Rev. Dr.  J.  E.  Skillington,

     I am sure that I appreciate the privilege of having a place on your program, even if I do come as a substitute.  By contrast I am reminded of an Irishman who was in a theater where “Faust” was being played and observed that the gentleman who was taking the part of “His Satanic Majesty”, being of very ample proportions, had some difficulty in getting through the trap door which was supposed to be the entrance into the infernal regions, and had to have the assistance of several other persons, shoving and pushing, before he could get down out of sight.  Upon observing this, the Irishman in the peanut gallery leaped up and shouted, “Thank God, hell is full”.  I am glad your program was not full, or that if it was, that there came to be an opportunity for me to bring this message to you tonight.

     My message is not a technical one, and it was not prepared and designed originally for railroad men, but I made a speech on this same subject and said some of the same things that I am going to say tonight, if I say what I intend to, and Mr. Richers, Master Mechanic of the Altoona Shops and President of their Club there, asked me to come and say the same things to his men.  And after having done that I received an invitation to go to Renovo and Harrisburg, and then you have called me here.

     After all, I suppose that railroad men are just about like other men, and I know considerable of them.  I lived for eight years in Renovo.  And there is nothing but the railroad there.  And now I am living in Altoona and there isn’t anything much but the railroad there, and we are proud of having those large shops and that great industry in our city.  Nearly all of my men are related to the railroad activities in some way or another. 

     I suppose there are none of you, I hope there are none of you, who do not appreciate the privilege of being identified with the transportation work of this great republic of ours.  Some time ago I saw this statement, comparing the facilities that we have for transportation, with those of China for example, where their civilization is quite primitive as compared with ours, and it was said that if all the freight, to say nothing of the passengers, which is moved every year by the railroads of the United States were moved by hand power as it is in China, by carrying it or wheeling it, it would take more men to move it than there are men, women and and children in China, and there are nearly four times as many there as there are in this country.

     That serves to suggest something of the very complex development of our civilization and also of the tremendous importance of the transportation facilities of any civilization that has developed as ours has.  Of course there are a good many industries which we consider in these days as indispensable, but hardly think of one that is more certainly indispensable than that of transportation.  You know very well that if the railroads stop to function everything stops almost immediately and stagnation and starvation face us at once.  So that I can say that any man ought to have some sense of pride, ought to recognize his position as being one of opportunity and honor to be identified with the great transportation system of this country, and of this great civilization of which we are a part.

     After all, man has to do something, to be identified with some kind of movement that is worth while, that is more than just a name.  I like a man who has some individuality and has some pride in what he is.  You may remember that interesting story in the Old Testament of a man who was a Jew and who got into trouble because he refused to do certain things, and when they demanded his reasons, he just said, “I am a Jew”, and because he was a Jew there were some things that he could not do and some things which he insisted in doing.

     There was a man who went into Wall Street to make his fortune, it is said, and like a good many others who go there lost the little nucleus of a fortune with which he went in, instead of making a fortune, and when he came out of that perilous adventure his friends were very anxious to know what his experience had been.  One of them having heard something of the terms used in Wall Street wanted to know if he had been a “Bear”.  He didn’t know just exactly what a “Bear” was, he didn’t feel like a “Bear”.  He said, “No”.  He hadn’t been a “Bear”.  Another one asked him if he had been a “Bull”, and he was equally prompt in denying that he had been a “Bull”.  Then someone asked, “What were you?”, and he replied, “I guess I was a jackass”.  Now the man who isn’t something better and who can’t figure something or accomplish something worth while, I suppose, will have to submit to being put in some such class as that.  I pity the man who hasn’t got something distinctive about him to suggest some class or qualification.  There was a disreputable looking hobo who was asked about his religion.  He said he was an Episcopalian.  When asked when and where he had been confirmed, he said he had not been confirmed at all, and when asked where he was baptized he said he had not been baptized, but that when he was down in New Orleans he had been in an Episcopal Church and all the people stood up said that they had done the things which they should not have done and had left undone the things which they should have done, and that religion suited his case, and from that time forward he had been an Episcopalian. 

     I guess railroad men are about the same as other men, and if they are really worthy to be called railroad men and not simply hands who are employed by the railroad, I have a very great satisfaction in bringing a message to them.

