The business man of this country possesses certain characteristics which we may examine at this point. First of all, the typical American enterpriser is daring; so daring in fact, that foreign observers have said that he would be willing, if necessary, to pay to be allowed to assume business risks. Overdrawn as this statement is, it points to a significant tendency. Not only is he daring, but he is resourceful. Like a good soldier he watches every movement of those opposed to him, takes advantage of every opportunity, and uses his own forces to the best advantage. In short, he often accomplishes the impossible. Moreover, the typical American enterpriser is imaginative. Particularly among our captains of industry do we find this characteristic well developed. On no other ground can we explain the numerous transcontinental railroads, the irrigation projects of the Southwest, the great steel mills at Gary, Indiana, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the Panama Canal. Such projects do not result from accident; they must mature in the mind before they become realities. James J. Hill owed much of his success as a master railroad-builder to a highly developed imaginative ability. In a more modest way the pioneer farmers of the West and Middle West saw in the future the long stretches of timber land and the trackless prairies give way to prosperous farming communities. They not only saw, but they also dared to make the "great venture," to pit their resourcefulness against the hostility of an unsettled country.