y. It is dishonest. It is
unsportsmanlike. It is unmanly.

The question of salary is, from whatever angle it is approached, a
delicate one. "My experience is," observed David Harum, "that most men's
hearts is located ruther closter to their britchis pockets than they are
to their vest pockets." It is a tender subject, and one that causes more
trouble than almost any other in the world. Employees who are trusted
with the payroll should not divulge figures and employees who are on the
payroll should not discuss and compare salaries. Jones cannot understand
why Brown gets more than he does when he knows that Brown's work is not
so good, Brown cannot see why Smith gets as much as he does when he is
out two or three days in the week, and Smith cannot see why he has not
been made an executive after all the years he has worked in the place.
There are many sides to the matter of salary adjustment and they all
have to be taken into consideration. And the petty jealousies that
employees arouse by matching salaries against one another only serve to
make a complex problem more difficult.

There is only one base upon which a man should rest his plea for an
increase in salary, and that is good work. The fact that he has a family
dependent upon him, that he is ill or hard up may be ample reason for
giving him financial help or offering him a loan, but it is no reason
why his salary should be increased unless his work deserves it.
Paternalism is more unfair than most systems of reward, and the man who
comes whimpering with a tale of hard luck is usually (but not always)
not worth coddling. Years of experience, even though they stretch out to
three score and ten, are not in themselves sufficient argument for
promotion. Sometimes the mere fact that a man has been content to stay
in one place year after year shows that he has too little initiative to
rise in that particular kind of work and is too timid to try something
else.

Another big cause of trouble among men working in the same organization
is rigid class distinction. When a man hires others to work _for_ him he
invites discontent; when he hires them to work _with_ him there may be
dissatisfaction, but the chances of it are lessened. A business well
knit together is like any other group, an army or a football team, bound
into a unit to achieve a result. At its best each person in it feels a
responsibility toward each one of the others; each realizes that who a
man is is not half