     I am supposed to talk to you on the subject of “Building”.  A good many other subjects might do just as well as that, but I think that is a fine word.  The words building and reconstruction are very closely related to one another, and maybe you get tired of hearing of reconstruction.  I heard men say four or five years ago that they were tired of hearing about it.  But whether we get tired of hearing it or not, the business of building is going to be an everlasting business, as long as we live in this world, and I don’t know but that we are going to continue building in the next world.  The man who doesn’t build something is of no use in the world until he becomes the occasion for the building of a tomb or the building of a coffin by those men who are engaged in those occupations.  “Building” is a word suggestive of great dignity.  I can hardly think of anything finer, and I want you to give it a wide scope and application as we think of it together.

     In these days we are gathering in the harvest and record crops of fruit and vegetables and grain, and I came from the farming country just last night, we think of the splendid work that the farmer and the man who cultivates orchards and works with nature is called to.  The men who follow in the footsteps of Burbank, for example.  And there is something fine about it when you get out among the fields and the trees and see how these things have grown during the summer and come to a bountiful harvest and fruitage.  It makes you marvel.

     I remember, some time ago I was on a little gunning trip up in Clinton County or Potter County.  I came across a tree out in the woods, about dinner time when I was hungry, that looked like an apple tree, and as I came near I was confirmed in my thought that it was an apple tree.  The foliage, the bark and the fruit resembled that of an apple tree in May or early June; green little bits of apples.  And I asked the man who was with me what that tree was, and he said it was an apple tree, a wild crab apple, that the tree was indigenous to the soil; that it had not been planted, just grew wild, and I know nothing to the contrary.  He asked me to taste the fruit and I plucked off one of those little green apples and set my teeth in it, and I have a strange feeling in my mouth now as I recall the taste of it.  I’ll never need to taste another one.  Now as far as I know that little bitter, sour, green, crab apple is the best sort of an apple that God Almighty ever made without the help of man.  I said so far as I know; I do not know what they had in the Garden of Eden, but I have never seen any apple better than that, that God Almighty has produced without the help of man.  Coming in from the farm yesterday I brought a dozen or so of apples of two or three varieties, one of which was a great, big, red Baldwin.  I would like to set those apples down on this table and then set that little green crab apple down beside them and remind you that that fine, great big Baldwin is the kind of work that man and God working together produce, and that little green apple is the kind that God makes when man doesn’t help him.  If man can work with God and accomplish such wonderful things as that, that is a work of great diginty and majesty, but I think that this great idea and work of building is superior even to that.  The man who works with Burbank and undertakes to make a new species of rose or apple, all that he does is to discover what the Creator’s plan is and what the Creator’s resources and powers are and then make way for those resources and powers to work for the accomplishment of this plan, but if a man undertakes to build, it is as if the Creator said to him, “There is the stuff, there is the place, see what you can do with them”, and the builder has to conceive his own plan.  He depends on his own power to originate and engineer, and he can make what he will, but Burbank can only develop what God has first thought out, so that the builder does a work which in dignity and honor surpasses that of the man who works with nature.

     Now, I suppose that the very first thing that a builder has to think about would be his plan of building, after he has the impulse to build.  I have never seen a child that did not like to have blocks or something of the kind and lay them out in some form of building.  With the child it is an instinct, and we outgrow a good many instincts when we can use our judgment.  And then a man must have the desire to build, to have something that he does not have, and the desire to possess something that he does not possess with the desire to bring that thing into being.  He may work on somebody else’s building for wages, or because he is a slave and compelled to do it, but the man who doesn’t have the desire to produce something that he wants for himself, or wants to see for himself and offer to others will never build.  Now, there are some people who never have such a desire as that; they are satisfied with what they have, at least they are not dissatisfied and do not make a move to get anything better.

     The story is told of an old black slave who had served his master for a long time.  The master was going off on a European trip.  He was an old man and he doubted if he would come back alive.  He was going for his health, and told the negro he feared he would not return and that he wanted to give him something.  “Let me know what you want, Sam, and I will give you almost anything that you want.  Now, tell me what you want”, he said.  Sam thought a good long time and then said, “Give me some ‘bacco, Marsa”.  “All right, I will give you five pounds of the best tobacco I can get.  Now, what else would you like to have?” Sam thought a little bit, and then a little bit longer.  “Marsa, give me some more ‘bacco.” “All right, I will make it ten pounds of the best tobacco that can be gotten and that will last a long time.  Can’t you think of something else? What else do you want?” And the old slave just thought a little bit longer and asked for more tobacco.  That was as far as his desire went.  Now, there are some men, a very few, who are on such a low plane as that, but a lot of men whose aspirations do not mount a great deal higher.  They will never build; they will never want anything they haven’t got enough to undertake to build it and achieve it for themselves.

