The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1886-06-04

| your machinery valueless, or some new
! style of tariff set your business back hope
lessly and forever. You must take all
that into consideration, and then pay VIII at
! is reasonable.
| Do not be too ready to cut down wages.
AS far as possible pay all, and pay
| promptly. There is great deal of Bible
| teaching on this subject.
will be a swift witness against ali sor-
| cerers, and against all adulterers, and
against those who oppress the hireling in his
| wa9es.-MaachL
Thou shalt not keep the wages OF the hire
/ ling all night unto the neutrality-suspicious..
Masters, give unto your servants that
which is just and equal, knowing tn at ye
also have Master in Heaven,-Oolossia ms.
So you see it is not question between
you and your employe so much as it is a
! question between you and your God. Do
not say to your employees, "Now, If you
/ don't like this place get another" VIII en-
! you know they can not get another. AS
| far as possible once year visit at their
| homes. your clerks and your workmen.
| That is the only way you can become ac-
| quainted with their wants. You will by
| such process find out that there is a blind
| parent or sick sister being supported.
You will find some of your young men in
rooms without any fire in winter, and in
| summer sweltering in ill-ventilated apart
ments. You will find how much depends
on the wages you pay or withhold. On
| Saturday morning, when you come into
| your counting room and draw the check
| which will bring the money for the wages
on the salaries, you will have a thrill of
satisfaction in knowing it is not only the
money you give to the young man, but the
relief to the dire necessities which stand
/ back of him,
Moreover, it is your duty as employer,
as far as possible, to mold the welfare of
the employe. You ought to advise him
about investments, about life insur-
ance, about savings banks. You ought
to give him the benefit of your ex-
perience. There are hundreds and thou
sands of employers in this country
and England, am glad to say, who are
settling in the very best possible way
the destiny of their employees. Such men
as Marshall, of Leeds; Fister, of Brad
ford; Akroyd, of Halifax, and men so
near at home it might offend their mod
esty if I mentioned their names. These
men have built reading libraries,
concert halls, afforded croquet lawns,
cricket grounds, gymnasiums, choral So
| cieties for their employees, and they have
not merely paid the wages on Saturday
night, but through the contentment and
| the thrift and the good morals of their
employees, they are paying wages from
| generation to generation forever.
Again, 1 counsel all employers TO look
we'll after the physical health of their
subordinates. You are expected to un-
derstand better than they all these ques-
tions of ventilation and sunshine, and all
the laws of hygiene.
There are stores and banking houses
and factories and newspaper establish
| ments where the atmosphere is death.
Your employees may not always appreoi-
ate your work, a that style of kind
ness was not appreciated in the instance
mentioned by Charles Reade, where in a
great factory a fan was provided
for the blowing away of the dust of metal
and stone, the dust arising from the ma
chinery, and some of the workmen refused
to put this great fan in motion. They
seemed to prefer to inhale the filings, the
| poisonous filings, into their lungs. But
in the vast majority of cases your en-
| ployes will appreciate every kindness in
that direction.
Then / would have you carry out this
sanitary idea, and put into as few hours
as possible the work of the day. Some
| time ago-whether it has been changed 1
| know not-there were one thousa and gro
| COT GAGIkS III DEOOkEBu HnO WeAb W BuSA-
ness at five O'Clock in the morning and
continued until ten o'clock at night. Now,
that is inhuman.
I 1t seems to me all the merchants in all
departments ought, by simultaneous move-
ment, to come out in behalf of the early
closing theory. These young men ought
| to have an opportunity of going to the
| Mercantile library, to the reading rooms,
to the concert hall, to the gymnasium, to
! the church. They have nerves, they have
brains, they have intellectual aspirations,
| they have immortal spirits. If they can
do good round days work in the ten or
! eleven hours, you have no right to keep
| them harnessed for seventeen. 1 do n OF
think that any intelligent employer can
afford to be reckless of the physical and
mental health of his subordinates.
But above all, / charge you, o employ
srs, that you look after the moral and spir-
| itual welfare of your employees. First,
know where they spend their evenings.
/ That decides every thing. You do not
want around your money drawer a young
man who went last night to see Jack Shep-
| pard. A. man that comes in to the store in
| the morning CHASTITY with midnight revel-
/ ry is not the man for your store. The
young man who spends his evenings in the
society Of refined women, or in musical or
| artistic circles, or in literary improve
ment, is the young man for your store.
| Without any disgusting inquisitiveness,
| without any impertinence you ought to
| have your young men understand that you
are interest so much in their welfare
| that you want to know where they spend
their leisure hours, and they will frankly
and gladly tell you.
One of my earliest remembrances is of
4 A-NNx
| differences of opinion about his politics,
| but no one who ever knew Arthur Tappan,
and knew him we'll, doubted his being an
| earnest Christian. In his store in New
| York he had a room where every morning
| he called his employees together, and he
| prayed with them. read the Scriptures TO
| them, sang with them. and then they en-
tered on the duties of the day. On Mon
! day morning the exercises differed, and
| he gathered the young men together and
asked them where they had attended
church, what had been their Sabbath ex-
periences and what had been the sermon.
Samuel Budget had the largest busi-
ness in the west Of England. He had in
room of his warehouse a place pleasantly
/ furnished with comfortable seats and
"Fletcher's Family Devotions'' and Wes-
leyan hymn books, and he gathered his
employees together every morning, and,
having sung, they knelt down and prayed
side by side--the employer and the em-
/ ployes.
/ Do you wonder at that mans success,
and that though thirty years before he
had been a partner in a smsll retail shop
in small village, at his death he be-
queathed many millions. God trust
such man as that with plenty Of money.
That Is Christian character demon
strated. There are others in this country
/ and in other lands on a smaller scale do
/ Ing their best for their employees. They