IRLF 
 
 EflS SEfi 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 BY 
 C. V. MOSBY, M.D. 
 
 M 
 
 ST. LOUIS 
 THE HIGHLAND PRESS 
 
 1917 
 
-B <j- 
 
 oat 
 
 Copyright, 1917, By The Highland Press 
 
To Mother who Urged 
 To Father who Guided 
 
 LilO 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Every individual has an inherent desire 
 to win. Ask the boy, the girl, the youth, 
 the maiden, or the middle-aged what of the 
 future. Every one will tell you that he 
 expects to reach his goal, that he expects 
 to sail into the harbor of old age with 
 a competency and with his hopes realized. 
 Alas! however, the possibilities of this 
 achievement grow dim with the passing 
 years, and fully eighty-five per cent of the 
 world's populace reach the sear and yel- 
 low time of life with the howl of the wolf 
 dangerously near ! This human waste is a 
 serious economic problem. It indicates 
 that our system is wrong somewhere. Is it 
 in our boasted educational institutions? 
 Are we training wrong f Sometimes I 
 think we are. It would seem more logical 
 to train a boy or girl to know themselves, 
 
 9 
 
10 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 to know the great laws governing life, to 
 know the principles upon which success is 
 founded, than to take years of time 
 familiarizing one with a language that is 
 never used and with mathematical prob- 
 lems that have no bearings on life. I 
 would rather my boy knew his biology and 
 became acquainted with his animal and 
 vegetable ancestry than to be able to read 
 "Caesar's War With the Gauls," in the 
 original tongue. 
 
 I would rather he knew that courage, 
 fidelity, optimism, imagination, patience, 
 and endurance were necessary in the 
 achievement of success than be able to 
 solve some difficult problem in calculus. 
 
 You may say that childhood is no time 
 for the consideration of life's serious 
 problems. Let me tell you that the sug- 
 gestions planted in childhood become the 
 serious problems of life, so why not plant 
 in childhood the right kind. Making the 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 11 
 
 grade is the real problem for all. It 
 makes no difference what your religion or 
 your philosophy may be, the crux of every 
 life is centered upon whether you have 
 been able to climb the hill. Suggestions 
 rule our lives. Consciously or uncon- 
 sciously we are influenced thereby. If the 
 suggestions set forth in this little volume 
 help some fellow traveler to climb the hill 
 and to make the grade, then, like other sug- 
 gestions, its life cycle will have been com- 
 plete. -C. V. M. 
 
 Webster Groves, 
 St. Louis County, 
 Missouri. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTION 1? 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 HEALTH . . 24 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ENDURANCE 32 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 IMAGINATION 40 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 PATIENCE 47 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 COURAGE 54 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 SELF- CONFIDENCE 62 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 OPTIMISM 69 
 
 13 
 
14 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FAITH IN THE SUCCESS OF YOUR UNDERTAKING 76 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 POISE 83 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CORRECT ESTIMATION OF VALUES .... 91 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 HONESTY OF PURPOSE 98 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 PLEASURES 106 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 KNOWLEDGE *" 112 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 INDUSTRY . 120 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 CONCENTRATION . 127 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 INITIATIVE 133 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 CONCLUSIONS . 141 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 AN automobile that cannot climb a hill is 
 -** worthless. When a horse balks every 
 time the going gets hard, it is branded as 
 a plug and loses its value. When a man or 
 a woman abandons his or her purpose in 
 life every time difficulties confront them, 
 they become closely akin to the balky horse 
 or the automobile that carries an inferior 
 motor. A country that stretches away on a 
 dead level is very uninteresting. It takes 
 the hills, the valleys, and the mountains to 
 give the charm to a landscape. Mountains 
 have always had an attraction for man. 
 They have lured the artists, inspired the 
 poets, and charmed the dreamer, and they 
 have imparted courage, manhood, integ- 
 rity, and resolute purpose to all who live 
 in their shadows. 
 
 17 
 
18 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 Historians speak of the hardy mountain- 
 eers of Switzerland and Scotland, and in 
 these countries the spark of liberty was 
 kept alive when tyranny ruled in other 
 lands. Mountains have charmed because 
 they presented difficulties to those who 
 would enjoy their fastness, and to be really 
 happy one must have difficulties to over- 
 come. 
 
 When you fatten a hog, you restrict its 
 field of activities, you take all efforts of 
 obtaining a living away from it, you surfeit 
 it with food, and the hog eats and dies. 
 The more it eats and the fatter it becomes, 
 the more quickly will come its end. So it is 
 with life. Take away the difficulties, level 
 the mountains, reduce the grades, make 
 living one unending monotony, and you are 
 dead. The men who do things are the hill 
 climbers. They take the grade on high 
 and they go to the top without heating the 
 motor. Anything in this life that has a 
 tangible value must be fought for. Com- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 19 
 
 pensation has laws that never vary. When- 
 ever you get something for nothing, you 
 are paying the highest price for it and this 
 price is usually that of self-respect or lack 
 of effort. 
 
 When an athlete ceases to train, he is on 
 the toboggan slide headed for oblivion. 
 When men cease to climb, when they strike 
 the dead level of life, they begin to toll the 
 knell to their own funeral. 
 
 There is no sadder spectacle in modern 
 life than that of the man or the woman 
 climbing the hill to the Goal of Success, 
 financial or otherwise, in order that their 
 sons or daughters may be spared similar 
 efforts. A ball rolls down hill much faster 
 than it can be carried up, and it strikes the 
 bottom with a thud. Start an untrained, 
 unsophisticated young man in life with 
 plenty of money, a good credit, or an estab- 
 lished business, and ninety-nine chances 
 out of the hundred, you put the ball of his 
 life at the top of the grade and give it a 
 
20 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 push. It is your fault, not hisf that it flies 
 through space on its downward plunge^and 
 hits the bottom with a crash. 
 
 To be capable of climbing hills you must 
 prepare for it while the machine is being 
 built. You can't put weak material into a 
 car and expect it to stand the strain of the 
 mountain trail. You must build every 
 piece of your machine with an understand- 
 ing of what it will go through ; it must be 
 tried and must stand the acid test. So it 
 is in life, you must build for hill climbing. 
 Very little of life's journey lies along the 
 shaded brook, most of it is over hills, 
 across deserts, and up rugged mountain 
 sides. There would be no glory in success 
 if it were easy to achieve, and there would 
 be no pleasure in achieving if it came by 
 the mere asking. A life of ease is a life of 
 failure. If you would be a success, climb. 
 Travelers from all over the world make 
 pilgrimages to Switzerland to climb the 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 21 
 
 Alps ; and the more difficult the ascent, the 
 greater the pleasure in the climb. Every 
 life has its Alps, some more difficult than 
 others, but none impossible. We can climb 
 them all. 
 
 A great injury is done young men and 
 young women today in withholding from 
 them the necessity of preparing for moun- 
 tain climbing. When an engineer starts on 
 a trip he must know in advance something 
 about the road he travels and how much 
 fuel will be needed to make the run. His 
 predecessor acquaints him with the curves 
 and with the grades that must be overcome 
 and he prepares accordingly. When a bat- 
 tle is fought, the wise commander charts 
 the ground, marks the hills, the valleys, 
 and the plains. This knowledge gives him 
 an advantage in deploying his forces and 
 helps him to make the grades. Life is a 
 battle, with success as the victory to be 
 Avon. It will pay every man and woman 
 
22 MAKING THE GKADE 
 
 to chart well the field over which the 
 fight is to be waged and build for the 
 struggle. 
 
 It is just as necessary to test yourself 
 as it is necessary for the manufacturers to 
 know that every article that goes into the 
 building of their machines is first-class 
 and will stand the strain. The highway 
 of life is strewn with junk, could not 
 stand the strain. Ninety-five per cent of 
 the men going into business fail could 
 not make the grade. Only about sixteen 
 per cent of life insurance policies taken out 
 are carried through could not stand the 
 test. There is something pathetic in the 
 mass of broken human machinery that lies 
 piled up at the bottom of the hill. It re- 
 sembles the debris that floats upon the 
 water after a disaster at sea, or the wreck- 
 age that strews the battlefield after the 
 carnage is over. " Could not stand the 
 test" is the inscription on the stone that 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 23 
 
 is erected over the grave of buried hopes 
 and blasted lives. 
 
 66 How can I make the grade?" is the 
 query of the man who knows life ; and 
 every hour is spent in an effort to solve 
 this problem. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HEALTH 
 
 "V/^OU cannot climb many of the hills in 
 A life unless you have health. One of 
 the saddest spectacles of the present day 
 is the physically unfit that one sees on 
 every hand. In the street cars, on the 
 Pullmans, at the theatres, everywhere 
 you see the maimed, the halt, and the 
 blind. Children start life with a mortal 
 handicap and they never overcome it. 
 They grow up with flat feet, become pigeon- 
 breasted, wizen -faced neurotics; adenoids 
 abound, enlarged tonsils are found every- 
 where; malformed jaws are met at every 
 turn. 
 
 Young men seem to care nothing for the 
 charm of physical strength and great en- 
 durance. The gymnasium does not appeal 
 to them. They never learn the value of a 
 
 24 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 25 
 
 strong, rugged, enduring constitution. Our 
 school system is much at fault. Our teach- 
 ers have not grasped the great idea. It is 
 a case of the blind leading the blind. 
 
 Biology is the foundation stone of educa- 
 tion; but a majority of our young men and 
 women will graduate from our so-called 
 high schools with only a vague understand- 
 ing of the meaning of this word. Few are 
 ever told where they belong in Nature. 
 They know nothing of their kinship 
 with the rest of the animate world. 
 Nothing is enduring unless founded on 
 fact. Education is of no value when its 
 concepts are false. What matters it if one 
 knows Greek or Eoman history, and has 
 no conception of the great laws of life? 
 What is the value to one in being able to 
 chart the heavens and have not the slight- 
 est conception of the life cycle of the sim- 
 plest cell ? If you would be educated, you 
 
26 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 must know life, from the simplest organ- 
 ism to the most complex. 
 
 You cannot have health unless you know 
 Nature's laws and the principles upon 
 which health depends. To be healthy you 
 must live as the primitives lived. It is no 
 mystery why the ancients lived to such 
 great age. Put man in the environment of 
 the patriarchs with the patriarchs' inherit- 
 ance, and you will see that it is no uncom- 
 mon thing for men to live a hundred years 
 and still retain the bloom of youth, but you 
 cannot live under present day conditions 
 and reach that age. To be civilized under 
 present conditions means, as a rule, an 
 early grave. Midnight suppers, numerous 
 cigarettes, high nerve tension, an over- 
 loaded intestinal tract, high percentage of 
 protein diet, with little physical exercise 
 all these are efficient tools for the under- 
 taker and assure him of early employment. 
 
 The human machine is spoiled in the 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 27 
 
 making. When you start to take the grade 
 in it your motor heats, your spark plug 
 misses, your carburetor gums and won't 
 work, you blow out a tire, then you are 
 shunted to the side of the road, or you 
 tumble back to the level from which you 
 started and there you remain couldn't 
 make the grade; you are an old worn-out, 
 broken-down wreck with a sign pinned to 
 you "For Sale, Cheap" just like the 
 wreckage of wagons and buggies that 
 you see in blacksmith shops all over the 
 country. 
 
 A wave of pity sweeps over me every 
 time I see a derelict, human or machine 
 "could not make the grade" is stamped 
 all over such relics. Now, frankly, who is 
 to blame for all these human misfits ? Why 
 cannot more than forty to fifty per cent of 
 our youths between the ages of twenty-one 
 and thirty-one stand a physical test for the 
 army and come through? What is the 
 
28 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 matter! Where is the leak in the factory? 
 Undoubtedly, most of it is due to ignorance 
 of the great laws of life. Man does not like 
 to imitate his animal ancestor. He wants 
 to forget his kinship with the rest of the 
 animal world. He wants to strut on life's 
 stage and brag about his divine origin, but 
 this conception of life makes the Devil 
 laugh because his satanic majesty knows 
 that ignorance is the greatest of all crimes, 
 and ignorance of one's origin is the crime 
 of all crimes. If you would be healthy, get 
 back to first principles. Did you ever see 
 an animal carrying around a coffee or a 
 tea pot? Did you ever see an animal eat- 
 ing a seven to fifteen course meal? Not 
 much. An animal eats one, not over two 
 kinds of food at a meal, drinks water or 
 milk, and does not need a pepsin tablet to 
 help digest it. Men are animals and must 
 be treated as such and their life to some 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 29 
 
 extent must be patterned after the animal 
 existence if they would be healthy. 
 
 Nothing is more pitiful than the old 
 young man or woman. Just when life is 
 really worth while, just when the goal 
 is worth reaching, just when the real 
 test comes, just when we strike the one 
 grade, at the top of which lies the great 
 object to be attained, then our machine 
 breaks down and we go to the scrap heap. 
 Pitiful! It is a tragedy! 
 
 Compensation, immutable, unswerving 
 and unchangeable, always gets in its work. 
 Unless the bird uses its wings, it will soon 
 forget how to fly; unless you exercise, your 
 muscles decay compensation everywhere. 
 You smoke, five, ten, fifteen, twenty ciga- 
 rettes a day, you get a pleasurable sensa- 
 tion, but you lose in nerve poise and ac- 
 curacy. Drink alcoholics for stimulation 
 or for the pleasure you derive from their 
 influence, and you lose in bodily vigor and 
 
30 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 endurance. Eat heavily of highly seasoned 
 food because it tickles your palate, and 
 you suffer from autointoxication and lose 
 your virile red-*blooded punch. 
 
