 Preface and Essays 1 through 7 of It's a Good Old World. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephen Escalera. It's a Good Old World by Bruce Barton. Being a collection of little essays on various subjects of human interest. Between Ourselves Magazine editors are genial gentlemen. They pay us for the pieces we write and allow us to gather them later into books. To Carl Harriman, editor of The Red Book, George Martin, editor of Farman Fireside, Harford Powell, editor of Collier's Weekly, W. W. Hawkins, general manager of the United Press Associations, and Frank Ober, editor of Association Men, who have given their cordial permission for the republication of the little essays that follow, I express my gratitude and thanks. The book is named in honor of our common friend, This Good Old World. I admire the quiet, patient fashion in which he goes around about the same old task day after day and year after year. I admire his magnificent tolerance toward all sorts and conditions of men, many of whom must frequently prove very irritating passengers. And I want him to understand that if he has no objection, I plan to ride along with him for another seventy years at least. BB. It's a Good Old World. Essay number one. I expect to be entirely consistent. After ninety. A reader writes to reprove me because a statement in a recent editorial apparently contradicts something which I wrote a year ago. A writer ought at least to be consistent, he says, which of course is the last thing that any writer below the age of ninety ought to be much concerned about. For it is the business of men, whether writers or not, to see truth and to express it in their lives. That a man should see more truth this year than he saw last and should hope to see even more in the year to come is a perfectly normal expectation. And inevitably the larger vision of this year will reveal the shortcomings of the past. I talked the other day with the president of one of the nation's greatest businesses. Said he, I go down to my office these days with a mind absolutely open. I am prepared at a moment's notice to reverse our entire business practice if the conditions demand it. With the world in tumult as it is today, the concern which says, we have always done it this way, or such and such a course is not in line with our previous policy, is writing for a fall. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Emerson exclaimed. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall, out upon your guarded lips. If you would be a man, speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. Ah, then exclaimed the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunderstood? It's a fool's word. Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. The butterfly is not consistent with the chrysalis. Nobody expects a frog to conform to the standards of the tadpole. Nature is herself the great parent of contradictions, and nothing in her universe is perfectly consistent but the eternal hills and old dogs who lie all day in the sunshine and men whose brains have hardened into shells. A man owes this obligation to himself that he should keep his vision high and his footsteps fixed in the path that leads toward the stars. Sometimes that path will lie straight and clear, sometimes it will bend to the left or right, and sometimes he may have to retrace his steps in order to fix his feet firmly upon it. When that necessity arises there should be no hesitation. I like to remember Dr. David Swing, who was for many years pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue. Through a long lifetime he expounded the truth to his people as his spirit revealed it to him. At the very end of his days new truth came to him, and he rose in his pulpit and confessed frankly that all of his previous preaching had been in large measure mistaken. St. Augustine toward the end of his career published a good-sized book called Retractions. Only a big man could have written such a book, for only a big man continues to grow straight up to the very last. Be not too fearful of inconsistencies, for if you are growing as you should be growing, consistency, which is the hardening of the mental and spiritual arteries, ought not to set in until you are ninety, at least. End of Essay Number 1 Essay Number 2 Watching the Prince Earn His Pay The Prince was to ride up the avenue, and we all put on our hats and went out onto the sidewalk to cheer. As he came along smiling with his hat on the side of his head, I could not help marveling a little at the changes time can work. My first ancestor in this country, William, spent several of the best years of his life fighting the Prince's ancestor, George. For many, many years, dislike and distrust of the English were fed to us from the pages of our first readers. Emerson's poem expressed the common American judgment about the gentlemen who sit on thrones. God said, I am tired of kings. I suffer them no more. Up to my ear the morning brings the outrage of the poor. Yet here was I, the descendant of a revolutionary fighter, taking time away from the office to cheer for the son of a king, and an English king at that. The explanation, of course, is simple. It is not we who have changed, but the kings. They have, at last, found a real job for themselves, and we respect them, as we respect any man who has work to do and does it well. They are now the traveling salesmen of their countries. Take the Belgians, for example. Before the war we looked on them as a rather unattractive people inclined to squalidness both physical and mental. Along comes Albert, their sales manager, with his sample case and opens it before us. He has a fine line of courtesy, something very nice in the way of true sportsmanship, a very superior article of good looks, and an entirely modern and up-to-date sense of humor. After we have seen the samples it is no great task for him to sell us quite a different idea of the Belgians. We will be much more inclined, in the future, to give them what every people have the right to demand, the privilege of being judged by their best rather than by their less attractive characteristics. So with Edward of the firm of Great Britain and Company. He knows well enough that our dealings with his house have not been altogether satisfactory in the past. He comes with the idea of straightening out all the old complaints and convincing us that this year's line is entirely unlike anything we have previously bought. Are we too much stocked up with the old-style Englishman's side whiskers, prejudices, stogenous, lack of humor and all? That's our pre-war brand, says Edward. We've entirely discarded that. The house is under new management and we're putting out a very superior article. Here's a sample of our smiles you never knew an Englishman could smile. Here's a choice bit of democracy which we've recently added to the line. Notice this patent bit of open-mindedness, an exclusive feature of this year's model. He's a good little salesman with a winning smile, and I for one am all prepared to put the old prejudices aside and open a good line of credit with his house. I know a man who has a curious job. He is paid just to visit conventions and banquets of his company's customers and tell funny stories. No spasm of economy ever endangers his weekly envelope. He is one of the most valuable assets that the corporation owns. That's the proper kind of a job for a king. Japan should send her emperor sales manager over as soon as possible. Alfonso of Spain would find this a very profitable territory. Italy's Victor Emanuel had better pack his bag and get some expense account blanks printed. And we, who have no kings, should elect a half a dozen good-looking chaps with a Roosevelt smile and a first-class fund of funny stories to show our customers across the two oceans what a fine lot of folks we really are. The League of Nations will be successful just in proportion to the amount of intelligent high-powered salesmanship that is put behind it. Every king should plan to live half the time in a suitcase, and every prince, no matter what his title, should consider that he draws his salary for being a prince of peace. End of essay number two. Essay number three. A great little word is why. A successful man whom I know recently changed from a business with which he was thoroughly familiar to a business that he knew absolutely nothing about. I watched to see what he would do. For two solid weeks he did nothing but ask questions. He took a train to Washington to learn what information the government had on trade conditions in the new field. He visited around among jobbers and manufacturers. He even went to the company's strongest competitors. Everywhere asking questions. It was simply amazing the amount of useful data that he was able to dig out. Curiosity is a human characteristic that has been much maligned. Men speak of it slightly as if it were something to be ashamed of, a weakness to be repressed. But my own idea is that when a man gets beyond the point of asking questions he might as well be dead. Without curiosity there would be no growth, no progress. There's not to make reply, there's not to reason why. Maybe a good enough motto for men who are on their way to be shot. But from such men expect no empires to be built, no inventions made, no great discoveries brought to light. Curiosity, the scientific American once said, is the handmaiden of science. No doubt many a man before the time of Columbus had remarked the exotic fruits and branches tossed up by the waves on the shores of the Canary Islands. The natives had gathered them for generations without ever so much as a thought. But to Columbus those strange gifts of the sea were messages sent from a land where no European ship had ever touched. Out of his wonder about them came his voyage to the New World. Then we have Newton's apple. Things have fallen ever since the universe was created. And no man before Newton seems to have ever asked himself, why? Robert Meyer, a ship surgeon in the East Indies, noticed that the vainest blood of his patients seemed redder than that of people living in temperate climates. Doubtless other physicians had also noticed that fact. Meyer, pondering on it, reached the conclusion that the cause must be the lesser degree of oxidation required to keep up the body temperature in the torrid zone. That thought led to the discovery of the mechanical theory of heat, and to the first comprehensive appreciation of the great law of the conservation of energy. If you have witnessed the gradual progress of the mind of a little baby, you have seen a miracle. And what is the golden ladder on which the baby climbs out of mere consciousness into intelligence? Curiosity, nothing else. The constant reaching out for the untried, even though the reaching involves much upsetting of flower vases and many burned and bleeding fingers. The eternal why, the unquenchable how and what. Some men climb a little way up that ladder, and are satisfied. They reach a point where the day's task becomes more or less automatic, where their feet follow easily along a familiar path, and they are content. They would not pay a nickel to see an earthquake. They would not open a new book or stretch their minds in wonder at what lies even beyond the next desk above them to say nothing of what lies beyond the stars. Ceasing to be curious, they cease to grow. For surely one secret of genius is this, the ability to remain interested in new things, even into old age. The curiosity of Bluebeard's wife proved fatal, to be sure, and Lot's wife yielding to her curiosity reaped a bitter recompense. One must use judgment in the exercise of even the divinest gifts. On the other hand, Zacchaeus, he did climb a tree, his lord to see. And, braving the ridicule of the passing crowd for the sake of his curiosity, he was rewarded with the secret of happiness and everlasting life. End of Essay No. 3 Essay No. 4 Don't lay in a stock of camouflage, it has depreciated badly in value