INITIATIVE AND LEADERSHIP 365Three weeks later a contract had been signed between the Balti-
more & Ohio Railroad Company, the Monongahela Valley Traction
Company, and the County Commissioners of Harrison County, pro-
viding for the construction of the bridge, one-third of its cost to be
paid by each.
Just two months later, the right of way was being graded and the
bridge was under way. And three months after that, the streetcars were
running into Lumberport on regular schedule.
This incident meant much to the town of Lumberport, because it
provided transportation that enabled people to get in and out of the
town without undue effort.
It also meant a great deal to me, because it served to introduce me
as one who "got things done." Two very definite advantages resulted
from this transaction. The Chief Counsel for the Traction Company
gave me a position as his assistant, and later on it was the means of an
introduction that led to my appointment as the advertising manager
of the LaSalle Extension University.
Lumberport, West Virginia, was then and still is a small town, and
Chicago was a large city and located a considerable distance away, but
news of Initiative and Leadership has a way of taking on wings and
traveling.
Four of the seventeen laws of success were combined in the trans-
action I have described here: a Definite Chief Aim, Self-Confidence,
Imagination, and Initiative and Leadership. The law of Doing More
Than Paid For also entered, somewhat, into the transaction, because
I was not offered anything and, in fact, did not expect pay for what
I did.
To be perfectly frank, I appointed myself to that job of getting
the bridge built more as a sort of challenge to those who had said it
could not be done than I did with the expectation of getting paid for
it. By my attitude I rather intimated to Mr. Hornor that I could get
it done, and he was not slow to snap me up and put me to the test.