 Become a hothouse plant and neglect ex- 
 ercise, and you lose all physical endurance 
 and ability to withstand the impact with 
 the world. It takes a well-built machine to 
 make the grades and you cannot test or 
 know the value of a machine until the 
 going gets hard. No one tests an auto- 
 mobile on level roads. It takes the rocks 
 and the hills to tell whether it has any 
 endurance ; and so it is with life. 
 
 Live clean, get in close touch with Na- 
 ture. Know from whence you came and 
 whither you are going, get acquainted with 
 your animal ancestry, and don't be 
 ashamed of them, and try to live without 
 all the embellishments of civilization, and 
 you will make the grades. This is no health 
 primer. The writer does not intend that it 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 31 
 
 should assist in diagnosing a diseased con- 
 dition or effecting a cure where a disease 
 exists, but it is hoped that the casual 
 reader, in scanning its pages will become 
 impressed with a suggestion here and 
 there that may cause him or her to place a 
 higher valuation on health and look at it 
 as a vital necessity in making the grade. 
 
 To prevent diseases is the great goal of 
 modern medicine. Healthy individuals 
 are the greatest asset of a state or a na- 
 tion and too much importance cannot be 
 given to the rearing of a race strong and 
 virile, able and competent to climb the 
 hills. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ENDURANCE 
 
 "T^NDURANCE is dependent upon a 
 ' sound body and a determined will. 
 There are many flabby wills housed in a 
 physically sound body. When this is the 
 case, there is little endurance; and, as a 
 consequence, there is not much hill climb- 
 ing for such an individual. 
 
 By inheritance man is a lazy animal. 
 Not many generations ago our ancestry 
 worked only enough to obtain the neces- 
 sary food to sustain life and an occasional 
 fig leaf for a dress suit. Press of circum- 
 stances made it imperative that he get out 
 and hustle, but the cell life of today still 
 harks back to the cell life of its yesterdays 
 and most of us like to hunt the shady side 
 of the street and loaf along. 
 
 The will is the Captain of the Soul. 
 
 32 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 33 
 
 Without it man has no place in civilization 
 and it takes a strong will to drive the 
 human machine up the hot and dusty 
 grades. "What, kind of a motor do you 
 use?" is the first question asked of the 
 automobile salesman when he offers you a 
 car. Experience teaches you that the value 
 of a machine rests upon the stability, the 
 accuracy, and the endurance of its motor. 
 Beautiful upholstery, silver trimmings, 
 musical horns, and noiseless rubber tires 
 amount to nothing unless you have a motor 
 that will run and is as sound as the heart 
 of an oak that has defied the storms for, lo, 
 these many years. So it is with man. You 
 must have the will to do, else your good 
 looks, your Chesterfieldian manners, your 
 kindness of heart and your good intentions 
 will avail you nothing. 
 
 Your muscles may be as strong as Her- 
 cules' and your limbs as powerful as 
 Achilles', but these are of no avail in the 
 
34 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 race of life unless they are driven by the 
 motive power of an unconquerable, untir- 
 ing will. A sound body and a well-trained, 
 resolute will give the necessary endurance 
 that puts one up and over the grade. Many 
 a weak body has been made to accomplish 
 wonders by a resolute, determined will. 
 Undoubtedly few individuals realize the 
 value of will power, and surely there are 
 very few individuals today that appreciate 
 will training as an asset in life. 
 
 Psychology is the baby in the science 
 family; but it is growing more rapidly than 
 Jack's bean stalk ever developed. An un- 
 derstanding of this science dispels about 
 all the mysteries that have clung to man 
 since animal life was first cradled in the 
 forests of antiquity. This science is the 
 light that dispels all mysteries and shows 
 man exactly what he is and what he can 
 accomplish. 
 
 To endure one must have a well-trained 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 35 
 
 will and one which demands and receives 
 obedience from the bodily functions and 
 powers. How is the will to be trained so 
 that it will endure? so that it will apply 
 the lash and drive our bodies on f Wishing 
 does not accomplish. If it did, life would 
 be a hideous nightmare. The inertia of in- 
 herited laziness can only be overcome by 
 the stimulus of an untiring, well-directed 
 will. Nothing is impossible where there is 
 resolute purpose and physical health. No 
 restraining hands are laid upon us save 
 our own ; but the pity in life is that few, if 
 any, of us ever realize the value of will and 
 the part it plays until life is well nigh 
 gone ; and the majority of that eighty-five 
 per cent of failures that are scrapped and 
 junked never knew that standing by ready 
 and willing to help was a power mightier 
 than the old guard and more potential than 
 the lurid lightning. What electricity has 
 proved to be to the motive world, will 
 
36 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 power is to the physical. Man today is 
 stumbling along, working haphazardly, 
 falling by the way, groping in the dark, 
 running on a dead level, all because he 
 does not understand the great motive 
 power, the great value of a well-directed, 
 carefully-trained will, and this power lies 
 within all. 
 
 For millions of years the Niagara River 
 poured its immeasurable gallons of water 
 over the Falls, and man never realized 
 that buried in this deluge was a power that 
 would dispel the midnight darkness of a 
 city and turn Jbhe< spindles and the wheels 
 of a commerce that could feed and clothe a 
 million souls. So it is with the power of 
 will. Men, women, and children are rush- 
 ing over the great Niagaras of life, wasted, 
 useless failures; while all the time there 
 is a mighty power that would enable each 
 and every one of them to rival in achieve- 
 ment the wizards whose light and whose 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 37 
 
 reason have been the guide posts of men 
 through countless ages. 
 
 You must endure if you would win, and 
 to endure you must have a will that knows 
 and understands. Steam and electricity 
 are man's greatest servants; but, unless 
 one is trained in the use of these powers, 
 they are of no value. So it is with the 
 will. Every individual of average intel- 
 ligence is endowed with a will, but it is 
 dormant throughout most of our lives be- 
 cause we do not train and use it. 
 
 A resolute will enabled John Paul Jones 
 to make the grade when defeat seemed in- 
 evitable. It made Washington the savior 
 of personal liberty in the western world 
 when all seemed lost, and it made Joffre 
 victor at the Marne and saved Paris and 
 the Eepublic of France when it looked as 
 though nothing could stem the tide of 
 German invasion. 
 
 The ancients used to exhort their war- 
 
38 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 riors to be bold. It seems to me that the 
 slogan of the man and woman of today 
 should be: "Endure, endure. " 
 
 It is pitiful, but nonetheless true, that 
 most men and women are quitters. If not, 
 then why so many failures ? Consult your 
 statistics, commercial or professional. You 
 will be appalled at the mortality. Take a 
 class of boys, we will eliminate the girls 
 because they are not supposed to keep in 
 the fight any longer than it is necessary to 
 take on the vows of matrimony after 
 graduation, watch their careers. You will 
 find that about one out of ten rises to any 
 height. The others cannot make the 
 grades. Their motors burn out, they have 
 no endurance, and they fall by the way. 
 Every man in the domain of commerce, or 
 professional life, that has made the grade, 
 has done it because he has had endurance. 
 Of course, he became tired; of course, the 
 way became long and the road dusty; but 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 39 
 
 the power of endurance carried him on and 
 victory was finally achieved. Now, why 
 did these men endure? In analyzing this 
 question you find the following solution: 
 First, they had physical stamina; they had 
 a constitution that would stand the strain; 
 and, secondly, they had a will power, 
 trained and obedient, that drove them on. 
 
 Now, you, my reader, no doubt, possess 
 both of these. If not both, undoubtedly, 
 you possess one, else you would not be scan- 
 ning these pages. 
 
 It lies within your power, unless you are 
 a hopeless invalid, or a mental defective, 
 to train yourself so that you can endure, 
 so that you can make the grade; and, if 
 you do not, then the fault lies with your- 
 self, and not with your stars, that you are 
 an underling. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IMAGINATION 
 
 TM AGINATION is of great assistance to 
 * endurance. It is the stimulus that 
 keeps one fighting on when nerve, muscle, 
 and brain are tired. 
 
 Physicians find it necessary at times to 
 administer powerful stimulants to keep 
 the fires of life from flickering out. A sur- 
 geon's armamentarium is never complete 
 unless he has at his side a hypodermic, 
 loaded with a powerful drug with which 
 to stimulate his patient should the shock 
 of the operation be too severe. Imagina- 
 tion is just such a stimulus in making the 
 grade. Anticipation is a great lure. It 
 has cleared forests and built homes, irri- 
 gated deserts and planted flower gardens, 
 tunneled mountains and brought to light 
 the gold and buried treasures hidden by 
 
 40 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 41 
 
 the convulsions of the earth in its child- 
 hood days. It laid the Atlantic cable, thus 
 enabling America to become the next door 
 neighbor to Europe; and it put Dobbins' 
 collar upon electricity, enabling man to 
 send, by the feeble tick of an instrument, a 
 wireless call that can be heard around the 
 world. 
 
 Ford anticipated the possibilities of the 
 automobile as he ate his hamburger sand- 
 wiches at midnight upon the streets of De- 
 troit after spending hours experimenting 
 with a car that he was afraid to try to run 
 upon the streets during the day, and Antici- 
 pation is the twin sister to Imagination. 
 
 Some wiseacre said sometime, some- 
 where, that all work and no play made Jack 
 a dull boy. This philosopher stated one 
 of the cardinal principles of life. Contin- 
 uous climbs bring on fatigue and fatigue is 
 the result of a poison created by the break- 
 ing down of muscle tissue, occasioned by 
 
42 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 continuous exertion. It is during these 
 deadly fatiguing spells on life's climb that 
 Imagination and Anticipation get in their 
 work. 
 
 Every conqueror has at times been tired, 
 so tired that life seemed not to be worth 
 the living. Eobert Bruce stumbled into a 
 cave on the mountains of Scotland fatigued 
 unto death and no doubt said to himself 
 "Oh, what is the use? I'm so tired;" but 
 the magic spider got in his work about this 
 time and through the eye of imagination 
 Bruce pictured himself leading an army to 
 victory on his native hills. This picture 
 sent him up the grade again and he climbed 
 on until he reached its pinnacle. 
 
 Great men grow tired just like the small, 
 but the difference between the great and 
 the small is just this: the great rests for a 
 while and then trudges on and still on; 
 while the failure, when he stops to rest, 
 never starts going again unless it be that 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 43 
 
 the going is down the grade. Imagination 
 is no more a divine gift than is it a di- 
 vine gift for one to master different lan- 
 guages by application. A powerful, well- 
 trained imagination, just like a powerful, 
 well-trained biceps, is the result of toil and 
 effort. It is within the reach of anyone 
 who has an average normal brain if they 
 will pay the price to obtain it. 
 
 It is just as natural to grow weary, tired, 
 and discouraged at times as it is to be 
 happy and hopeful; but the hill climbers 
 are the ones who recover from the attacks 
 of fatigue and discouragement and keep on 
 climbing. Every day and every night 
 sees them more resolute and more deter- 
 mined. The failures are those who cannot 
 recover from such attacks. 
 
 One of the great lessons of life to learn 
 is this: our fight is not directed against 
 either gods or devils; we are fighting for 
 a foothold in the world's affairs, and this 
 
44 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 achievement is contested only by our fel- 
 lows and they are as weak as we. 
 
 Nothing paints the sky quite so rosy, 
 makes the birds sing quite so sweetly, or 
 gives to the sunshine and the air quite so 
 much vigor and charm as good health and 
 a vivid imagination. This is a mighty good 
 world; the only fault lies with ourselves. 
 If you put water instead of gasoline in your 
 tank you will never climb the hill; you 
 won't even stand still; you'll retrograde so 
 fast that when you strike the bottom you'll 
 be buried in the mire. Now then, just put 
 the cold water of discouragement, despair 
 and hopelessness into the gas tank of life 's 
 motor car and you are headed for the mud 
 flats of dismal failure. A cold motor will 
 not run. It takes warmth and the vital 
 spark to get up motion. It is just this way 
 with life. To make the grade you must 
 keep your motor warm, the gas tank filled 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 45 
 
 and your carburetors cleaned and bur- 
 nished. 
 
 The value of a republic lies in the fact 
 that in it all men are free and equal. Bank, 
 station, and prerogative are given alike to 
 those who toil and strive for them. Under 
 this form of government the hill climbers 
 can go as far as they choose. Under these 
 environments man has nothing to fight ex- 
 cept himself, and he alone is responsible if 
 the grades are not made. But imagination 
 and anticipation are the spark plugs that 
 have driven the human cars around the 
 world. Again I repeat that our school 
 system is faulty. I have never heard of a 
 teacher advocating the establishing of a 
 department given over to the cultivation 
 of imagination. On the contrary you find 
 them discouraging the boy or the girl who 
 dares to dream, and in this respect let it 
 be said that the majority of mothers and 
 fathers are dream killers themselves. 
 
46 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 When a boy or girl shows a desire to dwell 
 in their Italy and Greece filled with gods 
 and temples, these selfsame mothers and 
 fathers smother with ridicule and scorn the 
 beginning fires that should be fanned into 
 a flame. 
 
