Smith’s family in Brooklyn went on short allowance, the oldest
son was taken out of college, the two daughters gave up their
music-teacher, there was no summer vacation. They explained
that Smith had lost thirty-six thousand dollars on R. & P.
stock. Smith knew that he had lost this money because he was ten
minutes late in getting a receipt from the directors.
On a certain day there were twenty-four directors in the head
office. They waited vainly for the twenty-fifth. Their half-hour
delay was costly to Smith and many others.
Mr. Brown, the twenty-fifth director, was late because his
clerk had not brought a certain mail package due on the
one-o’clock express. The clerk came at last with the package;
the one-o’clock express had arrived late.
Fifty more plans went wrong because the express was late.
Men rang up the general manager’s office to complain of the
annoyance. The manager sent for the conductor. The conductor
explained that the fault was a “hot box.” Inquiry at Rochester
traced the hot-box to the inspector and oiler. He had come late
to his work and was only in time to go over half the wheels of
the express. The oiler, being questioned, admitted that he was
late owing to a sick baby, for whom he had been obliged to go
for a doctor. So, in a way, an oiler’s sick baby, two hundred
miles away, upset Smith and his family, delayed boards of
directors, changed Wall Street fortunes. Victor Hugo said that
at Waterloo “the universe changed front.” But it changes front
every time we act. If one member suffers, all the members suffer
with it.
(2997)
* * * * *
The people of the world have a community of interests. Sickness in
the slums of a great city, for instance, breeds disease in the whole
community:
A man in the city of Chicago was asked why he did not do more
to better the condition of the working people in the poorer
sections of the city. “What are they to me?” he heartlessly
answered. A few weeks later his daughter died of typhoid-fever
brought to her in clothing made in the sweat-shops which her
father thought it was not his business to try to do away with.
(Text.)
(2998)
See SENSITIVENESS.