Suppose we cease wailing about incompetence, sleepy indifference and slipshod "help" that watches the clock. These things exist--let us dispose of the subject by admitting it, and then emphasize the fact that freckled farmer boys come out of the West and East and often go to the front and do things in a masterly way. There is one name that stands out in history like a beacon light after all these twenty-five hundred years have pa.s.sed, just because the man had the sublime genius of discovering Ability. That man is Pericles. Pericles made Athens.
And to-day the very dust of the streets of Athens is being sifted and searched for relics and remnants of the things made by people who were captained by men of Ability who were discovered by Pericles.
There is very little compet.i.tion in this line of discovering Ability. We sit down and wail because Ability does not come our way. Let us think "Ability," and possibly we can jostle Pericles there on his pedestal, where he has stood for over a score of centuries--the man with a supreme genius for recognizing Ability. Hail to thee, Pericles, and hail to thee, Great Unknown, who shall be the first to successfully imitate this captain of men.
Mental Att.i.tude
Success is in the blood. There are men whom fate can never keep down--they march forward in a jaunty manner, and take by divine right the best of everything that the earth affords. But their success is not attained by means of the Samuel Smiles-Connecticut policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily on.
Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every hand-clasp.
Do not fear being misunderstood; and never waste a moment thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your own mind what you would like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight to the goal.
Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate the shoal on which many a barque is stranded. When we become fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as the compa.s.s of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we hate, we have unshipped the rudder; and if ever we stop to meditate on what the gossips say, we have allowed a hawser to foul the screw.
Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought that you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual you so admire.
Thought is supreme, and to think is often better than to do.
Preserve a right mental att.i.tude--the att.i.tude of courage, frankness and good cheer.
Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation.
Each animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet because he wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck has a web foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed.
Many people know this, but they do not know it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives. We want friends, so we scheme and chase "cross lots after strong people, and lie in wait for good folks--or alleged good folks--hoping to be able to attach ourselves to them. The only way to secure friends is to be one. And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it. That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for others.
The individual who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered spirit more, will never lack for friends.
If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the stars, say to yourself again and yet again, "I am a part of all my eyes behold!" And the feeling then will come to you that you are no mere interloper between earth and heaven; but you are a necessary part of the whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you shall go down it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.
Like old Job, that which we fear will surely come upon us. By a wrong mental att.i.tude we have set in motion a train of events that ends in disaster. People who die in middle life from disease, almost without exception, are those who have been preparing for death. The acute tragic condition is simply the result of a chronic state of mind--a culmination of a series of events.
Character is the result of two things, mental att.i.tude, and the way we spend our time. It is what we think and what we do that make us what we are.
By laying hold on the forces of the universe, you are strong with them.
And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries will course red corpuscles, and in your heart the determined resolution is born to do and to be. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are G.o.ds in the chrysalis.
The Outsider
When I was a farmer lad I noticed that whenever we bought a new cow, and turned her into the pasture with the herd, there was a general inclination on the part of the rest to make the new cow think she had landed in the orthodox perdition. They would hook her away from the salt, chase her from the water, and the long-horned ones, for several weeks, would lose no opportunity to give her vigorous digs, pokes and prods.
With horses it was the same. And I remember one particular little black mare that we boys used to transfer from one pasture to another, just to see her back into a herd of horses and hear her hoofs play a resounding solo on their ribs as they gathered round to do her mischief.
Men are animals just as much as are cows, horses and pigs; and they manifest similar proclivities. The introduction of a new man into an inst.i.tution always causes a small panic of resentment, especially if he be a person of some power. Even in schools and colleges the new teacher has to fight his way to overcome the opposition he is certain to meet.
In a lumber camp, the newcomer would do well to take the initiative, like that little black mare, and meet the first black look with a short-arm jab.
But in a bank, department store or railroad office this cannot be. So the next best thing is to endure, and win out by an attention to business to which the place is unaccustomed. In any event, the bigger the man, unless he has the absolute power to overawe everything, the more uncomfortable will be his position until gradually time smooths the way and new issues come up for criticism, opposition and resentment, and he is forgotten.