 The motor is cracked in the making, the 
 gasoline of life is diluted and turned into 
 ice water. Then Mary or John turns turtle, 
 "Oh, what's the use," they say, "me for 
 the bright lights, ' ' another car has slipped 
 from its moorings and crashed to the bot- 
 tom but the driver was not to blame. 
 
 Making the grade is the great problem 
 of life. It is the vital burning problem of 
 every man and woman. All want to make 
 it, and most, if not all, try, once, twice, and 
 many several times; but ignorance, igno- 
 rance of the great laws of the game, throws 
 most of them back to the dead level; and 
 many go on into the mire. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 PATIENCE 
 
 TDATIENCE means more than being able 
 * to stick to a task until it is finished. 
 A slave can do that, and often blind, un- 
 reasoning patience keeps one at that which 
 is unprofitable. But patience does mean 
 having a philosophy that makes one under- 
 stand that it is continuous, well-directed 
 efforts that win ; and, furthermore, patience 
 must have an imaginative eye that sees the 
 completed task and pronounces it well 
 done. A mule can plod up and down the 
 field. It makes no difference to the mule 
 whether cotton or weeds are being plowed, 
 but the plowman would have little patience 
 if he did not feel that he would in season 
 harvest more than a crop of weeds. 
 
 To be patient, to keep plugging along, 
 to keep climbing the hill, you must be in- 
 
 47 
 
48 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 spired by, and buoyed up with, the hope 
 of reaching the top. It is not patience, but 
 hopelessness that keeps one working at a 
 task that holds out absolutely no promise 
 of ultimate successful completion. The pa- 
 tience that helps carry one up the hill is 
 the cheerful, hopeful kind. It is the kind 
 that realizes the necessity of well-directed, 
 intelligent, continuous efforts. Continu- 
 ous failure is the great patience destroyer, 
 but temporary failure is the sauce and the 
 spice of life. Continuous success brings 
 ennui and this condition is dangerous. He 
 that thinketh he standeth had better take 
 heed lest he fall, is mighty good logic, but 
 patience becomes drudgery when hope has 
 fled. The animal cell transmits to its 
 progeny a restless, longing, upward-reach- 
 ing instinct. This accounts for man's con- 
 tinuous progress, and it also accounts for 
 man's impatience. 
 We crave change. The Bedouin of the 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 49 
 
 desert cares nothing for a permanent abid- 
 ing place. When this instinct manifests it- 
 self, the millionaire migrates to his winter 
 home among the Savannahs of the South 
 and then to his summer home amid the 
 snowfields of Maine. Change, change 
 everywhere ; that 's life ; but uncurbed this 
 gives rise to a kind of impatience that 
 brings failure to all of one 's undertakings. 
 One finds something subtle in an analysis 
 of patience. Pushed to the extreme this 
 human quality can soon become drudgery, 
 and drudgery is death to accomplishment. 
 A drudge gets nowhere unless it be to the 
 cemetery. Healthy impatience is needed 
 in climbing. It imparts zest to the game. 
 It is the salt and spice needed to add the 
 savory taste to the meats of life. But 
 where is impatience to end, and patience to 
 begin? Ah! there is the rub! There is 
 where your finer judgment comes in. 
 Youth is usually impatient because youth 
 
50 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 is restive under restraint. Probably it is 
 for this reason that in the eyes of some it 
 is a crime to be young. Youth does not ac- 
 complish much, because, like the birds in 
 the spring, it flits from tree to tree, trying 
 to decide where it will build its permanent 
 abode. 
 
 Patience, like steam and electricity, must 
 be understood before its great value can 
 be appreciated, and like these two servants 
 of man, it can become man's destruction 
 if improperly handled. 
 
 Self-restraint and self-control are close- 
 ly akin to patience, but perfect self-control 
 is not patience. Impatience is necessary 
 to progress, but impatience exaggerated is 
 self-destructive. Balanced rations are 
 necessary in maintaining health ; and bal- 
 ance between impatience and patience is 
 necessary in making the grade. Undoubt- 
 edly it is for this reason that youth is un- 
 reliable, because it takes experience to give 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 51 
 
 one the necessary judgment, and experi- 
 ence comes with years. 
 
 A drill bites through the hardest steel 
 because the drillmaster directs the point 
 constantly against a given spot. It is need- 
 less to comment upon the well-known story 
 about the hare and the tortoise. Success 
 everywhere is a vindication of the value of 
 patience. Every grade that has ever been 
 made and every hill that has been climbed 
 has been done on account of patient bend- 
 ing to the task in hand. 
 
 It is a narrow line that sometimes 
 separates success from failure. Many a 
 hill has been almost climbed; but almost 
 getting to the top is not getting there. 
 Patience, and not drudgery, is the quality 
 necessary to keep one everlastingly at it. 
 Ability to endure the physical strain does 
 not always mean patiently sticking to a 
 task. Some of the most patient and hope- 
 ful workers are not the strongest physi- 
 
52 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 cally. Many times a physically weak body 
 is made to endure an enormous strain on 
 account of the hopeful patience of the in- 
 dividual and why not be patient and hope- 
 ful in your climb? You are climbing to- 
 ward a goal that will bring you success, 
 and the right kind of success brings hap- 
 piness. To achieve is a normal man's am- 
 bition and he wants to achieve, because his 
 success will make him find favor in some- 
 one 's eyes. 
 
 The love passion is the lodestar that 
 points the way in most achievements. This 
 statement may be disputed by many, but 
 the cold light of analysis will prove that it 
 is true. The love light has been, and will 
 always be, man's prime activator. It has 
 led him through the million years of de- 
 velopment. It made him shed the scales of 
 his reptilian ancestry and robbed him of 
 the long tail with which his simian forefa- 
 thers were blessed. It has driven him from 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 53 
 
 a habitat among the trees to a palace on 
 Riverside Drive; and from a tadpole, 
 swimming and hopping through the 
 marshes, to a palatial yacht, riding upon 
 the blue waves of the southern seas. 
 Love has done all this, and it will do even 
 more for man. But patience must stay the 
 hand that would rob man of his achieve- 
 ments by quitting before the task is done. 
 Patience matures the ear for harvest and 
 imprints the blush of ripeness upon the 
 cheek of the peach and covers it with down. 
 This same patience has brought man up 
 through animalism and savagery and made 
 him the conqueror that he is today; but, like 
 an enigma, this same patience can make a 
 drudge out of the mightiest warrior and 
 turn victory into the blackest defeat. Pa- 
 tience, then, like imagination, must be 
 trained; and it must be well directed in the 
 upward and never-ending climb. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 COUKAGE 
 
 /COWARDICE and ignorance are the 
 ^^ greatest of all human ills. Abolish 
 these and civilization would advance so 
 rapidly that a twin-six under strong gas 
 could not keep up with it. They do more 
 to stifle man, hamper progress, and spread 
 poverty and disease than all other agencies 
 combined. Cowardice is man's inheritance 
 from his animal ancestry. When the rule 
 of tooth and claw was supreme, the weaker 
 was devoured by the strong. This condition 
 gave birth to fear ; and the weak, acting un- 
 der this stimulus, in their efforts to pre- 
 serve life, fled when the strong appeared 
 intent upon their kill. This self -preserva- 
 tive instinct came with other animal inher- 
 itances, but when the rule of reason suc- 
 ceeded brutal force, and mentality was en- 
 
 54 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 55 
 
 throned, fear was so ingrained in man's 
 protoplasmic life that it takes education 
 and training to eradicate it. All men are 
 cowards, but reason and training can over- 
 come this inherent weakness. Only the 
 brave can win. A coward cannot progress. 
 More of the fights in life are lost on ac- 
 count of cowardice than from any other 
 cause. Financiers will loan money to and 
 back a man any time when it is known 
 that he is not afraid. Perils become pleas- 
 ures to the brave and dauntless; they are 
 the spice of life and a life without thrills 
 is no life at all. 
 
 A coward cannot win because fear sti- 
 fles initiative, paralyzes effort, and throt- 
 tles ambition. It makes pygmies out of 
 giants and renders a strong man as weak 
 and helpless as a babe. Keason is de- 
 throned when Cowardice takes the scepter; 
 then Logic gives way to Fallacy, and Chaos 
 reigns. The coward is an object of pity. 
 
56 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 To him life is a misery to be endured be- 
 cause it cannot be avoided. He cannot un- 
 derstand how to enjoy the game. He is a 
 bankrupt and a failure for all time. And 
 after all it is so foolish to be a coward. 
 Life is not so sweet that it transcends all 
 virtue. I would rather die young as the 
 brave die and leave a brave man's heritage 
 to the world than to live a coward's life 
 though it be prolonged until the end of 
 time. Men live in deeds not years. One's 
 value to the world is measured by what he 
 accomplishes, by the service he renders to 
 civilization, and not according to the 
 length of time he may have lived. 
 
 It takes a stout, brave heart to hew a 
 new path, to climb a hill, to make a grade; 
 and it is necessary to train honestly and 
 untiringly to overcome fear. Adults, both 
 men and women, can be convicted before 
 the bar for helping to make cowards. Chil- 
 dren are hushed when they cry and are put 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 57 
 
 to sleep by being told that a bogyman will 
 get them if they don't watch out, and these 
 phantoms of childhood become real in time. 
 Mothers and fathers, in their ignorance, 
 prey upon the fear instinct of their chil- 
 dren and control them through this medium 
 because this club is easiest to wield. More 
 children are beaten and bruised psychically 
 in this way than physically. It takes time, 
 patience, and courage to explain to a child- 
 ish mind why this or that must not be done 
 and it is easier to hurl a threat than to give 
 an explanation. A mother among lower 
 animals bites and slaps her young in repri- 
 mand. The human mother bites and slaps 
 her young in a psychic manner by promis- 
 ing that dire and terrible things will hap- 
 pen if they do not obey. One is supposed 
 to be brutal, the other refined, but let it be 
 said that muscle tissue when bruised re- 
 pairs with much less danger of permanent 
 injury than brain tissue when injured by a 
 
58 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 psychic trauma. Ignorance is the greatest 
 of all crimes. It is the breeder of all 
 crimes. Men lie, steal, forge, and commit 
 murder on account of their ignorance of 
 the great laws of compensation. They do 
 not know that they are a related part in the 
 great cosmos and that every time they 
 work injury upon their fellow man they 
 work it upon themselves. Light, more 
 light, is the despairing cry of the scientist, 
 because light, and light only, will save the 
 world. 
 
 Why must the average man attain the 
 age of thirty-five to fifty before he finds 
 himself, before he is squared away and 
 ready to make his impress upon the world ? 
 The most logical answer to this question 
 undoubtedly is this: it takes most men 
 until that age to unlearn the erroneous 
 things taught them by parents and teach- 
 ers; to overcome the fears of childhood in- 
 grained in them, and to learn what consti- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 59 
 
 tutes real life. When teachers and parents 
 realize that success in life consists in being 
 able to make the grade, more boys and 
 more girls will be trained for hill climbers. 
 At present it is enough to make angels 
 weep to see the injustice heaped upon child- 
 hood. The wonder is that even so high as 
 five per cent of business and professional 
 men become signal successes and reach the 
 top of the grade. If Henry Ford built his 
 cars as carelessly as ninety per cent of par- 
 ents and teachers train those under them, 
 the Ford factory would be closed, except 
 to the owls and bats, in less than two years. 
 Men pose as teachers who are as ignorant 
 of the science of psychology as a babe at 
 its mother's breast is ignorant of Caledo- 
 nian history. Mothers and fathers who are 
 as ignorant of the great psychic laws gov- 
 erning life as an owl is ignorant of the 
 principles of light are raising children, or 
 trying to raise them. You cannot govern 
 
60 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 and you cannot teach unless you under- 
 stand the power of this great psychic tide 
 in a human life that ebbs and flows like the 
 tide of the mighty ocean. Ignorance is the 
 curse of the world. 
 
 Ninety per cent of men and women, nor- 
 mal in mind and healthy in body, can make 
 the grade, can climb the hills if they are 
 properly trained in childhood, and are 
 taught the great laws of life. 
 
 The greatest of all waste is that of 
 human lives. Scientific medicine today is 
 bending its every effort to conserve, to 
 lengthen and to strengthen life. " Prevent 
 disease rather than cure it" is the slogan, 
 and the modern physician is trying to teach 
 this. He knows the danger in the psychic 
 trauma; he know^s what it takes to climb 
 the hill; he knows that the coward can 
 never make the grade; and everywhere he 
 is trying to create better than he finds. 
 Make our boys, our girls, our young and 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 61 
 
 our middle-aged men and women brave and 
 courageous, then we will have a race of hill 
 climbers, a race that can make the grade. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SELF-CONFIDENCE 
 
 TC^AITH in one's abilities has removed 
 mountains. Lack of this faith fills 
 one's life with sloughs of despond. You 
 cannot climb successfully unless you have 
 unbounded confidence in your ability to 
 reach the top. Life is one constant succes- 
 sion of suggestions and life is bent in ac- 
 cordance with the trend of these sugges- 
 tions. 
 
 Self-confidence is an auto-suggestion 
 that you have the ability to win, that your 
 ship is staunch enough to weather the 
 storm, that your motor is strong enough 
 to climb the hill. If you lack this requisite 
 to success, you might just as well get on a 
 sidetrack and content yourself with watch- 
 ing the other fellow pass by. Lack of con- 
 fidence is deadly to the success germ. Self- 
 
 62 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 63 
 
 confidence is termed nerve in some. "He 
 has the nerve to win" is frequently said 
 about the man who dares opposition, who 
 defies oppression, who challenges obstacles ; 
 but self-confidence is a better term. This 
 simply means that one has faith in one's 
 undertaking and confidence in one's abil- 
 ity to win. 
 