     You remember that Emerson said that we should hitch our wagon to a star, suggestive that we should be ambitious to do things that are lofty and worth while and aim at something high.  When I was a student in Prep. school, there was a young fellow, a classmate of mine, who wanted to quote this sentence in an oration, but he said “Hitch your star to a wagon”, and everybody laughed.  I met an old friend of his and mine, a few days ago, and he reminded me of it, and do you know, I think there is just about as much in that as in the way that Emerson put it.  There are some folks who have their ambitions, and the things they want are high enough, God knows.  What they want is to take this star of theirs, bring it down and hitch it to a wagon, because it is not enough that men have ambitions that are worth while, but they must relate them in a practical way to the things of life.  If you keep them always in the sky they will never amount to anything to you.  You must get them down and hitch them to wheelbarrows and wagons and other such things as that, and you will be able to lift yourself up to the place that you conceived of as occupied by the star that you have now made some practical use of.

     Another thing that the builder will think of very promptly, I suppose I could not put it in a better time, is a location on which to build and the material with which to build, both of which mean together a chance.   He wants a chance to do something.  A good many men say they have not had a chance in life.  While I would not deny that some seem never to have had a chance, yet, when I see what some men achieve with such a little chance, which seems to be no chance at all, I wonder whether other people have any right to complain.  It is a pretty sure thing that there is enough material, enough places on which to build, enough of chances, enough of positions for all the men and women in the world, especially in this country of ours.  It is a fact that there are men who do not want to build, and there are men who will want to do it, and if men have a will to do it they will find a place and a chance to exercise their talent.  It does not make much difference what they are, for after all the main consideration is not what you have to work with, but what you are going to do with that which you have.  I think you can recall illustrations from life that you have observed yourselves, and by which you can prove the reasonableness of that proposition.

     There is a story in the Old Book about the call of a great man.  He went out one day and saw a bush burning and not being consumed, and he went toward it to see what it was, and a voice spoke to him out of the bush directing him to a great task.  He thought the task too big for him, and began to say that he did not have the ability for it, that he could not do it and that he thought someone else ought to undertake that task.  The voice said to him, “What is that that you have in your hand?” “That is a shepherd’s staff”, he replied.  The voice said, “Cast the staff on the ground”, which he did and it became a serpent and fled from him.  The voice said, “Take it by the tail”, and he took it by the tail and it became a shepherd’s staff again, in his hand.  And that man who came to occupy one of the most outstanding positions in all human history by reason of his achievement, learned in that simple event that day a profound lesson, that it is not half so important what you have in your hand as what you do with the thing you have in your hand.  It may only be a shepherd’s staff, it may only be a carpenter’s hammer, it may only be the pen of a clerk, it doesn’t make a very great deal of difference what it is, it is what you do with it that is all important.

     Of course, when you come to choose your place and your materials you will find that there are other men who want the same place, and other men want the same materials that you want to build with, and then for the first time in your life you will have learned the gravity of the truth that you live in a world of men and women and other people have as good a right in the world as you have, and you will have to have consideration for them and you will have to give and take, and that should not discourage you for this world is a big place and there is still room for all of us and plenty of opportunity for everybody, and if you will just be reasonable and give the other man a chance, you will not have to take anything from him, and he will not take anything worth while from you.  You can’t get along real well unless the man beside you gets along well, his success is essential to your success.  If he gets the smallpox, you will be in danger, and if he is lazy and indolent and indifferent and dishonest, you are equally in danger, although not in the same kind of danger.  You are not going to advance yourself permanently and really unless you also give him a chance to advance himself, and you are not going to lose anything by his larger achievement, but his achievements ought to be a real gain to you.

