Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/275

Rh away with this trade. We are packers, I know, but that's no reason why we can't be shippers, too. I want to milk the critter coming and going, twice a day, and milk her dry. Unless you do the whole thing you can't do anything in business as it runs today. There's still plenty of room at the top, but there isn't much anywheres else.

There may be reasons why we haven't been able to tackle this exporting of live cattle, but you can tell our people there that they have got to be mighty good reasons to wipe out the profit I see in it. Of course, I may have missed them, for I've only looked into the business a little by way of recreation, but it won't do to say that it's not in our line, because anything which carries a profit on four legs is in our line.

I dwell a little on the matter because, while this special case is out of your department, the general principle is in it. The way to think of a thing in business is to think of it first, and the way to get a