The idea of Civil Service Reform--promotion for the good men in your employ rather than hiring new ones for the big places--is a rule which looks well on paper but is a fatal policy if carried out to the letter.
The business that is not progressive is sowing the seeds of its own dissolution. Life is a movement forward, and all things in nature that are not evolving into something better are preparing to return into their const.i.tuent elements. One general rule for progress in big business concerns is the introduction of new blood. You must keep step with the business world. If you lag behind, the outlaws that hang on the flanks of commerce will cut you out and take you captive, just as the wolves lie in wait for the sick cow of the plains.
To keep your columns marching you must introduce new methods, new inspiration and seize upon the best that others have invented or discovered.
The great railroads of America have evolved together. No one of them has an appliance or a method that is much beyond the rest. If it were not for this interchange of men and ideas some railroads would still be using the link and pin, and snake-heads would be as common as in the year 1869.
The railroad manager who knows his business is ever on the lookout for excellence among his men, and he promotes those who give an undivided service. But besides this he hires a strong man occasionally from the outside and promotes him over everybody. Then out come the hammers!
But this makes but little difference to your competent manager--if a place is to be filled and he has no one on his payroll big enough to fill it, he hires an outsider.
That is right and well for every one concerned. The new life of many a firm dates from the day they hired a new man.
Communities that intermarry raise a fine crop of scrubs, and the result is the same in business ventures. Two of America"s largest publishing houses failed for a tidy sum of five millions or so each, a few years ago, just thru a dogged policy, that extended over a period of fifty years, of promoting cousins, uncles and aunts whose only claim of efficiency was that they had been on the pension roll for a long time.
This way lies dry-rot.
If you are a business man, and have a position of responsibility to be filled, look carefully among your old helpers for a man to promote. But if you haven"t a man big enough to fill the place, do not put in a little one for the sake of peace. Go outside and find a man and hire him--never mind the salary if he can man the position--wages are always relative to earning power. This will be the only way you can really man your ship.
As for Civil Service Rules--rules are made to be broken. And as for the long-horned ones who will attempt to make life miserable for your new employe, be patient with them. It is the privilege of everybody to do a reasonable amount of kicking, especially if the person has been a long time with one concern and has received many benefits.
But if at the last, worst comes to worst, do not forget that you yourself are at the head of the concern. If it fails you get the blame.
And should the anvil chorus become so persistent that there is danger of discord taking the place of harmony, stand by your new man, even tho it is necessary to give the blue envelope to every antediluvian. Precedence in business is a matter of power, and years in one position may mean that the man has been there so long that he needs a change. Let the zephyrs of natural law play freely thru your whiskers.
So here is the argument: promote your deserving men, but do not be afraid to hire a keen outsider; he helps everybody, even the kickers, for if you disintegrate and go down in defeat, the kickers will have to skirmish around for new jobs anyway. Isn"t that so?
Get Out or Get in Line
Abraham Lincoln"s letter to Hooker! If all the letters, messages and speeches of Lincoln were destroyed, except that one letter to Hooker, we still would have an excellent index to the heart of the Rail-Splitter.
In this letter we see that Lincoln ruled his own spirit; and we also behold the fact that he could rule others. The letter shows wise diplomacy, frankness, kindliness, wit, tact and infinite patience.
Hooker had harshly and unjustly criticised Lincoln, his commander in chief. But Lincoln waives all this in deference to the virtues he believes Hooker possesses, and promotes him to succeed Burnside. In other words, the man who had been wronged promotes the man who had wronged him, over the head of a man whom the promotee had wronged and for whom the promoter had a warm personal friendship.
But all personal considerations were sunk in view of the end desired.
Yet it was necessary that the man promoted should know the truth, and Lincoln told it to him in a way that did not humiliate nor fire to foolish anger; but which surely prevented the attack of cerebral elephantiasis to which Hooker was liable.
Perhaps we had better give the letter entire, and so here it is:
Executive Mansion, Washington, January 26, 1863.
Major-General Hooker:
General:--I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course, I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.