     When London burned a great many years ago, Christopher Wren was living and he designed a plan for a new London that he submitted to the people in authority and they approved what they all said was an ideal plan.  They began almost to cease to regret that London had burned.  They said, “We will have a much more beautiful London now, if we adopt this plan by Mr. Wren”, and they adopted it and began to put it into execution.  They had not gone very far in their survey when some man came out and said, “Here, you can’t run that street there; you cut off a corner of this lot which belongs to me.  It belonged to my father and to my grandfather before me. It has been in our family for a thousand years.  No sir, you can’t run that street there”, and he made such a fuss that they had to just adhere to the old line.  Here the same thing happened and there the same thing happened and they had to give the whole thing up and build London on the same old plan on which it had been built before, for nobody was willing to make any concession; everybody wanted what was his own and what had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him.  They could not see that if they would yield here and there, they would have a larger return in a more beautiful London in building it on a much more artistic plan than the accidental scheme of the original city, for London had really not been built, it had just grown up.  Men must learn to give and take if they want to get along in the world and let others have a chance as well as themselves, and if they are real men and make use of the faculties with which God has endowed them they will find a way to do this, and if they will not, the time will come when chaos will take the place of civilization absolutely, for we have come to the point where we must co-operate in a larger measure than we have ever done before or else there will be a conflict to the death.  That will be the end of conflict between races, or between classes, labor and capital for instance, if it is not checked.  And I say, if men are really men and use the faculties with which God has endowed them they will find a way to co-operate.  If a man is to choose a woman for his wife he ought not to choose a woman who is like himself, experts tell us.  If quick tempered, he should choose a person who is more deliberate and cool headed.  They will learn to get along more beautifully in the end, live a thousand times more happily and their lives will be richer and fuller than two people who are exactly alike.  Because you and I, or you and your boss, do not think alike, is no reason why you can’t get along.  A difference of opinion ought to be an opportunity instead of an obstacle, if we use the faculties with which God has endowed us.

     A man was visiting a lunatic asylum and he saw a man seemingly in charge of a dozen other men who were cleaning up the lawn.  “Are you in charge of all these people?” the visitor asked.  “Yes”, he said, “I am”.  “Are they all crazy?” he asked.  “Yes, as crazy as bed bugs”.  “Are you the only sane man here? Aren’t you in a dangerous position? If they got their heads together, couldn’t they soon do away with you?” “Yes, but if they could get their heads together, they would not be here.” There is the place for men and women who can’t get their heads together, and not in the great world where people do things.  A lot of things about which we disagree aren’t worth fighting about and we had better sacrifice a lot of them and devote our attention to other things, if necessary, than to waste our time, our energy and our opportunity fighting about trifles.  Usually it is the trifles we can’t agree about, and if we can’t we had better abandon them and devote our attention to the big things upon which we can agree.

     Sometime ago I was out rabbit hunting with my brother.  We took with us a mongrel pack of rabbit hounds.  They had never hunted together before and they weren’t disposed to get along together.  During the afternoon we killed a little bit of a rabbit in a corn field, and when my brother threw the entrails out of the rabbit the dogs began to fight over them.  I grabbed hold of them and he grabbed hold of them to separate them, and he got his knee up into my face and broke my spectacles and cut my face, and we had quite a time before we got the dogs separated, and when we looked for the rabbit it was nowheres to be found, and we proceeded on our way without it, but we hadn’t gone very far until one little dog, a female, who hadn’t participated in the fight, seemed to be in trouble and she didn’t get relief until she emptied her stomach; then we found what had become of the rabbit.  While the other dogs were fighting over the offals that little dog ate the rabbit, and that is the way it usually goes.

     I think it was in the Lancaster Almanac that I found it, a cartoon about two men who had gone to law about a cow; one had hold of the horns and the other had hold of the tail, and the lawyers, one on one side and one on the other side milking the cow.  These two litigants were pulling, one on the horns and the other on the tail.  The next picture showed the men going head over heels, the horns and tail having been pulled off, and the lawyers undisturbed still milking the cow.  That is usually the way it goes with men who are everlastingly determined to fight for what they think belongs to them and leave someone else milk the cow.

     We can get along with the other men in the world about us, and there is place enough and chance enough for all of us if we will only be wise enough to believe it and to do the very best we can.  This matter of getting along with other men is about as big a problem as there is in our lives, and the man who can adjust himself and fit himself to conditions, naturally is the man who will go forward and make success of life, and the man who can’t will be constantly in trouble.  We ought to learn that lesson.

