DOWN in the bottom of our hearts we all know that success and happiness in life depend upon ourselves. No man is sure of having anything except what he himself earns, saves and invests - unless he is able and willing to live like a parasite upon others. As for luck, well, most grown men are really ashamed to talk much about luck. It is like loafing around for months living on one's relatives in the hope of finding a one thousand dollar bill. Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer, once told his salesmen that luck means:

"Rising at 6:00 o'clock in the morning. "Living on a dollar a day if you can earn two.

"Minding your own business and not meddling with other people's.

"Luck means appointments you never failed to keep - the trains you never failed to catch.

"Luck means to trust in God and your own resources."

We hear a great deal nowadays about cooperation, old-age pensions, old-age insurance, workman's compensation, minimum wage laws, and all manner of ways and means for men to help one another. Some of these are good, some may prove very bad. Unquestionably we are learning to help one another more and more. Common sense demands it. No man can live selfishly to himself. But we can't help one another either as individuals or as nations until each one of us learns to order his own life. You can best help your neighbor by paying your own debts and providing for your own future. Don't sit by and wait for the millennium. It is the inside force, not the outside force, that makes for success.

"What others have done I can do."

This is the motto which every young man and woman should cling to. It is worth sticking in one's memory and keeping it there. Success in life might seem beyond attainment, so many are the obstacles, if others no better endowed than we had not won the prize.

The proof of all I have written thus far is not my say-so, but the irrefutable testimony of life itself. It is not even what Henry Ford says, it is the life he has lived. How many successful business men have been spendthrifts? An absurd question, you say, but does it not bring its own conclusive answer?

Put the other way, did you ever hear of a successful business man who did not get his start in life with what he had saved or what some one had loaned him on the strength of his prudent character? Even in the case of those who inherited great wealth, how many have been able to keep it who were not prudent? The large proportion of self-made men among the successful ones in any community is a matter of common knowledge. Is it not so in your own town or city?

Marshall Field, the great Chicago merchant, began his business career on two dollars and fifty cents a week, and he saved. To tell the story of all the great merchant princes, railroad presidents, bankers and manufacturers who obtained their start by living within their means would be like repeating page by page a thick volume known as Who's Who in Finance, or the Directory of Directors of every large city in the country.

Trace every fortune to its source and you will find it began with economy, thrift of time as well as money. Even those which to-day seem to be permanently hereditary. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the great house, began to save early. When working as a steamboat captain he managed to save five thousand dollars. His wife, who was equally frugal and economical, saved thirteen thousand dollars by keeping a hotel. With this first eighteen thousand dollars Vanderbilt bought a controlling interest in a steamship. The result was that within a few years he owned other ships, and in time railroads and various transportation lines.

Three of our most famous multi-millionaires have written the stories of their early lives, and these books are to be had in any public library. The early struggles of these men - John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and James J. Hill - make intensely interesting reading to the ambitious young man, far more thrilling than the majority of novels. Of course, you don't want to make as much money as any of these men, and you probably never will. But if you want inspiration, read what they have done and how they began.

Another financier of enormous fortune, Daniel G. Reid, who founded several of the largest manufacturing combinations, began as a messenger in a bank. Then he became the janitor, and when his salary amounted to one thousand dollars a year he married and bought a house on mortgage. He paid off this debt in three years and then began to buy stock in the bank for which he worked. Thus another vast fortune had its modest beginning.

There is a danger, I think, in too strongly emphasizing the great conspicuous fortunes. Few young men will ever attain them. A great many young men, however, will acquire modest fortunes, inconspicuous competences, and by much the same methods. A boy earned a few pennies by holding horses and saved enough in time to buy a rig. Such was the beginning of many a successful if not spectacular business career in former years. I doubt whether much money is to be made in holding horses nowadays, but how about the garage owners and even the automobile manufacturers? Did not many of them begin as the humblest of mechanics? Indeed most of the great, successful automobile princes of to-day, if I may coin such an expression, men like Ford and Willys, did get their starts in the humblest of mechanical capacities.