You cannot retire successfully unless you have an assured income or great confidence in securing an adequate income. I want to give you a little lesson in economics—not the kind of economics you might learn in schools or in colleges. In fact, I don't know of any schools and colleges that will teach you this kind of economics. But this is the kind of economics I live by, the kind of economics I have succeeded with. It may be cruel and heartless as many have informed me, but riches are not garnered by soft philosophies and kid gloves.

As a starter you must remember this—keep it in mind always lest you unwarily fall into the wrong hands. ALL WEALTH IS THE END PRODUCT OF LABOR. EVERYTHING THAT HAS VALUE IS VALUABLE BECAUSE OF HUMAN LABOR EMBODIED IN IT. All that is useful is not necessarily valuable. For example, water is our most useful product. Yet it is practically free because little labor is necessary to acquire it. On the other side not all things are valuable because labor may be embodied in them. You can go out and spend twenty days with a pen knife and a piece of timber to make a wagon wheel. A great amount of work has been expended but the labor embodied in all this has not been applied to create a socially desirable product. Hence the labor is worthless. ANOTHER POINT! ONLY EFFICIENTLY AP­PLIED LABOR CREATES NOTEWORTHY WEALTH. Which is to say that labor is expended unnecessarily unless the best and latest production techniques are utilized. Who would think of using lung power to blow bottles and glasses in these days when a ma­chine, itself a magnificent example of embodied human labor of various and manifold types, can make hundreds of thousands of bottles and glasses during the same period of time.

NOTEWORTHY WEALTH are those products which com­mand a price in the market place. In the long run all products exchange the one for the other at their value. Price is but the monetary reflection of this value, that is, embodied labor. At times price may be above or below the value of a product, depending upon the supply and the demand. But in the long run the price will revolve around a hard core—THE VALUE OF THE PROD­UCT. AND LABOR CREATES ALL VALUES! Never be fooled or convinced otherwise on that score. Look again at the most use­ful thing in the world—water. It is practically free for the taking. Its value is nil. In the deserts it has value and market price—be­cause it requires labor to acquire and bring it to that desert point where it is in demand—where it is needed and wanted. LET US LOOK NOW AT SOME OF OUR MOST VALUABLE COM­MODITIES. Diamonds for example. A diamond cutter may spend days cutting just one diamond. It required quite an expenditure of labor in the first place to mine the diamond. A considerable amount of labor is expended in marketing the diamond. A diamond is tremendously valuable in the market place. Yet it is of less real use than a gallon of water. It is valuable because first it satisfies a human want and is, consequently, in demand as a prized posses­sion. But its real value lies in the labor embodied in its manufacture and distribution. There are many stones that rival its beauty but few so valuable—BECAUSE THEY DO NOT REPRESENT ANYWHERE NEAR AS MUCH EMBODIED LABOR!

AGAIN MAY I ASK YOU TO REMEMBER THIS. LABOR IS THE SOURCE OF ALL VALUES! All products are regarded as commodities, bought and sold on the market place at various prices, depending upon the supply and demand. Some are ex­pensive, some are said to be cheap. BUT LABOR IS INVARI­ABLY CHEAP. IT'S THE BIGGEST BARGAIN UNDER THE SUN! IT CAN ALWAYS BE BOUGHT RIGHT! I have bought and sold the labor of hundreds of people in my day! The price I paid was a stipend known by the kindly name of wage—or salary. So I paid $2.50 per hour. Believe me, what I got for that $2.50 was marketable for two to five times that much. That's a markup few finished products will ever stand. THAT IS A MARKUP THAT LABOR WILL ALMOST ALWAYS STAND. The prod­uct labor creates usually markets for many times its price, that is, what is paid for it in the form of wages. Perhaps you saw in my literature the mention of wage slavery. I meant that. Let me give you an example.

Back in the early part of the nineteenth century we had an in­stitution in this country known as chattel slavery. Negroes were bought and sold in the market place. They were owned as property just as today we own horses, cattle or sheep. They were owned for only one purpose. For the extraction of wealth which their labor created. It was no secret. It was an open affair. A slave was a valuable piece of property. But a slave presented certain prob­lems. He had to be kept in the peak of condition—otherwise he lost his use value and his market value. A sick slave had to be kept and nursed. He couldn't put out the work. If he became crippled it was like throwing $500 in the fire. He became worth­less. The master had to feed and clothe him, shelter him and assure his fitness—just as today cattle and hogs are kept in sleek market condition.

But the Industrial Age reasoned this way. Why should I be Sam's keeper? Why go to all that expense? Pay him a little money instead; let him fend for himself. It's cheaper that way. If I need him he'll be there ready to give out for a stipend. If I don't need him I won't be burdened with him. If the market is slow I won't have to keep him in food, clothing and shelter just the same. I can turn him out. He'll be there waiting till I need him again. He doesn't have any place to go. I get what I want out of him just the same—his ability to labor. And the stipend I pay him is consider­ably less than the expense of maintaining him come good or bad times. He's not a burdensome worry on me any longer. With this reasoning came about the institution known as the wages system— wage slavery, if you please. It was slavery in another form—a devious form that was not nearly so readily recognized. But slavery it was nevertheless and a form of slavery it remains.

