Part 2

Needless to say that McIntyre lacks humor. Personally, I prefer the McGregors, but in Los Angeles the McIntyres are popular. It was McIntyre who called a meeting to pray for Fay Mills, and in proposing the meeting McIntyre made the unblushing announcement that he had never met Mills nor heard him speak, nor had he read one of his books.

Chapman and McIntyre represent the modern types of Phariseeism--spielers and spouters for churchianity, and such are the men who make superstition of so long life. Superstition is the one Infamy--Voltaire was right. To pretend to believe a thing at which your reason revolts--to stultify your intellect--this, if it exists at all, is the unpardonable sin. These muftis preach "the blood of Jesus," the dogma that man without a belief in miracles is eternally lost, that everlasting life depends upon acknowledging this, that or the other. Self-reliance, self-control and self-respect are the three things that make a man a man.

But man has so recently taken on this ability to think, that he has not yet gotten used to handling it. The tool is cumbrous in his hands. He is afraid of it--this one characteristic that differentiates him from the lower animals--so he abdicates and turns his divine birthright over to a syndicate. This combination called a church agrees to take care of his doubts and fears and do his thinking for him, and to help matters along he is assured that he is not fit to think for himself, and to do so would be a sin. Man, in his present crude state, holds somewhat the same attitude toward reason that an Apache Indian holds toward a camera--the Indian thinks that to have his picture taken means that he will shrivel up and blow away in a month. And Stanley relates that a watch with its constant ticking sent the bravest of Congo chiefs into a cold sweat of agonizing fear; on discovering which, the explorer had but to draw his Waterbury and threaten to turn the whole bunch into crocodiles, and at once they got busy and did his bidding. Stanley exhibited the true Northfield-revival quality in banking on the superstition of his wavering and frightened followers.

The revival meetin' is an orgie of the soul, a spiritual debauch--a dropping from sane and sensible control into eroticism. No person of normal intelligence can afford to throw the reins of reason on the neck of emotion and ride a Tam O'Shanter race to Bedlam. This hysteria of the uncurbed feelings is the only blasphemy, and if there were a personal God, He surely would be grieved to see that we have so absurd an idea of Him, as to imagine He would be pleased with our deporting the divine gift of reason into the hell-box.

Revivalism works up the voltage, then makes no use of the current--the wire is grounded. Let any one of these revivalists write out his sermons and print them in a book, and no sane man could read them without danger of paresis. The book would lack synthesis, defy analysis, puzzle the brain and paralyze the will. There would not be enough attic salt in it to save it. It would be the supernaculum of the commonplace, and prove the author to be the lobscouse of literature, the loblolly of letters. The churches want to enroll members, and so desperate is the situation that they are willing to get them at the price of self-respect. Hence come Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Chapman, and play Svengali to our Trilby. These gentlemen use the methods and the tricks of the auctioneer--the blandishments of the bookmaker--the sleek, smooth ways of the professional spieler.

With this troupe of Christian clowns is one Chaeffer, who is a specialist with children. He has meetings for boys and girls only, where he plays tricks, grimaces, tells stories and gets his little hearers laughing, and thus having found an entrance into their hearts, he suddenly reverses the lever, and has them crying. He talks to these little innocents about sin, the wrath of God, the death of Christ, and offers them a choice between everlasting life and eternal death. To the person who knows and loves children--who has studied the gentle ways of Froebel--this excitement is vicious, concrete cruelty. Weakened vitality follows close upon overwrought nerves, and every excess has its penalty--the pendulum swings as far this way as it does that.

These reverend gentlemen bray it into the ears of innocent little children that they were born in iniquity, and in sin did their mothers conceive them; that the souls of all children over nine years (why nine?) are lost, and the only way they can hope for heaven is through a belief in a barbaric blood bamboozle, that men of intelligence have long since discarded. And all this in the name of the gentle Christ, who took little children in his arms and said, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

This pagan proposition of being born in sin is pollution to the mind of a child, and causes misery, unrest and heartache incomputable. A few years ago we were congratulating ourselves that the devil at last was dead, and that the tears of pity had put out the fires of hell, but the serpent of superstition was only slightly scotched, not killed.

The intent of the religious revival is dual: first, the claim is that conversion makes men lead better lives; second, it saves their souls from endless death or everlasting hell.