since the war. The future of Germany, I presume, is no particular concern of mine, yet I keep thinking what a tragic position hers must be for many years to come. Someday, soon or late, Germany, with the others, will send out her ambassadors to the world. He will come to Washington, airvon somebody, and smiling graciously, will tell us how eager his government is to resume friendly relations with us. And all the time he is talking, it will be running through the back of our minds. Yes, that is what von Bernstaff said, at the same time when he was trying to blow up our factories and lead Japan and Mexico against us. Another German ambassador will go to Buenos Aires. I present the compliments of the German government, he will say. And the President of Argentina will be wondering to himself, is this the same government whose envoy suggested that our boats be sunk so as to leave no trace? German salesmen will hurry out across the world with their sample cases, protesting the value of their goods. And men will wonder whether the statements behind those goods are like the statements made by the German government to the United States when the Sussex was sunk. Bitter as the days are for Germany now, the days to come will be more bitter. For her government ruthlessly torpedoed the good ship faith. It cut the cables of mutual trust by means of which men have been accustomed to communicate with each other, and the rest of the world stood aghast. Few things in civilization are more inspiring than the slow increase of men's faith in one another. When the psalmist exclaimed, I said in my haste all men are liars. He was not far wrong. To lie, to cheat, to get the better of a competitor by any hook or crook was the standard practice of early business. The Phoenicians in Greeks, trading with the tribes along the Mediterranean, used to land on the shore, pile up their goods, and then put out a little way in their boats again. Out from their hiding place would come the natives to pile up beside those goods the articles which they offered in exchange, and having done it they would hide themselves. Both sides wanted to do business, but neither party trusted the members of the other enough to appear beside them on the shore. In religion as well as business the rule of fraud was the accepted rule. I will sacrifice ten heads to Zeus if I be delivered from the sickness, the pious Greek would exclaim. And being delivered he would sacrifice cabbage heads instead of heads of cattle, and receive the congratulations of his friends upon the cleverness of his ruse. Little by little the world has grown away from this kind of practice. As the coral reef grows by the addition of one tiny organism after another, so has faith grown in the world each generation, raising it a bit higher by the addition of its honesty and trust, until all business has come to be done on men's confidence in each other's words. That slow, painfully wrought creation, Germany with wanton hand, demolished. We have heard much talk of camouflage, which is a fancy name for lying. Be not misled by that euphonious term. You will live to see a penalty visited on Germany for the slaughter of truth such as has never been borne by any people before. You will see men's words to each other take on a new preciousness in the years to come because of the terrible price which they will pay who had disregarded their word. In our generation it will be true as it never has been before that the highest honors will be reserved for the sort of man whom the Bible describes, the man who sweareth to his own hurt, and changes not. End of Essay No. 4 Essay No. 5 We're all in the same boat and can't get out. America was founded by people who wanted to get away from other people. The pilgrim fathers decided that they would rather run the risk of starving to death in a new, clean, unpeopled land than to live any longer with their neighbors. After them came men of various sorts, political offenders, Quakers who would rather immigrate than fight, Irishmen again the government, roving sons of settled households. They were all sorts of people, but driven by the same common motive, the desire to live their own lives in their own way, free from the restrictions of an older social order. We are the descendants of those daring pioneers. Their vigorous individualism flows through our veins. If before the war you had put your ambition into words you would probably have expressed the wish to be absolutely independent. I don't know what the war may have done to you, but to me it has revealed this one tremendous truth, that there is not, and never will be again, any absolute independence. That I, in my little home, am absolutely dependent, to some degree or other, on every other man and woman in the world. In the Balkans, an Austrian prince of whom I never heard, and his wife, are murdered. A petty, far away event. What has it to do with me? Nothing, of course. Nothing except to throw my life into disorder and change the whole thought and current of my days. In Russia, twenty million men are taken from the farms, and behold, the loaf of bread in my little home feels they're leaving and fades away. Millions of shoes are ordered for the men of Italy, and the shoes I purchased for my baby cost four dollars now instead of two. Absolute independence. What a foolish phrase indeed. The world has become a neighborhood, and the welfare of every single house along the street is conditioned by the welfare of every other. There is hardly an item in the newspapers that doesn't, somehow or other, come straight home to me. I read that the railroads are hard up and their stocks and bonds decline. I should worry. I own no stocks or bonds. Ah, but don't I, though? The savings bank where my few dollars lie has invested them in railroad bonds. The life insurance company that must look after my wife and family if I die has invested its funds in railroad bonds. Whether I like it or not, the railroads cannot be hurt without hurting me. For better or for worse, my prosperity is bound up with theirs. When the apostle Paul was being sent to Rome, the ship on which he sailed was tossed by the storms. At the moment of greatest danger Paul caught the sailors taking to the boats. Stop! he cried, and to the centurion he shouted, except these abide in the ship ye cannot be saved. Today the good ship world is being tossed about by the greatest storm of its existence. And now, in the time of greatest danger, I see some signs that are not good. I see some capitalists taking to the boats and saying to themselves, we'll pull out and play safe, no matter what may happen to the ship. I see some groups of labor taking to the boats and saying to themselves, when the ship is sinking is a good time to strike for higher pay. And if the lesson of the war means anything, it seems to me to mean just this. That the time has passed in the world when any single group of men can advance its interest permanently at the expense of the common good. Unless all of us, rich and poor, stick together in the ship, then all of us are lost. Individualism, as we used to understand it, is dead. God hath made of one blood all nations. The same great life-giving current flows through the veins of every class and race and people everywhere. And the only way to advance the interest of any class permanently is to purify and strengthen the stream of life that ministers to all. That, it seems to me, is one great lesson of this war. I visited once the boyhood home of a great man. His name will not go down in the histories, but he has made a high place for himself in his profession, and in every city important people are glad to be counted among his friends. I spoke of this to one of the residents of the village who occupied a reserved seat in front of the library stable. It must be a matter of great pride to your town to have produced a man like that, I said. You mean Joe Henkel? he answered. I nodded, and he uttered a scornful little laugh. Folks hereabouts don't think so much of Joe Henkel, he commented. We never supposed he'd amount to anything. Why, gosh, I knew him when he was running around with his pants held up by one suspender. I found more than one man in that community to echo the sentiment. They could not quite reconcile themselves to the thought that a boy who had been one of themselves should have traveled so far beyond them. Some years ago a song was popular in the vaudeville houses. It recounted the achievement of a certain John Duggan. And after each stanza the chorus broke in with an incredulous exclamation. What? Little Johnny Duggan? Little Johnny Duggan, that little fellow who used to be around here. You don't mean to tell me that he's been nominated for governor, or elected president of a bank, or called to the pastorate of a great church? Not our little Johnny Duggan. It can't be. Why, we knew him when? The song reflected accurately the attitude of too many hometowns toward their boys. Many great men have suffered from that attitude. Jesus of Nazareth suffered, perhaps most keenly of all. After he had begun his ministry, after he had performed a few miracles in the cities near at hand, and gained a considerable reputation, he went back to Nazareth where he had been brought up. One can picture the anticipation with which he turned his face in that direction. He could imagine the warmth of his old neighbor's greeting, the pride they would feel in his success which had brought credit to the town. But there was no warmth. Only skepticism and jealousy and scorn. It was as if their faces cried, We know you, why you're only the son of the carpenter Joseph, you may have fooled them in Capernaum, but you can't fool us. And there were those among them whose envy and bitterness would have led them to hurl into death. There are two ways to look at the folks around us, and particularly the young folks. One way is to get in the habit of regarding them as just common people, destined to failure or to only mediocre things, and to be surprised when they exceed our expectations. The other way is to form the habit of thinking of them in the biggest and best possible terms, of holding up the vision of large achievement before them, and letting them understand that we expect them to climb high. Whichever attitude we adopt were bound to suffer certain disappointments. But personally, I prefer to be disappointed by news of failure rather than by news of success. When I hear that Johnny Dugan has been sent to jail for forgery, I expect to exclaim, What? Little Johnny Dugan? But when they tell me that the Republicans have nominated him for governor, they needn't expect me to express surprise, even though he has red hair and never owned two suits of clothes as a boy. Governor Johnny Dugan. Of course, I always said you couldn't keep that boy down. End of Essay No. 6 Essay No. 7 First have a look at the figures. At the very beginning of the war Lord Kitchener announced to his people that it would last for at least three years. I can remember now the editorial that appeared in one of the most sedate and respected of our newspapers, taking him to task for his foolish statement. It was the one-sided view of a purely military man, said the editor. A three years war was unthinkable. The common sense of the world would not permit it. Kitchener is dead, but Kitchener was right. He was not a very brainy man. On the contrary, his teachers found him rather dull and listless. Men who conversed with him were embarrassed by his mental slowness. I will venture to say that the editor who wrote that article criticizing him was far more than his equal in all-around intelligence. But Kitchener's teachers noted one bright spot in his otherwise indifferent school record. He was very good at mathematics. I sometimes think there should have been another beatitude. Blessed are the mathematicians, for they shall inherit the earth. It is the nature of us common folks to live on hope instead of facts. The eyes that we turn to the future are fitted with rose-tended glasses. We see coming events shaping themselves as we would like to have them shape themselves. The thing that should be is the thing that will be in all our prophecies. Those cynical gentlemen who make their living on the stock exchange recognize that quality in us and trade upon it. The public is always bullish in their parlance by which they mean that every common man of us believes that the shares of stock which he has bought are sure someday to sell higher. We hold on to our shares, disregarding danger signals, and long after the professional has begun to sell, we are buying still. One reason why the prophet is never honored in his own country is that the true prophet must so often foretell unpleasant things, and the world does not like to face unpleasant things. Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Man never is, but always to be blessed. No man among us would want to see that divine spark of hopefulness lost out of human character. Nevertheless, in our optimism, we would do well to remember this that hope based on hard facts on a willingness to face the truth is a thousand times more useful than hope based on nothing but other hopes. Read Luke 1431, Wired Cecil Rhodes to Dr. Jamison, before the latter set out on a celebrated raid, and Jamison, calling for a Bible, turned to that verse in red. Or what king, going to make war against another king, siteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand. It is a good verse to read occasionally in days like these. Apply it to your own affairs. Have you had occasion lately to take account of stock? Do you know in black and white just what the chances for you and against you are? Suppose today you figure them up carefully and courageously, giving the odds against you full credit for their strength. If you are the man you ought to be, you will not be dismayed, no matter how strong the adverse figures may appear. Indeed you will find fresh courage in the fact that you have taken the full measure of your enemies, that the power which you present against them is made up not merely of hope, but of hope reinforced and made vital by fact. End of Essay No. 7 Essays 8-14 of It's a Good Old World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephen Escalera. It's a Good Old World by Bruce Barton. Essay No. 8 Why not use our island of Yap? Over at Ellis Island they are holding a big catch of anarchists and Bolsheviks, waiting for a boat to Russia whose owners don't care what kind of cargo it carries. They are not an attractive looking crowd. Most of them were poor, oppressed refugees fleeing from government or hunger when they came to us. We took them in, warmed them, fed them, gave them more money than they had ever had before. And while we were busy in the front yard beating off a mob of Germans, they stayed behind in our home and plotted to destroy the furniture, turn out the members of the family, and keep the house and all our possessions for themselves. That sort of ingratitude, the utter lack of any moral sense, is peculiarly irritating. So our government thinks it wise to send them back where they came from lest we might someday lose our self-control and be tempted to do them bodily injury. It is one solution of the situation, but not a very satisfactory one. They will be just as bad neighbors in any other country and there is always the chance that they may escape and appear in our midst again. A far better way would be to deal with them as Milton tells us the first Bolsheviks were dealt with. Things in heaven were going pretty well when a crowd of ungrateful spirits, headed by a gentleman named Satan, decided to overthrow the government and seize the kingdom for themselves. They were defeated, but no attempt was made to imprison them. Instead, they were given a secluded place all their own and allowed to do with it as they would. It was an absolutely free place. No one had to work. All authority was removed. There were none of the improvements that had existed in heaven. Of course they made a very distressing discovery. They found that the worst punishment that could be visited upon them was the necessity of living with themselves. Which way I fly is hell. Myself am hell," Satan exclaimed. He would gladly have made any surrender to get back to the heaven whose government he had sought to overthrow. But the gate was closed. I understand we received a prize at the Paris Peace Conference named the Island of Yap. I have never seen it. I do not know exactly where it is, but it sounds like a fine place to send Bolsheviks. Why not buy out the present inhabitants and turn the island over to the folks who don't like the way we run things here and are sure they could do it so much better? Let them organize to suit themselves. Have no house rules except the rule that no member may leave the island. That seems to have been the divine plan of dealing with their forebears. When they rebelled against the heaven God was conducting he gave them a heaven of their own, and they promptly made it hell. End of Essay No. 8 Essay No. 9 The Second Mile There is a strange fact about business that I have noticed many times. It may be expressed in this apparently senseless phrase. A little too much is just enough. A young man came to me yesterday to tell me his boss had been fired. I was sorry for the boss, glad for the young man, and glad for myself. It proved me, for once, a good profit. For the same young man had met me three months ago and complained of his lot. His boss was loafing on the job, he said, leaving all the work of the department to him. He gets the money and I do the work, the young man exclaimed. What shall I do? I told him to do more work. But I'm doing too much already, he cried. I know it, I said. Do more. Do so much more that everybody in the office will notice it. Then see what happens. Well, it happened. The boss is fired and he has the boss's job. I read a great deal of biography. It is my favorite kind of reading, and nothing impresses me so much as to see how hard the great men of the world have worked. Almost without exception they have done more work than they needed to do. More work than the average man would have been willing to do. More than enough. Take this extract from a book recently published, The Life of Delain, The Great Editor of the London Times. He read and edited himself everything that was to appear in the paper next morning. Telegrams, correspondence letters, the reports of Parliament. He selected the letters addressed to the Times that were to be published. He chose the books that were to be reviewed. He was scrupulous as to the way in which even small matters of social interest were announced and handled. This method of editing was infinitely laborious. Even when the Times was much less than its present size, the task of reading, correcting, and controlling from 40 to 50 columns of new matter every night was immense. But Delain never shrank from it. I know editors getting $50 a week who would consider themselves abused beyond endurance if anyone suggested a day's work like Delain's. Doubtless there were plenty of editors in London in Delain's own day who thought him a fool to work so hard. If there were, we do not know their names. Posterity seldom does know the names of the men who are careful not to work too hard. Dickens began life as a stenographer. How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand and all the improvements pertaining to it, he exclaimed. I will only add to what I have already written of my perseverance at that time of my life and the patient continuous energy which then began to be matured in me, and which I know to be the strong point of my character if I have any strength at all that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. Bishop Butler worked 20 years on his analogy and then wanted to burn it because he thought it not good enough. George Elliott read more than a thousand volumes before she began to write Daniel Deronda. Patient continuous ceaseless work. What the ordinary writer would have called too much, the extraordinary writer thought hardly enough. There is a verse in that great textbook on modern business, the Bible, which sums it all up. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Whosoever hires you to work eight hours, take advantage of him by working a little longer. Whosoever compels you to do a certain task, do more than you contract to do. It's the second mile that counts. All biography is a record of that truth. All business experience attests it. The work that no man compels you to do is the work for which the world pays most. A little too much is just enough. End of Essay No. 9 Essay No. 10 Which Knew Not Joseph It's a very old, old story, but it never needed retelling so much as in this present hour. His name was Joseph, and he was carried away from home and found himself in Egypt, a strange new land. Because he was good-looking and intelligent and a hard worker, he rose rapidly until he became Prime Minister. Except the king, there was no other man in Egypt more influential or more celebrated. His relatives learned of his rise with interest. They followed into Egypt, and with his help, they too, prospered and were likewise influential. It looked as though they were permanently provided for, as though nothing could happen to dislodge them. But in a single generation, yes, in a little fraction of a generation, the unbelievable occurred. The people who were so contented, so free from all concern, were hurled from their high position into the bitterness of slavery. The thing that happened to them is recorded in a single sentence. Joseph died, and there arose a new king in Egypt which knew not Joseph. Only a few years since Joseph's death, and the new king knew nothing about him and cared less. His name had been a byword in the ancient world, but a few people passed away, some new ones were born, and presto he was as much forgotten as though he had never lived. To print that story large upon the office walls of thousands of men in these changing days. On the walls of businessmen, for example. Only last week I talked with a man who told me that his company controlled 75% of the business in its line a quarter of a century ago. Today the company controls less than 20%. Those who owned it had grown self-satisfied, and almost overnight a new viral competitor arose, and with advertising pushed the older company from its place of power. Our fathers knew that older company well, but you and I have hardly heard its name. A new generation has arisen, a new king which knows not Joseph. You think that you have told your story to the world, and that therefore your task is done. I tell you that overnight a new world has been born that has never heard your story. You think because the gospel has been preached for 1900 years that by that preaching the race must automatically be saved. Every sermon preached as long ago as yesterday is already done. A little slackening of the effort, a little moment of self-satisfaction, and all the momentum gained by years of work is lost. For the world moves swifter today than ever before in its history. And even in the very instant of your self-content, the silence is shattered by the trampling of new feet. Behold, another generation has come, a new king who knows no precedence, and whose experience nothing is fixed. A king in whose sight yesterday has been cold a thousand years, a king which knows not Joseph. Essay Number 11 He called the President Charlie Some weeks ago I left New York where the talk was all of labor troubles and industrial unrest. Employers were locking the doors against their workmen, and labor leaders were calling out their followers on strike. I went up into the middle of the state to an industrial city of 22,000 people. The Vice President of one of the large plants there took me around in his automobile. Any labor trouble? I asked. Not a bit. Ever had a strike? Not in 75 years. Why, if we didn't read the newspapers, we would hardly know what the word