     An old minister living up in Renovo in the days when hey were lumbering in the mountains of Pennsylvania, was going down the railroad along the West Branch of the Susquehanna in company with a friend, after a great log drive had gone down the river, and there were stray logs lying here and there all along the bank, to which the minister called his friend’s attention and the following dialogue ensued.  “Did you notice that these are all peculiar logs?” “I didn’t notice anything peculiar about them.” “Well, there is, you just see if there isn’t.  Everyone has a hump on it, a great big end or a little end, a big belly in the center or something wrong about it.” He looked there for a long time and he didn’t see a log that was not of a peculiar shape, and his observations seemed to bear out what the minister had said.  “Well”, said the minister, “that is the reason those logs are there, the straight logs went down the stream smoothly and easily, and it is those misshaped logs that got out of line and are here stranded on the bank.” And the man who gets out of line and is stranded on the bank and complains would not have to look beyond his own nose to find the cause of his whole trouble.  You will remember Hamlet said, “The world is out of joint”.  I think it was Hamlet that was out of joint and that was why there seemed so much wrong with the world, as the old Indian said when he was lost, “Indian no lost, wigwam lost”.  It doesn’t matter which way you put it, whether you blame it on the wigwam or on the Indian, it is a very bad situation.  It would be a good deal better to find the cause of the trouble in himself and correct or remove it than to bow in defeat before an imaginary cause of trouble.

     And while I am talking about getting along with men, I ought not to pass over this suggestion that there is One with whom, above all others, we ought to make it a point of being right.  In these days when such an organ as the Wall Street Journal, and such men as Roger Babson, that great statistician and financial expert, are saying that the supreme need of this day is a rediscovery of God and a revival of religion; I say when men like that and journals like that are expressing such sentiments, I would be remiss if I did not say that the man who wants to take his place in this world and do something worth while ought to be sure that he is right with his Maker, with his God, the supreme person of all the universe.  You can’t count God out.  A French infidel said to a peasant, “We are going to destroy your religion; we will burn your Bibles, tear down your churches, destroy everything that will remind you of your God”.  The peasant said, “You will leave the stars, won’t you?” And as long as the stars shine you can’t count God out.  While you can’t count God out, I think you better count Him in and try to live with Him, in harmony, and learn what his will and purpose are.

     Out in the country the other day I was talking to a farmer who is raising cattle, and he said his cows were worth four or five hundred dollars, and I used to be on a farm when I was a boy and if we got thirty dollars we thought that was a large amount, but I found that he was raising much larger crops of wheat and corn and hay too, and he has simply learned nature’s secret; how to breed the best kind of cows; how to use the soil and make it productive and get the largest quantity of crops out of it.  And what does this mean? Almighty God made the soil and ordained the laws by which animal nature in cows and horses and other things lives and functions, and these men have simply learned the secret that God bound up in those things from the beginning, and they are simply working in accordance with God’s law and purpose.  An acre yields twice as much as it used to yield; and a cow is worth ten times as much as it used to be.  Why should not we learn what God’s will and purpose are in the profounder things of life and try to cooperate with Him?

     Having his place and material, his chance, the builder must recognize the obligation which rests upon him to make good and to use his material and occupy his place.  Other people wanted that place; other people wanted that material.  The only justification for giving it to him is the hope that he will make the best use of it.  Now that it is his the obligation is perfectly plain and clear and indisputable for him to make good with it.  Is it not so? Build something, construct something, let men and women see that it is worth while for you to have that place, that chance, that material.  But we are not all doing it. 

     I wonder what it cost to provide for you and me the right of franchise that we enjoy in this republic.  I guess none of us know.  We can trace back in history something of the cost.  A good many men died that we might enjoy the fruits of their labors and sacrifices, and you would think that we would appreciate these privileges, but 15,000,000 of the men and women who could have voted at the last election, never voted at all.  Think of it!  If there had been a few thousand or a few hundred thousand it would not have been, so striking, but 15,000,000 of men and women have been given this privilege of the franchise that has cost more than any of us know anything about, and they have not cared enough about it to exercise that right at all.  They have had the chance, they had the opportunity, and have not turned their hand.  Now, we ought to get busy. 

     There are some people who, being unwilling to assume the responsibility and perform the labor incident to building, or being of envious disposition begrudge the success of their neighbors, or being suspicious readily suppose they have been given a raw deal and instead of getting to work spend their time and energy complaining.  “Knockers” we call them today.  But, don’t we need men and women who can find the sore spots and put their finger on them until we “holler Ouch”? Aren’t they a useful sort of men and women to have in a community? I agree that we need some such, we could never get along without them, and I wouldn’t disparage their undertakings, but we don’t need any more of them than we have just now.  We have quite enoguh of them, and we pave had enough of them for some time, and I haven’t any misgiving as to the future.  I think we shall always have enough, and if the time ever should come when we will want more knockers, don’t worry; we can easily develop them.  It doesn’t require men and women of any unusual ability to become expert knockers.  It requires neither brains nor talent to become an expert knocker. 

