RADIANCIES OF SINCERITY
We need more of the virtue of belligerent sincerity. What the world
needs to-day is bold, outspokenness for principle. It is not enough that
we hold principles in the quietude of our own homes and discuss them in
the sanctity of our bedrooms. We need a belligerent sincerity of
fundamental principles in the mart, the store, in the counting house, in
the bank, on the board of trade, and the stock exchange. The tendency of
men in office and men in employment is to be subservient for the purpose
of their own advancement. It is so easy to yield a principle to gain an
increase in salary or to win the support of a swaying party vote. In
this age of great aggregations of capital, when corporations are
conducting gigantic enterprises, it is so easy for subordinates to place
all the responsibility of conscience upon their chiefs and to refuse to
accept responsibility for acts of which they themselves are the
instruments on the plea, "I am but a servant and carry out the will of
my superior." Relentless crushing out of competitors, secretly securing
rebates, unjust discrimination in discounts, the utilization of
official information for personal advantage or that of one's friends,
the writing of editorials contrary to one's principles because the
policies of the paper require it, in other words, the whole realm of
truckling subserviency, yielding, cowardice, obsequiousness, surrender,
fawning, servility, sycophancy, toad-eating, pliancy, should be weeded
out of the garden of the soul and belligerent sincerity planted in their
stead.
At the same time, I want to radiate my abhorrence of all the truckling
subserviency that seeks to gain its ends and make secure its own
position by cringing, fawning, and flattery upon those whose favor it
seeks.
Most men have their pet vanities. Few are free from weaknesses and
frailties. It is so easy to flatter, so natural to "kow-tow," so
profitable to pander. The reason that the world so laughs at the
delineations of the open, bold, corrupt, parasitical, pandering Falstaff
is that they find the echo in their own meannesses of soul. Like Henry
VII, many men have their Falstaffs, who seek to eat, drink, and be merry
at their expense.
By this I do not mean to decry and impeach the integrity and sincerity
of those who express sympathy and appreciation of those who are engaged
in large enterprises. It is natural for those conducting such to seek
and require such sympathy in their lieutenants, but to such lieutenants
I would cry mightily and constantly, "Sympathize and commend by all
means, but when you do, be sure your purest virtue is on guard over your
heart and your lips. Say nothing that you do not absolutely mean." Be
"belligerently sincere" with your own soul and speak no words to your
employer because he enjoys them that you would not _as freely and gladly
say if he had dismissed you from his employ_.
I would also radiate my appreciation of those who, occupying what we
call a subordinate position, speak out with frank, plain, direct
simplicity the thoughts of their hearts. I have sometimes found in
business, employers who sought by undue flattery, scheming, plotting,
chicanery, and fraud, all stealthily exercised, to "work" their
employees and secure from them a meed of service for which they were not
willing to pay a full and just price. In dealing with such employers a
frank, open, simple-hearted, and honest employee is often at a great
disadvantage. Being used to tortuous, underground, secret, plotting
methods himself, such an employer regards with suspicion the simple
actions of his employee. He sees in his frank openness nothing but
deeply laid plots. He finds in his candid sincerity craftily planned
schemes. The more open the one, the more certain the other is that
there is something hidden, deep, far-reaching, cunning, and deceitful
underneath his acts.
To these open-hearted souls I would radiate a tonic that is
stimulating--quickening to their moral fiber and stiffening and
strengthening to their moral spines. To such I would come as a cold
shower bath to stimulate the nerves and muscles to greater tension.
Stand by your truthfulness, stand by your frankness, stand by your
openness until you teach these burrowing, crafty, stealthy, sly,
evasive, sneaking creatures that openness is better than secrecy, light
better than darkness, truth better than falsity, candor better than
craft, and an open enemy better than a secret, fawning, sycophantic
foe.