In the winter the talk was all of dancing, boxing, or plays.
It soon became evident to Bok why scarcely five out of every hundred of the young men whom he knew made any business progress.

They were not interested; it was a case of a day's work and a day's pay; it was not a question of how much one could do but how little one could get away with.

The thought of how well one might do a given thing never seemed to occur to the average mind.
"Oh, what do you care ?" was the favorite expression.

"The boss won't notice it if you break your back over his work; you won't get any more pay." And there the subject was dismissed, and thoroughly dismissed, too.
Eventually, then, Bok learned that the path that led to success was wide open: the competition was negligible.

There was no jostling.