In the back pages of this Introduction you will observe a Personal Analysis Chart in which ten well known men have been analyzed for your study and comparison. Observe this chart carefully and note the “danger points” which mean failure to those who do not observe these signals. Of the ten men analyzed eight are known to be successful, while two may be considered failures. Study, carefully, the reason why these two men failed.
Then, study yourself. In the two columns which have been left blank for that purpose, give yourself a rating on each of the Fifteen Laws of Success at the beginning of this course; at the end of the course rate yourself again and observe the improvements you have made.
The purpose of the Law of Success course is to enable you to find out how you may become more capable in your chosen field of work. To this end you will be analyzed and all of your qualities classified so you may organize them and make the best possible use of them.
You may not like the work in which you are now engaged.
There are two ways of getting out of that work. One way is to take but little interest in what you are doing, aiming merely to do enough with which to “get by.” Very soon you will find a way out, because the demand for your services will cease.
The other and better way is by making yourself so useful and efficient in what you are now doing that you will attract the favorable attention of those who have the power to promote you into more responsible work that is more to your liking.
It is your privilege to take your choice as to which way you will proceed.
Again you are reminded of the importance of Lesson Nine of this course, through the aid of which you may avail yourself of this “better way” of promoting yourself.
Thousands of people walked over the great Calumet Copper Mine without discovering it. Just one lone man used his “imagination,” dug down into the earth a few feet, investigated, and discovered the richest copper deposit on earth.
You and every other person walk, at one time or another, over your “Calumet Mine.” Discovery is a matter of investigation and use of “imagination.” This course on the Fifteen Laws of Success may lead the way to your “Calumet,” and you may be surprised when you discover that you were standing right over this rich mine, in the work in which you are now engaged. In his lecture on “Acres of Diamonds,” Russell Conwell tells us that we need not seek opportunity in the distance; that we may find it right where we stand! THIS IS A TRUTH WELL WORTH REMEMBERING!
NAPOLEON HILL,
Author of the Law of Success.
Acknowledgments
THE AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF
HELP RENDERED HIM IN THE
WRITING OF THIS COURSE
This course is the result of careful analysis of the life-work of over one hundred men and women who have achieved unusual success in their respective callings.
The author of the course has been more than twenty years in gathering, classifying, testing and organizing the Fifteen Laws upon which the course is based. In his labor he has received valuable assistance either in person or by studying the life-work of the following men:
Henry Ford
Thomas A. Edison
Harvey S. Firestone
John D. Rockefeller
Charles M. Schwab
Woodrow Wilson
Darwin P. Kingsley
Wm. Wrigley, Jr.
A. D. Lasker
E. A. Filene
James J. Hill
Captain George M. Alexander
(To whom the author was formerly an assistant)
Hugh Chalmers
Dr. E. W. Strickler
Edwin C. Barnes
Robert L. Taylor
(Fiddling Bob)
George Eastman
E. M. Statler
Andrew Carnegie
John Wanamaker
Marshall Field
Edward Bok
Cyrus H. K. Curtis
George W. Perkins
Henry L. Doherty
George S. Parker
Dr. C. O. Henry
General Rufus A. Ayers
Judge Elbert H. Gary
William Howard Taft
Dr. Elmer Gates
John W. Davis
Samuel Gompers
F. W. Woolworth
Judge Daniel T. Wright
(One of the author’s law instructors)
Elbert Hubbard
Luther Burbank
O. H. Harriman
John Burroughs
E. H. Harriman
Charles P. Steinmetz
Frank Vanderlip
Theodore Roosevelt
Wm. H. French
Dr. Alexander Graham Bell
(To whom the author owes credit for most of Lesson One).
Of the men named, perhaps Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie should be acknowledged as having contributed most toward the building of this course, for the reason that it was Andrew Carnegie who first suggested the writing of the course and Henry Ford whose life-work supplied much of the material out of which the course was developed.
Some of these men are now deceased, but to those who are still living the author wishes to make here grateful acknowledgment of the service they have rendered, without which this course never could have been written.
The author has studied the majority of these men at close range, in person. With many of them he enjoys, or did enjoy before their death, the privilege of close personal friendship which enabled him to gather from their philosophy facts that would not have been available under other conditions.
The author is grateful for having enjoyed the privilege of enlisting the services of the most powerful men on earth, in the building of the Law of Success course. That privilege has been remuneration enough for the work done, if nothing more were ever received for it.
These men have been the back-bone and the foundation and the skeleton of American business, finance, industry and statesmanship.
The Law of Success course epitomizes the philosophy and the rules of procedure which made each of these men a great power in his chosen field of endeavor. It has been the author’s intention to present the course in the plainest and most simple terms available, so it could be mastered by very young men and young women, of the high-school age.
With the exception of the psychological law referred to in Lesson One as the “Master Mind,” the author lays no claim to having created anything basically new in this course. What he has done, however, has been to organize old truths and known laws into PRACTICAL, USABLE FORM, where they may be properly interpreted and applied by the workaday man whose needs call for a philosophy of simplicity.
In passing upon the merits of the Law of Success Judge Elbert H. Gary said: “Two outstanding features