Things are bad, economically, just now. I can put an ad in the Help Wanted columns in tomorrow's newspaper and tomorrow I can have hundreds of applicants knocking on my door, ready and eager to work for me, begging and pleading their consideration over that of competing applicants. Many will accept my terms, my of­fering wages. "Never mind what you got before. Why don't you go back there? Oh, they just laid you off. Well, if you wanta' work for me this is it. You don't want to starve do you? Well, I can hire plenty at this wage." And I got my prices all rigged in advance, of course.

Let's say I am a painting contractor—which I assure you I am not—and I get the opportunity to bid on painting a house. I look over the house, figure I can do the job for $550 and come out. I don't worry about my competitors bids too much. They are like me. If they can't make money on a job—well, what's the use. So we all bid in the same range, maybe I was even a bit higher. So what, I did a real snow job on the home owner. He thought his home would be twice as beautiful with my job as it would have been if anyone else but me painted it. So I got the job. I know it will take about three days for three men to complete the job. This I figure will cost me a total of about 72 labor hours at about $3.00 per hour. I have a $216 labor cost right away. I will need, say, about $120 in paint purchased in wholesale quantities. I figure my wear and tear on equipment and my time and trouble on this job as $100. My overall cost of handling the job will be $436. I make over $100 clear. I might knock out two or three of these jobs a week during the season. I am not working. I am just bidding on the jobs, supervising them and furnishing the precious little equipment needed to get a painting job done. I am the enterpriser knocking down the money. AND WHAT IS MY REAL SECRET!

MY SECRET would be simple enough. There are dozens of painters sitting around waiting for a call to go to work. I get calls from some every day wondering if I have any work for them yet. RIGHT HERE IS MY SECRET! I am dealing in the commodity —LABOR!

WHAT I WANT TO GET ACROSS TO YOU IS THIS. YOU CAN DEAL IN THIS COMMODITY TOO! Labor is woefully ignorant. It knows not its value, it realizes little what wealth it creates, and knows little enough about its market price—wages. You can buy it and sell it wholesale. This is one important in­gredient that created every great fortune today. Oh, of course, many acquired great wealth that were not dealing in this wonderful commodity, labor, directly. But they were dealing in the wealth that labor had created, or something that would be valuable only if labor were applied upon it. Again, remember that HUMAN LABOR is the cheapest commodity under the sun! Can you utilize it to your advantage? Can you direct its use in some marketable service or product whereby you reap a bountiful harvest?

I have employed workers as far back as I can remember, here and there, even back in Oklahoma in my teens. When I was a High School boy, it was the custom for a farmer to have the pecan trees thrashed on his place by someone else. It was a dangerous job to climb and thrash trees, especially if you were a farmer well along in years. Pecan harvesting was so hazardous that it was customary to gather the crop for 50% of the harvest. Indians were best suited for this kind of work and could best do it, but what decent Indian would think of work if he were drawing Indian relief? I made ar­rangements with several farmers in the river bottom areas to thrash their pecans. Some had groves of them, some had only a few trees. Thrashing begins after the first few frosts and lasts well into Decem­ber, a period covering as much as two months. Some trees yield as much as two to three hundred pounds of pecans and these trees can be mammoth affairs to boot. With pecans at .15 a pound on the market at that time, I did very well. I climbed trees in the evenings after school and hired other school boys to help me. I had boys and girls gathering nuts from under the trees. On some Saturdays a crew of us managed to thrash five or six of these trees and come up with as much as eight hundred to one thousand pounds of pecans, half of which was mine. In those days wages were only .25 an hour for men or boys. I paid off my helpers and often managed to come out with $50 or more for a day's work. But tree skinning wasn't to my liking and for a few seasons pecans never bore because of adverse weather conditions during the spring season. I got the wanderlust too, even before I finished High School. Otherwise, I imagine I would still be down there signing up every farmer with a contract to harvest and market his pecans. I had great ambitions about it at that time.

The point to grasp here is that I, by myself, could have done very little in the way of thrashing pecans and gathering pecans. If I had been working for someone else I might have received .25 an hour for my labor. But, as it was, I hired others to help me, paid them the .25 per hour and made a tremendous profit thereby. In fact, I didn't even remunerate my labor until I had already mar­keted their product, the pecans. And this can be the case with you too! Why should you pay for labor before you have put much of its product on the market? I am presently an employer. I pay my em­ployees weekly. And I am not paying them for the work they did this week. NO SIR! They are getting paid for the work they did for me—LAST WEEK!

A little capital can go a long way. Perhaps you have heard of the contraption known as the COTTON PICKER. They aren't the best machines in the world because they can't hold a torch to a man dragging a cottonsack down a row. That is, from their per­formance in the field. They leave fully a third of the cotton laying loose on the ground and the cotton gathered is full of leaves, bolls, stems and whatnot. The cotton laying on the ground after a cotton picker is usually picked up on the halves, by Mexicans in the West Texas district of whence I speak now.