 Confidence begets confidence, repetition 
 gives birth to habits, and habits rule men. 
 When you get the success habit you have 
 won the victory of life. 
 
 Men have toiled and lost because they 
 toiled half-heartedly. They had no con- 
 fidence in their undertaking, they put an 
 icepack on their motor and then could not 
 understand why they could never get up 
 any speed. Self-confidence begets enthu- 
 siasm and hope kindles the fires of deter- 
 mination and builds a palace instead of a 
 hut. 
 
 The world's great accomplishments have 
 
64 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 come about because a man had implicit 
 confidence in his undertaking and fired the 
 confidence of his fellow man until it flamed 
 as brightly as his own. Columbus knew 
 that by sailing westward he could reach 
 the Indies and he told his story with such 
 enthusiasm that Isabelle caught the vision 
 and stripped her jewels from neck and 
 arms and cast them at the adventurer's 
 feet. Eeed, Carroll, and Lazar were con- 
 fident that the yellow fever germ was car- 
 ried by the mosquito. They were so con- 
 fident that this was true that they bared 
 their own arms to the sting of the mos- 
 quito previously fed upon the blood of a 
 yellow fever victim; subsequent results 
 proved their correctness and ever since 
 these experiments were made the South 
 has smiled in security, serene in the knowl- 
 edge that never again can this grim mes- 
 senger of death invade her land. 
 Morse knew that an alphabet of dots and 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 65 
 
 dashes could be worked out so that elec- 
 tricity could be put in chains and do man's 
 bidding. Today every message that spats 
 its wireless way around the world is a vin- 
 dication of his idea. 
 
 Turn anywhere, look down time's corri- 
 dor, and you find that the men have won 
 who knew that their message was correct 
 and true. They first convinced themselves 
 and then convinced the world. You can 
 lay a match with perfect security beside a 
 train load of powder; so long as the match 
 is not ignited the powder is perfectly safe 
 from explosion, but light the match and 
 you rock the world. You will never do 
 anything, accomplish anything, or get any- 
 where until you light your match; but 
 Avhen your own torch starts burning, you 
 have a chance to ignite the world. 
 
 Here again our educational system is at 
 fault. Boys and girls are penned in a room 
 twenty feet square and are told about the 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 abstruse problems of geometry or the in- 
 tricacies of a language that lost all value 
 after the light of the Eoman empire ceased 
 to burn; but there is never a word said to 
 these embryo men and women that theirs 
 is the hand that controls their destiny, that 
 in their keeping is a pearl of great price, 
 that self-confidence, nurtured, trained, de- 
 veloped, will prove the lamp that lights the 
 universe. The crime for which the 
 twentieth century will be accused is its 
 mistakes in education. A man here and 
 there gets the so-called secrets of success, 
 he stumbles by chance or otherwise upon 
 the great laws that make him win; and he 
 uses this influence to further his power 
 over his fellows. Carnegie caught it and 
 then the lurid glare from his steel furnaces 
 painted the midnight skies; but he has 
 made a dismal failure in his efforts to send 
 this message ringing throughout the world. 
 Almost anyone can read. Look around you 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 67 
 
 in the street cars and you see everyone 
 reading; and while they read, they are on 
 the way to have their necks collared and 
 their wrists clasped in handcuffs by the 
 man who knows. We do not need readers 
 only; we need thinkers; men and women 
 trained to think for themselves, trained to 
 be independent and self-confident. 
 
 Kockefeller is a public benefactor. His 
 educational scheme would be complete if 
 he would only add to the great institution 
 that bears his name, a department where 
 teachers could be trained in psychology, 
 the science of conduct, the science of know- 
 ing yourself, and then send these teachers 
 out to instruct men and women how to de- 
 velop confidence and how to know them- 
 selves. Few men can think. Most all can 
 read; but it is the thinker who does things. 
 Look at Germany today. A coterie of 
 scholars have done the thinking for eighty 
 million souls. In turn for this thinking, 
 
68 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 many have been willing to fight and die. 
 Now the conflagration, started when the 
 match was struck by some unknown 
 Servian, is lighting up the world, and 
 America has shuffled her cards, dealt out 
 a hand, and sits in. Self-confidence 
 has swayed the scepter over man and 
 over his animal ancestry from the spawn- 
 ing time of Creation. It has lighted all 
 the intellectual fires that have burned 
 upon the hilltop of achievement, and this 
 same self-confidence will go on to victory 
 when all other human qualities have lain 
 down to die. Confidence can be the gift of 
 all. It is the Geni standing by ready 
 to grant man's every wish, but it 
 must be recognized, it must be nurtured 
 and it must be trained. This quality puts 
 men over the grade and up the hill and 
 gives them the right to conquer. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 OPTIMISM 
 
 OUNSHINE is essential to life. Disease 
 ^ and crime breed and grow where there 
 is darkness. A hopeless individual is al- 
 ready defeated. The poison has entered 
 his soul and paralyzed his initiative. Pes- 
 simism has crowded the lower rungs of 
 life's ladder and gives plenty of room to 
 those who would go to the top. 
 
 Optimism is a state of mind, but it is 
 more contagious than the measles. Like a 
 little leaven, it leaveneth the whole, but 
 this quality is necessary to anyone who 
 succeeds in making the grade. All success- 
 ful men are optimists. If they were not, 
 they could not succeed. It is probable that 
 some individuals who revel in pessimism 
 have reached the top; but, like barnacles, 
 
70 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 they have ridden up fastened to the back 
 of the other fellow. 
 
 Jim Hill was optimistic with reference 
 to the future of the Northwest. To him 
 that empire was capable of being converted 
 into the granary of the world. He believed 
 in its future. In his imagination he saw 
 fields of grain waving golden in the sun; 
 he saw a railroad, reaching across the for- 
 est, over the mountain, through the vale, 
 on and still on until it touched the tidewater 
 of Puget Sound. He believed in the North- 
 west and made the Northwest what it is 
 today. He was optimistic and his opti- 
 mism enabled him to make the grade. 
 
 The Christian Science church has 
 climbed the hill because its leaders and 
 teachers are optimists. In this respect it 
 is so far ahead of other denominations that 
 the orthodox churches can scarcely distin- 
 guish the tail light on the Eddy machine, 
 and as the climb still goes on, the distance 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 71 
 
 between these two organizations will in- 
 crease. 
 
 Healthy, vigorous, normal men and 
 women want to be, and are, optimistic; but 
 some killjoy comes along on a bright day 
 and says to Molly or John, "You are look- 
 ing badly, don't you think the world is 
 lost I Isn't it terrible how late that Jones 
 girl stays out with her beaux? Did you 
 know that Jim Pollywog has infantile 
 paralysis and all the children on this block 
 are in danger?" Goodbye to John or 
 Molly's sunshine. They have been hit a 
 solar plexus blow by some old dyspeptic 
 who should have been confined as a public 
 nuisance long ago. And thus the world 
 goes on. It is easier to condemn than to 
 praise, easier to kick a ball down hill than 
 to push one up. 
 
 Mrs. Eddy was a good psychologist, so 
 are the homeopathic physicians. One knew 
 that the world would rather be happy than 
 
72 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 sad, the other knew that people would 
 rather take a small sugar-coated pill than 
 a spoonful of slough water as bitter as gall. 
 If the Protestant churches do not abolish 
 the cowl, the long face, glowing fires and 
 roasting irons, the Christian Scientists will 
 soon have the odds so much in their favor 
 that churches everywhere will be turned 
 into reading rooms and ministers will be 
 readers of the new Bible. 
 
 Pessimism is a sign of disease. When 
 the world is black to you, your alimentary 
 tract has become the breeding ground for 
 a million germs that have poisoned you 
 and obstructed your vision. Sane, healthy 
 individuals never wear a grouch. Men and 
 women are made invalids and criminals be- 
 cause they lose hope. You try to dam the 
 ebb and flow of the ocean's tide and you 
 court destruction. Try to dam the great 
 psychic tide in a human life and you 
 are undertaking something equally as dan- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 73 
 
 gerous. Man was born to be happy, to be 
 healthy, to rule, to win, and to love. 
 Thwart any of these laws and you beget 
 disease, you beget sorrow, you make men 
 cowards and bring on premature death. 
 And, after all, what is the use to sorrow? 
 Life flows on in its remorseless way, in- 
 dependent of any thought or act of ours. 
 Men are born, marry, and die, irrespective 
 of whether you and I smile or frown ; but 
 sorrow kills, it paralyzes and renders you 
 inert. 
 
 Crile, the great Cleveland surgeon, has 
 demonstrated that sorrow reduces the 
 chance of a patient's recovery from an 
 operation more than one-half, and fear of 
 an operation literally kills. Sorrow, grief, 
 pessimism, have made serfs of men and 
 women. Banish this somber triad and you 
 will add fifty per cent to the longevity of 
 life, you will double the value economically 
 of every man and woman, and you will in- 
 
74 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 crease the percentages of success a thou- 
 sand fold. 
 
 Henry Ford knows life. He may have 
 started only as a mechanic and made his 
 wealth out of things mechanical, but some- 
 where he caught the whisperings from hu- 
 man hearts and he has interpreted these 
 whisperings correctly. He knows what is 
 necessary to make efficient workmen and 
 that in accordance with the efficiency of his 
 workmen does he progress. 
 
 A living wage, hope of independence in 
 old age, hygienic surroundings, love and 
 kindness, this is the slogan in the Ford 
 factory and this is the Golden Rule of life. 
 
 Be an optimist if you would make the 
 grade not a foolish optimist, not the kind 
 that would have you mix matches and gaso- 
 line, or the kind that would have you send 
 a babbling baby girl to fight a bull, but the 
 healthy, sensible, capable kind that makes 
 you see the glint of sunshine everywhere 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 75 
 
 and the flowers that bloom along the way. 
 This spirit will put red blood in your veins, 
 will put determination in your heart and 
 will make you make the grade. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 FAITH IN THE SUCCESS OF YOUR 
 UNDERTAKING 
 
 "V^OU must believe in yourself and in the 
 service that you are capable of ren- 
 dering to the world if you would win. 
 You must convince yourself, first, that you 
 are capable of making the grade, and with 
 the saturation of every fiber in your being 
 with this belief success will come. If you 
 want to fire your fellow man with enthusi- 
 asm and the power to win, pat that fellow 
 on the back and say, "Old man, you are a 
 winner, I believe in you, you are doing a 
 great work, just keep on striving, hew to 
 the line, fight on, and victory is yours." 
 If we could have words like this repeated 
 to us frequently, honestly, conscientiously, 
 and enthusiastically, the business mortal- 
 ity of the world would be lessened. 
 
 76 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 77 
 
 It is a pity that so many people belong 
 to the icewater brigade and keep their 
 tank full all the time. It's a crime to dis- 
 courage any individual. It takes the zest 
 out of life and makes sorrow breed a crop 
 where happiness should reign. But man is 
 envious. Your neighbor slips on the grade, 
 falls back or gets ditched to one side. You 
 come chugging along on a good head of 
 steam and seem to be making the grade, 
 and this envious brother slips some water 
 in your gasoline, or puts a tack in your tire 
 and soon you join him on the roadside and 
 thus the failure family grows. 
 
 Do not expect plaudits from the world 
 as a free-will offering. If you want recog- 
 nition, you must go out and fight for it and 
 you must wring it with the hands of toil 
 from an unwilling populace. The world 
 will pay its tribute of respect for signal 
 service, but it never applauds the loser. 
 You must win to find favor in your neigh- 
 
78 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 bor's eye. While it is true that the world 
 will not applaud you and cheer you on in 
 your fight, the fact remains that you can 
 applaud and cheer yourself. 
 
 Perfect faith in your ultimate success is 
 the greatest of all tonics and it is the tonic 
 that is constantly at your service. Every 
 man has a double ; there are two beings on 
 hand all the time the conscious and the 
 subconscious. The subconscious wants to 
 help but the conscious man is ignorant of 
 his ally and goes through life on one cylin- 
 der. We sleep and dream. In our dreams 
 the subconscious is in the ascendancy be- 
 cause our conscious self is then uncon- 
 scious. 
 
 Auto-suggestion is our means of com- 
 munication with the subconscious mind. 
 Through this medium we keep in constant 
 touch with our ally and we need never be 
 afraid of its deserting us. The men who 
 have made the most pronounced success 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 79 
 
 are the men who use this power. Con- 
 sciously or unconsciously it is called to 
 their assistance and it has never been 
 known to fail. If you need convincing evi- 
 dence of this, talk to a man that is 
 pursuing some great idea and has im- 
 plicit faith in his ultimate success. 
 You soon catch his spirit and shortly be- 
 come an ardent supporter of his opinions. 
 His faith convinced you, but first his faith 
 convinced himself. You simply caught 
 some of the warmth with which his spirit 
 was all aglow. This quality is that which 
 distinguishes the man of achievement from 
 the common herd. All men are capable of 
 developing this power ; but like the gold in 
 the mountain side, it is hidden from view 
 and can only be utilized by digging and 
 working to bring it to the surface. The 
 road to success is as plain as the Lincoln 
 Highway, but men are blind. Indolence, 
 pleasure, procrastination, ill health, cow- 
 
80 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 ardice, and all the negative powers of 
 darkness have hidden the light of achieve- 
 ment from their eyes. The populace sees 
 one of its fellow men climb over its head 
 by sheer merit. It tries to pull him back 
 to its level, but he still goes on and makes 
 the grade. Instead of subjecting this man 
 to the cold light of analysis and finding 
 out why he won, the crowds take up all 
 their time in condemning him, and envying 
 his achievement; but the same rules that 
 this man followed are open to the crowd, 
 they can choose the same path, and 
 they can achieve the same as he. Suc- 
 cess never locked and barricaded its doors 
 against man. It is simply fleet of foot and 
 challenges in a race of endurance and 
 pluck, and victory has always been 
 awarded to the strong. 
 
