Office Boy Always Potential Boss

1910

By Jonas Howard

"Every office boy is a potential office manager. Every clerk is a potential head of the firm. The talk that the day of opportunity is past is all rot. The chance to 'work up' is as good as ever. It always is up to the boy."

These little extracts from the philosophy of James B. McMahon, whose recent election as first vice-president of the American Cotton Oil Company of New York supplemented his old position as vice-president of the N. K. Fairbank Company of Chicago, are worth the reading and remembering. The difference between them and the casual optimisms of the ordinary giver of "advice to the young" is that they emanate from a man who has the right to talk, especially along this line. Mr. McMahon does not say what he does simply because he believes it. He knows. Mr. McMahon began his career as an office boy with the firm of which he now comes near being the head.

The story of McMahon is a good, inspiring idea with which to begin the new year. It reeks with hope and optimism and has results to back it up. McMahon now is only 43 years old and from a start humble enough to suit anybody he has mounted pretty near to the heights of business success.

He was 14 when he began in the New York office of the Fairbank company. That was 28 years ago. There was nothing spectacular or meteoric about the boy. There are probably thousands of office kids around the country at this moment who show as much promise as did he. He was just a common office boy who had to work for a living and he did nothing but work, work hard, for his subsequent promotions.

He moved naturally from ordinary office boy to ordinary clerk and it wasn't until he was placed in charge of the export shipping business that the future began to promise much. There he displayed the ability that won him the confidence of his superiors and in 1896 he was appointed general sales manager and came to Chicago.

Chicago has been the scene of his most important activities, but he had won his spurs before he came here. It is easy enough to continue as a success; where the thousands fail is in making the big step upward.