can reform the world, but every old man who has lived in it knows
that it cannot be done. Somewhere half way between they meet and say,
"We'll keep working at it just the same," and then business begins to
pick up. But reaching the meeting ground takes tolerance and patience
and infinite politeness from both sides.

"It is the grossest sort of incivility," the quotation is not exact,
for we do not remember the source, "to be contemptuous of any kind of
knowledge." And herein lies the difficulty between the hard-headed
business man of twenty years' experience and the youngster upon whose
diploma the ink has not yet dried. "Ignorance," declares a man who has
spent his life in trying to draw capital and labor together and has
succeeded in hundreds of factories, "is the cause of all trouble." And a
lack of understanding, which is a form of ignorance, is the cause of
nearly all discourtesy.

So long as there is discourtesy in the world there must be protection
against it, and the best, cheapest, and easiest means of protection is
courtesy itself. Boats which are in constant danger of being run into,
such as the tug and ferry boats in a busy harbor, are fitted out with
buffers or fenders which are as much a part of their equipment as the
smokestack, and in many cases, as necessary. Ocean liners carry fenders
to be thrown over the side when there is need for them, but this
naturally is not as often as in more crowded waters. A single boat on a
deserted sea with nothing but sea-gulls and flying fish in sight cannot
damage any one besides herself. But the moment she enters a harbor she
has to take into account every other vessel in it from the _Aquitania_
to the flat-bottomed row-boat with only one man in it. It is a
remarkable fact that most of the boats that are injured or sunk by
collision are damaged by vessels much smaller than themselves. Most of
these accidents (this statement is given on the authority of an able
seaman) could have been prevented by the use of a fender thrown over the
side at the proper moment. Politeness is like this. It is the finest
shock absorber in the world, as essential from an economic point of view
as it is pleasant from a social one. In business there is no royal
isolation. We are all ferry boats. We need our shock absorbers every
minute of the day.

No boat has a right to run into another, but they do it just the same,
and a shock absorber is worth all the curses the captain and the crew
ca