enterprise system. Without competition, business would
stagnate.
These facts are conveniently ignored by those individuals
and pressure groups who loudly demand that the Federal
Government do something about “unfair” foreign
competition. The “something” they want the Government to
“do” is, of course, to raise sky-high tariff walls which would
prevent foreign countries from trading with us—about as
nearsighted a policy as one could imagine.
Creeping socialism? That particular plaint is proven to
be false and without foundation by the very fact that there
are so many more free-enterprise-system American
businessmen to voice it today than there were ten, twenty
or more years ago.
In short, I can’t see any validity in the arguments
advanced by the pessimists and defeatists. But then,
calamity howlers have always been with us, chanting one
dismal and discouraging chorus or another.
When I purchased the Hotel Pierre, located on Manhat-
tan’s swank Fifth Avenue at 61st Street for $2,350,000, it
was New York’s most modern hotel. No crystal ball was
needed to show that this was an excellent buy. The country
was rapidly emerging from the Depression; business
conditions were improving st
eadily. Business and personal
travel were bound to increase greatly. There had been very
little hotel construction in New York for several years, and
none was planned for the immediate future. The Pierre was
a bargain— and a hotel with a great potential. But the
gloom-and-doom chaps were too busy titillating their
masochistic streaks with pessimistic predictions of worse
times to come to recognize such bargains as this when they saw them.
I began negotiations for the purchase of the Hotel Pierre
in October 1938 and took possession the following May. At
today’s land and construction costs, between 25 and 35 mil-
lion dollars would be needed to duplicate the Pierre in New
York City.
I’m not crowing; I’m merely trying to show that there
are always opportunities through which businessmen can
profit handsomely if they will only recognize and seize
them—and if they will disregar
d the pessimistic auguries of
self-appointed prophets of doom.
Conditions are much different now than they were in
1938, 1932 or 1915. Just the same, the last things that
American business needs are complaints, alibis and
defeatist philosophies.
What American business
does
need—and in ever-
increasing numbers—are young businessmen who are
willing and able to assume the responsibilities of
progressive, vigorous industrial and commercial leadership.
The rewards awaiting such men are practically limitless.
There is plenty of room at the top. That figurative
Millionaire’s Club has an unlimited number of vacancies on
its membership rolls. That these aren’t being filled faster
is, I’m afraid, due largely to the fact that too many
potentially highly qualified young applicants give up before
they start. They listen to cautionary defeatism instead of
opening their eyes to the opportunities around them. They
are apparently blind to the many examples provided by
those who have made and are making their fortunes.
As I’ve said, I started my own business career in the
petroleum industry as a wildcatter, and oil has remained
my main business interest. I find it discomfiting that so
many young men today have an idea that the era of the
relatively small-time wildcatter is over. Actually, nothing
could be further from the truth.
Oil is a funny thing. It is likely to turn up in the most
unlikely places. There are many areas in the United States
where an enterprising wildcatter is quite likely to find oil—
and to strike it rich. Admittedly, most structures in
recognized oil belts have been located and are being
exploited. On the other hand, there are many localities
which have received little or no serious attention from oil
prospectors.
At the time I started wildcatting, “everyone” said there
was no oil in the Oklahoma Red Beds. By the same token,
30 or 40 years ago, oil operators got it into their heads that
there was no oil in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Iowa or
Utah—to name only some states—and passed them up.
This belief has influenced oil exploration ever since. That
it’s a theory without much fact
to support it is proven by
the fact that only a few years back, oil prospectors finally
began drilling test wells in Utah—and discovered oil.
There are many opportunities for the knowledgeable
small-scale wildcatter today. While the oil prospector has to
do his exploration outside recognized—and thus already
exploited— oil belts, scientific and technological advances
have made the business of looking and drilling for oil easier
than it was years ago. Petroleum geology, an infant and at
best uncertain science in 1914, has made fantastic strides.
The modem geologist has the knowledge, experience and
equipment that make it possible for him to spot the
presence of oil with a much-better-than-fair degree of
accuracy. It’s true that most of the oil that lay close to the
surface has been located, and that wells have to be drilled
to much greater depths than was necessary in the early
part of the Twentieth Century. On the other hand, using