To make men lead beautiful lives is excellent, but the Reverend Doctor Chapman, nor any of his colleagues, nor the denominations that they represent, will for an instant admit that the fact of a man living a beautiful life will save his soul alive In fact, Doctor Chapman, Doctor Torrey and Doctor Sunday, backed by the Reverend Doctor McIntyre, repeatedly warn their hearers of the danger of a morality that is not accompanied by a belief in the "blood of Jesus."

So the beautiful life they talk of is the bait that covers the hook for gudgeons. You have to accept the superstition, or your beautiful life to them is a byword and a hissing.

Hence, to them, superstition, and not conduct, is the vital thing.

If such a belief is not fanaticism then have I read Webster's Unabridged Dictionary in vain. Belief in superstition makes no man kinder, gentler, more useful to himself or society. He can have all the virtues without the fetich, and he may have the fetich and all the vices beside. Morality is really not controlled at all by religion--if statistics of reform schools and prisons are to be believed.

Fay Mills, according to Reverend Doctor McIntyre has all the virtues--he is forgiving, kind, gentle, modest, helpful. But Fay has abandoned the fetich--hence McIntyre and Chapman call upon the public to pray for Fay Mills. Mills had the virtues when he believed in the fetich--and now that he has disavowed the fetich, he still has the virtues, and in a degree he never before had. Even those who oppose him admit this, but still they declare that he is forever "lost."

Reverend Doctor Chaeffer says there are two kinds of habits--good and bad.

There are also two kinds of religion, good and bad. The religion of kindness, good cheer, helpfulness and useful effort is good. And on this point there is no dispute--it is admitted everywhere by every grade of intellect. But any form of religion that incorporates a belief in miracles and other barbaric superstitions, as a necessity to salvation, is not only bad, but very bad. And all men, if left alone long enough to think, know that salvation depends upon redemption from a belief in miracles. But the intent of Doctor Chapman and his theological rough riders is to stampede the herd and set it a milling. To rope the mavericks and place upon them the McIntyre brand is then quite easy.

As for the reaction and the cleaning up after the carnival, our revivalists are not concerned. The confetti, collapsed balloons and peanut shucks are the net assets of the revival--and these are left for the local managers.

Revivals are for the revivalists, and some fine morning these revival towns will arise, rub their sleepy eyes, and Chapman will be but a bad taste in the mouth, and Sunday, Chaeffer, Torrey, Biederwolf and Company, a troubled dream. To preach hagiology to civilized people is a lapse that Nemesis will not overlook. America stands for the Twentieth Century, and if in a moment of weakness she slips back to the exuberant folly of the frenzied piety of the Sixteenth, she must pay the penalty. Two things man will have to do--get free from the bondage of other men; and second, liberate himself from the phantoms of his own mind. On neither of these points does the revivalist help or aid in any way. Effervescence is not character and every debauch must be paid for in vitality and self-respect.

All formal organized religions through which the promoters and managers thrive are bad, but some are worse than others. The more superstition a religion has, the worse it is. Usually religions are made up of morality and superstition. Pure superstition alone would be revolting--in our day it would attract nobody--so the idea is introduced that morality and religion are inseparable. I am against the men who pretend to believe that ethics without a fetich is vain and useless.

The preachers who preach the beauty of truth, honesty and a useful, helpful life, I am with, head, heart and hand.

The preachers who declare that there can be no such thing as a beautiful life unless it will accept superstition, I am against, tooth, claw, club, tongue and pen. Down with the Infamy! I prophesy a day when business and education will be synonymous--when commerce and college will join hands--when the preparation for life will be to go to work.

As long as trade was trickery, business barter, commerce finesse, government exploitation, slaughter honorable, and murder a fine art; when religion was ignorant superstition, piety the worship of a fetich and education a clutch for honors, there was small hope for the race. Under these conditions everything tended towards division, dissipation, disintegration, separation--darkness, death.

But with the supremacy gained by science, the introduction of the one-price system in business, and the gradually growing conviction that honesty is man's most valuable asset, we behold light at the end of the tunnel.

It only remains now for the laity to drive conviction home upon the clergy, and prove to them that pretence has its penalty, and to bring to the mourners' bench that trinity of offenders, somewhat ironically designated as the Three Learned Professions, and mankind will be well out upon the broad highway, the towering domes of the Ideal City in sight.

