ur employer by
clipping your hours, shirking your work, by carelessness or
indifference, without robbing yourself of infinitely more, of capital
which is worth vastly more than money capital--the chance to make a man
of yourself, the chance to have a clean record behind you instead of a
smirched one.

If you think you are being kept back, if you are working for too small
a salary, if favoritism puts some one into a position above you which
you have justly earned, never mind, no one can rob you of your greatest
reward, the skill, the efficiency, the power you have gained, the
consciousness of doing your level best, of giving the best thing in you
to your employer, all of which advantages you will carry with you to
your next position, whatever it may be.

Don't say to yourself, "I am not paid for doing this extra work; I do
not get enough salary, anyway, and it is perfectly right for me to
shirk when my employer is not in sight or to clip my hours when I can,"
for this means a loss of self-respect. You will never again have the
same confidence in your ability to succeed; you will always be
conscious that you have done a little, mean thing, and no amount of
juggling with yourself can induce that inward monitor which says
"right" to the well-done thing and "wrong" to the botched work, to
alter its verdict in your favor. There is something within you that
you cannot bribe; a divine sense of justice and right that can not be
blindfolded. Nothing will ever compensate you for the loss of faith in
yourself. You may still succeed when others have lost confidence in
you, but never when you have lost confidence in yourself. If you do
not respect yourself; if you do not believe in yourself, your career is
at an end so far as its upward tendency is concerned.

Then again, an employee's reputation is his capital. In the absence of
money capital, his reputation means everything. It not only follows
him around from one employer to another, but it also follows him when
he goes into business for himself, and is always either helping or
hindering him, according to its nature.

Contrast the condition of a young man starting out for himself who has
looked upon his position as a sacred trust, a great opportunity,
backed, buttressed, and supported by a splendid past, an untarnished
reputation--a reputation for being a dead-in-earnest hard worker,
square, loyal, and true to his employer's interests--with that of
another young man of