“Old Bill” Suggests—

A cheery spirit and a sense of loyalty and enthusiasm have always been the pure gold of fellowship, shortening a voyage, lightening a load, brightening a shop. Instead of being less valuable in this mechanized age, they are more valuable because human contacts are fewer. No matter how mechanized, you can never escape the human element.

“None of your new-fangled, labor-saving appliances in them, but plenty of men and plenty of good salt beef and hardtack put aboard—and off you go to fight your way out and home again.

“Those were the ships for him. He pointed out that you couldn’t say to labor-saving devices, ‘Jump lively now, my hearties.’ No labor-saving applicances would go aloft on a dirty night with the sands under your lee.”

When a business is three-fourth machines and one-fourth man, the gloom of a disgruntled workman is just four times as sour as if he was the single crabber among a good-humored crowd of his fellows.

The few men in mechanized industry today need a smile apiece and it is good economy to pay them enough to make the smile not forced but natural.

ROYAL F. MUNGER.