     Suppose the worst old scandel-monger in this town should start out tomorrow morning and tell a foul story about the cleanest, purest woman in this town.  About 85% of those who hear it would believe it, and of  the other 15%, 10% would suspect some truth in it.  And, she would score 95% success right off.  And what qualifications had she?  No character, no brains ; and she undertook a big job ; she took the finest, cleanest, purest woman in the city and undertook to ruin her character, and she scored almost 100% in a day.  It does not require any brains or character to be a knocker.  Do not undertake to qualify yourselves for that business; others will look after it.  It will bring no particular credit to them, and it will not bring any for you.  Notwithstanding that fact there are people who make it their business to criticise everybody in the United States from the President down to the Dog-Catcher, and strut around as if the ability to criticise our laws was a mark of distinction and as though by this token they were persons of importance.  That is a mistaken conception of the qualities that are required.  The Builder wants to do something worth while and not tear down.  He wants to build, he wants to construct, he wants to bring something into being, instead of destroying something that someone else has wrought. 

     There was a little boy who wanted to go swimminng every day and one day his mother forbade him just on the general principle that a boy ought not to always be allowed to do what he wants to do.  He took it like a good sport and meant to obey.  But when the boys came for him he found it hard to decline.  One of them called him a ‘fraidicat,’ ‘fraid to go, ‘cause his mom said he darsent.  That weakened him and he made a move to yield, opening the gate and stepping out with one foot.  But when someone said, I knowed he’d go”, he stepped back and firmly shut the gate.  The boys went on presently and left him.  When he saw them leaving the last gate at the edge of the village it was too much for him and again his hand was on the yielding latch and one foot was out, but his hand held the gate until his better self recovered command and he came back into the yard, closing the gate.  He tried to play, he tried to work, he tried to read, but he couldn’t get his mind off of the swimming hole and what was happening there.  Finally he threw down his book and made a dash for the gate and was gone, Upon his return his mother met him with, “You went swimming ; didn’t you?” He had no reply.  She continued, “I saw you, I saw you open the gate twice and shut it and then I saw you---” But she got no further.  He looked up at her accusingly and burst out, “Did you see me, mamma? Well, why couldn’t you have tapped on the window and helped a fellow?” Why, indeed? There are men and women who are sitting at their window and they would not do as much as tap on the window and help a fellow.  It is their particular business to watch other people go wrong, and they seem to have an actual delight when they see somebody, or something, is going wrong.  They become expert at the business and there is little they miss.  Indeed, the wish being father to the thought, they think they see many things that really never happen.  We ought not to be disturbed by men and women like that.  We are, sometimes, but I declare to you that we ought not to be.  The man who stays away from the polls and the next morning searches the paper to see who was elected and then complains about the politicians for their rottenness; the man who won’t join the church but lets his wife join and then sits back at the window and watches for all the mistakes that the minister and everybody else make; we ought not to listen to him.  We need men and women who will take hold, anxious and willing to do their full share of whatever there is to be done. 

     There was a Scandinavian out in Minnesota who had gone out one night with a young lady in whom he was interested, for a buggy drive, and the moonlight got into his veins and blood, and he reached over, took her hand, and asked her in very few words if she would marry him.  She very promptly replied in the affirmative, whereupon he withdrew his hand and was silent.  They are great on being silent.  For half an hour he did not say a word.  She couldn’t stand it any longer, and finally she said, “John, why don’t you say something?” and John replied “I been said too durn much already”.

     There are a good many men who are afraid of saying or doing too much.  Let the moonlight and the light of human sympathy and brotherhood get into your views and say the best and biggest things you can think of and then live up to them. 

     Have you read “The Americanization of Edward Bok”? 1 see some of you nodding your heads in the affirmative.  I wish you had all read it, if you have not.  There are some tine things in it.  One thing I want to tell you about.  You all know of the marvelous success of that young man who began with no, education, a poor foreign boy here, he had come from good stock to be sure, but he had all the handicaps of a poor boy who could not speak the language of the country in which he lived, and he has come to be one of the greatest men of his day. He began early to work for other men, and in a sense he served men and women all his life.  He said that he very soon discovered that everybody else almost that he came in contact with seemed to think, “I will do the very least that I can do, and get through.  If I am hired for two dollars a day, I will not do two dollars and five cents worth, not a bit more than is necessary to get my two dollars.” That was the principle on which they worked.  He conceived the idea that that was a false principle, and he adopted this one, “‘I will do the very most for the two dollars that I can possibly do, that I can possibly cram in”, and that was his principle his whole life through, and the result was that he was not a two dollar man long, and he went constantly forward.  Don’t be afraid of doing too much or saying too much for the other fellow, and don’t be afraid of assuming too much responsibility.