means. Later in the afternoon I sat in the office of the President of another factory in the same city. It is no small plant. The owners are just breaking ground for an addition that will cost more than a million dollars. Only one other company in its line does a larger annual business. As I sat talking with the President, the door opened and the shipping clerk came in. Shall we prepay that shipment to Louisville, Charlie? The shipping clerk asked. We will this time, Al," the President replied. I gasped. A concern whose goods are sold from coast to coast, a concern whose owners can build a million-dollar addition without asking any outside help, and the shipping clerk calls the President, Charlie? In that instant a big light dawned for me. I got a picture of a social organization far different from anything we residents of the big cities know. Charlie, the President, owns his own home. So does Al, the shipping clerk. Charlie raises vegetables in the backyard to cut down his cost of living. So also does Al. Charlie's children go to the same school with Al's. Al's wife rides out occasionally with Charlie's in the automobile. And Charlie's wife calls on Al's when there is a new baby or one of the older children is sick. No jealousy, no suspicion, no profiteering on one side or holding back on the other. The company is our company, not the company, to every man and woman in it. From our present social troubles we are bound to reap some very large rewards. The troubles look black enough at times. It seems to have been decreed by Providence that the process of birth should never take place without the accompaniment of suffering and pain and tears. And it is a process of birth, not of death, that we are passing through in this reconstruction period. Out of it is going to come a new world, a world in which things will be better for the average man than they ever were before. One of the developments, in my judgment, will be the removal of a good many industries from the smoke laden air of the cities to the pure air of the country. Where every family can have a home and a garden and a man is a personality to his employer, not a number. Where it is harder to forget that the business of industry is to create human happiness as well as to multiply wealth. Where men stand side by side in mutual appreciation and respect. And even a shipping clerk named Al can call the President Charlie. End of Essay Number 11 Essay Number 12 A course of reading for a young man about to run into debt. Recently a young man wrote to ask me how he could borrow a sum of money for a certain purpose. And I suggested that before he sought to borrow any money he should read the biographies of Benjamin Disraeli and Balzac. I would advise any young man who contemplates running in debt to read these two books. Here is a note from Disraeli's diary, December 5th, 1836. What a tragic vision it presents, one of the most brilliant men in England hesitating to accept a dinner invitation for fear of being arrested for debt. He writes, Our county conservative dinner, which will be the most important assembly of its kind yet held, takes place on the ninth instant. I have been requested to move the principal toast, the House of Lords. I trust there is no danger of my being nabbed. In as much as in all probability I am addressing my future constituents. In his later years Disraeli wrote these words. If youth but knew the fatal misery they are entailing on themselves the moment they accept a pecuniary credit to which they are not entitled, how they would start in their career, how pale they would turn, how they would tremble and clasp their hands in agony at the precipice on which they are desporting, debt hath a small beginning but a giant's growth and strength. When we make the monster we make our master, who haunts us at all hours and shakes his whip of scorpions forever in our sight. Faustus, when he signed the bond with blood, did not secure a doom more terrific. How many hours of bitter agony and regret are mirrored in that paragraph? Balzac's life is even more pitiable. I know of no more pathetic picture in all history than that of this great genius toiling relentlessly at his desk from two o'clock in the morning, adding story to story and novel to novel, afraid to pause for even a single hour lest his creditors close in upon him. There are, of course, exceptional circumstances under which a young man is justified in running into debt. His debt may secure an education, for example, and so add greatly to his earning power, but be very slow to assume that your circumstances are exceptional. Before you decide that you are justified in running into debt, read the lives of these two men, and the lives of Cicero, William IV, Bret Hart, Eugene Field, and Mark Twain. They spent the best years of their lives in paying for dead horses. Each managed to be great in spite of constant, irritating financial worry. But the world will never know how much greater they might have been had their minds been wholly freed for constructive work instead of burdened with the misery of debt. End of Essay Number 12 Essay Number 13 On Meeting an Insignificant Man We had invited some friends to spend the evening with us, and when they arrived, he was with them. Rather short, and almost bald he was, and his hand, when he offered it, was soft and lady-like. Altogether he seemed to me about as insignificant a bit of humanity as I had recently encountered. I rather resented the fact that he had come along to destroy the balance of the party, and for some time we quite ignored him in the conversation. Then, out of common politeness, we addressed some question to him about the war, and an amazing thing took place. The little man spoke up with an amount of information and a calm confidence that were astonishing. We led him on from point to point, and always he answered modestly, but with facts that gripped our interest. From that moment the conversation of the evening centered about him. Who is he? I asked my friend in a whisper as he prepared to go. And he answered, Why don't you know? That is Jones, one of the greatest chemists in the country. The government sent for him when war was declared, and he probably knows as much about the real inside history of the past two years as any man in the United States. I only hoped, as I bade him good night, that he had not guessed from my earlier attitude how very insignificant and unworthy of attention I had considered him. Once upon a time an efficiency expert boasted to me that a single glance was enough to form his judgment of a man. No matter what the circumstances of the meeting, he said, he could rely upon his first impression. Perhaps he was right, but I doubted. Would he, I wonder, have recognized in the shabby little lieutenant named Bonaparte, wandering the streets of Paris, the man of destiny who was to conquer Europe? If he had stood on the sidewalk of Philadelphia when a crude lad walked by with a loaf of bread under each arm, would he have seen beneath that rough attire the philosopher and statesman Franklin? What about U.S. Grant, the middle-aged failure delivering wood in St. Louis, unkempt, unshaven, regarded by his neighbors as a near-do-well? God sends great souls into the world clothed oftentimes in curious attire, and one misses much good fellowship who thinks that from what men seem to be he can determine offhand what they are. Along a country road in Palestine a group of tired men walked one afternoon toward sundown. Go ahead to the next village, said their leader, and see if there we may find a place to sleep. After a little time they returned to say that the village would not receive them. It was a busy day in the village. The inhabitants were preoccupied and proud. What were a few travel-stained pilgrims to them? They trusted their first impression. It was a group of weary fishermen whom they supposed they had refused. And so they lost for themselves and their village forever the opportunity to entertain his disciples and their lord. End of Essay No. 13 Essay No. 14 It's a moving picture world, and the film changes every few minutes. If someone had asked me on a certain day in 1915 to name three permanent human institutions, I might have answered the Papacy, the Bank of England, the Tsar of Russia. Maybe on consideration I could have given a better answer, but offhand that sounds fairly reasonable. At nine o'clock that morning, so far as we knew, the Tsar of all the Russians was as firm on his throne as Gibraltar. In my morning paper at least, there was no hint to the contrary. And at six o'clock we opened our evening papers to discover him a prisoner, and Russia on the threshold of immediate democracy. It was the kind of mental shock that is good for us. The war was full of such shocks. We learned from it, in more dramatic fashion than ever before, this very necessary truth that nothing is fixed, nothing is sure, nothing is changeless in this whole wide world. A man told me the other day about a conversation he once held with Jay Gould. Gould got up from his desk, walked over to the wall, and pointing to a map of the United States, put his finger on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. There, he said, is the finest railroad property in the United States. That conversation took place only about a quarter of a century ago. A few months ago the common stock of the Missouri Pacific sold down to something like $4, and the holders of it paid an assessment of $50 a share to rehabilitate the road. So confident were the shrewd investors of New England in the everlasting prosperity of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford that they invested the funds of widows and orphans and institutions in its stock. Ten years ago there was not a banker in the United States who would have believed that stock could ever crumble away. But the impossible happened. The change came. Suppose a man graduating from college at any time in the past 25 years had wanted to pick out an absolutely safe profession, one into which no unexpected change could possibly enter. What profession would he have chosen? Teaching in a college or university, probably. University professors are almost never discharged. They are sure of work as long as children continue to be born into the world, and in old age they are taken care of by Carnegie Pensions. So he might have argued to himself. But behold there comes a world war, taking away from a quarter to two-thirds of the students of our colleges with their tuition fees. The war ends, the students return, but the dollar has so shrunk in purchasing power that every college professor in the land finds his secure living made suddenly precarious. When Darwin was making his studies in evolution, working out the law by which lower forms changed through the ages into higher, he came across certain forms of life that, for some reason or other, had been incapable of change. Their environment had shifted, but they failed to adapt themselves to the new environment. So the tide of progress moved on and left them, stranded wrecks on the shore. The business world is full of men of that sort. They say to themselves, I know this job well enough to hold it the rest of my life. I can afford to take things a little easier. Nothing can happen now to change my life. So gradually they lose the power of adaptation, which is the power of growth. They are perfectly typified by the man described in the Bible, who said to his soul, Thou hast much goods laid up for many years. Take thine ease. That night he died. The one change which he had not foreseen came to him and found him unprepared. End of Essay Number 14 Essays 15 through 21 of It's a Good Old World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Stephen Escalera. It's a Good Old World by Bruce Barton. Essay Number 15 Are you industrious or merely busy? I presume the stage is partly responsible for it, or perhaps the earnest young novelists who live in small towns and write novels about American