One-Man Power

Every successful concern is the result of a One-Man Power. Coöperation, technically, is an iridescent dream--things coöperate because the man makes them. He cements them by his will.

But find this Man, and get his confidence, and his weary eyes will look into yours and the cry of his heart shall echo in your ears. "O, for some one to help me bear this burden!"

Then he will tell you of his endless search for Ability, and of his continual disappointments and thwartings in trying to get some one to help himself by helping him.

Ability is the one crying need of the hour. The banks are bulging with money, and everywhere are men looking for work. The harvest is ripe. But the Ability to captain the unemployed and utilize the capital, is lacking--sadly lacking. In every city there are many five- and ten-thousand-dollar-a-year positions to be filled, but the only applicants are men who want jobs at fifteen dollars a week. Your man of Ability has a place already. Yes, Ability is a rare article.

But there is something that is much scarcer, something finer far, something rarer than this quality of Ability.

It is the ability to recognize Ability.

The sternest comment that ever can be made against employers as a class, lies in the fact that men of Ability usually succeed in showing their worth in spite of their employer, and not with his assistance and encouragement.

If you know the lives of men of Ability, you know that they discovered their power, almost without exception, thru chance or accident. Had the accident not occurred that made the opportunity, the man would have remained unknown and practically lost to the world. The experience of Tom Potter, telegraph operator at an obscure little way station, is truth painted large. That fearful night, when most of the wires were down and a passenger train went through the bridge, gave Tom Potter the opportunity of discovering himself. He took charge of the dead, cared for the wounded, settled fifty claims--drawing drafts on the company--burned the last vestige of the wreck, sunk the waste iron in the river and repaired the bridge before the arrival of the Superintendent on the spot.

"Who gave you the authority to do all this?" demanded the Superintendent.

"Nobody," replied Tom, "I assumed the authority."

The next month Tom Potter's salary was five thousand dollars a year, and in three years he was making ten times this, simply because he could get other men to do things.

Why wait for an accident to discover Tom Potter? Let us set traps for Tom Potter, and lie in wait for him. Perhaps Tom Potter is just around the corner, across the street, in the next room, or at our elbow. Myriads of embryonic Tom Potters await discovery and development if we but look for them.

I know a man who roamed the woods and fields for thirty years and never found an Indian arrow. One day he began to think "arrow," and stepping out of his doorway he picked one up. Since then he has collected a bushel of them.

Suppose we cease wailing about incompetence, sleepy indifference and slipshod "help" that watches the clock. These things exist--let us dispose of the subject by admitting it, and then emphasize the fact that freckled farmer boys come out of the West and East and often go to the front and do things in a masterly way. There is one name that stands out in history like a beacon light after all these twenty-five hundred years have passed, just because the man had the sublime genius of discovering Ability. That man is Pericles. Pericles made Athens.

And to-day the very dust of the streets of Athens is being sifted and searched for relics and remnants of the things made by people who were captained by men of Ability who were discovered by Pericles.

There is very little competition in this line of discovering Ability. We sit down and wail because Ability does not come our way. Let us think "Ability," and possibly we can jostle Pericles there on his pedestal, where he has stood for over a score of centuries--the man with a supreme genius for recognizing Ability. Hail to thee, Pericles, and hail to thee, Great Unknown, who shall be the first to successfully imitate this captain of men.

Mental Attitude

Success is in the blood. There are men whom fate can never keep down--they march forward in a jaunty manner, and take by divine right the best of everything that the earth affords. But their success is not attained by means of the Samuel Smiles-Connecticut policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily on.

Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every hand-clasp.

Do not fear being misunderstood; and never waste a moment thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your own mind what you would like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight to the goal.

Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate the shoal on which many a barque is stranded. When we become fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we hate, we have unshipped the rudder; and if ever we stop to meditate on what the gossips say, we have allowed a hawser to foul the screw.

Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought that you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual you so admire.

Thought is supreme, and to think is often better than to do.

Preserve a right mental attitude--the attitude of courage, frankness and good cheer.

Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation. Each animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet because he wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck has a web foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed.

Many people know this, but they do not know it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives. We want friends, so we scheme and chase 'cross lots after strong people, and lie in wait for good folks--or alleged good folks--hoping to be able to attach ourselves to them. The only way to secure friends is to be one. And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it. That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for others.

