business house that by the very force
of its directness and worth has incurred the enmity of many rivals. In
fact, there is a very general conspiracy on hand to put the institution
down and out. In talking with a young man employed by this house, he
yawned and said, "Oh, in this quarrel I am neutral."

"But you get your bread and butter from this firm, and in a matter where
the very life of the institution is concerned, I do not see how you can
be a neutral."

And he changed the subject.

I think that if I enlisted in the Japanese army I would not be a
neutral.

Business is a fight--a continual struggle--just as life is. Man has
reached his present degree of development through struggle. Struggle
there must be and always will be. The struggle began as purely physical;
as man evolved it shifted ground to the mental, psychic, and the
spiritual, with a few dashes of cave-man proclivities still left. But
depend upon it, the struggle will always be--life is activity. And when
it gets to be a struggle in well-doing, it will still be a struggle.
When inertia gets the better of you it is time to telephone to the
undertaker.

The only real neutral in this game of life is a dead one.

Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of every other
good thing.

A business that is not safeguarded on every side by active, alert,
attentive, vigilant men is gone. As oxygen is the disintegrating
principle of life, working night and day to dissolve, separate, pull
apart and dissipate, so there is something in business that continually
tends to scatter, destroy and shift possession from this man to that. A
million mice nibble eternally at every business venture.

The mice are not neutrals, and if enough employes in a business house
are neutrals, the whole concern will eventually come tumbling about
their ears.

I like that order of Field-Marshal Oyama: "Give every honorable neutral
that you find in our lines the honorable jiu-jitsu hikerino."

Reflections on Progress

Renan has said that truth is always rejected when it comes to a man for
the first time, its evolution being as follows:

First, we say the thing is rank heresy, and contrary to the Bible.

Second, we say the matter really amounts to nothing, anyway.

Third, we declare that we always believed it.

Two hundred years ago partnerships in business were very rare. A man in
business simply made things and sold them--and all the manufacturing was
done