business. Anyway, some one or some thing has given us a portrait of the successful American businessman that is unlike any successful American businessman whom I have ever happened to meet. Our portrait represents him as snapping orders through a telephone while he munches his breakfast, stopping his automobile halfway downtown to get off a couple of telegrams, rushing through a breathless day at the office, and dictating letters in his limousine all the way home. As a matter of fact, nothing has impressed me as more characteristic of really big men than a certain suggestion of leisure, a kind of elevation above the little maelstrom of detail in which the average man is caught up in world through the day. He does big business without appearing too busy. You know from the record of his achievements that he must get through an enormous amount of work in a day, yet there seems to be nothing on his mind when you meet him but the subject you have come to discuss. And he apparently has all the time that is needed to discuss it. I talked one day with President Wilson. His desk was piled with commissions and bills waiting to be signed. It was a time of great perplexity in foreign relations. I had rather expected to be warned by a secretary that I must leave in ten minutes and to have those ten minutes frequently interrupted. But the president talked for forty minutes. He pushed back from his desk and spoke of this thing and that with no evidence of preoccupation, no more sign of being rushed or ridden by his job than as if we were out fishing together with the whole day before us. Lincoln, of course, is the supreme example of the really great man's ability to carry his burden easily with no suggestion of desperate haste. The members of his cabinet never grew fully reconciled to his habit of stopping on his way to cabinet meetings to play a moment with Tad and his goat. They were so terribly busy themselves they could not understand a man who could carry a greater load and yet have plenty of time to be friendly and good-natured and sympathetic. Extreme business is a symptom of deficient vitality, says Stevenson, while a faculty for idleness implies a Catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There are dead, alive, hackneyed people about who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring those fellows into the country or set them aboard ship and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They cannot be idle. Their nature is not generous enough and they pass in a sort of coma those hours which are not dedicated to furious toiling in the gold mill. When they do not require to go to the office they are not hungry and have no mind to drink. The whole breathing world is a blank to them. This does not appear to me as being success in life. Life is a good deal like a journey on a train. Most of us go through with it huddled in the same seat our noses buried in our work and once in a while we glance up rather enviously at the big, genial looking man across the aisle. He too works, but every time the train stops to change engines he seems to find time to get out for a little stroll on the platform. His work has not prevented him from having some fun with his kid and learning a good deal about the country through which he is passing and making some good friends on the trip. We ask who he is and learn that he is a captain of industry. It is an appropriate title. He captains his industry, commands it. It does not command him. He organizes it and fits it into its proper place in his scheme of life. He does not let it interfere with the important business of being sometimes idle. He is learned to be effective and still unhurried, to be industrious without being busy. End of Essay Number 15 Essay Number 16 If you are not too careful, who gets the credit? Yesterday a man traveled two miles out of his way and wasted two hours of his time in order to call on me and make a complaint. We had published a photograph taken by him and had failed to put his name as the photographer and little type underneath. It was our mistake and I told him I was sorry about it. But as he left I thought to myself, my dear sir, I have your measure to a quarter of an inch. And I felt like warning him to be careful and walking over the subway gradings lest he should drop through one of the cracks. For it is only little men, as I have observed, who are so tremendously concerned about the precious allotment of credit in this world. I cannot imagine Lincoln walking two miles out of his way to protest because his name had not been printed in little type. He formed a cabinet of men better known nationally than himself. Four of them were sure that they were far greater than he. Seward wrote to his wife, only one man can save the union and I am the man. Stanton said to a friend who asked him what he was going to do in the cabinet, I am going to make Abe Lincoln, President of the United States. Chase from the Treasury Department conducted an open campaign for Lincoln's defeat and his own nomination to the presidency. Yet Lincoln, aware of it all, pursued his quiet way untroubled. He meant to save the union and if he could do it by submitting to Stanton's abuse he would submit gladly. If he could do it by suffering some personal humiliation at the hands of McClellan and Fremont it was a price he was glad to pay. If Seward or Stanton or Chase were to have the credit when the thing was done, he did not care. The important thing was to get it done, let the credit fall where it might. Have you read the story of Harriman's fight to save the Imperial Valley, as told by George Keenan? In 1907 the Colorado River overflowed its banks and threatened to destroy the Valley. Though Harriman's railroads did not own any of the land in the Valley, Harriman jumped in and spent $1,500,000 to stem the flood. When it became evident that another million or more would be required, he telegraphed President Roosevelt and the President told him to go ahead and practically assured him that Congress would reimburse him. Harriman saved the Valley. Roosevelt recommended his reimbursement, but Congress never acted on the recommendation and Harriman's roads have never to this day been reimbursed. Shortly before his death, Harriman revisited the Valley and was met by a reporter. Mr. Harriman, the government hasn't paid you that money, said the reporter, and your work does not seem to be duly appreciated. Do you not, under the circumstances, regret having made this large expenditure? No, replied Mr. Harriman. The Valley was worth saving, wasn't it? Yes, said the reporter. Then we have the satisfaction of knowing that we saved it, haven't we? Not much reward, you say, for the expenditure of two or three million dollars, but it's the only kind of reward that big men really value. There is a wise old saying to this effect. A great deal of good can be done in the world if one is not too careful who gets the credit. If your object in life is to get credit, you'll probably get it, if you work hard enough. But don't be too much surprised and disappointed when some chap who just went ahead and did the thing without thinking of the credit winds up with more medals on his chest than you with all your striving have collected on yours. End of Essay Number 16. Essay Number 17. The Reflections of a Grizzled Voter I went down to the firehouse in my precinct on the first Tuesday of November and voted for woman's suffrage, as has been my custom all these years. And, to my astonishment, the next morning I read in the newspaper that it had carried. I say astonishment because almost nothing that I vote for ever does carry. On the day after election I look over the papers and if a single road commissioner or supervisor of the poor on my ticket has pulled through, I consider that it has been a successful election for me. Like truth, I have grown accustomed to being crushed to earth. It doesn't worry me as much as it used to. Before having watched many elections and listened to many campaign promises, I have noticed this, that the progress of the world isn't permanently affected very much by turning one set of politicians out and putting another set in. I continue to vote as intelligently as I can, but I have ceased to feel as enthusiastic as I used to feel about the power of votes to usher in the millennium. Maybe I'm just plain old fashioned, but I just can't believe that anything is finally going to turn the trick of saving the world but simple, individual goodness. It was Napoleon, a very successful politician who said, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires, but on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon sheer force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love, and at this hour millions of men will die for him. The empires, with all their machinery of election and legislation, have passed away, leaving hardly a trace behind. The carpenter held no elections. He was president of nothing, secretary of nothing. He formed no committees, made no stump speeches, cast no vote. Yet the influence of his simple goodness has outlived all the empires of the earth, and stands today the most potent force for righteousness and progress in the world. I lunched the other day with a celebrated war correspondent just back from Europe. There's just one thing I'm sure of, he said. Everything else about the war and the future of the world is problematic, but this I know. The world must be run by heart power after this. We've tried brain power, and it doesn't work. The Germans developed it to its highest point of efficiency, and we have the results today. It's got to be heart power from now on, or we're all in. That's all. And the home is the dynamo, out of which heart power flows. There were thousands of agitators and reformers at work in the United States in the days before the Civil War. They doubtless did much good work. But all their influence added together did not equal that of the simple woman in a log cabin who gave us Abraham Lincoln, with the heart power great enough to reunite his fellow countrymen. I welcome my sisters to the ballot box. They will clog up the polling place a little more, and make me a bit later in getting down to the office on election day. But I'll forgive them all that, and I'll vote for all the reforms they think are going to do any good, so long as they will continue to give us sons like the carpenter and Lincoln. Meantime, when their pet reforms and candidates are defeated, as often they will be, let me commend them to Sam Walter Foss. Let me live in a house by the side of the road where the race of men go by, the men who are good and the men who are bad as good and as bad as I. I would not sit in this corner seat or hurl the cynics' ban. Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man. Reforms will come and go. Truth will keep right on being crushed and rising again. Politicians will promise and fail to make good. Movements will wax and wane. But if enough of us build our houses alongside of Sam's, we'll gradually turn this old alleyway of a world into a nice, respectable street, no matter who carries our precinct for alderman. End of Essay Number 17 Essay Number 18. They say, has made many a good man good for nothing. The first steamboats built in America looked like wooden boxes with pointed ends. Colonel John Stevens, their designer, concentrated his attention on his engines. One day his son Robert conceived the notion that the boats would make better time if their bowels were longer and more sloping. He designed a false bow of this sort and built it onto a ship called the New Philadelphia, which slipped through the water so much more easily thereafter that it attained the great speed of 13 and a half miles an hour. Robert had to build his bow almost with his own hands. He took it to his shipbuilders, measures Brown and Bell, and asked them to do it for him. But Mr. Bell declined. That bow will be called Bell's nose, he said, and I shall be a general laughing stock. So a man who might have played a worthy part in the development of a great industry in America lost one big chance because he was afraid of the possible ridicule of people whose opinion, one way or the other, was worthless. How many utterly drab and uninteresting people are there in the world who might have developed real personalities if they had only had courage to do and be something different from the crowd? Every single step forward in history has been taken over the bodies of empty-headed fools who giggled and snickered. Fulton, needing a paltry $1,000 to complete the building of his first steamboat at length, managed to secure it. But the friends who lent it asked that their names be withheld from the public lest it should be known that they had any connection with so full hearty and enterprise. As I had occasion daily to pass to and from the shipyard where my boat was in progress, he says, I often loitered near the groups of strangers and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, sneer or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense, the dry jest, the wise calculation of losses or expenditures, the dull but endless repetition of Fulton's folly. Never did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope, a warm wish, cross my path. Governor DeWitt Clinton, pushing through the construction of the Erie Canal, which was so important a factor in the early upbuilding of the country, was hooded with cries of Clinton's big ditch and Clinton's folly. Alaska, which has paid for itself so many hundred times over, was derisively referred to as Seward's Icebox, when that courageous statesman negotiated for its purchase from Russia. Remember this if you would accomplish anything worthwhile. The crowd is generally good-natured, but its judgments are seldom the judgments of history. If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world, it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature. A noted English schoolmaster used to have as his motto, never explain, never retract, never apologize, get it done and let them howl. It is a motto not altogether to be commended. He who governs his life according to it will not be an agreeable companion or accomplish the largest service under a government where the will of the majority must finally prevail. But there is a rugged spirit of independence embedded in it that many men would do well to adopt. You can afford to have a decent regard for public opinion. But you can never afford to let yourself get into the pathetic condition where what they say or may say will keep you from doing what ought to be done. It's a hopeless condition to be in, because what they say today is not what they said yesterday or will say tomorrow. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, said Jesus, and ye say he hath a devil. The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and ye say behold, a gluttonous man and a wine-biber, a friend of publicans and sinners. End of Essay number 18 Essay number 19 You have known about him all these years, but have you really known him? Since we stand upon the threshold of his birthday, let me introduce you to the most attractive, most delightful young man in the world. You have never known him as he really is. All the pictures ever drawn misrepresent him. They have made him out a weakling, a woman's features with a beard. He who for years swung an axe and drove a saw through heavy timbers, who for long days tramped the borders of his loved lake and would not sleep indoors if he could slip away into his garden. An outdoor man he was, a man's man who could stand watch when all his friends deserted him and sleep, and could face the tempest in a little boat, calm-eyed and unafraid. They have called him a pacifist. How could they forget that day, I wonder, when in the midst of the hard-faced crowd he stood and braiding a little whip drove them out before him. Think you it was only the glance of righteous anger in his eye that sent them scurrying? I tell you that behind that little whip were muscles of iron made strong by many years of labor and a spirit that never once knew fear, not even in the presence of the cross. I have met men long-faced and sorrowful, wagging their heads bitterly over the evil of the world, and by their very joylessness adding to that evil. And in their hearts they suppose that they were representing him. Think of it, representing him to whom little children flocked with joyous laughter, and men beseeching him to have dinner with them in their homes. You remember the first of his miracles, or perhaps you do not. Too often those who claim his name have preferred to forget that miracle. It does not fit in with the picture of him that they have wrought. He was at a wedding party with his mother and some friends, where the merry-ment ran high. In the midst of it they came to him in consternation. The wine had given out. So he performed his first miracle. Just to save a hostess from embarrassment, and he thought it worth a miracle. Just to save a group of simple folk from having their hour of joy cut short, it was for such a cause, he thought, that his divine power had been entrusted to him. No one ever felt his goodness a-cloud upon the company. No one ever laughed less heartily because he had joined the group. He was the gospel of joyfulness. His the message that the God of men would have them travel happily with them, as children by a father's side, not as servants shuffling behind. They killed him, of course, in the end, and sometimes I am almost glad. Glad that he died at thirty-three with youth still a-throbbing his veins, and never illusion lost or an ideal dimmed by age. Claim him, you who are young and love life, let no man dispute your claim. For he too was young and is. He too loved laughter and life. Old age and the creeds have had him too long. I offer him now to you, not in creed, but in truth. Jesus of Nazareth, the joyous companion, the young man whom young men can love. End of essay number nineteen. Essay number twenty. Be sure you're right, and then don't do it. In Washington the other day I called on a high official of the government, whose department has come in for a great deal of praise in the last few months. I found him in his office, well and happy. And I said to him, when I called on you three years ago, you had just made a move that everybody thought was absolutely indefensible. In the Senate and House they were calling for your resignation. Various cities sent resolutions to the president, demanding that a fit man be substituted in your stead. That was three years ago, and now you seem to be in danger of becoming a really popular character. He laughed. One thing a man has to learn in public office, he said, is that criticism is inevitable. The man who lets his judgment be deflected from day to day by what the people think or say will go on the rocks as sure as shooting. A man must trust his own judgment and conscience, and go ahead. Some day, if he has been true, the facts will come to light and justify him. Coming back on the train I picked up Ida Tarbell's Life of Lincoln, and read again the story of those bitter years of civil war. In the West was Fremont, brilliant, impetuous, conceited, the popular idol. Without consultation or authority from the president, he issued in his own name an Emancipation Proclamation. It was immensely popular in the North. Newspapers and public speakers hailed it as a stroke of statesmanship, and its author as the man of vision who dared while the president weakly hesitated. The country did not know the full facts. Lincoln did. He knew that such a proclamation issued at that hour would do far greater harm than good. It would not help to save the Union, and it might throw into the arms of the Confederacy those border states which had in it their power to win the war. So he modified the proclamation. When his order was made public, says Ms. Tarbell, a perfect storm of denunciation broke over the president. The whole North felt outraged. There was talk of impeaching Lincoln and replacing him with Fremont. Great newspapers criticized him, warning him to learn where he was tending. Influential men in all professions spoke bitterly of his action. How many times, wrote James Russell Lowell, are we to save Kentucky and lose our self-respect? And all the time Lincoln, knowing better than any of his critics, having in his own mind his own plan for an Emancipation Proclamation, held his peace, enduring the criticism waiting for the proper hour. Passages like that make me feel very reticent about exercising my divine right as an American citizen to denounce the government. So often in our history the events have proved that those who were criticized had all the facts and the critics only part. So often men have slain the prophets and then erected mausoleums to them afterwards. Criticism is an intelligent service in a democracy, but it is a very specialized job and I for one am willing that it should be somebody else's job. Generally speaking there is safety in this rule and a lot of solid sense. Don't criticize until you're sure you're right, then don't. Usually by the time you're absolutely sure it will be too late anyway. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Joseph. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Joseph, the true-hearted carpenter of Nazareth. To Mary, his wife, the mother of Jesus, the world pays generous homage and well at May. Her faith was firm at the end. She was one of those who stood brave and trusting even at the foot of the cross. The world remembers that and generously forgets that there were times when her son was too great a mystery for her. Times when she and his brethren would have locked him up as mad and when he spoke of them almost as though they were hardly worthy of him. We forget all this and remember her at her best and she deserves to be remembered. But Joseph we remember hardly at all, yet he must have been a wonderful man. Suffer the little children to come unto me, Jesus said, holding out his tired arms and smiling, even as his patient carpenter father had opened his arms to his own children at the close of the wearying day. Remembering such a scene is that I stand reverently before the memory of Joseph. This is his distinction. He so represented fatherhood to his own son that the son could conceive of no more splendid title for God than the single title father. There is no reward of riches for successful fathers, no distinguished service-metal, no Victoria Cross. We reverence Washington and Lincoln, Luther and Phillips Brooks, but the men who gave them birth and training have disappeared from our remembrance. Yet I know of no business of greater compensations than the business of successful fatherhood. Recently I was a visitor at two homes. The first was a home of abundance. We aid on rich China and sat afterwards amid expensive surroundings. I wondered that a man who had so much should seem to find so little satisfaction in it. Late in the evening I discovered the truth. Men call me fortunate, he said to me, but they do not know what they say. I have made a failure of the only thing in life that counts. My son is worthless, and I let him drift into worthlessness. The other home was modest. The man who dwells in it will never be heard of beyond the limits of his own small town, but he has put humanity in his debt. The lives that he has brought into the world will shed glory on his name long after he has passed beyond. He has paid the price, of course. He might perhaps have gone farther in business if he had been content to sacrifice everything to business. But for years he has made it a rule to take some regular time each day to be a comrade to his boys. Their reading, their sports, their problems are a first consideration on his calendar. In business he makes only his living. At home he is guiding and molding lives. Do not be concerned at my death, murmured Samuel Wesley on his dying bed. God will then begin to manifest himself in my family. The world has erected no monument above Samuel Wesley. He has been forgotten, as completely forgotten as though he had been a king of England or a millionaire. But the influence of his character will not perish. His is the proud heritage of the Friends of Joseph, the unobtrusive, unremembered fellowship of men who lose their lives in fatherhood, and losing them find an immortality in the undying influence of their sons. End of essay number 21. Essays 22 through 28 of It's a Good Old World. