|
Reader question: Please explain “he did it the hard way” in this passage: W. Clement Stone was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in America. And like so many people who achieve great success, he did it the hard way. Born into poverty, at the age of six Stone started selling newspapers to help his mother pay the rent. It was the rough-and-tumble of street-corner competition on Chicago’s tough South Side that taught him the first secrets of selling, and it was those secrets that finally got him off the street corner and made him successful enough to have his own stand by the time he was thirteen. My comments: Mr. Stone went through all the hardships (selling newspapers at six to help her mother pay the rent), did the dirty work and took a lot of pain (eking out a survival in the rough-and-tumble streets Chicago’s South Side, where blacks and poor people congregate) before achieving great success. In short, Stone achieved his success through honest hard work. He did it by himself. Nobody’s given him anything. He had to create everything with his own hand, feet, and crucially, head. To say “he did it the hard way” is to acknowledge that nothing had come easy for him. He was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, i.e. he did not inherit a large sum of money to enable him to have a nice education, get a good job or invest in the stock market that is looking up, etc. and so forth. | 
