December 28, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
13 
On Minding Our Own Business 
By Principal L. P. Jacks 
Any person who dares, in tliese days, to say a good 
/% ^^■ord for minding one's own business will find 
/ % liimsclf exposed to various forms of obIoqu\;. 
^ .^^His neiglibours will conclude in general that he is a 
selfish man. It he ventures his plea in public, somebody will 
charge him with being an advocate of laissez-faire, and the 
inference will be drawn that he is not only indifferent to the 
sufferings of his fellow men, but thoroughly idle. It will 
also be hinted that he regards himself as a superior person, 
and mental pictures of him will be evolved in which he will bo 
represented as bidding the whole world go to the de\-il. No- 
body will believe that he is a good citizen or a patriot. 
The best citizen, the best patriot I ever knew, was a man 
whose life was fiercely devoted to the principle of minding 
liis own business. I have never met a man more industrious, 
more unselfish, more trustworthy. He had thirteen children, 
v.ho grew up into stalwart, sober, intelligent and self-respecting 
men and women ; every one contributing necessary service 
to the world at this moment : three in the army, two in the 
navy, the rest doing skilled work in munition factories or tiUing 
the land. The man himself was a sliepherd, and his regular 
\\ages were eighteen shillings a week. He bred the finest 
rams in England. But for him the mutton on our tables to-da\' 
would be poorer in quality and less in ((uantit\-. I wish I 
could think that I had contributed to the life of the coiji«- 
munity anything a quarter as valuable. To be sure he never 
talked cither about citizenship or patriotism ; but he did the 
thing the rest of us would talk about. He neither interfered 
wit!) other people, nor would he allow them to interfere 
with him. Because he wanted to mind his own business, 
that of breeding sheep, he insisted on being left alone. And 
he left others alone, thus doing unto them precisely as he 
would they should do unto him. Taken on his own terms, he 
was agreeable enough and interestini^ beyond measure. Ht; 
was excellent company, and deeply religious. But if you inter- 
fered with him, especially if you showed the least desire to 
impro\e him or do him good, }ic would turn liis back and walk 
away in wrath. 
If all men were like him it would be impossible for anybody 
to do good to anybody else — except, of course, in secret, 
which is the way the Bible says it ought to be done. But in 
tliat case — if everybody minded his own business as this 
shepherd did — doing them good in ways that were not secret 
would be unnecessary. The reason we have to do so much 
good in public, to pass so many public laws, and to make so 
many public speeches, is always, in the last resort, that some- 
lx)dy is not minding his own business. It is a rather humiliat- 
ing state of things and suggests that life moves in a vicious 
circle. Smith causes trouble by not minding his own business ; 
then Jones has to neglect his in order to set right the trouble 
caused by Smith ; and then Robinson has to leave his counter 
ill order to straighten things up in Jones's shop — and .sq it 
goes on. Hence it is that our morals, politics, and social 
reforms have much in them to remind us of the process by 
which the men of Gotham earned their livelihood — they took 
in one another's washing. It is clear that if everybody would 
wash his own clothes there would be a general sauvc qui 
pent among the moralists, politicians and social reformers. 
Their occupation would be almost gone, and they would be 
reduced to the necessity of having to do good in secret, which 
some of them would find most uncongenial to their habits. 
I believe good citizenship, patriotism, and, indeed, Christ- 
ianity itself, were not well servexl when " doing good to others " 
became the war-cry of moralists. These moralists meant well, 
iMit they did harm. Just because they meant so well we have 
been half blind to the harm they did and are still doing. 
What they meant to do, of course, was to promote good works 
all round, in which no doubt they have succeeded— -to some 
extent. But, incidentally, they caused a new division of 
classes— that, namely, between "the people who fancy it their 
mission to do good, and the " others " to whom good' is done. 
Without intending it, they set up a small aristocracy, which 
called itself " we," and at the same time they created (in 
imagination) an enormous moral proletariat known as 
" others." This has had the effect of opening a door, for anv 
man who wants to neglect his own business, through which he 
can press the claim that ho is one of the " others " whose 
business ougiit to be minded for-them by somebody else. 