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephen Escalera. It's a Good Old World by Bruce Barton. Essay number 22. And he goeth. Several years ago when I had just been promoted to my first real job, I called on a business friend of mine. He is a wise and experienced handler of men. I asked him what suggestions he could make about executive responsibility. You are about to make the great discovery, he said. Within a week or two you will know why it is that executives grow gray and die before their time. You will have learned the bitter truth that there are no efficient people in the world. I am still very far from admitting that he was right, but I know well enough what he meant. Every man knows who has ever been responsible for a piece of work or had to meet a payroll. Recently another friend of mine built a house. The money to build it represented a difficult period of saving on the part of himself and his wife. It meant overtime work and self-denial, an extra effort in behalf of a long cherished dream. One day when the work was well along he visited it and saw a workman climbing a ladder to the roof with a little bunch of shingles in his hands. Look here, the foreman cried. Can't you carry a whole bundle of shingles? The workman regarded him solemnly. I suppose I could, he answered, if I wanted to bull the job. By bull the job he meant do an honest day's work. At ten o'clock one morning I met still another man in his office in New York. He was munching a sandwich and gulping a cup of coffee which his secretary had brought into him. I had to work late last night, he said, and meet a very early appointment this morning. My wife asked our maid to have breakfast a half hour early, so that I might have a bite and still be here in time. When I came down to breakfast the maid was still in bed. She lives in his home and eats and is clothed by means of money which his brain provides, but she has no interest in his success, no care whatever except to do the minimum of work. The real trouble with the world today is a moral trouble, said a thoughtful man recently. A large proportion of its people have lost all conception of what it means to render an adequate service in return for the wages they are paid. He is a generous man. On almost any sort of question his sympathies are likely to be with labor, and so are mine. I am glad that men work shorter hours than they used to, and in certain instances I think the hours should be even shorter. I am glad they are paid higher wages, and hope they may earn still more. But there are times when my sympathy goes out to those in whose behalf no voice is ever raised, to the executives of the world whose hours are limited only by the limit of their physical and mental endurance, who carry not merely the load of their own work, but the heartbreaking load of carelessness and solid indifference in so many of the folks whom they employ. Perhaps the most successful executive in history was that centurion of the Bible. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, he said. And I say to this man, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh. And to my servant, do this, and he doeth it. Marvelous man. The modern executive also says, go. And too often the man who should have gone will appear a day or two later and explain, I didn't understand what you meant. He says, come. And at the appointed time his telephone rings and a voice speaks, saying, I overslept, and will be there in three quarters of an hour. End of essay number twenty-two. Essay number twenty-three. In a manger. Just a group of simple shepherds they were, going about their jobs as usual, with no suspicion that this night would be different from any other. And to them, of all men in the world, the heavenly vision came. In their ears, mingled with the noises of their daily toil, the angel voices sounded. Thousands of men were looking eagerly for the appearance of the Messiah that night, as they had looked for his appearance every night for years. Surely with great acclaim he would come, in a king's palace, with signs and wonders to restore his chosen people. And while their eyes were fixed on high to see the great event, lo the great event took place at their very feet, and they never saw it. He came to the world out of the depths, not on the heights. They found him lying in a manger. It often happens so in life. There is in the world today a man who is told terribly that he might achieve a vast success. He has piled dollar upon dollar, and business upon business. Mounting to the top of the great pile, which he has made, he has looked longingly for a glimpse of the thing worthwhile, and he has not found it. While only one short block from his home, and a little cottage, surrounded by his red-cheeked children, a man who will never have ten thousand dollars to his name, looks out on life through reverent eyes, and finds it wonderful. Not in the palace on that street will one find the kingdom of happiness, but in the little cottage, even as they found him, years ago, lying in a manger. There is another man who cherishes in his heart the vision of a reconstructed social order. He hopes, by laws and ordinances, and by this and that, to hedge the people in and mold them, so that they must be good in spite of themselves. His mind is full of social betterment, and in his heart is no appreciation whatever of the people whom he seeks to better. He has no confidence in them. He forgets that it was from them Lincoln Spring. He forgets that it was the French Revolution, in spite of its violence, and not the thought and plan of statesmen that started the modern world on its great role toward democracy. Almost every great movement has grown up from below, yet he does not understand it. He thinks to hand improvement down, like old clothes, from above. He seeks the millennium from on high, and behold, at his very feet the millennium is slowly working itself into being, even as the great beginning of the millennium came, not in a king's palace, but in a manger. It is an easy thing to fix one's eyes on the distant splendor, and, pressing toward it, lose the nearer splendor that lies everywhere about. It is a temptation to say, I am so busy with the great work I am doing, my activities are so important that I cannot be bothered about little things. He who was born in a manger was never busy. With the burden of the world on his shoulders, he was not too preoccupied to hear the cry of a single blind man. Wearyed by anxious hours of toil, he was not too weary to open his arms to little children. Take time to live each day in simple friendliness. This would be his message to you. The kingdom of happiness lies not far off, but close about you. It was thus that the shepherd's discovered it. In the midst of their daily job, the heavenly light broke around them, with the noises of their regular, routine labor in their ears, the voice of the angel shouted, You shall find him lying in a manger. End of Essay No. 23 Essay No. 24 Why your eyes are in the front of your head In 1833 a clerk in the Patent Office at Washington handed in his resignation. It was an interesting document touched with pathos. He had found the work congenial, he said. He was sorry to leave it, but his conscience would not allow him to continue to draw pay under false pretenses. There was no more need for a job like his. Every possible invention had been conceived and patented. There was nothing left to invent. In 1833 and nothing left to invent. Before the railroads had spanned the continent, before electricity lighted our streets and moved our cars, before the telephone or the wireless or the steam shovel or the dynamo, At the very threshold of the greatest period of mechanical advance that the world has ever known, this young man threw up his hands. A large section of the human race, in any age, belongs to the class of that mistaken young man. You find men at every period, their eyes gripped by the past, looking forward when they look at all, only to shudder and to fear. There were the people who criticized Jefferson bitterly because he paid the enormous sum of sixty million francs for the worthless tract of land beyond the Alleghenies. Fortunately, he withstood their criticism and persisted in his extravagant, high-handed course, and the richest agricultural empire in the world was added to our territory at a cost of less than four cents an acre. They sneered at Fulton when his steamship lay building in the dry dock. The idea of a fool supposing that he could run a boat without the aid of wind or tide, and the children of these men of little faith stand today aghast at the prospect of what may happen to the world in the months that are before us. I met a few days ago a rich man who shook his head lugubriously. I am turning everything I can to gold or government bonds, he said, I am not so sure about the bonds. We are going to have terrible times, marked my words. The same day a laborer spoke to me, nodding sagely. I tell you we have no idea of the troubles that are coming to us. He said, Europe is bankrupt and we are on the way. They did not need to tell me that we are to have some trying times. I know it as well as the next man. I cannot shake the earth from its very foundations and expect to set it back in place again without a jar. But I know this, which they do not know or do not believe at least, that the world, with all its times of trouble, still moves ahead. No man can play a big part in the world who does not believe in the future of the world. There is a thrill in the thought of the days ahead, with the rising of people's long oppressed and the overturn of customs long outgrown. Suppose it does cost us part of the money we have saved. We are young and can make some more. Suppose it does throw some of us into new jobs. There is joy in a job that is new. It is pleasant to read the history of the past, but the wise man does his historical reading at night when the day's work is done. During the working hours he keeps his eyes on the great and glorious and thrilling future. For eyes were made to look forward. That's why they're placed in the front of the head. End of Essay Number 24 Essay Number 25 Would you be great? Then expect suffering, for it is the stuff greatness is made of. I have been reading the tragic, inspiring story of a great man. His work has enriched the life of every generation since his own, but his life was a long, dark day of suffering. This man was Ludwig von Beethoven. He was born in the humble cottage in Bonn in the year 1770. His parents were poor, but that is a minor matter. The parents of most great men have been poor. Tragedy entered Beethoven's life not by reason of his parents' poverty, but because they were utterly incapable of appreciating the fine spiritual gift that was in the boy. His father had no thought but to exploit the son's musical talent. At the age of eleven he was playing in theatre orchestras and carrying burdens far too heavy for his young shoulders to bear. His health was poor. There were none to appreciate his genius. And in the glory of his young manhood, when he was just beginning to feel his power, his life was clouded by an irredeal calamity. He began to lose his hearing. Think of it, a musician dependent on the fine harmony of sounds for his success and death at twenty-six. Poverty stricken, unloved, betrayed, and flouted by the nephew for whom he had sacrificed everything, this unconquerable spirit yet gave to the world music that has gladdened the hearts