By Clarence Poe
My Dear Boy:
I spoke last night (as I write this) in a small town. My first plan was to leave at 10 o’clock, getting to my next destination, 40 miles away, at midnight. But when I got ready to start with the man who had been hired to carry me, his flivver wasn’t ready. One tire was flat and he hadn’t put in either gasoline or oil.
“All right, then,” said I, “let’s wait and start at 6 o’clock tomorrow morning. Can you be ready to start at six?” He said he could, and I went to bed. At 5 o’clock this morning I was awake, and in order to be ready in time, I would not let myself go back to sleep. But was my man ready at six sharp? Not by a long sight.
After waiting three-quarters of an hour without his yet making his appearance, I finally found out where he lived and went down and got him out of bed at 6:45—and then found that he hadn’t finished fixing his car last night, but had largely left that job for this morning. And when we finally did get started—more than an hour last—he had forgotten to put water in his radiator!
My boy, I am telling you all this for a purpose.
I have had a lot to say these last twelve months about cooperative marketing—and I haven’t said half enough. I am going to keep right on talking about it until every open-minded farmer and business man in the South sees its advantages.
I have also had a lot to say about the need for the farmer’s getting a square deal from our financial institutions, from the government, the railroads, etc.—and I haven’t said half enough about this subject either.
But what I wish to say to you right now is this: Not all the cooperative marketing we can imagine, nor all the economic and political reforms we can think of, will make a success of you unless you have the fundamental bed-rock virtues of reliability, dependability, honesty, and integrity.
This man robbed me of an hour’s time. He might just as well have robbed me of so much money. It is indeed just as wrong to steal a man’s time as his cash. “Would you waste life?” asked Poor Richard. “Then do not waste time, for time is the stuff life is made of.”
Should I get into this little town again, would I again hire this man to carry me anywhere? Not if I could help it. Will my friends who recommended him to me feel satisfied about recommending him to other travelers, in view of the treatment I got? They are not likely to do so. He is likely to lose business to someone else who will give better service and therefore win greater prosperity.
Punctuality, dependability, reliability—these are fundamental virtues which you must possess if you are to succeed, and no sort of government or social order can make up for your failure to develop and exercise these basic qualities of genuine manhood.
Let me give you another incident. A man came to see me a few weeks ago, telling me that he was in desperate straights and that unless he got $15 right away, his family was bound to suffer seriously. He made the most solemn promises to pay me back the following week, if I would only let him have the money. Although he had no claim of kinship or friendship even, and it was not at all convenient to let him have the money, I finally did. “I am not even going to ask for your note,” I said. “I am trusting to your honor.”
But the next week passed, and the next and the next—and he hasn’t yet paid me a penny.
Sometime or other this man may need money again—ten times as seriously as he needed it this time. But he has broken his word and I cannot trust him again. It is only by faithfulness in small matters that a man develops a reputation that helps him with his bigger and more serious affairs.
I once had a man on my farm. I wished to treat him not only right but a little more than right, as I wished to encourage him and his children. But he would take no interest in my work except the pay he could get out of me. He made no effort to be thrifty, economical, or saving with crops, supplies, machinery, etc. He did not see to it that his children gave good service when they also were hired for work.
I wished to keep this man on my place for along time and I intended to pay him more than he would get elsewhere. But of course his failure to be reliable, energetic, and saving prevented me from doing so.
Another man I know has the habit of forgetting. And while he recognizes this fact, he will not form the corrective habit of keeping a notebook and jotting down matters that call for his attention. All my life I have found a notebook invaluable. In fact, the very act of writing down a memorandum helps fix it in your memory. But he seems to think it enough to say apologetically: “Oh, I am so forgetful anyway!”
But an excuse is worth nothing. Which reminds me that there’s a good motto hanging in one of our Progressive Farmer offices: “Don’t make excuses: Make Good.” And of course this man has not made the success in life that he would have made if he had recognized the fact that a weakness is not made to be excused but to be corrected—if it is humanly possible to correct it, and usually it is. It is true indeed as the poet says—
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
I know that in my own case some of my most serious mistakes have proved to be the best things that have ever happened to me—because of the lessons I learned from them and the changed policies they led me to adopt.
Of course all these illustrations that I have given—the flivver-driver’s unreliability; the farm worker’s failure to take a real interest in his work; the borrower’s failure to keep his word; my friend’s failure to tray seriously to correct a weakness—all these are the verist commonplaces of everyday life. There is (more’s the pity) nothing unusual about any of them.
Nevertheless, these commonplace, everyday faults are the rocks on which possibly nine-tenths of our young men make shipwreck of their lives, and it is for that reason that I want you to think about them and keep on thinking about them.
Of course our people have got to improve general conditions. We have got to get more nearly a square deal for the farmer. We have got to establish a government which will insure “equal right for all and special privileges for none.” But while you are yet a boy, I want you to face the fact which I mentioned in the onset—namely, that none of these outward things will make a success of your life (this one and only earthly life that is given you in all God’s eternity of years) unless you have in you the fundamental virtues.
There are four things that are often said of a man than which there are few earthly things finer.
One is that the man has character—that he is “straight as a shingle.”
One is that he lives right—is “clean as hound’s tooth.”
A third is that he has dependability—“his word is as good as his bond.”
The fourth is that he has industry—that “he hasn’t a lazy bone in his body.”
If you so live that men will say these four simple, folksy, everyday things about you, you will have the foundation on which real success may be laid. And no reforms in all the world outside—much as they are needed—will give you success unless you have these four qualities eternally pulsating inside your own heart. And for the sake of your own future, I beg you to think about these four things.
Sincerely your friend,
Clarence Poe
From page 11 of The Progressive Farmer, Saturday, March 25, 1922. Poe was editor of Progressive Farmer, a weekly magazine published each Saturday. The clubs referred to in the article are the early form of 4-H Clubs.
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