The weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Craig County, Okla.) 1905-1913, 1912-01-26

How might you have made better
man out of him? BY saying to him:
you aie doing wrong. You are do
ing wrong to yourself, to your fellow
workmen. to the shipper, and to the
company. / appeal to you as man.
Don't do these things. They will lead
to your downfall You still have a .
chance to pull yourself together and
start doing right"
The man may resent this advice,
even though he knows that it is good.
But when he is alone, afterwards,
perhaps in the solitude of his room at
night. those words will come flaming
back into his mind and he will give
thought to what you have told him.
Even yet he may not change his at
titude or his conduct. He may com
nit similar depredations and theft
Appeal to him a second time. Say
to him: IF had conveyed informa-
ton as to your offense to the officials OF
the road, it would have meant your
discharge. Instead, have been square
with you. Now be square with your
self"
Do you think that this will not
make him a better man, more loyal to
his company? Incidentally, you have
performed a service to your company
far in excess of what your service
would have been had you reported the
offender and had him discharged.
The dismissal of an erring employe
does not restore the industrial organ
ization which has been offended
against To restore the offender to a
right point of view, to strengthen his
moral fiber by dispelling the ignor-
ance which caused his offensive act
this constitutes far the greater serv-
ice to the company as whole.
Lack of moral consciousness is
pretty largely a matter OF ignorance.
There is no human being but is born
with a strong instinct to do right But
all are a bundle of weaknesses to be-
gin with. and experience is the great
est teacher for the development OF
moral courage and the knowledge of
what is right
To punish an offender summarily is
simply to weaken him still further
Educate him instead of discharging
him, and you will have gone long
way in the development of aman who
will count
The officials of company, laboring
under the mistaken notion that dis
charging a man will restore the bal
ance and weed out evil conduct are
themselves laboring in the dark. That
is not to say that man should never
be discharged. There are rare in
stances where firing man is the only
act that will wake him up.
But no employer, and no fellow en-
ploye has a right to pause anywhere
short of a square deal to all with
whom he may have dealings.
The tale-bearing employe, who re-
ports his fellow-workman for the pur-
pose of getting him discharged, more
over. does not act for the benefit of
his company as a whole. Nine times
out of ten, his mind is intent on gain
ing preferment for himself, and wise
employers should see that this is his
motive, and that such a man is a men
ace to an evil sort.
The man who observes, let US say,
an act of theft on the part of a fell
low-workman, and who, instead of re
porting the eyil-doer, reasons with him
and attempts to restore him to normal,
in doing his company the far greater
service.
Nothing in the world ever succeeded
which was not built on a solid founda-
tion. The Bible has a parable of the
house which stood upon the sand. The
finest steel structure, if built upon
sand, will collapse. And an industrial
organization, the attitude of whose
employees, one toward the other, is
based upon the proposition of espion-
age for the purpose of self-preferment,
is shaky to the core and cannot abide
And yet it is hard to blame the rank
and file for possession of this wrong
conception of their relations to each
other
The man in the rank and file is the
child, 50 to speak. learning his A. B.
C's. His employers, with their su-
perior wisdom and greater experience,
are his teachers. And this they must
bear always in mind leaving nothing
undone to develop and broaden their
employees.
The right education of the employees
by the employer is purely matter OF
business. 1t is not a sentimental phil