     I remember when I was a young pastor, I was undertaking to build a church.  Some wanted it one way and some another, and it looked as though we were going to have trouble, and I called a meeting of my Official Board to settle the matter.  On my way to the meeting I passed the residence of one of my most prominent members.  He was sitting on his porch with his family.  I said, “Brother ‘S’, aren’t you coming to the Official Board meeting?” “No, he is not”, his wife promptly said, “you are going to have trouble up there, and I am not going to let him go”, and he didn’t go.  Well, there are a lot of people who are afraid of getting into some place where there is trouble or danger of it, or a battle to be fought.

     Last summer one day my little five year old boy came running into the presence of the rest of the family with an ugly big bug between his thumb and his forefinger, and his sister said, “Drop it! Drop it! Weren’t you afraid of it?”, and he said, “It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous”, and the implication was that because it was a dangerous thing he had to take it in hand.  Because it was dangerous he had to deal with it, not run away from it.  The man who would construct something, and the man who would make his life count, must not run away from the hard things, the difficult things.  The mere fact that it is difficult or hard should be a challenge to take hold of it and to deal with it.  Somebody will have to deal with it, and why not he?

     I have sometimes thought, living in railroad towns and over here in the hard coal regions where so many men work for wages, under the direction of others, that a good many of them get a sort of servile spirit, and get the habit of waiting for somebody to tell them what to do.  A man ought never to lose his own power of initiative.  He ought to be willing to do things for himself act for himself, and to do things on his own initiative, and not have to be told everything that he is to do.  He ought to have some sense of responsibility.

     There was a colored man in the war who was driving mules and who did an awful lot of swearing.  He had a Captain who was a good religious man and did not like profanity, and he called him into his presence, and told him that after this; he, the captain, would do the swearing for the whole company.  Sometime later it was reported to the captain that Sam had done some terrific swearing.  The captain called him in again and said, “Sam, don’t you remember that I had you before me last week and I told you that I would do the swearing for this Company?” “Yes, I know you said that, then, but them mules was stuck in the mud and I didn’t have no time to send for you,” Well, there will come times in men’s lives when everything will stop and stagnation will result unless a man can act for himself and think for himself, and I think you men need to develop that sort of spirit among yourselves and among the men in a larger measure than you have in the past.

     Somehow or other, if men are going to count for any thing worth while in the world, they must believe in the thing that they are doing.  They must have some enthusiasm for it, not simply be able to believe in it but put themselves into the thing that they are doing and make it theirs in a very real sense by their investment of their life in it.

     An Irishman and a German were working together a good many years ago.  The Irishman was very enthusiastic and the German was very phlegmatic, and every once in a while Irishman would shout, “Hurrah for Ireland”.  And the German got tired of it and said, “Hurrah for hell”.  The Irishman said, “That’s all right, every man for his own country”.  And so any man ought to enthuse for his own country and his own job, no matter what that job may be.  I don’t think I am wrong, but it seems to me this country of ours is so large and there are so many things to do that I believe that every right minded man and woman can find a job that he or she will delight in and enthuse over if they go at it in a right minded sensible way; and I am sorry for any man or woman who is working at any job that they do not like.  They must first be sure that they themselves are right, get the right attitude toward their lives and toward their work, and then maybe they will find the job that they’ve got is the most delightful job in the world, and if they are sure that they do not have the right job they ought to go and hunt some other job.  The man who is happy in the thing he is doing and believes it is the very job for him is worth from two to twenty times as much as the man who doesn’t like to do the thing that he is doing and is only doing it because he has to do it and not because he wants to do it.  No man can put his very best into any job that he does not believe in.  You would not build a house in a town you do not believe in.

     Up in Renovo, I said to a friend of mine who had been in business there for good many years, “You haven’t bought this building have you?” He had been renting it for more than twenty years.  “Why haven’t you bought this building? Don’t you own any other real estate in this town?” He  replied, “I haven’t been sure that it would be a good investment, I have been afraid to invest my money; they are all the time talking about taking this shop away from here.  Why, if they took this shop away from here your property wouldn’t be worth anything.” He didn’t have faith in that town, and he wouldn’t put his money into it.  And the man who doesn’t have faith in the thing that he is doing will not put his hope, his life and his energy into it.  Anything that isn’t worth putting your life into isn’t worth doing at all.