The individual who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered spirit more, will never lack for friends.

If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the stars, say to yourself again and yet again, "I am a part of all my eyes behold!" And the feeling then will come to you that you are no mere interloper between earth and heaven; but you are a necessary part of the whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you shall go down it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.

Like old Job, that which we fear will surely come upon us. By a wrong mental attitude we have set in motion a train of events that ends in disaster. People who die in middle life from disease, almost without exception, are those who have been preparing for death. The acute tragic condition is simply the result of a chronic state of mind--a culmination of a series of events.

Character is the result of two things, mental attitude, and the way we spend our time. It is what we think and what we do that make us what we are.

By laying hold on the forces of the universe, you are strong with them. And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries will course red corpuscles, and in your heart the determined resolution is born to do and to be. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

The Outsider

When I was a farmer lad I noticed that whenever we bought a new cow, and turned her into the pasture with the herd, there was a general inclination on the part of the rest to make the new cow think she had landed in the orthodox perdition. They would hook her away from the salt, chase her from the water, and the long-horned ones, for several weeks, would lose no opportunity to give her vigorous digs, pokes and prods.

With horses it was the same. And I remember one particular little black mare that we boys used to transfer from one pasture to another, just to see her back into a herd of horses and hear her hoofs play a resounding solo on their ribs as they gathered round to do her mischief.

Men are animals just as much as are cows, horses and pigs; and they manifest similar proclivities. The introduction of a new man into an institution always causes a small panic of resentment, especially if he be a person of some power. Even in schools and colleges the new teacher has to fight his way to overcome the opposition he is certain to meet.

In a lumber camp, the newcomer would do well to take the initiative, like that little black mare, and meet the first black look with a short-arm jab.

But in a bank, department store or railroad office this cannot be. So the next best thing is to endure, and win out by an attention to business to which the place is unaccustomed. In any event, the bigger the man, unless he has the absolute power to overawe everything, the more uncomfortable will be his position until gradually time smooths the way and new issues come up for criticism, opposition and resentment, and he is forgotten.

The idea of Civil Service Reform--promotion for the good men in your employ rather than hiring new ones for the big places--is a rule which looks well on paper but is a fatal policy if carried out to the letter.

The business that is not progressive is sowing the seeds of its own dissolution. Life is a movement forward, and all things in nature that are not evolving into something better are preparing to return into their constituent elements. One general rule for progress in big business concerns is the introduction of new blood. You must keep step with the business world. If you lag behind, the outlaws that hang on the flanks of commerce will cut you out and take you captive, just as the wolves lie in wait for the sick cow of the plains.

To keep your columns marching you must introduce new methods, new inspiration and seize upon the best that others have invented or discovered.

The great railroads of America have evolved together. No one of them has an appliance or a method that is much beyond the rest. If it were not for this interchange of men and ideas some railroads would still be using the link and pin, and snake-heads would be as common as in the year 1869.

The railroad manager who knows his business is ever on the lookout for excellence among his men, and he promotes those who give an undivided service. But besides this he hires a strong man occasionally from the outside and promotes him over everybody. Then out come the hammers!

But this makes but little difference to your competent manager--if a place is to be filled and he has no one on his payroll big enough to fill it, he hires an outsider.

That is right and well for every one concerned. The new life of many a firm dates from the day they hired a new man.

Communities that intermarry raise a fine crop of scrubs, and the result is the same in business ventures. Two of America's largest publishing houses failed for a tidy sum of five millions or so each, a few years ago, just thru a dogged policy, that extended over a period of fifty years, of promoting cousins, uncles and aunts whose only claim of efficiency was that they had been on the pension roll for a long time. This way lies dry-rot.

If you are a business man, and have a position of responsibility to be filled, look carefully among your old helpers for a man to promote. But if you haven't a man big enough to fill the place, do not put in a little one for the sake of peace. Go outside and find a man and hire him--never mind the salary if he can man the position--wages are always relative to earning power. This will be the only way you can really man your ship.

As for Civil Service Rules--rules are made to be broken. And as for the long-horned ones who will attempt to make life miserable for your new employe, be patient with them. It is the privilege of everybody to do a reasonable amount of kicking, especially if the person has been a long time with one concern and has received many benefits.