ence, for
impertinence, for disobedience of orders, for laziness, for shirking,
for cheating, or for theft. To do so is a social wrong. It is the wrong
that lies back, not only of sinecures and spoils, but of employing
incompetent and wasteful cooks and dressmakers.

What we make of our lives through wages depends upon ourselves. For
instance, a man gives each of five boys twenty-five cents for sweeping
snow off his sidewalks. One boy tosses pennies, and loses his quarter by
gambling. One boy buys cigarettes, and sends his money up in smoke. One
boy buys newspapers, and sells them at a profit which buys him his
dinner. A fourth boy buys seeds, plants them, and raises a tiny garden
which keeps him in beans for a whole season, The fifth boy buys a book
which starts him on the career of an educated man: he becomes an
inventor and a man of means. The man who paid out the twenty-five cents
to each boy is in no way responsible for the success or failure of their
investment of this quarter. He is responsible only for the fact that he
did or did not pay a fair price for the work.

God, the great Paymaster, gives to each of us the one talent, the two
talents, or the ten talents, of endowment and opportunity: after that,
we are left to our own devices!

There are four things which every employee should constantly bear in
mind, if he wishes to advance,--skill, business opportunity, loyalty,
and control. Until a man has mastered what he has to do, he cannot be
expected to be accounted a serious factor in the economic world. The
moment he achieves skill in what he has to do--and this is a question of
thoroughness, accuracy, and speed--he has achieved power, a possibility
of dictation in the matter of hours and wages.

The next point is business opportunity. Two men, of exactly the same
opportunities and endowments, take up the same task. One man idles and
is surpassed by the other, or he does only what he is told to do,
without further thought. The other performs his set task, but at the
same time he is examining into the principles of his engine, or into the
conduct of the factory or business. In a few years he is the foreman, or
an inventor, or a partner, with independent capital of his own. Again,
there is a blind way of doing skilled work, or of merely doing it
without noticing where it is most needed, or how the market is going for
this special kind of work. The one who has his eyes open reads, notes
the state of the market