     Three men were working on a cathedral.  A man came walking past and to one that he knew he said, “John, are you here”?  And John said, “Yes, I am here.  I am here every day from eight o’clock until five.  What time is it?” Then he came to another fellow and said, “Henry, you here”? “Yes, said Henry, “I am here, working for five dollars a day.” He came to a third man and said, “You here, George?” George said, “Yes, I’ve been here since they started”.  He did not take his eyes off his work. “We are building a cathedral.  It is going to be the finest cathedral for thousands of miles.” That man was a builder; the other two were just hands.  They didn’t have their heads in the work they were doing, much less their hearts or their lives. 

     There is a story told in verse of the proper way for a  man to pray.  It goes something like this:

          The proper way for a man to pray,
          Said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
          And the only proper attitude,
          Is down upon his knees.

          No, I should say the way to pray,
          Said Reverend Doctor Wise,
          Is standing straight with out-stretched arms,
          And rapt and upturned eyes.

          Last year I fell down Adkins well,
          Head first, said Cyrus Brown,
          With both my feet a pointing up,
          My head a pointing down.

          Right then and there I prayed a prayer,
          The best I ever said,
          The prayenist prayer, I ever prayed,
          A standin’ on my head.

     The moral I would point out from that little poem is not the question of the proper attitude in prayer, but that man can pray fervently, for himself at least, when he is on his head in the well into which he has fallen, but it takes quite a different spirit to stand out in God’s bright sunlight without anything threatening him and pray just as fervently for some good thing to come to pass, as that man would pray in the well to be delivered from some evil thing that was threatening to come to pass.  And why can’t we pray and work just as hard for the good things to come as for deliverance from imminent evil? But we don’t.  Why can’t we do the heroic and generous things we did during the War? Was it because we were scared then? God pity us! The need is still upon us.  But I appeal to you to set a goal before you that is high and worth while and then work and pray as you would to dig yourself out of a hole that meant death and destruction to you.

     I think it was General Walker who introduced the repeating rifle into use in the Civil War.  When he brought it out on the field they began to shoot, shoot, shoot, without stopping to reload, and he made a great reputation for himself.  The point is this, someone asked him to what he attributed his great success.  He had not had a military training, but went right out from the ranks to a Brigadier General, and he said if there was any explanation, it was this, “I made the war my own”.  He went into the war as his war and he found success in the expression of that spirit. 

     You men in a supervisory position with the Railroad Company—is not the man in your employ who speaks of the Railroad Company in the first personal pronoun, of a good deal more value than the man who uses the third person? The man who says “we are doing so and so”, and if he talks about an operation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company he says “our” work, is not that man of more use to the company than the men who says “they” and has somehow in thought separated himself from the enterprise in which he is engaged? The man who makes it his own will put into it all his strength and skill and zeal.

     We must have faith in what we have not yet seen, what is incomplete, unaccomplished.  None of us in this life, I suppose, will have anything that is entirely complete and, satisfying.  We must be satisfied with what is incomplete, which we hope will be better tomorrow or next year.  And we must take hold and see enough in it to incite us to give to it our very best endeavor and try to make it worth while tomorrow if it was not today.

     A little boy had prayed for a baby brother.  He had prayed a good while, and then at last his prayer was heard.  The baby brother had come.  And he went in to see him.  He looked at him for a while and then looked up into the face of his father and seemed to be disappointed, saying, “Why, he ain’t got no hair”, and nobody denied it.  “And he ain’t got no teeth”, and again nobody denied it.  “And I don’t believe he can talk.  He ain’t finished.  I was anxious for a baby brother, but I wasn’t in such a hurry that I couldn’t wait to have him finished.” Suppose the mother had that same lack of faith in the little babe that nestled on her bosom.  She knows he has no teeth, he can’t talk and he can’t walk, but she sees in that little baby who has no teeth, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t take care of himself for a long period of years, a Gladstone, a Lincoln, an Edison, and because she sees all that in him she gives her life to the making of a Gladstone, or Lincoln, or Edison, and if it were not for that faith in the unfinished baby, on the part of the mother, we would never have Gladstones, or Lincolns, or Edisons.  Do not be utterly disgusted because things are not as you think they ought to be.  Look at them with the vision of faith and you can see the possibilities that will seem worthy of your best effort to bring them to a glorious realization.  I thank you.