t expended than any other of the many human
characteristics which might be classed as Instruments of
Accomplishment." But this was not always true. In the beginning "big
business" assumed an arrogant, high-handed attitude toward the public
and rode rough-shod over its feelings and rights whenever possible. This
was especially the case among the big monopolies and public service
corporations, and much of the antagonism against the railroads to-day is
the result of the methods they used when they first began to lay tracks
and carry passengers. Nor was this sort of thing limited to the large
concerns. Small business consisted many times of trickery executed
according to David Harum's motto of "Do unto the other feller as he
would like to do unto you, but do him fust." The public is a
long-suffering body and the business man is a hard-headed one, but
after a while the public began to realize that it was not necessary to
put up with gross rudeness and the business man began to realize that a
policy of pleasantness was much better than the "treat 'em rough" idea
upon which he had been acting. He deserves no special credit for it. It
was as simple and as obvious a thing as putting up an umbrella when it
is raining.

People knew, long before this enlightened era of ours, that politeness
had value. In one of the oldest books of good manners in the English
language a man with "an eye to the main chance" advised his pupils to
cultivate honesty, gentleness, propriety, and deportment because they
paid. But it has not been until recently that business men as a whole
have realized that courtesy is a practical asset to them. Business
cannot be separated from money and there is no use to try. Men work that
they may live. And the reason they have begun to develop and exploit
courtesy is that they have discovered that it makes for better work and
better living. Success, they have learned, in spite of the conspicuous
wealth of several magnates who got their money by questionable means,
depends upon good will and good will depends upon the square deal
courteously given.

The time is within the memory of living men, and very young men at that,
when the idea of putting courtesy into business dealings sprang up, but
it has taken hold remarkably. When the Hudson Tubes were opened not
quite a decade and a half ago Mr. McAdoo inaugurated what was at that
time an almost revolutionary policy. He took the motto, "The Public be
Pleased," instead of