Obviously, this can’t go on forever. Not all new hires will have the same closeness to the boss or opportunity to have their talents recognized as the original ones. While everything should be done to allow employees to show their talents—and while the difference between a great organization and a mediocre one lies in the ability to recognize and give autonomy and responsibility to this young talent—the fact remains that when employees number in the thousands, this becomes more and more difficult and eventually impossible. This fact is not to be mourned, however. If things didn’t work this way, the larger companies’ business would just keep growing until eventually one or two companies would dominate the world, leaving no room for anyone else.

Recently, I was on a panel with IBM’s most famous inventor, who was also the head of one of their research labs in California. He was lamenting the fact that excellence in research wasn’t really recognized or compensated for properly. Because of this, he’d already lost some of his best people and might lose many more in the years to come. But that is a necessary problem that he can’t avoid. Surely, I told him, you wouldn’t want IBM or Microsoft to dominate the world without room for mobility.

You see, these sorts of self-correcting mechanisms, which ensure no single family or company gets too powerful, all protect the economy. The children of rich industrialists, for instance, generally don’t work as hard to get ahead as the children of less wealthy immigrants. Believe me, I know. At Bronx Science and Harvard I went to school with both groups. Every day, the sons of alumni fill the tennis and squash courts. The scholarship children of grocery store owners are filling the libraries and labs. This virtually ensures a massive wealth shift over the next generation. And that’s good.

Back to the mail-order business, though. Even having cut back my advertising schedule, I was one of the largest mail-order advertisers in the country. Even more important, I was one of the few whose ads were wholesome enough and broad-based enough in their appeal that they could run successfully in virtually any publication in the country. This brought me to the attention of some shady “businessmen” anxious to establish a relationship with me.

It is a much-glossed-over fact that there is a strong historical connection between the mob and many of the country’s leading newspaper and magazine publishers. Moses Annenberg, whose family was until recently owners of TV Guide, the country’s largest-circulation magazine, had his start running a racing wire in the twenties.