That, in the miserable days before the war, was the a'ttitude 
of the public— the artificially created proletariat— towards the 
Government. " You," said the public, addressing the Govern- 
ment, " represent the moral aristocracy, who mind other 
people's business. Behold us, then, who are the 'others' 
in question. Do us good. Mind our business— for we are 
disinclined to mind it ourselves. Educate our children. 
Regulate our wages. Insure us against poverty. Fix prices. 
Compel us to behave ourselves decentlj-. Put policemen at 
every street corner." ^ 
It is not wholesome for any man to think of himself as one 
of the " we " who do good to others ; he is apt to become a 
Pharisee without knowing it. Nor is it better for him, but 
worse, if he think of himself as one of the " others " to whom 
good is done ; he will almost certainly fall into the habit of 
neglecting his own business, especially if it Imppens to be diffi- 
cult. Most of us, it will be found, unconsciously place our- 
selves in one or other of these two classes. Or rather, we trans- 
fer ourselves from the first to the second and vice versa, accord- 
ing to the convenience of the moment. If the business we arc 
engaged in is pleasant and costs nothing — such as public 
agitation, speech-making, devising schemes of social recon- 
struction — the tendency is to place ourselves among the 
" we " who go about doing good. If it is unpleasant, or 
arduous, or requires abstinence, care, forethought and seU- 
, sacrifice — such as properly educating our children or pro- 
tecting ourselves from poverty in old age — our tendency is 
to let the business drift and w-ait till the' State steps in and 
takes it off our hands : we now belong to the " others " to 
whom good is done. 
A Curious Process 
You may see this curious process actively at work in the 
discussions that arc now going on about "Education. The 
assumption on which it proceeds is that there exists in the 
community a comparatively small class of persons (" we ") 
whose part is to educate, and an enormous multitude of 
persons (" the others ") whose part is to be educated in the 
manner which " we " consider best. Every one who has a 
scheme to propose unconsciously reckons himself a member of 
the small aristocracy represented by the first class ; rarely 
indeed, do you encounter an educational reformer who shows 
the faintest suspicion of his own need to be educated. On the 
other hand, the great mass of the public is so accu6tomed to 
be treated in this way that it doesn't bother its head about 
education at all. It leaves the whole business, which is really 
its own, to be looked after by " we ; " though it is not unlikely 
that when "we" have made their arrangements the public 
will discover that they have been most unwarrantably inter- 
fered with, and will kick ferociousiy ugainst the^rrangements 
" we " have made. 
That, I contend, is bad for both parties 
As happens so often, the moralists, with their cry of " dc 
good to others," have got hold of the stick, but they have 
grasped it by the wrong end. The most effectual way of 
doing good to others is to mind your own business — the most 
effectual, but the least showy, for there is nothing in it to in- 
dicate to the passers-by that you are a philanthropist. Your 
conduct will commend itself "only to those who prefer to se< 
good done in secret. Assuredly, there is no form of " social 
service " comparable to that which one can render by doins 
his job to the very*best of his ability. And, contrariwise, 
the true enemies of society arc those who scamp their )obs, 
no matter whether the cause be idleness, stupidity, selfishness 
or the benevolent desire to spend one's time in looking aftei 
the interests of other people. This applies to everybod\', 
from the Prime Minister to the hodman. No education is 
worth a straw that is founded on any other principle. 
One often wonders what the w-orld would be like at the 
present moment if civilisation had been grounded from the first 
on the law of "mind your own business," with less said about 
doing good to others'. I cannot but b .lieve that we should 
be living in a far better world. There would be less idleness, 
less inefticiency, less ughness, less dirt, less shoddy, and, above 
all, less humbug— less, in short, of everything which darkens 
the future of the earth. The curse of bad work — the root 
of the labour problem — would never have hghted on our 
civilisation. There might not be so much wealth in the world, 
but what there was would be worth far more. We should 
be doing each other more good than we can ever hope to do 
by all that is commonly comprised under "social service." 
W'e should entertain a higher respect for our neighbours ; 
for there is nothing that makes you despise a man so com- 
pletely as the sight of him scamping his job. We should be 
more united, more sociable, more unselfish, and more NwUin" 
to pull together. And the present war would never have 
taken place. What is wrong with Germany is simply that she 
has never learnt to mind her own business and to leave other 
nations to mind theirs. She claims the right to impose her 
.ulture on the rest of the world without consulting it, which 
s precisely what our educational reformers do when th'cv take 
