55o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



loyalty, and we rather overdo the thing at times in the southern states 

 where we keep up family feuds one generation after another, and vote 

 with one political party all our lives through thick and thin. In his 

 story of " Ked Kock," Thomas Nelson Page expresses the more serious 

 southerner's view when he says of the soldier, " It is loyalty, not success, 

 that is knightly" (p. 145). 



Without making any fine distinctions, I start with the proposition 

 that loyalty is the most valuable attainment, if we may call it an 

 attainment, or the most valuable trait of character, if that is a better 

 name, that any man or any people can have in this life. And I chal- 

 lenge any one who questions this theory to put the matter to any test 

 he chooses to apply from the highest moral standards down to the 

 lowest commercial ones. 



Now loyalty has to do with our relations to principles, to organiza- 

 tions, to communities and to persons. I would have it distinctly under- 

 stood that I regard loyalty to a right principle as the highest type of 

 loyalty, and the kind that must always be most satisfactory in the end. 

 Practical illustrations of the importance of the professional forms of 

 loyalty are constantly falling under our attention, and it is chiefly of 

 these that I shall speak. These lower types consist in loyalty to organi- 

 zations of various kinds and to individuals. As many people insist 

 on the commercial standards of values let us see, if we can, what 

 business men think of it. 



When you get through your university studies and go out into the 

 affairs of life, if you become employers of other men, you will lay great 

 stress on the loyalty of those you have about you. You may not put 

 it to yourselves in just this form, but if you are wise, you will none 

 the less be influenced as much, or even more, by the loyalty of your 

 employees than by any other one quality they may have. You will say 

 of every man you engage : " If I can't trust this man to think of and 

 work for my interests, I don't want him around, no matter how skilful 

 he may be in his particular line of work." 



If you seek employment under others you must surely count on 

 having to meet this test yourselves, for this will be the unfailing 

 attitude of your employers. And the more important the position you 

 are to occupy the more weight will be given to this particular trait of 

 your character. 



The matter simply reduces itself to this, that a man who is not 

 loyal is not wanted by anybody for anything. 



In a business like that of mining, consulting geologist and the like, 

 what do you suppose a man would be worth who was not loyal to the 

 interests of his employer ? How long would any one keep an employee 

 who was not loyal? How long ought he to be kept? 



Let us take a simple case : Imagine a man employed to examine 



