If the men who serve under your direction, Red, are not allowed to grow--if their ambition is not aroused to a point where they fit themselves with your help to take your job, or jobs like it, you cannot hope to gain promotion. Leaving out the personal side of it, if yourself and men in similar positions accept your present positions with smug satisfaction and take no part in an effort to be constantly building, the foundation of your house will surely crumble as dry rot and decay sets in and your temple will some day fall upon your head.
And Red, don't be selfish to the point of being afraid of personal handicaps that you might impose on yourself. Your company needs trained branch house managers, district managers, sales managers and other executives. If they choose your right-hand man and leave a hole in your organization, don't grouch about it--don't complain about their having broken up your organization--Good Lord, Boy, what higher compliment could they pay you than to thus acknowledge that they consider you a builder of men? Just start in and train another, for the day you can honestly walk in and tell the Boss that you've trained a man who can fill your place better than you can, he will not waste much time finding a bigger and better job for you, Red.
While I think you're too young to really appreciate the pride one feels in the successes of their own children, you can take it from me it's some feeling and I don't know anything in this world that's so closely akin to it as the satisfaction and genuine pleasure one derives in watching the successes of those men whom you have personally coached in their earlier successes.
Think it over Boy! The duty you owe to your company, or the world at large, isn't at all performed when you have merely achieved personal success--why bless your heart, one graduate from Red's school is worth more to the company than a single sale of the entire output of their largest cannery.
Fate has entrusted to your keeping as likely looking a bunch of youngsters as I've seen in many a day. What are YOU going to do with 'em old Red Top? Are you going to be satisfied with just making good salesmen out of them--are you short-sighted enough to think that's all that's expected of you?