SELLING LUMBER 



127 



piness is the highest motive we can work for; and when you are 

 selling good goods to a customer you are creating happiness. You 

 are doing them good. Not doing them good, but doing them good. 

 (Laughter). You know how to do both, if you want. The first 

 is production; that is the first of the five. There are more dol- 

 lars and human brains invested in producing things than all the 

 others combined. I don't know what Venus and Mars are doing, 

 our neighboring planets, but I do know that the earth is a pro- 

 ducing unit. Next comes distribution, distributing the products 

 thus made, man to man, city to city, and so forth. That is an 

 enormous part of business. The next is government, then edu- 

 cation, and then religion, arranged in the order of business con- 

 venience, or the relative amount of dollars invested in each. One 

 city, New York, leads because more men of business live there. 

 The men and women who make their living by selling their edu- 

 cational and religious ideas, for which we pay them, happen to 

 be the last of them all. 



Now, there is no one out of those five. If there is, he ought 

 to be locked up. Why ? Because he tends to spread human misery 

 by the thing he is doing, if he is not doing one of those five. 

 Now, I can name some things not included there. You take the 

 thief. He is not producing or distributing anything, aiding the 

 conduct of government, sowing education or sowing religion, . but 

 he is spreading human misery, and that is the reason he ought 

 to be locked up. Does the thing you are doing create human 

 happiness, or human misery? If it tends to create human misery, 

 you are wrong and abnormal and insane. Every man who wants 

 to create human misery has got something wrong with his up- 

 per story, or wrong with his heart. Now, the gossip what is she 

 doing? She sees Mr. Smith walk down the street with Mrs. 

 Jones and turn the corner and disappear, and says: "There is 

 something doing now." Merely because of a courtesy to a lady 

 friend this she-devil says: "Now, look at that!" She is insane. 

 We ought to have the spirit of the boy and play the game of life 

 lightly. I believe we ought to have more life, even when we are 

 gray-haired. I like to flirt. (Laughter). God Almighty knows 

 that, and you might as well know it. (Laughter). I like to flirt 

 with my neighbor's wife, and I like for him to flirt with my wife. 

 If she wasn't flirtable I would not think she was worth anything. 

 But he must not flirt too long. (Laughter). Now, why did 

 Mrs. Thompson say that? Because, if Mrs. Thompson was in 



Nothing Use- 

 ful Outside 