 Believe in yourself, know you will win, 
 and the first great barrier has been over- 
 come. Lack of faith in your work is a hu- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 81 
 
 man handcuff and chains you tight and 
 solid to the rocks of dismal failure. No 
 wonder Christ said that if you had suf- 
 ficient faith you could move mountains. 
 This is literally true and every successful 
 man is a living example that such is the 
 case. It is enough to make angels weep to 
 see the lack of faith that the majority of 
 men and women display in their work. 
 Labor unions are a first-class protection 
 against class oppression but they fall short 
 of the mark that they could reach if they 
 would do some educational work among 
 their members. Personally, I am for prop- 
 erly conducted labor unions. There is no 
 use trying to deny the fact that man is in- 
 herently selfish and domineering. With- 
 out labor unions, many employers would 
 make peons and serfs of their employees, 
 but labor leaders are blind to the great 
 laws of evolution and to the great princi- 
 ples of service. Labor unions have trained 
 
82 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 men, not educated them. The educated 
 know they must serve their work if they 
 would have their work serve them; faith 
 in your work, love of it and implicit faith 
 in its future is the greatest service you can 
 give to the business of life. 
 
 The hope of mankind lies in love and 
 work. When God drove man out of the 
 Garden of Eden and made him earn his 
 living by the sweat of his brow, the dawn 
 of a new day was ushered in. There would 
 have been no progress if Adam and Eve 
 had remained in that mortal Paradise ; life 
 would have become burdensome, and death 
 a thing desired, because it would cut short 
 an ennui that is more terrible than death. 
 
 Work is the crowning achievement of 
 man. Labor and love are the dual forces 
 that have mastered all difficulties, climbed 
 all the hills, and made all the grades over 
 which civilization has trod in its upward 
 and onward march. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 POISE 
 
 T> ALANCE is necessary in all things. 
 ""^ Nature demands and preserves an 
 equilibrium. Get out of balance and you 
 are in danger of a fall. A well-ordered and 
 successful life consists of being able to pre- 
 serve your poise, in keeping in tune and in 
 harmony with nature. Insanity is caused 
 by the loss of mental balance and failure 
 comes to a life that is not well poised. It 
 is amusing, though pitiful, to see the 
 energy wasted by raving over the weather. 
 "This is the hottest day I ever experi- 
 enced " is hurled at you a dozen times dur- 
 ing the morning by some fuming, fussy 
 neurotic when a glance at the thermometer 
 would convince one that the temperature 
 is about normal. "I am dead tired, utterly 
 worn out, worked to death," is said over 
 
 83 
 
84 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 and over again, day after day by individ- 
 uals who are perfectly normal in every 
 way except for lack of poise. Haste, ex- 
 travagant statements, fussing and fuming 
 does nothing but burn up your gasoline. 
 You stand still all the time but your engine 
 is running at top speed. 
 
 Mrs. Eddy scored her greatest hit with 
 the Christian Science religion when she 
 made as its chief tenet the abolishment of 
 worry. If you want to see a satisfied in- 
 dividual and one who knows that every- 
 thing is all right, you must meet a Simon- 
 pure Christian Scientist. It is quite a 
 beautiful religion and one that seems to 
 serve the purpose. 
 
 An engine needs a governor; without 
 this its value is nil. Instead of serving 
 man it destroys. The same is true of life. 
 Lack of poise, lack of perfect control of 
 our emotions, lack of order and equanimity, 
 and life becomes chaos; nothing is accom- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 85 
 
 plished, all the energy and efforts needed 
 in climbing, in making the grades, are 
 burned up while we stand stock still. 
 "Am I my brother's keeper?" can well be 
 answered in the affirmative. Life is so 
 interrelated that every individual is a cog 
 fitting into a neighboring wheel. Econom- 
 ic loss, inefficiency, waste and destruc- 
 tion are felt by those living far and away 
 from the immediate scene. 
 
 A parent laughs at the childish tantrum, 
 but this mental gyration is burning a path 
 of destruction across that child's mind 
 that will cause misery, suffering, and fail- 
 ure. It is easier to laugh than to repair, to 
 threaten than to explain, and the march of 
 ignorance goes on. Anger burns up a mil- 
 lion tons of human energy and leaves noth- 
 ing but ashes that blight and wither every 
 object that they may touch. What a pity 
 that self-restraint is not featured more and 
 more in the home, in the schoolroom, and 
 
86 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 in the marts of trade and commerce. A 
 man or woman who is composed under all 
 conditions is the bulwark of civilization. 
 Perfect poise could have prevented all 
 wars, would thin the ranks of the legal 
 profession, the members of which fatten 
 upon the fights and bickerings of their fel- 
 low men, and would close the doors of 
 nearly all, if not quite all, the sanatoriums 
 and asylums in this country. Nervous 
 prostration is on the increase. The coun- 
 try hillsides are being dotted with institu- 
 tions where the neurotic, the hysteric, and 
 the unbalanced assemble for treatment 
 and for re-education; all caused from lack 
 of poise, lack of a governor to properly 
 regulate life, to harmonize it with the laws 
 of nature by which all things came into ex- 
 istence and by which they must be ruled. 
 What a pleasure it is to meet an individual 
 of perfect poise, not a prude, but a man or 
 a woman that understands life and the laws 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 87 
 
 of living. Calm, courageous, hopeful, pa- 
 tient, determined, never losing sight of the 
 goal, the person with poise moves on. He 
 lives one day at a time and tries to make 
 every minute of the present count. No 
 time is spent in idle romancing on what the 
 future may bring to him and the past 
 with its mistakes and its sorrows is forgot- 
 ten. Eight now, the contact point with 
 the past and the future is his chief concern 
 and he makes the present the golden mo- 
 ment of opportunity. Such an individual 
 is headed straight toward the Goal of Suc- 
 cess. He may be halted, but such an inter- 
 ruption will be only temporary. His 
 great business in life will go on and he will 
 get to the top. 
 
 Most, if not all, the successes in life are 
 those individuals with poise. There 
 are rare cases where this principle is in- 
 grained in the individual early in life and 
 then we have the early successes. Occa- 
 
88 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 sionally you see the bank president, the 
 congressman, the governor of a state or 
 the president of some mighty corporation 
 who has broken all precedents and 
 achieved the goal at thirty to thirty -five. 
 These individuals were early trained in 
 self-mastery, either by their teachers or 
 by themselves, but such instances are rare. 
 Most men who win arrive after they out- 
 grow the error taught them by their blind 
 leaders. This, no doubt, is the reason why 
 more than half of a life is spent before one 
 finds one's self and evolves a correct phi- 
 losophy of life. 
 
 The God of Failure must grin every time 
 he takes account of his human chattels. 
 Worse than sheep do men and women trail 
 a leader or a precedent. Judges render 
 their decisions in accordance with the de- 
 cision of some judge preceding them. 
 Business is conducted by men today like 
 their ancestors conducted it a quarter of a 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 89 
 
 century ago. Physicians are treating cases 
 like they imagine textbook writers treat 
 them and thus the procession continues. 
 The eighty-five per cent who fail are the 
 trailers. They never work out their own 
 methods of procedure, they never think 
 for themselves. Lack of poise, lack of sta- 
 bility of purpose make them a weathercock, 
 to be blown about by every varying wind. 
 A ship must be held to its course if it ever 
 reaches the harbor. The pilot never takes 
 his hand off the wheel. Through shallows 
 and in deep currents, he threads his way 
 on and still on. If he does not follow these 
 fixed unvarying laws of navigation he soon 
 brings destruction to himself, his cargo, 
 and his passengers. Every man or woman 
 is the pilot on his or her ship down the 
 Kiver of Time. They must steer carefully 
 and be at the wheel constantly. Indecision, 
 impatience, cowardice means loss of con- 
 trol and then you are on the rocks. 
 
90 MAKING THE GRADE . 
 
 Perfect balance, careful judgment, and 
 an understanding of values gives one poise 
 and enables the voyage to be made with- 
 out mar or mishap. Training for poise is 
 one of the great businesses of life. In this, 
 as in everything else that is worth while, it 
 is found that eternal vigilance is the price 
 of success. You cannot maintain poise and 
 neglect your training any more than an 
 athlete can keep in physical condition and 
 neglect exercise. But poise can be at- 
 tained and kept. Its maintenance means 
 much and it is of inestimable value in 
 making the grade. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 COKRECT ESTIMATION OF VALUES 
 
 r r v EERE is both a science and an art in 
 -* the correct estimation of values. It 
 takes training and mature judgment to 
 pick the false from the true, and there is 
 a fine art in the application of values to the 
 things in life that are worth while. 
 
 It is easy for one to fall into the error 
 of thinking values are relative, except 
 those standardized by mathematical pre- 
 cision. Perspectives of value may vary, 
 but the inherent value remains irrespective 
 of whether an article be judged by one 
 competent to pass an opinion on its worth 
 or by a mere tyro and the value of those 
 things in life that assist in making the 
 grade remain fixed and definite, it makes 
 no difference through whose eyes they are 
 looked upon. 
 Industry has a definite value in the mak- 
 
 91 
 
92 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 ing of a success in life. The hill climber 
 knows this and his constant application is 
 one of the reasons for his continuous prog- 
 ress. The dilettante has no estimation as 
 to the value of industry ; to him work is a 
 burden to be carried only when stern ne- 
 cessity forces him to it, but the value of 
 industry remains and the understanding of 
 it brings success to the industrious one. 
 Honesty has fixed and definite values, that 
 must be understood. The man of integrity 
 knows that a successful life is based upon 
 honesty, and he strives to make this a cor- 
 ner stone in the structure that he builds. 
 The fact that the less honorable individual 
 fails to take into account this feature and 
 builds his house upon the sand does not de- 
 tract one jot or tittle from the intrinsic 
 worth of honesty. The value of patience, 
 imagination, self-confidence, health, truth, 
 and honesty of purpose remains the same, 
 and will always be fixed and definite; it 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 93 
 
 makes no difference what your estimation 
 of them may be. 
 
 A yardstick measures thirty-six inches. 
 If one looks at a string that is thirty-six 
 inches in length and says that it is only 
 thirty-four, the thirty-six inches still re- 
 main; the value is not lost because some 
 individual underestimated it. 
 
 A correct understanding of values that 
 touch the great principles of life is an ab- 
 solute necessity in making the grade. 
 Your taste may differ from that of your 
 neighbor, your likes and your dislikes may 
 be entirely at variance, but all must agree 
 on the worth of the cardinal factors that 
 constitute a successful life. 
 
 Pleasures have a great value. The 
 esthetic must play a part in making the 
 grade, but an incorrect value placed upon 
 pleasures may bring about one's utter ruin. 
 Narcotics, depressants, and various medi- 
 cines have a value, but a misunderstanding 
 
94 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 of these values may cause them to assume 
 the role of a destroyer. To judge correct- 
 ly, to know values and to estimate their 
 importance in building the fabric of life 
 is one of the fine points in climbing the hill. 
 
 The great problem constantly coming up 
 is how can one interpret values correctly 
 and get a true conception as to their worth. 
 Careful analysis will enable one to detect 
 the false from the true, the counterfeit 
 from the genuine, and such an analysis is 
 always possible. 
 
 A good engineer can tear down his ma- 
 chine and build it all over again, or he can 
 take the object in concrete and reduce it to 
 a pile" of scraps. Analyzing one of life's 
 problems reduces by half the difficulties 
 encountered. Tear down the stone wall 
 that impedes your progress; you may not 
 be able to overcome it en masse; but take 
 it down piece by piece and you will soon 
 have it leveled to the ground. 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 95 
 
 Nothing is impossible to the man or the 
 woman who can correctly judge values. 
 Most individuals exaggerate. It seems to 
 be impossible to form an absolutely cor- 
 rect conception of what a thing really is 
 worth. In business most men deceive 
 themselves as to the real condition of their 
 affairs. Any banker will tell you that he 
 will discount from one-third to one-half 
 the reported net worth of any commercial 
 statement that is not furnished by a certi- 
 fied public accountant. Most professional 
 men will express themselves on some scien- 
 tific point without being familiar with the 
 absolute facts in the case. Incorrect con- 
 ception of values keeps one headed toward 
 the rocks. Water is necessary to satisfy 
 your thirst, but it never would propel a 
 gasoline motor car. Its value as water can- 
 not be questioned, but you get in trouble 
 when you give it an undue value in think- 
 ing it will run your machine. Inflated 
 
96 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 values have brought on most of the world's 
 financial crises and they cause many of the 
 personal failures. Habits are formed on 
 account of the value that we place upon 
 certain things. The young man gets a taste 
 of champagne suppers and bridge parties. 
 In his estimation of things material, they 
 have great worth. He devotes more time 
 to them than he can spare and money that 
 is not his. In time the false values that he 
 placed upon these things bring about his 
 failure and the complete shattering of his 
 life. Another individual underestimates 
 the value of honesty, of integrity, of truth ; 
 he holds the cardinal factors in life as being 
 of no value and he disregards their tenets. 
 In time his reputation is gone; he has vio- 
 lated all usages of ethics and is a moral 
 bankrupt, if not a fugitive from outraged 
 society. You cannot climb unless you cor- 
 rectly judge the values of those things that 
 constitute the warp and the woof of a sue- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 97 
 
 cessful life. You may run on the dead level 
 of life and get by with a false conception 
 of values, but just as soon as you start to 
 make the grade you are lost. 
 