of millions of men and women in every land. I have no friend. I must live alone, he said. But I know that in my heart God is nearer to me than to others. I approach him without fear. I have always known him. Neither am I anxious about my music, which no adverse fate will overtake, and which will free him who understands it from the misery which afflicts others. And, at another time, I want to prove that whoever acts rightly and nobly can by that alone bear misfortune. No man can read these words, remembering Beethoven's life, without failing his own soul enriched and strengthened. It is a significant thing that a large proportion of the great lives of history have been conceived in suffering and nurtured on disappointment and pain. We think of Lincoln as the great storyteller. But if you would know the real Lincoln, look at the deep lines in his face. Napoleon conquered the world, yet he almost never laughed. He was never really well, never rose from his bed feeling rested. He was so depressed as a young man that he seriously contemplated ending his life. It was a famous writer who said, What has been well written has been well suffered. The lives of the great heroes were lives of long martyrdom, says Romain Rowland in The Life of Beethoven, from which I have quoted, A tragic destiny willed their souls to be forged on the anvil of physical and moral grief, of misery and ill health. There is this consolation to you in your hours of disappointment and distress, that suffering is the stuff out of which true greatness grows. Yield to it weekly and it will destroy you. Rise a conqueror of it and by that act you become a finer spirit, a greater man or woman. I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me, said Jesus of Nazareth. By lifted up he meant lifted up on the cross, crucified. Only by his suffering and death could he become the cure and saviour of the world. There was no shortcut, no easier way, to greatness and glory for him, and there seldom is for any man. End of Essay No. 25 At a public dinner some weeks ago, five speakers were scheduled. It was agreed that each would speak for twenty minutes, a hundred minutes of oratory, all that any patient audience ought to be called upon to stand. The first man spoke twenty-two minutes. The second man spoke twenty-five. The third man stood on his feet and rambled along for an hour and forty-four minutes. The other two speakers, with an amount of Christian charity and common sense not often found among platform habituaries, had meanwhile folded their tents and gone home. The speaker has an unfair advantage over a writer. Any reader of this piece can, at any moment, decide that it is not worth reading and move on, as doubtless many do. But no man rises in the middle of a public address, jams on his hat, and stamps down the aisle. We are held by a certain convention of courtesy, and nine speakers out of ten presume upon that fact. Only once in a blue moon does a man arise and, without palaver, drive right to the point, making his statement in a few, crisp words and sitting down before we are ready to have him stop. Such a one leaves us gasping with relief and admiration. We would, with the slightest encouragement, shout for him for president. He glistens in our memory, and we mention his name with a certain awe when the names of speakers are told. Brevity is so popular of virtue that I cannot understand why more speakers do not cultivate it. It is one of the keys to immortality. Two men spoke at Gettysburg on the same afternoon during the Civil War. One man was named Everett, the leading orator of his day, and he made a typically great oration. What reader of this page has ever heard it referred to, or could repeat a single line? The other speaker read from a slip of paper less than three hundred words. His speech, Lincoln's Gettysburg address, will live forever. Greeley used to say that the way to write a good editorial was to write it to the best of your ability, then cut it in two in the middle, and print the last half. When a reporter complained to Dana that he could not possibly cover a certain story in six hundred words, Dana sent him to the Bible. The whole story of the creation of the world is told in less than six hundred, he exclaimed. Everything is taxed these days, except talk, and no tax could be more popular from the standpoint of the patient-consumer. The tax should be graded, like the income tax. Let speeches of five minutes or under be exempt. From five to ten minute speeches, ten percent. Ten to fifteen minutes, fifteen percent. Over thirty minutes, sixty percent. And over an hour, one hundred percent, with double taxes on all speeches in Congress. Only by some such rigorous treatment will the spoken word regain a position of respect, and silence receive the honor that is its due. There is one historical character who has fascinated me. His name was Enoch. The honor conferred upon him has been enjoyed by no other, yet his whole biography is written in less than twenty words. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. So far as we know he was the only man ever selected by the Almighty as a walking companion. And there is every indication that he was a man of very few words. A few days ago a successful man sat in my office discussing his business. Our organization is all right. We're showing good profits, he said. The only thing we lack is a boss that can make things hum as they used to in the old days, when we were poor and struggling. The best thing that could happen to the business would be for me to lose all my money. I don't have to worry anymore. I don't have to work, and try as he may, the man who doesn't have to work can't put the same fire into it as he did when his living and his future were at stake. The next afternoon at the club I ran into a collegemate whose father left him plenty of money. He had as much ability as any man in his class, and he has worked at one job and another after a fashion. No one could accuse him of being shiftless. But always in the back of his mind was the consciousness that he did not need to work. If he lost the job, if it proved unpleasant and he quit, nothing vital was sacrificed. He still could live and wait to look around for something more according to his fancy. So while some other men, who have had to hustle in commencement day, have made real places for themselves, he still is holding jobs, none of which seemed to him quite worth holding. There is something in all this worth remembering in days when the air is so full of schemes for reorganizing the world on an easier basis. All the socialistic systems I have ever heard of, all the plans for substituting governmental ownership for private ownership, break down when you ask this impertinent question. But how are you going to get men to work? William James, the psychologist, pointed out long ago that even the most ambitious of us live at about half our actual capacity. It's only when we are stirred by a great demand an insistent necessity that we accomplish the sort of things that make us proud of our humanity. The war proved that to millions of men. We subscribed for liberty bonds away beyond our capacity to pay. We didn't see how we could possibly work our way out. Yet we did work our way out. We did because we had to. I have seen writers become so well fixed financially that they could take things easy. Now I can do really fine work, they say. I have leisure and can wait until I am fully rested and then produce a masterpiece which I'll show no trace of pressure or necessity. And usually they produce nothing at all. Most of the great works of art have been the creation of men who needed food and drink and room rent. Old mother Hubbard when she went to the cupboard and found not even a single bone was then in perfect condition to sit down and write a first class novel or carve an immortal statue or start a beauty parlor that would have made her rich. We need a little more clear thinking these days. A new gospel of work and a new definition of independence. We have talked about independence as though it meant leisure. We take them from responsibility, the opportunity to loaf. But real independence is mastery. The proud consciousness of being able to do a task a little better than the average and the assurance that the task itself will provide the reward of every legitimate desire. We want the world to be every year an easier and happier and more comfortable place. But our progress toward that end will be mightily diminished if we ever institute a social system that vanishes the iron mastery of the great God must. End of Essay Number 27 Essay Number 28 Put great men to work for you. It doesn't cost a thing. Considering that it cost nothing I am surprised that so few people have the great men of the world working for them. Personally I should hardly know how to get through a week without their help. I am in a business that has no office hours. There is no one except myself to assign my work and see that it gets done. And frequently there are days when I kick against my boss and do not feel like doing any work at all. For such days I have discovered a remedy. I go to my desk a little early and instead of starting at once to work I pick up the biography of some great man and read a chapter out of the most interesting portion of his life. After half an hour or so I am conscious of a new feeling. My spiritual shoulders are straighter. My reluctance has disappeared. I say to myself how trivial is my task compared with the marvels he achieved. I am on fire with his example eager to make the day count. The discovery that great men can be drafted for help and even the humblest office is not original with me. Many another has profited by it. Emerson for example. I cannot even hear of a personal vigor of any kind great power of performance without fresh resolution," he says. We are emulous of all that men do. Cecil, saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, I know that he can toil terribly, is an electric touch. So are Clarendon's portraits of Handon, who was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle and sharp and of a personal courage equal to his best parts. And of Falkland, who was so severe and adorer of truth that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal as to disemble. We cannot read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood. And I accept a saying of the Chinese Mercius, a sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Lou are heard of the stupid become intelligent and the wavering determined. There is in biography an antidote for almost every mood. Are we discouraged? A half hour with Lincoln, carrying patiently his great load, never once losing faith, makes me properly ashamed of myself. Are we inclined to be afraid? It stirs new depths of courage in us to read of Stonewall Jackson, whose motto was, Never take counsel of your fears. Do we vacillate between two courses of action? There is in all literature no such way against vacillation as the pitiful uncertainties of poor Cicero. I would recommend these willing helpers to every man who finds his task sometimes heavy beyond his individual strength. There is no limit to their service. The fact that I employ them does not keep them from working with equal efficiency for you. They answer at a moment's notice and may be dismissed peremptorily without the slightest hurt upon their feelings. In their companionship is the secret of mental and spiritual growth. It is fairly easy to be as great as our contemporaries. It is hard to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps to distinguished effort and achievement. But these great men any one of us may make his own contemporaries and companions if he will, and there is no danger that we will outgrow them. They are a daily stimulation to that which is best and most effective in us. They stand out like golden peaks of achievement along which even the least of us may climb a little nearer to his best ideals. End of Essay Number 28