88 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-MASTERY
Within an inconceivably short period of time, Ford has mastered
three of the most stubborn enemies of mankind and transformed them
into assets constituting the very foundation of his success.
These enemies are ignorance, illiteracy, and poverty!
Anyone who can stay the hand of these three savage forces, much
less harness and use them to good account, is well worth close study
by the less fortunate individuals.
This is an age of industrial power in which we are living, and the source
of all this power is organized ifJort. Not only has the management of
industrial enterprises efficiently organized individual workers, but in
many instances mergers of industry have been effected in such a way
and to the end that these combinations (as in the case of the United
States Steel Corporation, for example) have accumulated practically
unlimited power.
One may hardly glance at the day's news without seeing a report
of some business, industrial, or financial merger, bringing under one
management enormous resources and thus creating great power.
One day it is a group of banks; another day a chain of railroads;
the next day it is a combination of steel plants, all merging for the
purpose of developing power through highly organized and coordi-
nated effort.
Knowledge, general in nature and unorganized, is not power; it is
only potential power-the raw material out of which real power may
be developed. Any modern library contains an unorganized record of
all the knowledge of value to which the present stage of civilization
is heir, but this knowledge is not power because it is not organized.
Every form of energy and every species of animal or plant life, to
survive, must be organized. The oversized animals whose remains have
filled Nature's boneyard through extinction have left mute but certain
evidence that nonorganization means annihilation.