guide than the Ten Commandments and the Golden
Rule. The test of my misconduct would have come when, having cleverly
destroyed their profits, I found them quitting in discouragement,
closing up the business and throwing us all out of our jobs for keeps.

I tried to point out these things to the men. Some of them felt as I did
about it. Others couldn't see it. So I learned darn early in life that
you can't reform 'em all.

I used to say to the complaining man:

"Look here, Bill; you're in no shape to work. Go home and lie down for
a couple of days. You wouldn't last here two hours in your present shaky
condition. You'd pinch the rolls with your tongs and probably get your
neck broke. That's why they won't let you work. You can't work. So back
to your bed, Bill, we will not call them out to-day."

Bill usually went away cursing me as the friend of the "plutes" and
the enemy of labor. "I'll get you yet," he'd say, "you black-headed
buzzard."

And so while I was making enemies among many of the men who thought
I wasn't standing up for their rights, I was making myself even more
unpopular with the owners by sticking up too firmly for the rights of
the men. They told me they believed I knew as much about the tin plate
business as any man in the trade. This knowledge would enable me to
do better in the distributing end of the business, while as a worker I
could only make the union wages that all the fellows were getting. This
gave me an idea that has since become the dominating purpose of my life.
Handicraft is the basis of the best schooling. By working with my hands
as well as with my head I learned the actual cost of production of every
kind of plate they put out. This was something that I could not have
learned from books. Without such knowledge the business would have to be
run partly on guesswork. With a thorough knowledge of the production end
of the business I became a valuable man. The way was open for me to get
out of the labor field and into the field of management.

But here is where my natural feeling of fraternity stepped in. I liked
to be among the men. I felt at home there. I was only twenty-two, and
salesmanship was a field I had never tried, except for a season when I
sold Mark Twain's book, Following the Equator. There were plenty of
men who had the knack of selling. My natural gift, if I had any, was to
smooth the path for working men and help them solve their problems. I
had learned that labor was th