in 20 markets stretching from Washington to Florida, Scripps Howard
News Service, United Media, and the worldwide licensing and syndication
home of PEANUTS and DILBERT.
He started the business in 1878, borrowing $10,000 to launch a
newspaper in Cleveland called “The Penny Press.” It was aimed at an
unserved market of urban workers, and quickly became the model for the
nation’s first mass medium. He found a successful formula, and started
to build the first chain of newspapers under common ownership.
Today, the E.W. Scripps Company is “a diversified media concern with
interests in newspapers, broadcast television stations, cable television
networks and other media-related enterprises.”
Some Outlandish Rules for Making Money
Ethics was important to Scripps, and he strived to keep his money,business, and life in proper perspective. Learn the 23 code of conduct
that E.W. Scripps used in both his life and his business in excerpts
from his essay “Some Outlandish Rules for Making Money.”
1. Never spend as much money as you earn.
The smaller your expenditures are in proportion to your earnings the sooner you will become rich.
2. It is more blessed to pay wages than to accept them.
At least, it is more profitable.
3. Never do anything yourself that you can get someone else to do for you.
The more things that someone else does for you the more time and
energy you have to do those things which no one else can do for you.
4. Never do anything today that you can put off till tomorrow.
There is always so much to do today that you should not waste your
time and energy in doing anything today that can be put off till
tomorrow. Most things that you do not have to do today are not worth
doing at all.
5. Always buy, never sell.
If you’ve got enough horse sense to become rich you know that it is
better to run only one risk than two risks. You also know that just as
likely as not the other fellow is smarter than you are and that whether
you buy or sell, in each case you run the risk of getting the worst of
the bargain. By adopting my rule you will diminish by one-half your
chances of loss.
Why compete with one person or many other persons in any occupation
or line of business so long as it is possible for you to have a monopoly
in some other field?
7. There is always a good, better and best way.
If circumstances compel you to pursue some occupation or to follow
some line of business which is being pursued by some other person, then
you do your work in some other way than that in which it is done by the
other. If you take the best way then the other fellow has no chance of
competing with you.
8. Whatever you do once, whatever way you undertake to do a
thing, don’t do the same thing again or don’t do the thing in the same
way.
If you know one way to do a thing you must know there is a better way to do the same thing.
9. If you’re succeeding in anything you are doing, don’t let anyone else know of your success
Because if you do some other person will try to do the same thing and be your competitor.
10. When you become rich, as you will become rich if you follow my advice, don’t let anyone know it.
General knowledge of your wealth will only attract the tax gatherer,
and other hungry people will try to get away from you something they
want and some-thing you want to keep.
11. One of the greatest assets any man can secure is a reputation for eccentricity.
If you have a reputation of this kind you can do a lot of things. You
can even do the things you want to do without attaching to yourself the
enmity of others. Many an act which, if performed by an ordinary
person, would arouse indignation, animosity and antagonism, can be
per-formed by a man with a reputation for eccentricity with no other
result than that of exciting mirth and perhaps pity. It is better to
have the good will than the bad will, even of a dog.
12. Never hate anybody.
Hatred is a useless expenditure of mental and nervous energy. Revenge costs much of energy and gains nothing.
13. The wise man regulates his conduct rather by reason than by instinct.
When you find many people applauding you for what you do, and a few
condemning, you can be certain that you are on the wrong course because
you’re doing the things that fools approve of. When the crowd ridicules
and scorns you, you can at least know one thing that it is at least
possible that you are acting wisely. It is one of the instincts of men
to covet applause.
14. It is far more important to learn what not to do than what to do.
You can learn this invaluable lesson in two ways, the first of which
and most inspired is by your own mistakes. The second is by observing
the mistakes of others. Any man that learns all the things that he ought
not to do cannot help doing the things he ought to do.
15. Posterity can never do anything for you.
Therefore, you should invest nothing in posterity. Of course your
heirs will quarrel over your estate, but that will be after you’re dead
and why should you trouble your mind over things which you will never
know anything about?
16. A man can do anything he wants to do in this world, at least if he wants to do it badly enough.
Therefore, I say that any of you who want to become rich can become rich if you live long enough.
17. After what I have said it goes without further saying that you should save money.
But no man can save himself rich. He can only make himself rich.
Savings are capital. It is only by doing things that one learns how to
do things. It is only the capitalist who handles capital that learns how
to handle capital profitably. The more capital you have the more
skillful you become as a capitalist.
18. Fools say that money makes money.
I say that money does not make money. It is only men who make money.
19. There are two cardinal sins in the economic world: one is
giving something for nothing, and the other is getting something for
nothing.
And the greater sin of these is getting something for nothing, or
trying to do so. I really doubt if anyone ever does get some-thing for
nothing. (Don’t marry a rich wife. Women are what they are. At best they
are hard enough to get along with. They are always trying to make a man
do something that he doesn’t want to do, and generally succeeding. When
a woman is conscious of the fact that she has furnished all or any part
of your capital, her influence over you will be so great as to be the
worst handicap you can carry.)
20. I would advise you to refuse to be an heir.
If you’re a prospective heir of your father or some other relative, you should also consider that a handicap.
21. Despise not the day of small things, but rather respect the small things.
It is far easier to make a profit on a very small capital invested in
any business than it is to make the same proportion of profit off of a
large capital. It is true that after you have learned how to make a
profit on a business that shows small capital, successively, as your
capital grows, you learn how to handle it profitably. Then the time will
come when the greater your capital becomes in this way the greater your
pro-portion of profits on it should be. And, for an added reason, as
your wealth and skill grow rapidly, your so-called necessary expenses
grow much more slowly and in time cease to grow at all, so that beyond a
certain limit all your income and added income becomes a surplus,
constantly to be added to your capital.
22. It is far easier to make money than to spend it.
As it becomes more and more difficult to spend money, you will spend
less and less of it, and hence there will be more money to accumulate.
23. The hardest labor of all labor performed by man is that of thinking.
If you have become rich, train your mind to hard thinking and hold it
well in leash so that your thinking will all be with but one object in
view, that of accumulating more wealth.
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