 The pity of so many lives is that so much 
 time is consumed in arriving at a concep- 
 tion of what is true and what is false. The 
 fires of youth burn hotly. It is hard to 
 keep them in bounds. Pleasures lure and 
 charm and hide the pitfalls. Values are 
 over- and underestimated, and it is hard to 
 separate the false from the true, but when 
 values are once well established, then the 
 road straightens out and the upward climb 
 becomes easier. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 HONESTY OF PURPOSE 
 
 TT ONESTY is an effort to know the 
 * truth, to avoid error. There are 
 fixed and definite principles of ethics that 
 must be followed to win. A house erected 
 without proper regard being given to the 
 rules governing balance and resistance 
 will fall to the ground. A machine that 
 is constructed without due consideration 
 being paid to the laws governing 
 mechanics will not do the work intended 
 for it by its designer; and a life that is 
 built without due consideration being 
 paid to the fixed and immutable laws of 
 truth and honesty will fail. You cannot 
 slough your human machine in the making 
 and then expect it to stand up under the 
 grilling test in life's endurance race. You 
 must build four square, you must give serv- 
 ice plus. 
 
 98 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 99 
 
 An artist paints a picture and weaves 
 into its colors his very soul. It takes 
 months and years to complete it, but it is 
 true and tells an honest story and this pic- 
 ture lives for all time. Another painter 
 makes a daub, sells it for a trifle, and this 
 soon finds a resting place on some forgot- 
 ten wall. 
 
 The pyramids and obelisks of Egypt have 
 withstood the decaying power of time for 
 centuries. Their builders and the race to 
 which the builders belonged have long since 
 crumbled into dust and today are known 
 only through the pages of sacred history, 
 but their handiwork remains because it was 
 honestly done. Business physicians have 
 tried to work out a list of mortality sta- 
 tistics. They do postmortems by the thou- 
 sands and then publish their findings to the 
 world, but it seems to me that back of all 
 the gruesome facts they bring to light is a 
 reason that transcends all. 
 
100 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 Modern civilization means an artificial 
 life, and artificialness means sham, and 
 sham is dishonesty. Into the warp and 
 woof of most men's lives there creeps some- 
 thing that is not just square, that does not 
 ring just true. You do not have to be a 
 deadbeat to be dishonest, you can cut the 
 corners in your business life in a thousand 
 ways and not violate a statutory law, but 
 every time you cut a corner and shade your 
 fellow man in a transaction, you violate one 
 of the laws of success and you pay the price 
 thereby. 
 
 Service plus is the rule of the game if 
 you would win. That employee who filches 
 an hour 's time is doing the greatest injury 
 to himself. That employer who tries to 
 add an extra dividend to his earnings by 
 wringing it from the lives of his employees 
 is hurting no one so much as himself. He 
 may add to his bank account, but he loses 
 in fineness and character those things that 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 101 
 
 soar in value far above the worth of gold. 
 A high sense of honor must be cultivated. 
 One must not lose sight of his animal an- 
 cestry and the primitive rule of tooth and 
 claw. Ethics is the result of reason's 
 rule and transcends brutal force. Forget 
 this principle, blot out this light, and civil- 
 ization is nothing but a veneer, is nothing 
 but a pawn with which the brutally strong 
 can play at will. 
 
 Honesty protects the weak against ag- 
 gression, it sub-dues the animal instincts, it 
 respects human right irrespective of 
 whether those rights are backed up with 
 bustling bayonets and big guns. It is the 
 cordon of defense thrown about the weak. 
 It is more than a scrap of paper. The train- 
 ing for honesty in life is like the making of 
 a superb machine. You must build care- 
 fully and in harmony with truth. The more 
 care and attention you give to it, the finer 
 the product. 
 
102 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 There is not enough emphasis given in 
 our schools to ethics. There is not enough 
 attention paid to it in our homes. Honor 
 should be impressed upon the life of a child 
 from its babyhood, not fear but honor, and 
 an example of honor should be set before 
 it and an atmosphere of honor should sur- 
 round it in the home. How can you expect 
 a boy to be four square with the world when 
 he sees his father and mother do unclean 
 things in their contact with their fellow 
 men 1 And let it be said here that childish 
 minds are quick to grasp the false, much 
 quicker than they are given credit for being 
 able to do, and they do not forget. An im- 
 pression made on a child mind lives for all 
 eternity. Like stain upon the snow, it re- 
 mains until life melts and fades away. 
 Many a vicious life is started from impres- 
 sions made in childhood and many a 
 wrecked machine is due entirely to poor 
 workmanship in the making. You cannot 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 103 
 
 build false and run a winner's race. The 
 great laboratory of the human soul tests 
 all things, and by these tests one stands or 
 falls. 
 
 Nature sets a good example. She always 
 rings true, and what man gives to Nature, 
 she in turn gives back to him. Give the 
 world loyal, loving, worth-while, square 
 and honest service and you will be re- 
 warded in proportion to what you give. 
 
 Jesus gave utterance to a basic truth 
 when he said, "Give, and it shall be given 
 unto you," but let us understand that this 
 must apply to the broad principles of life 
 and not to some sickly sentimentalist's plea 
 for aid to some pet cause. Give the world 
 the best you have in an honest effort to 
 serve your work, your family, and civiliza- 
 tion; and the world will give back to you 
 in kind. 
 
 If you pour muddy water into a pitcher, 
 you will pour muddy water out again. 
 
104 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 Slight and you will be slighted. Give and 
 you will be given unto. 
 
 Life is not a thing of chance. Success or 
 failure is not accidental. There is no such 
 thing as luck. Mankind was cursed when 
 this word was born. Its false hopes have 
 lulled men and women into an unconscious 
 security or into a hopeless condition for 
 ages. "What is the use, my luck is against 
 me," has been the nightshade grasped in 
 many bruised and bleeding hands as the 
 hopeless one expired. "My luck will pro- 
 tect me ' ' has been the insane cry of many a 
 reckless voyager as he drifted on toward 
 the Cyclopean rocks. There is no mystery 
 in success. The road to achievement is well 
 charted. It has been trodden by countless 
 feet, but it is straight and narrow and per- 
 mits of no short cuts. Build every day like 
 the Egyptians built their pyramids ; cut and 
 polish every stone. Eun square with the 
 world and you will have no complaints to 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 105 
 
 make. Give your best to the world and the 
 world will give back her best to you. Pour 
 clear water into your pitcher of life and the 
 pitcher will return clear water to you. 
 Build honestly and your machine will run 
 true to form and will carry you up and 
 safely over the grade. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 PLEASURES 
 
 'T^HERE are flowers in the gardens, as 
 well as grain upon the hills. There is 
 an esthetic life, as well as a material one. 
 The proper mixture of the two makes for a 
 well-ordered, successful existence. Pleas- 
 ures well chosen and properly assimilated 
 help materially in the onward climb. It 
 can be well said that blessed is he who 
 finds his pleasure in that which does not 
 harm. 
 
 I trust that I may be pardoned for again 
 referring to values, but the subject of pleas- 
 ures in life is so akin to that of values that 
 it is almost, if not quite, impossible to dis- 
 cuss one without referring to the other. It 
 can well be said that the value placed upon 
 pleasures is entirely relative. The artist 
 revels in a winter sunset, a soft and shaded 
 
 106 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 107 
 
 twilight, and a harvest moon hanging re- 
 splendent in a midnight sky. To the stolid 
 brain of the peasant, no pleasures can be 
 seen in any of these things; but to such a 
 mug of ale served by a rough-armed bar 
 maid is considered to be one of earth's 
 choicest blessings. A game of golf is a 
 great pleasure to one tired, brain-fagged 
 business man; to another there is no value 
 in the noble Scottish pastime, but a game 
 of domino or checkers is a great treat. 
 Comparisons in this way might be indefi- 
 nitely prolonged to show the impossibilities 
 of standardizing the values of pleasures. 
 But enjoying pleasures in life is a great 
 help in making the grades. The wise 
 manufacturer knows that he cannot drive 
 his machinery day and night; he must give 
 it an occasional rest. Molecules, inanimate 
 though they be, will disintegrate, fall apart, 
 and break down unless given rest. So it is 
 with the human machine. Ceaseless driv- 
 
108 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 ing, constant application, continuous use of 
 the motor and your organization breaks 
 down under its own strain. 
 
 Diversion then in the form of pleasures 
 becomes of great value in making the 
 grade. One of the fine arts of living con- 
 sists of being able to get the maximum 
 pleasure out of your climb and still con- 
 tinue to drive ahead. 
 
 It is a pleasure to live, love, and work, 
 and one should be an incentive to the other. 
 Under natural conditions this would be 
 true, but civilization means living under 
 artificial conditions. The higher the civili- 
 zation, the more artificial it is. Mountain 
 climbers strive to attain some far-away 
 commanding peak, because it gives them 
 vantage ground from which to survey the 
 surrounding landscape. They get genuine 
 pleasure out of being able to view the val- 
 leys, the rivers, and the less commanding 
 points from their eminence. The pleasure 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 109 
 
 they derive from this outweighs the toil 
 and the effort necessary to make them 
 climb. Pleasure was the drive that urged 
 the Alpine climber over fields of snow and 
 ice, up and still up and on, and so the pleas- 
 ures of making the grade grow apace as the 
 journey continues. One rests on an emi- 
 nence today, enjoys the flowers, the fruits 
 and the scenery, and waves back at his fel- 
 low climbers, then he turns his face reso- 
 lutely to the fore and makes for the next 
 commanding ridge. Pleasure in accom- 
 plishment, that was the urge that drove 
 him on. The failures, the eighty-five per 
 cent, cannot get in tune with enjoyment of 
 this kind. Material, animal enjoyment 
 constitutes their pleasure. To one of this 
 type there is no beauty in the orchid, but 
 the cabbage carries to him a great happi- 
 ness. There is no harmony in a symphony 
 to him, but ragtime has an indescribable 
 charm. But the keen pleasure that achieve- 
 
110 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 ment brings is one of the factors that makes 
 for success. 
 
 You cannot win unless you feel that you 
 would rather have success than anything 
 else in the world. A thoroughbred racer 
 runs because he loves to run, but you have 
 to ride a selling-plater with whip and spur. 
 You cannot drive a man or woman up the 
 hill. You may push or pull them up, but 
 unless they want to go and want to go so 
 badly that it hurts to be anywhere else ex- 
 cept in the race trying, there is not much 
 hope for such an individual being num- 
 bered among the hill climbers. The pleas- 
 ure in achieving is the urge that drives men 
 on. The captain of industry and finance 
 does not work solely because he wants to 
 pile up money; money is his least concern; 
 but he keeps on because he loves the game 
 and enjoys the ride. Nothing is more piti- 
 ful than the man whose sole idea of success 
 is the accumulation of money and whose 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 111 
 
 eyes never get above the dollar mark. The 
 truly successful man thinks secondarily of 
 money. He first wins on account of his love 
 for the game, then money comes ; but that 
 individual who thinks solely of money, 
 never gets it and never experiences any of 
 the .great thrills that success brings. 
 
 To, select and enjoy pleasures that help 
 in the climb is a fine art and comes with 
 training and a broad understanding of life. 
 It takes the inventor a long time to make 
 his models, try them out and perfect a ma- 
 chine that will serve. It is the same with 
 life. It takes knowledge of the game, ac- 
 quaintanceship with its many sides and a 
 perfect understanding of the lights and 
 shadows before one is capable of standing 
 the strain that comes in the continuous up- 
 ward climb. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 * * A ND ye shall know the truth, and the 
 ^~^ truth shall make you free" bears 
 the vintage of an utterance made when 
 civilization was young; and knowledge is 
 truth. When you become really educated, 
 the fetters fall away and you are free. 
 Knowledge means more than being able to 
 sign A.M., A.B., or LL.D., after your name. 
 It means knowing life in all its varied rami- 
 fications, under its different and many- 
 colored settings; it means an understand- 
 ing of the great cosmos, a correct interpre- 
 tation of Nature's way and Nature's laws; 
 it means that you must know and under- 
 stand the cry of the weak and the feeble 
 and harken unto that cry, that you be 
 familiar with the ways of the strong and 
 detect the hidden weakness in their sup- 
 112 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 113 
 
 posed strength. To know is the privilege 
 of all, is within the reach of all, and will 
 bless and benefit all. Knowledge is not 
 relative, it is exact. When you know, you 
 are free. When you bow to the unknow- 
 able, when you recognize anything as 
 mysterious except space and time, then 
 truly you are bound in the shackles of igno- 
 rance. You must know to win. Ignorance 
 is no excuse before the law, and Nature's 
 law knows no pity. In the race of life you 
 either win or lose. Man may pity the fail- 
 ure, but Nature never does. When you fail, 
 you fail and success never condones a mis- 
 take. Knowledge cannot be laid hold of 
 easily, but once it comes into your posses- 
 sion, it remains for life. Men live by truth, 
 by error they die. Man's only hope lies in 
 knowing, knowing the laws, not man's laws 
 because they are artificial, but in knowing 
 the great laws of life. When you climb you 
 do so because you work in harmony with 
 
114 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 laws. When you fall you do so because you 
 transgress laws. To be educated is to know 
 life and to obey law. Crime of every de- 
 scription is the result of ignorance. Man 
 would not be so foolish as to bring the suf- 
 fering upon himself that follows the viola- 
 tion of law if he only knew. 
 
