looking on, giving advice and philosophizing on the situation. In fact, the result of a man’s work is not the measure of success. To go down with the ship in storm and tempest is better than to paddle away to Paradise in an Orthodox canoe. To have worked is to have succeeded—we leave the results to time. Life is too short to gather the Harvest—we can only sow. ¶ Up to the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six the business world was tainted by trickery in trade ❦ The methods of booth and bazaar were everywhere practised. Business was barter, and he who could cheat and not get caught was accounted clever. On the customs of the time there was no copyright. They were a take-over from monarchical days ❦ But a new ethic has arrived. Within ten years’ time the thought has gone through the entire business fabric that to cheat and not get caught is really a worse calamity than to get caught. To be caught means that some one has applied the brake and you are given pause. Not to get caught means that you are headed for the precipice on the high clutch and down grade. To cheat another is to cheat yourself. Theology did not teach us this, for precept and preaching never touch our lives. We shed them. We are moved in only one way, and that is by self-interest ❦ Cut off our food-supply and we are no longer apathetic. And self-interest is a form of selfishness; it is the desire for life ❦ It is the instinct of self-preservation in action. It was all a matter of mental growth, evolution. ¶ The discovery of truth as our most valuable business asset is the one great achievement of the age in which we live ❦ For truth there is no substitute, and this discovery was made by businessmen. Honesty as a working policy was first put forth by Benjamin Franklin; and his remark was regarded as a mere pleasantry until yesterday. The clergy have not yet adopted it; the doctors are considering it, and the lawyers haven’t heard of it. However, all these will finally adopt it, as a last resort, as a means of self-preservation. ¶ Economics based on falsehood leads to dissolution. Falsehood is a polite form of conquest. The lie is exploitation. The preacher has diverted us while the lawyer picked our pocket; the doctor gives you ether and accomplishes the same result ❦ Egypt, Rome and Greece lived on their slaves and outlying colonies. ¶ Slave labor is the most expensive kind. In time the land is exhausted, and the slaves die. But before this happened to the capitals that were, the aristocrats who wasted, destroyed and consumed had gotten nervous debility, and were impotent, also impudent. Then they died and the barbarian overran the land ❦ A wise Economist—and America has many—could have figured out exactly how long Babylon and Nineveh would have lasted ❦ None of these ancient civilizations produced economists. They had soothsayers, priests, lawyers, poets, artists, clowns, dramatists, orators, rhetoricians, singers, philosophers. And most of all they had guzzlers and gormands.