Hanan's. I now resolved that every pair of shoes that left our factory should be branded with our name — not only once, but several times and on various parts of the shoe. They should be marked indelibly.

I know of nothing in my business life that has been of more value to me than the analytical study I made that night of the future of Hanan's shoes, and the fixed policy that followed it. It was an analysis based on human nature, and its logic has been demonstrated countless times. On numerous occasions I have had to fight against influences tending to cause a deviation from this policy, but I have resisted them steadfastly. For example, I was once offered an order for a sum that may seem fabulous one hundred thousand dollars - if I would leave the Hanan brand off my goods and permit the use of certain dealer's names instead. These, offers only proved the truth of my reasoning. If the brand was worth to others a hundred thousand dollars for an order, it was worth more than that to me.

When I received these generous propositions I had occasion to look back with satisfaction to that night in Detroit when I analyzed the future and put a correct estimate on the worth of Hanan's name stamped in our shoes.

Whatever a man's business, and whatever the proposition that confronts him, he can get right down to the fundamentals of the thing if he chooses, eliminating to a large degree the element of guess that makes some undertakings so uncertain. Many businesses have vacillating policies. This is merely an indication that analysis of the future is lacking.

A business may be conducted systematically as far as the system concerns records of transactions concluded, and yet may be entirely unsystematic when it comes to

transactions contemplated. It is well to discriminate carefully in this connection.

Are you in the habit of applying the same degree of analysis to the undertakings you are planning as to the undertakings that have gone into history, recorded in your ledgers? Perhaps you never thought of the matter in this light. You have studied bookkeeping systems and modern ideas for saving and tabulating business information concerning your daily acts, but it may be that you never opened an account with the future. It is more difficult to analyze the future than the past, but in some respects it is even more essential.

If

You can take your ledgers and from them tabulate the facts and figures that went to make your success or failure. You can group these statistics, arrange them in brackets, and reduce them to analysis of the minutest detail. you study all the ramifications of this detail and trace each result back, logically, to its cause, you will learn whence came your success or lack of success. You will find, too, that in all your processes of analysis every result was built practically on some attribute of human nature either in yourself, in the people who bought your goods, or in your competitors. While you have been analyzing your business you have been analyzing humanity.

Reverse the process. Project the analysis into the future, and see if you can dissect the causes that are to produce results for you during the coming year. Relentlessly cut out prejudice and your own desires and inclinations. Keep your analysis down to the bedrock of human nature. Don't soar above the heads of humanity. Of course you may have elements to consider that did not enter into your analyses of completed undertakings, but to all intents you will have to take into account the same immutable laws of mankind.

Open a mental ledger account with the future, or, if you prefer, tabulate your analysis on paper. Enterprises reduced to cold facts and figures, and transcribed in black and white, often appear different from enterprises pictured to you in the glowing words of a promoter. The imagination governs many an undertaking, which, if reasoned out in the remorseless logic of mathematics, would resolve itself into its true components. In your consummated transactions your bookkeeping searches out for you the mistakes and hidden leaks. So, too, the detail of your analysis of the future will indicate to you the points where impulsiveness and reason diverge.

For example, to take a rough illustration, you may be supplying the capital with which to manufacture a certain piece of machinery. The inventor is enthusiastic, and talks to you about the possibilities of the machine until you are ready to put up the cash. There is no doubt about the invention being a fine one. It will do everything claimed for it.

You build an expensive factory and organize a force of executives and workmen. For a year you make machines, and then you sit down to reason out why you have run so far behind your expectations. You figure it out and analyze it, and discover that you forgot to take into account the human element. The machine is all right, but the market for it is measured by certain factors you neglected to consider. You did not estimate the number of persons who could use your machine under existing conditions and competition. All your plans were too much influenced by the glamour of the imagination.

You were impetuous instead of analytical. You might have analyzed the proposition just as well before you started as at the end of the year, with its heavy losses.

Such an illustration might be trite if it were not borne

out so often in actual experience. It is difficult to understand the lack of foresight displayed in many business enterprises. Men forget to analyze the possibilities involved. We are continually seeing concerns start out with a flourish of trumpets, and end within a short time with a dirge.

I have in mind an instance that came to my attention quite recently. It was a manufacturing enterprise that enlisted a capital of sixty thousand dollars, and lost it within a year. I foresaw the result at the beginning, but those who were engaged in the enterprise were enthusiastic. They were not analytical enough to trace out the causes that would lead them to certain failure.

A simple study of human nature would have revealed the termination of the enterprise just as positively as the ledger accounts revealed it afterwards.

One of the most certain methods of anatomizing the future of an undertaking is to analyze the men who are to direct it. Analyze the promoter who wants you to invest your money. If he and his logic will stand the test of your pitiless dissection, then put your cash into the thing; otherwise keep clear of it.

Analyses of men will write the fate of their businesses as plainly as if shown by prophecy. Yet those men themselves will fail to see it. They never have cultivated the quality of analysis; they cannot analyze even themselves. To learn to dissect one's self is the first duty of every busiHe can hardly expect to read others until he

ness man.

knows himself.

To go back to my own experience: since that night in Detroit I have made it a policy never to take up an enterprise impulsively, but to analyze it as I would analyze a problem in mathematics. In the beginning I said to myself: "The business of making shoes deals intimately

with the human foot. Therefore, a shoe manufacturer who expects to create a reputation by the quality of his goods, and by stamping his name upon his output, ought to analyze the human foot. The foot is his business proposition. In making a shoe there are more things to be considered than the mere necessity of having a sole, an upper, or a lining."

I set to work to study the foot. I analyzed the instep, the toes, and the heel, not only separately but in their relations to one another. I studied the human element of making a shoe that would be successful in the purpose for which a shoe is designed protection, comfort, durability.

For twenty-five years I made my own models. In doing so I knew that I was analyzing the elements that were contributing to my success as a shoe manufacturer. If I could make the analysis of the foot harmonize with the analysis of the shoe, then I was accomplishing the ends of my business.

The same idea I applied to all the various enterprises that developed as my business expanded, and I believe that every man will be successful in proportion to the manner in which he makes the shoe of analysis fit his business. It is sometimes a little difficult to apply a concrete idea to a thing that seems more or less abstract, but the abstract element disappears to a large degree when you get down to definite analysis.

This is the remedy for every doubtful situation and every business difficulty. Keen analysis, following out the ramifications to the minutest detail, will illumine the way for the manufacturer, jobber, or retailer, and prevent many a business mistake. Is the trouble in the toe of the shoe, the heel, the sole, the lining, or the leather? Analyze the shoe and the foot and find out.

In an advertising proposition this element of analysis