258 The Labor Question 



only by each of us steadfastly keeping in mind that 

 there can be no substitute for the world-old, hum 

 drum, commonplace qualities of truth, justice and 

 courage, thrift, industry, common-sense, and genuine 

 sympathy with and fellow-feeling for others. The 

 nation is the aggregate of the individuals composing 

 it, and each individual American ever raises the na 

 tion higher when he so conducts himself as to wrong 

 no man, to suffer no wrong from others, and to show 

 both his sturdy capacity for self-help and his readi 

 ness to extend a helping hand to the neighbor sinking 

 under a burden too heavy for him to bear. 



The one fact which all of us need to keep stead 

 fastly before our eyes is the need that performance 

 should square with promise if good work is to be 

 done, whether in the industrial or in the political 

 world. Nothing does more to promote mental dis 

 honesty and moral insincerity than the habit either 

 of promising the impossible, or of demanding the 

 performance of the impossible, or finally, of fail 

 ing to keep a promise that has been made; and it 

 makes not the slightest difference whether it is a 

 promise made on the stump or off the stump. Re 

 member that there are two sides to the wrong thus 

 committed. There is, first, the wrong of failing to 

 keep a promise made, and, in the next place, there 

 is the wrong of demanding the impossible, and there 

 fore forcing or permitting weak or unscrupulous men 



