In the first place, he found every avenue leading to success wide open and certainly not overpeopled.  He was surprised how few there were who really stood in a young man’s way.  He found that favoritism was not the factor that he had been led to suppose.  He realized it existed in a few isolated cases, but to these every one had pointed and about these every one had talked until, in the public mind, they had multiplied in number and assumed a proportion that the facts did not bear out.

Here and there a relative “played a favorite,” but even with the push and influence behind him “the lucky one,” as he was termed, did not seem to make progress, unless he had merit.  It was not long before Bok discovered that the possession of sheer merit was the only real factor that actually counted in any of the places where he had been employed or in others which he had watched; that business was so constructed and conducted that nothing else, in the face of competition, could act as current coin.  And the amazing part of it all to Bok was how little merit there was.  Nothing astonished him more than the low average ability of those with whom he worked or came into contact.

He looked at the top, and instead of finding it over-crowded, he was surprised at the few who had reached there; the top fairly begged for more to climb its heights.

For every young man, earnest, eager to serve, willing to do more than he was paid for, he found ten trying to solve the problem of how little they could actually do for the pay received.

It interested Bok to listen to the talk of his fellow-workers during luncheon hours and at all other times outside of office hours.  When the talk did turn on the business with which they were concerned, it consisted almost entirely of wages, and he soon found that, with scarcely an exception, every young man was terribly underpaid, and that his employer absolutely failed to appreciate his work.  It was interesting, later, when Bok happened to get the angle of the employer, to discover that, invariably, these same lamenting young men were those who, from the employer’s point of view, were either greatly overpaid or so entirely worthless as to be marked for early decapitation.

Bok felt that this constant thought of the wages earned or deserved was putting the cart before the horse; he had schooled himself into the belief that if he did his work well, and accomplished more than was expected of him, the question of wages would take care of itself.  But, according to the talk on every side, it was he who had the cart before the horse.  Bok had not only tried always to fill the particular job set for him, but had made it a rule at the same time to study the position just ahead, to see what it was like, what it demanded, and then, as the opportunity presented itself, do a part of that job in addition to his own.  As a stenographer, he tried always to clear off the day’s work before he closed his desk.  This was not always possible, but he kept it before him as a rule to be followed rather than violated.