So, yea...
First post of the new year.
I haven't really had anything on my mind lately that I've felt compelled to write about, but I'm on business in Georgia and I wanted to write a post to break up my current boredom.
Therefore, I have decided to share with you an excerpt from a book that I've been reading by Napoleon Hill,
The Law of Success (original 1925 edition). It's a solid book that I would suggest for anyone. The concept of the book sounds like it's one for someone that has no idea where they're going in life, but I can assure you it's not. It just makes you think about and consider things in your life that I think everyone should at some point or another.
I wouldn't call the following excerpt his best work, but I was reading it last night and I felt like it was worth sharing. I was reading it in the book I mentioned, but it actually first appeared as an article in
Hill's Golden Rule magazine, which he owned and published himself.
So, with no further delay.....
"A Personal Visit with Your Editor"
"I am writing on Monday, November eleventh, 1918. Today will go down in history as the greatest holiday.
On the street just outside my office window, the surging crowds of people are celebrating the downfall of an influence that has menaced civilization for the past four years.
The war is over!
Soon our boys will be coming back home from the battlefields of France.
The lord and master of Brute Force is nothing but a shadowy ghost of the past! Two 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 on 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 idealism that will guide us, not to see how much we can "do our fellowmen for," but how much we can do for 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 on the Law of Compensation. 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 simply 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 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 ago 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 thirteen. Of this, I paid fifty cents a day for my board and room.
Shortly after I began work, the miners became dissatisfied and began talking about striking. I listened eagerly to all that was said. I was especially interested in the organizer who had organized the union. He was one of the smoothest speakers I had ever heard, and his words fascinated me. He said one thing, in particular, that I have never forgotten, and if I knew where to find him, I would look him up today and thank him warmly for saying it. The philosophy that I gathered from his words has had a most profound and enduring influence upon me.
Perhaps you will say that most labor agitators are not very sound philosophers, and I would agree with you if you said so. Maybe this one was not a sound philosopher, but surely the philosophy he expounded on this occasion was sound.
Standing on a goods box in the corner of an old shop where he was holding a meeting, he said:
"Men, we are talking about striking. Before you vote, I wish to call your attention to something that will benefit you if you will heed what I say.
"You want more money for your work, and I wish to see you get it because I believe you deserve it.
"May I not tell you how to get more money and still retain the goodwill of the owner of this mine?
"We can call a strike and probably force them to pay more money, but we cannot force them to do this and like it. Before we call a strike, let us be fair with the owner of the mine and with ourselves; let us go to the owner and ask him if he will divide the profits of his mine with us fairly.
"If he says 'yes,' as he probably will, then let us ask him how much he made last month and if he will divide among us a fair proportion of any additional profits he may make if we all jump in and help him earn more next month.
"He being human, like each of us, will no doubt say--'Why, certainly, boys; go to it and I'll divide with you.' It is but natural that the would say that, boys.
"After he agrees to the plan, as I believe he will if we make him see that we are in earnest, I want every one of you to come to work with a smile on your face for the next thirty days. I want to hear you whistling a tune as you go into the mines. I want you to go at your work with the feeling that you are one of the partners in this business.
"Without hurting yourself, you can do almost twice as much work as you are doing, and if you do more work, you are sure to help the owner of this mine make more money. And if he makes more money, he will be glad to divide a part of it with you. He will do this for sound business reasons if not out of a spirit of fair play.
"He will retaliate as surely as there is a God above us. If he doesn't, I'll be personally responsible to you, and if you say so, I'll help blow this mine into smithereens!
"That's how much I think of the plan, boys! Are you with me?"
They were, to the man!
Those words sank into my heart as though they had been burned there with a red-hot-iron.
The following month, every man in the mines received a bonus of twenty percent of his month's earnings. Every month thereafter, each man received a bright red envelope with his part of the extra earnings in it. On the outside of the envelope were these printed words:
Your part of the profits from the work that you did that you were not paid to do.
I have gone through some pretty tough experiences since those days of twenty odd years ago, but I have always come out on top--a little wiser, a little happier, and a little better prepared to be of service to my fellowmen, owing to my having applied the principle of performing more work than I was actually paid to perform.
It may be of interest to you to know that the last position I held in the coal business was that of Assistant to the Chief Counsel for one of the largest companies in the world. It is a considerable jump from the position of common laborer in the coal mines to that of Assistant to the Chief Counsel of one of the largest companies, a jump that I never could have made without the aid of this principle of performing more work than I was paid to perform.
I wish I had the space in which to tell you of the scores of times that this idea of performing more work than I was paid to perform has helped me over rough spots.
Many have been the times that I have placed an employer so deeply in my debt through the aid of this principle that I got whatever I asked for, without hesitation or quibbling, without complaint or hard feelings, and what is more important, without the feeling that I was taking unfair advantage of my employer.
I believe most earnestly that anything a man acquires from his fellowmen without the full consent of the one from whom it is acquired will eventually burn a hole in his pocket or blister the palms of his hands, to say nothing of gnawing at his conscience until his heart aches with regret.
As I said in the beginning, I am writing on the morning of the Eleventh of November, while the crowds are celebrating the great victory of right over wrong!
Therefore, it is only natural that I should turn to the silence of my heart for some thought to pass on to the world today--some thought that will help keep alive in the minds of Americans the spirit of idealism for which they have fought and in which they entered the world war.
I find nothing more appropriate than the philosophy that I have related because I earnestly believe it was the arrogant disregard of this philosophy that brought Germany--the Kaiser and his people-- to grief. To get this philosophy into the hearts of those who need it, I shall publish a magazine to be called Hill's Golden Rule.
It takes money to publish national magazines, and I haven't very much of it at this writing, but before another month shall have passed, through the aid of the philosophy that I have tried here to emphasize, I shall find someone who will supply the necessary money and make it possible for me to pass on to the world the simple philosophy that lifted me out of the dirty coal mines and gave me a place where I can be of service to humanity. The philosophy that will raise you, my dear reader, whoever you may be and whatever you may be doing, into whatever position in life you may make up your mind to attain.
Every person has or ought to have the inherent desire to own something of monetary value, In at least a vague sort of way, every person who works for others (and this includes practically all of us) looks forward to the time when he will have some sort of a business or a profession of his own.
The best way to realize that ambition is to perform more work than one is paid to perform. You can get along with but little schooling, you can get along with but little capital, and you can overcome almost any obstacle with which you are confronted, if you are honestly and earnestly willing to do the best work of which you are capable regardless of the amount of money you receive for it."
On November 21st, 1918, a man by the name of George B. Williams made the publication of Hill's Golden Rule magazine possible.
You get out of life what you put into it. No other way around it.
<>< C. T. Gunn