 Every man and woman wants to win. 
 They start in life with high hopes and great 
 expectations. They plan a brilliant future 
 for themselves and then they fail; but 
 when you analyze these lives, why should 
 they not fail? They followed the direct 
 path that leads to failure, they were simply 
 mistaken in their direction. You cannot 
 reach Chicago by traveling south from St. 
 Louis, but Chicago remains in its identical 
 location and would be glad to welcome you ; 
 but if you travel in an opposite direction all 
 the time you, and you only, can be blamed 
 for not arriving at your destination. And 
 so it is with life. You want to reach the 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 115 
 
 harbor of success; you deserve to reach it, 
 but if you travel in the opposite direction, 
 success is not to blame. Knowledge, real 
 knowledge, keeps you from taking the 
 wrong road ; but you must have knowledge, 
 the real kind, not the kind that says this 
 or that is true because it is written in a 
 book or spoken by someone else, but you 
 must know the law that makes for truth. 
 Knowledge can be obtained. It has never 
 failed to open wide its doors to all who 
 knocked loud and long; but faint-hearted, 
 timorous requests never gained admittance 
 to the Temple of Truth. It is impossible to 
 monopolize knowledge. It cannot be cor- 
 nered. There is an abundance with which 
 to supply all the demands of those who are 
 willing to pay the price^ It is the only com- 
 modity in the world that does not cheapen 
 on account of its supply. It is just as ex- 
 pensive today as it was when man first 
 fought his way up through the silent ages 
 
116 MAKING THE GKADE 
 
 of cell development; and it will be just as 
 expensive a million years hence as it is to- 
 day. You cannot cheapen knowledge. 
 There is one price put upon it to all. It is 
 worth the same to all and it serves all ex- 
 actly alike. Knowledge rules, youth fails 
 because it does not know the law, old age 
 totters on to ruin because it does not kno\v 
 the law; but give one the light of truth, 
 either in youth, middle life, or old age, and 
 then success is his. 
 
 Jacob wrestled with the angel until he 
 received the blessing. Thus man must 
 wrestle with the Angel of Truth until he 
 gets the blessing that it can give to him. 
 It is much easier to live in error. The fatal 
 eighty-five per cent can attest to that fact. 
 It is easier to "let George do it" than to do 
 it yourself. It is easier to float down 
 stream than to paddle against the current. 
 It is easier to accept as true the statement 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 117 
 
 made by someone else than to dig into a 
 problem of life and solve it for yourself. 
 Knowledge is life. You must know, or 
 short indeed will be your race from the 
 cradle to the grave. Where knowledge is 
 there liberty abounds. Ignorance means 
 servility. Eulers in Continental .Europe 
 have enjoyed the divine right of kings be- 
 cause their vassals did not know. Wher- 
 ever you educate, freedom is born. There 
 is a difference between an education and 
 knowledge. A college youth may be edu- 
 cated and know less than a Eussian peasant 
 about life and its great truths. For this 
 reason schools can be justly blamed for a 
 part they play in the failures of life. 
 Graduate boys or girls from the average 
 high school, turn them out in life to make 
 their way and ninety per cent of them will 
 go on the rocks. They must be re-educated 
 before they are of any value to the world 
 or to themselves. This loss of time is a big 
 
118 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 factor in a human life. The period from 
 the age of twelve to twenty looms big in 
 life's brief span. It can be made the 
 spawning time for ideas and become rich 
 in a creative way. In school one should be 
 taught life's problems. Culture has its 
 place in the world and so has practicability. 
 No doubt one of the great reasons for the 
 success of the poor and the orphaned is be- 
 cause boys of this class learn life and learn 
 it young. They get off to a running start 
 and when they hit the grade, they have 
 been trained for hill climbing and the steep 
 and rugged ascent presents no unusual dif- 
 ficulties to them. 
 
 Knowledge of life enables one to detect 
 shams, hypocrisy, deceit and weakness of 
 all kinds ; and when one is familiar with the 
 weakness of his opponent, it gives to him 
 added strength. Knowledge is the last lap 
 in the race. When you reach this period 
 the victory is won. When thus equipped, 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 119 
 
 you know the value of industry, of honesty, 
 of patience, you are familiar with all that 
 health, self-confidence, optimism, and val- 
 ues mean. You have come to the point 
 where you are perfectly capable of 
 strengthening any of the weak spots in 
 your armamentarium ; your motor has been 
 tested and found to be staunch and true; 
 the fallacies have been winnowed from the 
 facts and the false separated from the true. 
 Through wisdom's vision the crooked paths 
 are made straight, and you no longer stag- 
 ger in the dark. Knowledge crowns all 
 achievement. It is the great hope and the 
 blessing to mankind. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 INDUSTRY 
 
 "PRIMITIVE man was lazy; inheritance 
 * and environment made him so. His 
 wants were restricted to food and raiment 
 and these were of the simplest character. 
 With the development of civilization wants 
 and needs multiplied, but our cell life of to- 
 day has not escaped the impress made upon 
 it by inheritance, and it requires an effort 
 to throw off the desire to loiter by the way. 
 Only by training can habits of industry be 
 formed. Mental development marks the 
 progress of civilization and civilization 
 means the subjugation of the brute and ani- 
 mal instincts. 
 
 Progress in the arts, in science, and in 
 economics has come about because man has 
 applied his brains and his brawn to the 
 mastery of these problems. His instincts 
 
 120 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 121 
 
 would have kept him still wearing animal 
 skins instead of a dress suit and would 
 have had him content with the music from 
 a tom-tom instead of Mendelssohn strains; 
 but the love call, the libido, proved to be 
 stronger than primitive laziness, and man 
 began to work and then to conquer. 
 
 Undoubtedly the warp and woof of life 
 is made up of love, work, and play; with 
 the proper intermingling of these ingredi- 
 ents you have a formula that brings success. 
 A life that is lacking in either cannot be- 
 come the full, well-rounded existence that it 
 should. You must love to work. No great 
 human achievement has ever been attained 
 except through this urge. Eons ago it was 
 this drive that made the male go forth and 
 slay with tooth and claw and bring his kill 
 to the cave that his mate and her little ones 
 might eat and live. It is the same today. 
 Mansions are built in gratification of the 
 love instincts, mountains are tunneled, rail- 
 
122 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 roads are built, the air has been conquered, 
 the lightning put in chains because men 
 loved. The world is rocked by the greatest 
 of all wars because men love their coun- 
 try and for this love they are shedding 
 their blood with reckless abandon. Go 
 through the marts of trade and commerce, 
 go to the halls of science, of art, and of 
 literature, everything that has endured 
 has been wrought because men have loved 
 and labored. The one is the handmaiden 
 to the other. When you work from fear, 
 fear of hunger and bodily discomfort, you 
 are harking back to your animal ancestry; 
 you have crushed from your life all there is 
 in it except your primitive instincts; you 
 have prostituted the dignity of labor and 
 robbed yourself of the vital spark. Work 
 without art is brutality. If you do not love 
 your work you are leading yourself to the 
 shambles and failure has marked you for 
 its own. 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 123 
 
 A brute builds a hut, a lover a palace. 
 Kunners formerly carried to and fro all 
 messages, first men on foot, then men on 
 horseback ; but today we touch a key in New 
 York and almost instantly San Francisco 
 knows what is happening on Fifth Ave- 
 nue. The bank of England or of France 
 lowers or advances its rate of discount; in 
 one hour, or less, the banks on Wall and 
 La Salle Streets know what has been done. 
 Love brought this about, love and work; 
 but love for work and the lure of achieve- 
 ment made this possible. 
 
 The world is at war, but the aeroplane is 
 the eye of the army and that country will 
 win that has the most eyes. The Wright 
 brothers are responsible for this. Their 
 unconquerable love for work in aeronautics 
 brought about the solution of aerial navi- 
 gation. America built the Panama Canal, 
 but not until the public health official and 
 the hygienist through love, altruistic love 
 
124 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 for humanity, solved the problem of yel- 
 low fever and malaria. Walter Heed so 
 loved medicine and the people it served 
 that he gave his own body for experimenta- 
 tion and proved by personal experience 
 how yellow fever was transmitted. He 
 worked for love and he gained all that he 
 lacked in life, immortality. The money 
 grubber whose eyes have never been lifted 
 above the dollar mark may not count 
 Keed's life a success, but the thirty million 
 souls living south of the Mason and Dixon 
 line that have been freed from the yellow 
 fever scourge, call him blessed, and science 
 has made a niche for him high up in her 
 temple of fame. 
 
 Industry and love go hand in hand and 
 their union has made all conquests possible. 
 Work without love is slavery. When you 
 drive a man or a woman with a lash, you 
 are nothing more than an animal trainer. 
 The successful manufacturers and mer- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 125 
 
 chants, men of large affairs, who employ 
 great numbers of men, have won because 
 they have made their men love their work, 
 and these manufacturers have so loved 
 their own work that they have infused this 
 spirit into everyone with whom they are 
 associated. 
 
 Fear never begot loyalty, patience, imag- 
 ination, hope or courage; but love fathers 
 all these. Get a man or boy, woman or girl, 
 in love with their task in life, and you have 
 put the key that unlocks all doors in their 
 hands; but put hate in their hearts for a 
 task of any kind, and you have forever 
 bolted the door against them. 
 
 That individual is of value to the world 
 who creates something useful. Upon your 
 handiwork you impress your character. 
 The well-executed task shows the master's 
 touch. The men who have made the grade 
 are the men who have worked earnestly, 
 loved passionately, and played hard. They 
 
126 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 have mixed well the ingredients of success 
 and the result has been a satisfaction to 
 them. One of the great lessons one must 
 learn is to make his work the one grand pas- 
 sion of his life. 
 
 That individual who starts every day 
 with keen enjoyment because it gives an op- 
 portunity to work, is -headed straight for 
 Success Land. Nothing daunts this type of 
 a man. Opposition, hardships, obstacles 
 count for naught. To overcome them only 
 makes him more certain of the goal. But 
 that individual who works at a task be- 
 cause it gives him food and raiment is in 
 a sorry plight. He is a slave chained to 
 the galley wheel. 
 
 Hope begets industry. Destroy this in- 
 centive and you put man upon a parity with 
 the brute. Increase it and there is no 
 limitation to his achievement. Well-di- 
 rected, cheerful labor conquers. It for- 
 ever remains one of the great factors in 
 climbing toward the goal. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 CONCENTRATION 
 
 ~D ESISTANCE gives way to superior 
 
 "' force continuously applied upon a 
 given point. This is a law of physics and 
 also a law of life. 
 
 Concentrate your energy and you burn a 
 way through opposition. One of the chief 
 difficulties in life consists of not being able 
 to concentrate. Few people when they 
 work throw their entire energy into the 
 task. Go into a store or a factory and take 
 note of the employees. You will find most 
 of them working in a desultory manner, 
 doing just enough to keep up a semblance 
 of being busy and thereby escape a repri- 
 mand from the manager. The clock is 
 watched assiduously and as soon as clos- 
 ing time arrives, nothing can keep them one 
 minute longer than is necessary to put their 
 stocks in order and get away. Lack of con- 
 
 127 
 
128 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 centration is one of the great contributing 
 factors among those who cannot make the 
 grade. 
 
 Concentration is no easy task. It de- 
 mands the most carefully trained will and 
 a powerful determination. Thinking must 
 always precede the act, except, of course, 
 involuntary bodily movement. If we act 
 with concentration we must think in the 
 same way and let it be said here that well- 
 trained, concentrated thinking comes only 
 after much effort has been expended upon 
 it. To think correctly is a difficult task. If 
 you do not believe it, try to concentrate 
 your mind on a given object for five min- 
 utes; exclude all extraneous matter and 
 think upon that one subject continuously. 
 Try this for a time and you will be 
 astounded at the magnitude of the task. 
 After such an experience as this, it will be- 
 gin to dawn upon you what little effort is 
 really expended in your work. Train this 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 129 
 
 way for thirty minutes a day and you will 
 see an improvement in your results; it 
 makes no difference in what endeavor you 
 are engaged; and above all else you will 
 realize what little time and effort you have 
 been really giving to the great business of 
 succeeding in life. 
 
 In another chapter reference was made 
 to the work of Carnegie and the establish- 
 ing of free libraries. Sometimes I think 
 that most of us read too much. THINKING 
 is what the world needs. Eeference li- 
 braries are all right. Know what your con- 
 temporaries are doing, but above all else do 
 something yourself, think for yourself, 
 dare to stand alone and have your own 
 ideas about things, concentrate all your 
 psychic and your motor powers in your at- 
 tack upon the forces that would keep you 
 from winning and they will be put to flight. 
 
