HE CAN WHO THINKS HE CAN, AN IRON WILL & PUSHING TO THE FRONT. Orison Swett Marden
in his very face and manner that there is something within him not for sale—something so sacred that he would regard the slightest attempt to debauch it as an unpardonable insult. He should so carry himself that no one would even dare to suggest that he could be bought or bribed.
Who was so corrupt during the Civil War that he would have dared to attempt to bribe Abraham Lincoln? There was something in that face that would have cowed the hardest character. Who would be bold enough to presume to bribe our present President?
Many a one has failed because he was not a man before he was a merchant, or a lawyer, or a manufacturer, or a statesman—because character was not the dominating influence in his life. If you are not a man first—if there is not a man behind your book, behind your sermon, behind your law brief, or your business transaction—if you are not larger than the money you make, the world will expose and despise your pretense and discount your success; history will cover up your memory no matter how much money you may leave.
That is the lesson of the startling disclosures of late. These men whose reputations have melted away so rapidly—men who have had such a drop in the public regard—were not real men to start with. There were flaws in their character foundations, and the superstructures of their achievement have fallen before the flood of public indignation. Those criminals in high places are beginning to realize that no smartness, brilliancy, genius, scheming, long-headed cunning, bluffing, or pretense can take the place of manhood or be a substitute for personal integrity.
There are men in New York, to-day, whose names have been a power, who would give every dollar they have for a clean record—if they could wipe off all their underhanded, questionable methods from the slate and start anew; but there is no way to buy a good name. It is above riches, and beyond the price of rubies.
How many men there are, to-day, in high positions who are in perpetual terror lest something should happen to expose the real facts of their lives—something which would pierce their masks and reveal them in their true light. How must a man feel who is conscious that he is walking all the time on the thin crust of a volcano which is liable to open at any moment and swallow him?
There is one thing no money or influence can buy; that is, the heart’s approval of a wrong deed or a questionable transaction. It will be bobbing up all along the future to remind you of your theft, of your dishonesty, or of your unfair advantage. It will take the edge off your enjoyment. It will appear, like Banquo’s ghost, at every feast to which you sit down.
Methinks that some of the men who have been exposed recently must have had strange dreams and horrid nightmares during their sleep, when the ghosts of the poor people whom they have wronged appeared to them and haunted their rest Methinks they must have had strange visions as these sacred dollars intended for widows and orphans slipped through their fingers for luxuries and amusements—dollars which had been wrung out of the lives of those who trusted them.
What a pitiable picture those great financial giants made, under investigation in courts of inquiry, squirming, ducking, dodging, and resorting to all sorts of ingenuity to avoid telling the exact truth—to keep from uncovering their tracks or exposing their crooked methods!
No man has a right to put himself in a position where he has to cover up anything or where he must be afraid of the truth. Every man should live so that he can hold up his head, look his kind in the face without wincing, and defy the world.
A man went to President Roosevelt, before the last presidential election, and told him that someone had unearthed a letter of his which would be extremely damaging to his canvass were it made public, and that, with a little diplomacy, the damaging part of the letter could be suppressed. After listening to the man, the great President said, "I have never written a letter which I am afraid to have published. Let them print the letter, the whole of it. I have nothing to conceal. I am not afraid to face anything I have ever done.”
How many of our public men dare take that attitude?
Isn’t it a disgrace to this fair land that there are men in our Senate and House of Representatives, and in almost every legislature, whose votes and influence can be bought, and upon whose honor there is a price?
If there is anything which a man in a responsible position ought to prize, it is the esteem of the young men who look up to him as their idol or hero. Is it strange, when our youth find their idols smashed, and their heroes betraying them, that their ideals should become blurred and twisted? Is it strange that they should ignore the old-fashioned methods of slow fortune-making when they see the smooth, oily, diplomatic schemers getting rich in a few months, and young men who were mere clerks a year ago, now riding in costly automobiles, giving expensive entertainments, and living in fine houses? Why should they not catch the spirit, and try to do the same thing themselves?
You wrongdoers in high places, if you should live as long as Methuselah, should devote every minute of the balance of your lives to doing good, and should give every farthing of your wealth to charity, you could not repair the damage you have done in crushing the ideals of these tens of thousands of youths who have looked up to you as their models of successful men. How can you escape responsibility for the crookedness which may be repeated in their lives when they shall come to fill these high positions which you now hold? They thought that square dealing, honesty, and integrity had been the secrets of your success, and now they see that it was won by your smooth, oily, cunning dishonesty—your ability to deceive, to cover your tracks, and to live a double life. Who but yourselves will be responsible for the cracks in their characters which may come from the terrible shaking of their confidence in humanity?
But, young men, don’t lose your faith in humanity—don’t let your fallen idols shake your faith in your fellow men—for the great majority of people are honest. Let these terrible examples that have recently been held up to you make you all the more determined to build your own superstructure on the eternal rock of right and justice. Let the man in you stand out so boldly in every transaction that the deed, or task you do, however great, will look insignificant in comparison. Get what you can and keep your own good name—not a penny more. A dollar more than that would make your whole fortune valueless.
If there is a pitiable sight in the world, it is that of a man. with the executive ability, sagacity, and foresight, to make a clean fortune, yet using his energies and abilities in making a dirty one—a fortune which denounces and condemns him, and is a perpetual disgrace to himself and his family.
The right ought to thunder so loudly in a man’s ears, no matter what the business or transaction in which he is engaged, that he cannot hear the wrong or baser suggestion.
Men have two kinds of ambition: one for dollar-making, the other for life-making. Some turn all their ability, education, health, and energy toward the first of these—dollar-making—and call the result success. Others turn them toward the second—into character, usefulness, helpfulness, life-making—and the world sometimes calls them failures; but history calls them successes. No price is too great to pay for an untarnished name.
The highest service you can ever render the world, the greatest thing you can ever do, is to make yourself the largest, completest, and squarest man possible. There is no other fame like that—no achievement like that.
Chapter XVIII.
Getting Away From Poverty
“THOSE who have the misfortune to be rich men’s sons are heavily weighted in the race,” says Andrew Carnegie. “The vast majority of rich men’s sons are unable to resist the temptations to which wealth subjects them, and they sink to unworthy lives. It is not from this class that the poor beginner has rivalry to fear. The partner’s sons will never trouble you [the poor boys,] much, but look out that some boys poorer, much poorer, than yourselves, whose parents cannot afford to give them any schooling, do not challenge you at the post and pass you at the grandstand. Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work directly from the common school, and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is the probable dark horse that will take all the money and win