A Cotton Picker will gather up to 25 bales of cotton a day with two operators. The best a boll puller can do by hand is around 1000 pounds if he really puts out. The average is around 500 pounds. It requires 2000 pounds of cotton in the boll to make a bale. Can you see the tremendous advantage a Cotton Picker with two operators that gathers up to 25 bales a day has over two boll pullers who between them can gather only y2 bale?

Now speaking of a little capital going a long way, let's get into a case history.

CASE HISTORY No. 1. Melven Ayers was no poor kid. His father owned a section of West Texas cotton land and put his son through High School. He was scheduled to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock but a hitch in the Army interfered with those plans. Upon return from the Army he was 21 and married. He had to make a living. His father was none too pleased with his son's conduct and wasn't too kindly disposed toward Mel. In the late forties the Cot­ton Picker was coming into its own. Mel went to a local bank and got a $1000 loan on no more security than that he was Mr. Ayers' kid. He went to a local farm machinery dealer, planked the $1000 down on a Cotton Picker costing several thousand dollars. The balance was financed. The Dealer arranged for that through the manufacturer. The machine was not delivered to Mel until well into November, just when the cotton season was getting under way for the pickers—long after several killing frosts. Mel hired a helper at $5.00 a day, let the farmer whose cotton he was harvest­ing worry about tractors and trailers to move his cotton. Instead of $2.00 a hundred pounds for pulling bolls Mel got $15 a ton with his machine. On some days he cleared $300. He paid for the ma­chine during the first season. During the next season he acquired a second machine, hired a couple of boys to operate it. And during the season following that he purchased two more machines in the same manner. When I visited West Texas in 1952 Mel was well on the way to becoming a wealthy man and spent most of the year free from work or the responsibilities of his business.

COULD YOU DO THIS? Keep in Mind that Mel's success was in ownership (or shall we say control—a bank and finance company owned the machine) of a cotton harvesting machine. He could have failed. But he didn't have much to lose except his credit standing—and it wouldn't have hurt because I am sure Mel's pop wouldn't let a kid of his ruin his reputation. Can you think of some business or service you can perform, utilizing the labor of others? On which you can collect the tab and pay out considerably less to the hired labor?

I am retired as much as an employer as much as for any other reason and believe me I could be retired for many other reasons than that of my position as an employer. But my reasoning is like this. If I had a business with 20 employees, why should I beat my brains out to keep things in line? I am only one man. If the business is worth having it is worth a good general manager. There are plenty of people around willing to risk a few ulcers for $10,000 to $15,000 a year. So why should I worry? Instead of so much and so much a year I come out with so much less. But so what? I am enjoying myself in the meantime. I am still making plenty of money. I am free to go here and go there. That's the trouble with too many businessmen. They don't own a business. It owns them. Heck, it only takes one man to replace them. That is all it took to replace me in any business that I ever started—just one good man. If the business couldn't afford just one good man that wasn't the business to be in. Every business is, no matter what line you may call it, just a business of dealing in labor, either directly or indirectly.

The acquisition of wealth is not exactly an easy task. If you have a penetrating mind you might turn up more situations than you can hope to cope with. This is my case. In fact, I sometimes find myself spread too thin on a project to project basis. At heart I am lazy and the comment has been made about me that I have worked harder getting out of work than if I had just went ahead and done the work in the first place. But my sort of laziness has developed an imagination that I am proud to brag about. And I can see opportunity in just about anything—perhaps from my varied background and experience—and perhaps because I try to look at it from the viewpoint of "How can I make something out of this and still be down on the creek fishing?" I have heard it said that it was the lazy man who was faced with work that invented a way of getting around it. I have a great love for the wealth and pleasures of this world. I don't intend to let work or duty stand in my way. As long as the commodity—LABOR—is around at such a bargain and is so ignorant why should I involve myself? I can live off the fruits of labor as long as I can utilize it efficiently and competently in the creation of a marketable product or service.

Do you imagine for one minute that the great industrial empires of this day were created by those who own them? If you do just how naive can you be? Is it not just possible that the half million workers whom a giant industrial corporation employs had some­thing to do with the creation of the tremendous wealth the corpora­tion holds title to? Did you know that many corporations have a net worth exceeding the net worth of all their employees combined by as much as 500%? The expression "He went out and made a fortune" isn't exactly true. "He so directed the activity of others that he made a fortune." Labor that works for a mere wage is much like the sheep that gives up its wool for a little food. It gives up just a whole lot more than it gets in return. It is really incredible that the great body of humanity permit themselves to be mulcted so pitifully by a mere handful who own our industrial wealth. But that is the situation. And with the situation this way why can't you in your little way evolve a little system of your own for dealing in labor to your advantage?

Remember again! To acquire wealth you must somehow lay title to the product of the labor of another. You, yourself, by your own effort, cannot hope to create much wealth beyond your own com­fortable needs. The legal way to lay claim to another's labor is to acquire his labor at a price which is considerably less, perhaps only a fraction, of its real market price. When you have mastered the situation to the point where you can employ one kind of labor to manage and corral another kind of labor, then you can free your­self of the whole process, go where you please, when you please, live as you please and enjoy life to its hilt. Others have done it from time immemorial and continue to do it. Why not you, too?

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