Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 177, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1920 — BEAR HEAVY LOAD [ARTICLE]

BEAR HEAVY LOAD

Some of the Trials of PresentDay Executives. I Man Who Complained That There Were Na Efficient People in the World Had Some Excuse for Hie Bitter, ness—Trouble Is Moral. Several years ago, when 1 had just been promoted to my first real job, 1 called on a business friend of mine. He is a wise and experienced handler of men. 1 asked him what suggestions he could make about executive responsibility, writes Bruce Barton, in the Red Book.

“You are about to make a great discovery,” he said. “Within a week or two you will know why It is that executives grow gray and die before their time. You will have learned the bitter truth that there are no efficient people in the world." I am still very far from admitting that he was right,' but 1 know well enough what he meant. Every maa knows, who has ever been responsible for a piece of work or had to meet a pay roll. Recently another friend of mine built a house. The money to build it represented a difficult period of saving on the par| of”himself and his wife, it meant overtime work and self-de-nial, and extra effort in behalf of a long-cherisbed dream. One day when the work was well along he visited it. and saw a workman climbing a ladder to the roof with a little bunch of shingles in his hands. "Look here,” the foreman cried, "can’t you carry a whole bundle of shingles?" The workman regarded him sullenly. “I suppose I could,” he answered. “if I wanted to bnll the job.” By “bull the job" he- meant “do an honest day's work.” At 10 o’clock one morning I met still another man in his office in New York, Ha, was munching a sandwich and gulping a cup of coffee which his secretary had brought in to him. “I had to work late last night,” he said, “and meet a very early appointment this morning. My wife asked our maid to have breakfast a half hour early so that I might have a bite and still be here in time.

“When I came down to breakfast the maid was still In bed.” She lives in his home and eats and is clothed by means of money which his brain provides; but she has no Interest in his success, no care whatever except to do the minimum sos work. , I “The real trouble with the world today Is a moral trouble,” said a thoughtful man recently. “A large proportion of Its people have lost all conception of what it means to render an adequate service in return for the wages they are paid.” He is a generous man. On almost any sort of question his sympathies are likely to be with labor, and so are mine. lam glad that men work shorter hours than they used to, and in certain Instances I think the hours should be even shorter. I am glad they are paid higher wages, and hope they may earn still more. But there are times when my sympathy goes out to those in whose behalf no voice is ever raised—to the executives of the world, whose hours are limited only by the limit of their physical and mental endurance; who carry not merely the load of their own work, but the heartbreaking load of carelessness and stolid indifference in so many of the folks whom they employ. Perhaps the most successful execn- - tlve in history was that centurion of the Bible. “For I am a man of authority, having soldiers under me.” he said. "And I say to this man go, and he goeth; and to another, come, and he cometh; and ■ to my servant, do this, and he doeth ! it.” i Marvelous man! The modern executive also says, “Go.” and too often the man who should have gone will appear a day or two later and explain. "I didn t understand what you meant.” He says, “Come,” and at the appointed time his telephone rings and a voice speaks saying. “I overslept and will" be there in about three-quarters of an hour.”