n the artist, must perforce stake some
portion of his success in life upon the chance of his forecast as to
the success of a particular speculation, article of manufacture, or
artistic conception, and its prospects of proving as attractive or
remunerative as he has expected it to be. The successful business man
no doubt makes his plans, as far as may be practicable, upon the
system indicated by the humorist, who advises people never to prophesy
unless they happen to know, but the nature of his knowledge is almost
always to some extent removed from certainty. He may spend much time
in laborious searching; make many inquiries from persons whom he
believes to be competent to advise him; diligently study the
conditions upon which the problem before him depends--in short, he may
take every reasonable precaution against the chances of failure, yet,
in spite of all, he must necessarily incur risks. And so it is with
regard to the task of forecasting the trend of industrial improvement.
All who are called upon to lay their plans for a number of years
beforehand must necessarily be deeply interested in the problems
relating to the various directions which the course of that
improvement may possibly take. Meanwhile their estimates of the
future, although based upon an intimate knowledge of the past and
aided by naturally clear powers of insight, must be hypothetical and
conditional. Unfortunately for the vast majority of manufacturing
experts, the thoroughness with which they have mastered the details of
one particular branch of industry too often blinds them to the chances
of change arising from localities beyond their own restricted fields
of vision.

The merriment occasioned by the first proposals for affixing pneumatic
tyres to bicycles may be cited as a striking instance of the lack of
forecasting insight displayed by very many of those who are best
entitled to pronounce opinions on the minutiae of their particular
avocations. In almost every "bike" shop and factory throughout the
United Kingdom and America, the suggestion of putting an air-filled
hosepipe around each wheel of the machine to act as a tyre was
received with shouts of ridicule!

Railway men, who understood the wonderful elasticity imparted by air
to pieces of mechanism, such as the pneumatic brake, were not by any
means so much inclined to laughter; but naturally, for the most part,
they deferred to the rule which enjoins every man to stick to his
trade. Th