re accustomed to wearing glasses,
although he did not have them on, and when he asked about it he
discovered that the boy had broken his glasses a few days before, and
that he had not had them fixed because he did not have money enough.

"Why didn't you tell us about it?" the employment manager asked.

"It was not your fault that I broke them," the boy replied. "It was up
to me," an independent answer which in itself indicates how much worth
while it was to keep him.

The manager gave him money enough to have the glasses mended, the next
day the boy was back at work, and there was no more trouble.

An employee in the same organization unintentionally did something which
hurt the president of the firm a great deal. But when he went to him and
apologized (it takes a man to admit that he is wrong and apologize for
it) the president sent him back to his desk, "It's all right, boy," he
said, "I know you care. That's enough."

In a big department store in New England there was a girl a few years
back with an alert mind, an assertive personality, and a tremendous fund
of energy. She was in the habit of giving constructive suggestions to
the heads of the departments in which she worked, and because of her
youth and manner, they resented it. "I took her into my office," the
manager said. "I'm the only one she can be impertinent to there and I
don't mind it. It is a bad manifestation of a good quality, and in time
the disagreeable part of it will wear off. She will make an excellent
business woman."

"If a man finds fault with a boy without explaining the cause to him,"
we are quoting here from an executive in a highly successful Middle
Western firm, "I won't fire the boy, I fire the man. We have not a
square inch of space in this organization for the man who criticizes a
subordinate without telling him how to do better." Unless the plan of
management is big enough to include every one from the oldest saint to
the youngest sinner it is no good. Business built on oppression and
cut-throat competition, whether the competition is between employer and
employee or between rival firms, is war, and war, industrial or
political, is still what General Sherman called it some years ago.

We hold no brief for paternalism. We have no patience with it. All that
we want is a spirit of fairness and cooeperation which will give every
man a chance to make good on his own account. This spirit inevitably
flowers into courtesy. In every place