Love, Life & Work: Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to OthersHubbard, Elbert
Religion
Love, Life & Work: Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others
Hubbard, Elbert
Conduct of life; Happiness
This tendency to coöperate is seen in such splendid features as the
Saint Louis Union Station, for instance, where just twenty great
railroad companies lay aside envy, prejudice, rivalry and whim, and use
one terminal. If competition were really the life of trade, each
railroad that enters Saint Louis would have a station of its own, and
the public would be put to the worry, trouble, expense and endless delay
of finding where it wanted to go and how to get there. As it is now, the
entire aim and end of the scheme is to reduce friction, worry and
expense, and give the public the greatest accommodation--the best
possible service--to make travel easy and life secure. Servants in
uniform meet you as you alight, and answer your every question--speeding
you courteously and kindly on your way. There are women to take care of
women, and nurses to take care of children, and wheel chairs for such as
may be infirm or lame. The intent is to serve--not to pull you this way
and that, and sell you a ticket over a certain road. You are free to
choose your route and you are free to utilize as your own this great
institution that cost a million dollars, and that requires the presence
of two hundred people to maintain. All is for you. It is for the public
and was only made possible by a oneness of aim and desire--that is to
say coöperation. Before coöperation comes in any line, there is always
competition pushed to a point that threatens destruction and promises
chaos; then to divert ruin, men devise a better way, a plan that
conserves and economizes, and behold, it is found in coöperation.
Civilization is an evolution.
Civilization is not a thing separate and apart, any more than art is.
Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Civilization is the
expeditious way of doing things. And as haste is often waste--the more
hurry the less speed--civilization is the best way of doing things.
As mankind multiplies in number, the problem of supplying people what
they need is the important question of Earth. And mankind has ever held
out offers of reward in fame and money--both being forms of power--to
those who would supply it better things.
Teachers are those who educate the people to appreciate the things they
need.
The man who studies mankind, and finds out what men really want, and
then supplies them this, whether it be an Idea or a Thing, is the man
who is crowned with the laurel wreath of honor and clothed with riches.
What people need and what they want may be very different.
To undertake to supply people a thing you think they need but which they
do not want, is to have your head elevated on a pike, and your bones
buried in Potter's Field.
But wait, and the world will yet want the thing that it needs, and your
bones will then become sacred relics.
This change in desire on the part of mankind is the result of the growth
of intellect.
It is Progress, and Progress is Evolution, and Evolution is Progress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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