Retiring And Reforming

There is another side to this question of retirement, more significant than the personal phase. It refers to and includes a certain type of business man to whom "retire" spells "reform." To such a man, retirement means - consciously or unconsciously - the swing from getting to giving, from labor to love, from preying to praying. In other words, to retire from business implies a fundamental shift in all of life's values. Herein lies the real sin.

After all, there is probably no great gain or loss to the world at large, whether you or I add or subtract a paltry decade or so in our declining years. Longevity is not a measure of achievement. Idiots attain to incredible ages. No! The issue is more than personal. What counts with the world about your living and mine is not How Long but How - how we live the great active span of life. Shall we remain business cave-men during the period of our maximum endeavor, postponing all else until we retire? Or shall we follow exactly the opposite policy of building a business from which it shall not be necessary to retire in order to find the better things? This is what counts - with reference to society.

The Business Cave-Man

Reducing the general principle to specific examples, here is Mr. A., the business cave-man. For forty years he has sweated his workers. The output of his factory is tremendous - lots of merchandise, also lots of human wrecks and ruins. He is looking forward to the time when he will retire. In his mind is the project of building a great hospital at this time, which shall serve as an offset to any damage that he may have caused. Or it may be that he has in mind the gift of a library - upon his retirement - which may counter-balance the years in which his slave-driving has deprived men and women of even the opportunity for reading.

With another man, in this same class, post-retirement activities may take the form of study, touring, the collection of objects of art, or similar cultural projects. Meanwhile, his plant and environments are destitute of all beauty and devoid of all culture. These specifications of Mr. A's life might be amplified indefinitely, but from these brief hints I think you will have no difficulty in forming a mental photograph of this man.

Reform At The Beginning, Not At The End, Of Your Business Career

On the other side we have Mr. B. who has no thought of retiring from business. In the back of his head there are no pretty pictures of future hospitals, libraries, and other elegancies of leisure. His life is so bound up with his business that the two are felt to be a unit. He realizes that his worth to the world will be measured by this single standard and in consequence he builds accordingly. His contributions to the cause of health are made in the form of wholesome working conditions. His share in increasing the world's happiness is contributed in the form of giving men and women opportunities for a happy day's work. Reading and refinement are not withheld from the present generation of workers with an idea that these benefits will be given to some future generation of workers. The good he does is done here and now, rather than postponed until he can retire.

This attitude and policy are not limited to his employees, but are extended to include the two great classes, namely; first, his customers, and second, those from whom he purchases. The idea is now pretty firmly established in business that service should be given to customers and that a transaction which does not benefit the customer is in the long run a transaction that cannot benefit the concern. But we are still very far from having learned the corollary lesson that it does not pay to injure those from whom we buy our goods. For the man who is looking forward to retirement, principles of this kind may seem too new fangled for actual practice, but the man who knows that his record is being made during his business life rather than afterwards, sees all these things in a very different light. Moreover, Mr. B. does not look upon his business merely as a ladder by which he alone may climb up. He does not look forward to some distant day when he will contemptuously kick down this ladder, loaded with the men and women who have helped to put him where he is.

The above sections had been written when one of my manuscript readers made the suggestion that instead of naming my characters "Mr. A." and "Mr. B.," I should use some other letters of the alphabet, because "Mr. B." might be taken as a complacent reference to myself. I was about to make the suggested change, and then thought:

"No, let it stand. It's my creed if not my record."

"a man's reach must exceed his grasp"

Doubtless in our own organization we have fallen short of the ideal sketched above as Mr. B's business career. Nevertheless this represents a standard toward which we have sincerely struggled, and it shall remain as a statement of faith at least, however far from a literal chronicle.

The proposition, then, is simply this. A man's basic attitude toward his work has a most profound influence upon the direction and character of that work. If his program is split into two parts, business and post-business, - then his business career is inevitably cheapened and degraded. There is always the feeling that for any questionable practice indulged at present, he may give recompense during the period of retirement. There is always the hope that he will be judged by the double standard, - in one light as an active business man, in another light as a retired business man. There is always the delusion that the public may let the good works of the future Dr. Jekyl repay the mischief wrought by the present Mr. Hyde.