 Men who win the big victories are those 
 who concentrate all their abilities on the 
 
130 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 task in hand. Difficulties melt before the 
 disintegrating power of concentrated and 
 well-directed efforts. If boys and girls 
 could be trained to think correctly and 
 learn the power of concentration, the per- 
 centage of failures would materially de- 
 crease. Independent thinking results eas- 
 ily from concentration; and independent 
 thoughts and acts are the great need of the 
 world. Following blindly in the path 
 others have made, thinking the same as 
 others have done brings on stagnation and 
 mental death. 
 
 Few individuals love work. Our primal 
 instincts are against it and it is hard work 
 to think logically, continuously and with 
 concentration. It is easier to envy posses- 
 sions of others than to gain such posses- 
 sions ourselves. It is easier to delude our- 
 selves with false hopes than to get out and 
 take possession of opportunities and make 
 our own impress upon the world's affairs, 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 131 
 
 and the majority of men like to do the 
 easier thing. 
 
 It is amusing to hear men and women talk 
 about the divine origin of man and claim 
 kinship with a deity and all the while they 
 exhibit a pronounced animal characteristic, 
 that of aversion to real work. Few people 
 really know how to work effectively. To 
 them a task is measured by the number of 
 hours it takes to get through with it just 
 any old way. "Put in the time, get what 
 you can for it with the least effort" thus 
 say the eighty-five per cent who think they 
 work, but all the time they have an eye on 
 the clock and their mind is far away gloat- 
 ing over some withered flowers in the gar- 
 den of pleasures. The world needs mes- 
 sengers that will find Garcia, and men and 
 women who will by the power of concentra- 
 tion in thought and deed accomplish things. 
 
 Efficiency is a popular theme at the pres- 
 ent time. Efficiency experts have revealed 
 
132 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 a waste that has made the world gasp. They 
 have demonstrated to manufacturers, to 
 merchants, to bankers and professional men 
 that only about twenty-five per cent of 
 labor is productive, the other seventy-five 
 per cent being waste. Think of it! work 
 one hundred days on what could have been 
 done in twenty -five ! Employ one hundred 
 men to do the work that twenty-five should 
 be able to accomplish ! Waste everywhere, 
 both material and human! Man's power 
 lies in his brain. If he does not use this 
 power, then it is of no service to him. 
 Brain power to be effective must be well di- 
 rected and concentrated upon a given point. 
 When men and women are capable of doing 
 this, they can climb. There is no impass- 
 able grade to them. When they do not 
 concentrate and think independently, they 
 are on the dead level with a graveyard not 
 very far away. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 INITIATIVE 
 
 TNITIATIVE is the ability to think for 
 one 's self and the exercise of this power, 
 with the will to put your thoughts into exe- 
 cution through action. The human ma- 
 chine, like a material one, gets out of order 
 occasionally and needs to be repaired. 
 When you cannot make your own repairs 
 and keep in the race, you are carrying a 
 great handicap and will never last through 
 a sweepstakes contest. Most of your time 
 will be spent laid up in the shop waiting 
 for someone else to put you back into the 
 running. 
 
 Initiative enables you to become your 
 own mechanic. It keeps you in the run- 
 ning all the time when the other fellow is 
 waiting to be repaired, waiting his turn to 
 get assistance. You help yourself and 
 
 133 
 
134 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 gain a lap or two in the climb. Individual 
 thinking makes for progress. I do not be- 
 lieve in fatalism. Man is always the mas- 
 ter of his destiny. We are what we are 
 by our own acts and by our own acts we 
 change our environment and our condition 
 in life. We rise or fall, win or lose, over- 
 come difficulties or succumb to them just 
 as we choose. Human environment is the 
 result of human thought and human action. 
 By thought and action we change it. * * Will 
 you pay the price?" is the eternal ques- 
 tion that confronts man from the cradle 
 to the grave. 
 
 Exercise of initiative is to work, to think, 
 and to act. It means a never-failing spring 
 of hope, of courage, of optimism and of 
 determination. The soldier that picked up 
 the broken sword on the battlefield when 
 he had been fighting with no sword at all 
 had initiative. The primitive man, when 
 he first realized that a club swung with the 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 135 
 
 mighty force of his savage arms gave him 
 supremacy over his brutal opponent, had 
 initiative and the development of this has 
 solved all the problems of civilization and 
 will continue to solve all of them. 
 
 No ascent is too steep for the man with 
 initiative. When the granite cliffs of the 
 Alps barred Napoleon's advent into Italy, 
 he calmly remarked, " There shall be no 
 Alps," and proceeded to build roads over 
 them. Lincoln said, "I will study and pre- 
 pare myself and some day my chance will 
 come." His initiative led him from the 
 cabin in the Kentucky woods to the presi- 
 dential chair and made him the liberator 
 of a race. And why not think; when you 
 do not you are closely akin to the brute 
 and you live as the brute lives to eat, to 
 sleep, and to reproduce your kind. But 
 initiative means that you must pay. It 
 means not the path of primrose dalliance, 
 but the life of strife. It is lamentable but 
 
136 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 nonetheless true, that few individuals real- 
 ly think; many dream, most all put in the 
 time, but to actually think out a problem 
 in all its ramifications, to familiarize one's 
 self with all the facts connected with the 
 task in hand is something that very few in- 
 dividuals accomplish. The thinkers and 
 the doers are the path finders, the trail 
 makers, the hill climbers. Block their path 
 today and tomorrow you will find that they 
 have either removed the obstacle and cast 
 it aside or else, like Napoleon, they have 
 used the obstacle as he used the rock- 
 ribbed mountain barriers, making a mac- 
 adam road to the object that he sought. 
 
 Matter must give way to mind. Thought 
 has always conquered the material and it 
 always will. The philanthropist aids most 
 when he starts people to thinking. To dis- 
 burse bounty in a material way is bad 
 policy. There is a reason for poverty just 
 as there is for disease. A hospital that is 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 137 
 
 maintained for the mere purpose of har- 
 boring the sick would be a curse instead of 
 a blessing. Disease must be prevented as 
 well as cured, and unless you remove the 
 cause of disease you are not accomplishing 
 much. To relieve poverty and not remove 
 its cause is but little help, in fact it is a 
 positive harm. When you can get an in- 
 dividual to thinking you set his feet on 
 firm ground and put him in a position to 
 help himself and you must think or you are 
 doomed. 
 
 The cell instinct makes us lazy. The evo- 
 lution of the dress suit from the fig leaf 
 has been a long and toilsome journey and 
 there are still more leaves than Tuxedoes 
 being worn. One of the greatest indict- 
 ments that the Orthodox church must bear 
 is its stifling of independent thinking. Ig- 
 norance and hypocrisy are twins. They 
 are both spawn from the same cesspool 
 and they both stifle and enslave. A man 
 
138 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 or a woman independent in thought and 
 in deed has always been the pioneer, has 
 always blazed the trail. But why so few 
 path finders, why so many who never think 
 one thought that is their own? Is it the 
 fear of isolation? Men go in crowds, like 
 birds. The herd instinct keeps them to- 
 gether that they may be preserved. Just 
 as it takes a well-built, honestly-made car 
 to stand the acid test of the mountain 
 climb, so does it take an individual with 
 courage and endurance to think independ- 
 ently and to exercise initiative. When 
 civilization was young, men and women 
 were tortured and burned at the stake be- 
 cause they dared to break away from estab- 
 lished customs in thought and act. While 
 the fagot and the thumbscrew have passed 
 into oblivion, the independent thinker must 
 still run the psychologic gauntlet of the 
 world and unless you have bravery, pluck. 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 139 
 
 optimism and courage, your new ideas 
 never get beyond the infantile stage. 
 
 Most people doze mentally. Their 
 thoughts run in a groove that was cut for 
 them by tradition. Life is responsive to 
 stimuli. A battery that does not spark 
 when the current is applied will never carry 
 a car up and over the grade. Teachers fall 
 short of their objectives when they fail to 
 impress upon their students the necessity 
 of thinking for themselves. 
 
 It is better to try and fail than never to 
 try at all. Individual thinking should be 
 encouraged in children. Unfortunately, 
 however, just the opposite is the case. 
 Johnny starts out on his round of explora- 
 tion with his inquiring mind making new 
 discoveries at every turn. He is constantly 
 admonished not to do this, that, or the 
 other thing, and his brain is kneaded by 
 negative suggestions like a bunch of dough. 
 In time his inquiring mind is so bruised 
 
140 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 and beaten by the psychic shocks that it 
 becomes like a worn-out battery and the 
 stimulus from outside sources fails to pro- 
 duce any response. These dough brains 
 are then baked in the world's oven and, 
 like pastry forms, are displayed in the shop 
 windows of factories and counting rooms. 
 To think for yourself and to put your 
 thoughts into execution means progress. 
 The world would have you stick to the 
 beaten trail because the world dislikes 
 change, but sameness is stagnation. When 
 you dare to stand out from the crowd, 
 when you have the courage to defy tradi- 
 tion, when you have confidence in yourself, 
 when you are willing to pay, when you 
 think and act for yourself, then you are 
 supplying the motive power that moves the 
 world and this power is the great factor 
 that helps you to climb to the top and make 
 the grade. 
 
CHAPTER XVIH 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 TN mathematics one must prove that his 
 deductions and conclusions are correct. 
 Answers to problems do not count in the 
 realm of science unless they bear the 
 searchlight of analysis. In life it is just 
 the same. How to achieve success is the 
 great problem, but who is to know when 
 success is attained? 
 
 To many success is a place somewhere; 
 like a material heaven, it is hard to locate 
 by direction. There is one thing sure, it 
 is neither a city nor a country. It may be 
 a harbor, landlocked and free from storm ; 
 but never has a material ship ridden at 
 anchor upon its waves. What then is this 
 prize; where is this much-sought-for 
 place; how is one to know when the goal 
 has been won ; by what process of reason- 
 
 141 
 
142 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 ing can one prove that he or she has made 
 the grade and has climbed the hill? Why 
 be honest; why be optimistic; why have 
 health; why correctly know values; why 
 work, ]augh and love? It would seem to 
 me that a correct answer to all these ques- 
 tions can be found in the one word 
 SERVING. "Do you serve your fellow 
 man!" is the acid test to be applied in the 
 soul's laboratory. By this analysis you 
 will know the truth. Men achieve success 
 in accordance with the service that they 
 render- to the 'world and to civilization. 
 Material success is impossible unless you 
 serve, and your life will be a dismal fail- 
 ure unless you serve. Florence Nightin- 
 gale, as she bended to her task of nursing 
 the wounded and the sick on the battle- 
 fields and in the hovels, was climbing the 
 hill. By her serving she made the grade. 
 Today the great profession of nursing 
 with its white-robed messengers, number- 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 143 
 
 ing more than forty thousand in America 
 alone, pays tribute to her memory, and ev- 
 ery sufferer on the blood-soaked fields of 
 Europe or in the hospital ward anywhere 
 in all the world blesses and reveres her 
 name, and that's success. 
 
 Walter Reed, when he lay bare his arm 
 to the sting of the mosquito in order that 
 he might solve the mystery concerning the 
 source from which yellow fever came, was 
 serving, and today the Southland and the 
 Tropics honor and revere his name, and 
 that's success. 
 
 Thomas Edison, toiling in his laboratory 
 hour after hour, oblivious of the flight of 
 time, so anxious is he to wring one more 
 secret from Nature's womb, is serving; 
 and every incandescent light that mirrors 
 back to the world the sun's rays and every 
 strain of harmony wafted on the midnight 
 air from the phonograph are peans of vic- 
 tory for Edison, and that's success. 
 
144 MAKING THE GRADE 
 
 Marconi, as he worked and dreamed, 
 knew the air could be made into a beast of 
 burden upon whose back the thoughts of 
 man could ride at will. He was serving. 
 Today every wireless message that hums 
 its way around the world is a tribute of 
 praise to Marconi, and that's success. 
 
 Morse, Field, Lyden, Watts, Vanderbilt, 
 Gould, Ford, Carnegie and those countless 
 thousands who have climbed to the pinna- 
 cle of human achievement have done so be- 
 cause they served. They forgot self and 
 in their efforts to render service, they 
 achieved success. It is utterly impossible 
 to succeed and to achieve in life unless you 
 serve, and in your willingness to render 
 service is recorded the degree of success 
 that you attain. Civilization progresses 
 only in accordance with the degree of serv- 
 ice that man is willing to render to his fel- 
 low man. 
 
 To accumulate money is not success ; to 
 
MAKING THE GRADE 145 
 
 do that is simply following out one of 
 man's primal instincts of storing up food 
 for a rainy day. The crow and the squir- 
 rels lay up nuts in the summer that they 
 may live when winter comes with its snow 
 and ice. There is more to life than the ac- 
 cumulation of gold. To serve your fellow 
 man, to advance civilization, to add some- 
 thing to the sum total of human knowl- 
 edge, to leave better than you found, that's 
 success and that's the goal to win. To do 
 this you must climb the hills, you must 
 know the truth and live its tenets. For 
 this reason it is necessary that you have 
 health, that you be an optimist, that you 
 have patience, that you know values, that 
 you have confidence in your undertakings, 
 that you be honest, that you have knowl- 
 edge, that you be able to concentrate, and 
 that you have initiative. Mix well these 
 ingredients. They constitute the warp 
 and woof of life, and then with faith and 
 loyalty serve, that's success. 
 
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