How are they to find the money?
They go to a banker — put their problem up to him. He has not the money himself, but he knows how and where to raise it. He sells the promise to pay of the foreign country (their bonds, in other words) to people who have money to invest. His is merely a service. But it is such an invaluable service that both sides are glad to pay him liberally for it.
In the same way, by opening up a channel between universal supply and human needs — by doing your neighbors or your friends or your customer’s service — you are bound to profit yourself. And the wider you open your channel — the greater service you give or the better values you offer — the more things are bound to flow through your channel, the more you are going to profit thereby.
But you’ve got to use your talent if you want to profit from it. It matters not how small your service — using it will make it greater. You don’t have to retire to a cell and pray. That is a selfish method — selfish concern for your own soul to the exclusion of all others. Mere self-denial or asceticism as such does no one good. You’ve got to DO something, to USE the talents God has given you to make the world better for your having been in it.
Remember the parable of the talents. You know what happened to the man who went off and hid his talent, whereas those who made use of theirs were given charge over many things.
That parable, it has always seemed to me, expresses the whole law of life. The only right is to use all the forces of good. The only wrong is to neglect or to abuse them.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. This is the first and the greatest Commandment.” Thou shalt show thy love by using to the best possible advantage the good things (the “talents” of the parable) that He has placed in your hands. “And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thou shalt not abuse the good things that have been provided you in such prodigality, by using them against your neighbor. Instead, thou shalt treat him (love him) as he would treat you. Thou shalt use the good about you for the advantage of all.
If you are a banker, you’ve got to use the money you have in order to make more money. If you are a merchant, you’ve got to sell the goods you have in order to buy more goods. If you are a doctor, you must help the patient you have in order to get more practice. If you are a clerk, you must do your work a little better than those around you if you want to earn more money than they. And if you want more of the universal supply, you must use that which you have in such a way as to make yourself of greater service to those around you.
“Whosoever shall be great among you,” said Jesus, “shall be your minister, and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.” In other words, if you would be great, you must serve. And he who serves most shall be greatest of all.
If you want to make more money, instead of seeking it for yourself, see how you can make more for others. In the process you will inevitably make more for yourself, too. We get as we give — but we must give first.
It matters not where you start — you may be a day laborer. But still you can give — give a bit more of energy, of work, of thought, than you are paid for. “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile,” said Jesus, “go with him twain.” Try to put a little extra skill into your work. Use your mind to find some better way of doing whatever task may be set for you. It won’t be long before you are out of the common labor class.
There is no kind of work than cannot be bettered by thought. There is no method that cannot be improved by thought. So give generously of your thought to your work. Think every minute you are at it — “Isn’t there some way in which this could be done easier, quicker, better?” Read in your spare time everything that relates to your own work or to the job ahead of you. In these days of magazines and books and libraries, few are the occupations that are not thoroughly covered in some good work.
Remember in Lorimer’s “Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son,” the young fellow that old Gorgan Graham hired against his better judgment and put in the “barrel gang” just to get rid of him quickly? Before the month was out the young fellow had thought himself out of that job by persuading the boss to get a machine that did the work at half the cost and with a third of the gang. Graham just had to raise his pay and put him higher up. But he wouldn’t stay put. No matter what the job, he always found some way it could be done better and with fewer people, until he reached the top of the ladder.
There are plenty of men like that in actual life. They won’t stay down. They are as full of bounce as a cat with a small boy and a dog after it. Thrown to the dog from an upper window, it is using the time of falling to get set for the next jump. By the time the dog leaps for where it hit, the cat is up the tree across the street.
The true spirit of business is the spirit of that plucky old Danish sea captain, Peter Tordenskjold. Attacked by a Swedish frigate, after all his crew but one had been killed and his supply of cannon balls was exhausted, Peter boldly kept up the fight, firing pewter dinner-plates and mugs from his one remaining gun.
One of the pewter mugs hit the Swedish captain and killed him, and Peter sailed off triumphant!
Look around YOU now. How can YOU give greater value for what you get? How can you SERVE better? How can you make more money for your employers or save more for your customers? Keep that thought ever in the forefront of your mind and you’ll never need to worry about making more for yourself!
A Blank Check
There was an article by Gardner Hunting in a recent issue of “Christian Business,” that was so good that I reprint it here entire:
“All my life I have known in a vague way that getting money is the result of earning it; but I have never had a perfect vision of that truth till recently. Summed up now, the result of all my experience, pleasant and unpleasant, is that a man gets back exactly what he gives out, only multiplied.
“If I give to anybody service of a kind that he wants I shall get back the benefit myself. If I give more service I shall get more benefit. If I give a great deal more, I shall get a great deal more. But I shall get back more than I give. Exactly as when I plant a bushel of potatoes, I get back thirty or forty bushels, and more in proportion to the attention I give the growing crop. If I give more to my employer than he expects of me, he will give me a raise — and on no other condition. What is more, his giving me a raise does not depend on his fair-mindedness — he has to give it to me or lose me, because if he does not appreciate me somebody else will.
“But this is only part of it. If I give help to the man whose desk is next to mine, it will come back to me multiplied, even if he apparently is a rival. What I give to him, I give to the firm, and the firm will value it, because it is teamwork in the organization that the firm primarily wants, not brilliant individual performance. If I have an enemy in the organization, the same rule holds; if I give him, with the purpose of helping him, something that will genuinely help him, I am giving service to the organization. Great corporations appreciate the peacemaker, for a prime requisite in their success is harmony among employees. If my boss is unappreciative, the same rule holds; if I give him more, in advance of appreciation, he cannot withhold his appreciation and keep his own job.
“The more you think about this law, the deeper you will see it goes. It literally hands you a blank check, signed by the Maker of Universal Law, and leaves you to fill in the amount — and the kind — of payment you want! Mediocre successes are those that obey this law a little way — that fill in the check with a small amount — but that stop short of big vision in it. If every employee would only get the idea of this law firmly fixed in him as a principle, not subject to wavering with fluctuating moods, the success of the organization would be miraculous. One of my fears is apt to be that, by promoting
