RADIANCIES OF SINCERITY

We need more of the virtue of belligerent sincerity. What the world needs to-day is bold, outspokenness for principle. It is not enough that we hold principles in the quietude of our own homes and discuss them in the sanctity of our bedrooms. We need a belligerent sincerity of fundamental principles in the mart, the store, in the counting house, in the bank, on the board of trade, and the stock exchange. The tendency of men in office and men in employment is to be subservient for the purpose of their own advancement. It is so easy to yield a principle to gain an increase in salary or to win the support of a swaying party vote. In this age of great aggregations of capital, when corporations are conducting gigantic enterprises, it is so easy for subordinates to place all the responsibility of conscience upon their chiefs and to refuse to accept responsibility for acts of which they themselves are the instruments on the plea, "I am but a servant and carry out the will of my superior." Relentless crushing out of competitors, secretly securing rebates, unjust discrimination in discounts, the utilization of official information for personal advantage or that of one's friends, the writing of editorials contrary to one's principles because the policies of the paper require it, in other words, the whole realm of truckling subserviency, yielding, cowardice, obsequiousness, surrender, fawning, servility, sycophancy, toad-eating, pliancy, should be weeded out of the garden of the soul and belligerent sincerity planted in their stead.

At the same time, I want to radiate my abhorrence of all the truckling subserviency that seeks to gain its ends and make secure its own position by cringing, fawning, and flattery upon those whose favor it seeks.

Most men have their pet vanities. Few are free from weaknesses and frailties. It is so easy to flatter, so natural to "kow-tow," so profitable to pander. The reason that the world so laughs at the delineations of the open, bold, corrupt, parasitical, pandering Falstaff is that they find the echo in their own meannesses of soul. Like Henry VII, many men have their Falstaffs, who seek to eat, drink, and be merry at their expense.

By this I do not mean to decry and impeach the integrity and sincerity of those who express sympathy and appreciation of those who are engaged in large enterprises. It is natural for those conducting such to seek and require such sympathy in their lieutenants, but to such lieutenants I would cry mightily and constantly, "Sympathize and commend by all means, but when you do, be sure your purest virtue is on guard over your heart and your lips. Say nothing that you do not absolutely mean." Be "belligerently sincere" with your own soul and speak no words to your employer because he enjoys them that you would not as freely and gladly say if he had dismissed you from his employ.

I would also radiate my appreciation of those who, occupying what we call a subordinate position, speak out with frank, plain, direct simplicity the thoughts of their hearts. I have sometimes found in business, employers who sought by undue flattery, scheming, plotting, chicanery, and fraud, all stealthily exercised, to "work" their employees and secure from them a meed of service for which they were not willing to pay a full and just price. In dealing with such employers a frank, open, simple-hearted, and honest employee is often at a great disadvantage. Being used to tortuous, underground, secret, plotting methods himself, such an employer regards with suspicion the simple actions of his employee. He sees in his frank openness nothing but deeply laid plots. He finds in his candid sincerity craftily planned schemes. The more open the one, the more certain the other is that there is something hidden, deep, far-reaching, cunning, and deceitful underneath his acts.

To these open-hearted souls I would radiate a tonic that is stimulating—quickening to their moral fiber and stiffening and strengthening to their moral spines. To such I would come as a cold shower bath to stimulate the nerves and muscles to greater tension. Stand by your truthfulness, stand by your frankness, stand by your openness until you teach these burrowing, crafty, stealthy, sly, evasive, sneaking creatures that openness is better than secrecy, light better than darkness, truth better than falsity, candor better than craft, and an open enemy better than a secret, fawning, sycophantic foe.