Fighting Off Despair

brought him, if his fields had perforce to lie fallow. What he had come to tell me, in effect, was that he had decided to sell his lands. It is one of the great ironies of life that there are hundreds and thousands of unemployed, and yet many jobs just seem to go abegging. There is, in fact, no dearth of work in this world. The unemployed must simply cultivate two all-important qualities—diligence and perseverance—and they will find that jobs come to seek them out. One thing they must never do is give in to despair. If they do, they merely reduce themselves to the same crippled state —mentally, if not physically—as poor Ramesh Dhobi from Maharashtra. Having One's Share The Bata Shoe Company is named after the family which founded it. Originally, the Bata family lived in Czechoslovakia, where they began manufacturing shoes as far back as 1620. Thomas Bata senior, father of the present proprietor, established a shoe factory for the first time in 1925. His career was cut short though when his private plane lost its bearings in heavy fog and crashed, burning him to death on the spot. On his father's death, Thomas Bata junior became president of Bata Ltd. The Bata Shoe Company, the largest shoe manufacturer in the world, is now doing business in 114 different countries, having sold 315 million pairs of shoes throughout the world in 1982. Its greatest volume of business is in Canada, with India ranking second. It has 90,000 direct employees not to mention thousands of indirect employees. Mr. Thomas Bata junior visited India for the fortieth time in 1983. On this occasion, a correspondent asked him what he thought was the most important factor in his success. Mr. Bata replied, "In manufacturing shoes