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Bok, Edward William, 1863-1930

"A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After"


After Bok had been in the world of affairs, he wondered where were
these choked avenues, these struggling masses, these competitors for
every inch of vantage. Then he gradually discovered that they did not
exist.
In the first place, he found every avenue leading to success wide open
and certainly not overpeopled. He was surprised how few there were who
really stood in a young man's way. He found that favoritism was not
the factor that he had been led to suppose. He realized it existed in
a few isolated cases, but to these every one had pointed and about
these every one had talked until, in the public mind, they had
multiplied in number and assumed a proportion that the facts did not
bear out.
Here and there a relative "played a favorite," but even with the push
and influence behind him "the lucky one," as he was termed, did not
seem to make progress, unless he had merit. It was not long before Bok
discovered that the possession of sheer merit was the only real factor
that actually counted in any of the places where he had been employed
or in others which he had watched; that business was so constructed and
conducted that nothing else, in the face of competition, could act as
current coin.


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