PROFITING BY FAILURETwo thousand years ago the son of man was an outcast,
with no place of abode. Now the situation has been reversed
and the devil has no place to lay his head.
Let each of us take unto himself the great lesson that this
world war has taught: namely, only that which is based upon
justice and mercy toward all-the weak and the strong, the
rich and the poor, alike-can survive. All else must pass on.
Out of this war will come a new idealism-an idealism
that will be based on the Golden Rule philosophy; an ideal-
ism that will guide us, not to see how much we can "do our
fellow man for;' but how much we can do jor him that will
ameliorate his hardships and make him happier as he tarries
by the wayside of life.
Emerson embodied this idealism in his great essay, Com-
pensation. Another great philosopher embodied it in these
words, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
The time for practicing the Golden Rule philosophy is
upon us. In business as well as in social relationships, he who
neglects or refuses to use this philosophy as the basis of his
dealings will but hasten the time of his failure.
And while I am intoxicated with the glorious news of
the war's ending, is it not fitting that I should attempt to
do something to help preserve for the generations yet to
come, one of the great lessons to be learned from William
Hohenzollern's effort to rule the earth by force?
I can best do this by going back twenty-two years for
my beginning. Come with me, won't you?
It was a bleak November morning, probably not far from
the eleventh of the month, that I got my first job as a laborer
in the coal mine regions of Virginia, at wages of a dollar a
day. A dollar a day was a big sum in those days; especially to
a boy of my age. Of this, I paid fifty cents a day for my room
and board.
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