Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/683

Rh by the unionist principle that the better workers must not discredit the worse by exceeding them in efficiency, he may trace to the immoral belief" (well put!) "that the unworthy should fare as well as the worthy. To-morrow it turns out that business for the plumber has been provided by damage which the brick-layers have done." And so daily and hourly do we feel that the moral imperfections of the community are fit subjects for such altruistic efforts as may help to raise the average morality.

While we thus recognize that our well-being depends so greatly on the well-being of others—their health and bodily capacities, their sense and knowledge, and their moral qualities—that due regard for others is essential to the happiness of self, we see further that each member of the body social gains directly by the possession and exercise of such qualities as lead or enable him to help his fellows. Among the proverbs which present in brief the ideas of a race as to what is good and bad, are many which imply that regard for the interest and welfare of others is bad policy. Such proverbs can not be regarded as expressing "the wisdom of many" by "the wit of one," for experience proves abundantly that the policy of hardness and indifference is unwise and short-sighted. Even mere material success—which does not always mean happiness—is not advanced in the longrun by disregard of others. The man of business gains in unnumbered ways by consideration for the rights and interests of his fellow-workers, and loses in as many by selfish disregard for them. Nay, even in the trivial affairs of ordinary life, at home and abroad, the kindly and considerate gain constantly, while the careless and indifferent as constantly suffer. It is, however, when we consider happiness as distinguished from mere material success, and the general balance of comfort and enjoyment as distinguished from the effects of individual actions, that we see how much men gain by sympathetic and kindly, conduct. We see even first-rate abilities and untiring energy beaten easily in the race of life by the kindliness which makes friends of all around and leads to opportunities which the hard and ungenial fail to obtain. But when we rightly apprehend the nature of life, and what makes life worth living, we find the chief gain of the kindly, not in these material opportunities, but in the pleasanter ways along which their life's work leads them. Compare two men, toward the evening of life, of whom both perhaps have achieved a fair amount of material success in life, but one of hard, unkindly manners, the other genial and sympathetic; one alone in life's struggle, the other with "troops of friends" from first to last. Who can doubt, as he compares the worn and weary look of one with the bright and cheerful aspect of the other, that regard for others counts for something toward the welfare and the happiness of self?

Care for others helps so surely in life's struggle that it would be good policy for the naturally hard man to benefit others for purely