Part 10 (1/2)
”Well, the fact is, I am out of a job. You know I've been doing reporter work on the morning SENTINEL since I graduated last year.
Well, last Sat.u.r.day Mr. Burr asked me to go down the road Sunday morning and get the details of that train robbery at the Junction, and write the thing up for the extra edition that came out Monday morning, just to get the start of the NEWS. I refused to go, and Burr gave me my dismissal. He was in a bad temper, or I think perhaps he would not have done it. He has always treated me well before. Now, do you think Jesus would have done as I did? I ask because the other fellows say I was a fool not to do the work. I want to feel that a Christian acts from motives that may seem strange to others sometimes, but not foolish. What do you think?”
”I think you kept your promise, Fred. I cannot believe Jesus would do newspaper reporting on Sunday as you were asked to do it.”
”Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. I felt a little troubled over it, but the longer I think it over the better I feel.”
Morris rose to go, and his pastor rose and laid a loving hand on the young man's shoulder. ”What are you going to do, Fred?”
”I don't know yet. I have thought some of going to Chicago or some large city .”
”Why don't you try the NEWS?”
”They are all supplied. I have not thought of applying there.”
Maxwell thought a moment. ”Come down to the NEWS office with me, and let us see Norman about it.”
So a few minutes later Edward Norman received into his room the minister and young Morris, and Maxwell briefly told the cause of the errand.
”I can give you a place on the NEWS,” said Norman with his keen look softened by a smile that made it winsome. ”I want reporters who won't work Sundays. And what is more, I am making plans for a special kind of reporting which I believe you can develop because you are in sympathy with what Jesus would do.”
He a.s.signed Morris a definite task, and Maxwell started back to his study, feeling that kind of satisfaction (and it is a very deep kind) which a man feels when he has been even partly instrumental in finding an unemployed person a remunerative position.
He had intended to go right to his study, but on his way home he pa.s.sed by one of Milton Wright's stores. He thought he would simply step in and shake hands with his paris.h.i.+oner and bid him G.o.d-speed in what he had heard he was doing to put Christ into his business.
But when he went into the office, Wright insisted on detaining him to talk over some of his new plans. Maxwell asked himself if this was the Milton Wright he used to know, eminently practical, business-like, according to the regular code of the business world, and viewing every thing first and foremost from the standpoint of, ”Will it pay?”
”There is no use to disguise the fact, Mr. Maxwell, that I have been compelled to revolutionize the entire method of my business since I made that promise. I have been doing a great many things during the last twenty years in this store that I know Jesus would not do. But that is a small item compared with the number of things I begin to believe Jesus would do. My sins of commission have not been as many as those of omission in business relations.”
”What was the first change you made?” He felt as if his sermon could wait for him in his study. As the interview with Milton Wright continued, he was not so sure but that he had found material for a sermon without going back to his study.
”I think the first change I had to make was in my thought of my employees. I came down here Monday morning after that Sunday and asked myself, 'What would Jesus do in His relation to these clerks, bookkeepers, office-boys, draymen, salesmen? Would He try to establish some sort of personal relation to them different from that which I have sustained all these years?' I soon answered this by saying, 'Yes.' Then came the question of what that relation would be and what it would lead me to do. I did not see how I could answer it to my satisfaction without getting all my employees together and having a talk with them. So I sent invitations to all of them, and we had a meeting out there in the warehouse Tuesday night. A good many things came out of that meeting. I can't tell you all. I tried to talk with the men as I imagined Jesus might. It was hard work, for I have not been in the habit of it, and must have made some mistakes. But I can hardly make you believe, Mr. Maxwell, the effect of that meeting on some of the men. Before it closed I saw more than a dozen of them with tears on their faces. I kept asking, 'What would Jesus do?' and the more I asked it the farther along it pushed me into the most intimate and loving relations with the men who have worked for me all these years. Every day something new is coming up and I am right now in the midst of a reconstruction of the entire business so far as its motive for being conducted is concerned. I am so practically ignorant of all plans for co-operation and its application to business that I am trying to get information from every possible source. I have lately made a special study of the life of t.i.tus Salt, the great mill-owner of Bradford, England, who afterward built that model town on the banks of the Aire. There is a good deal in his plans that will help me. But I have not yet reached definite conclusions in regard to all the details. I am not enough used to Jesus' methods. But see here.”
Wright eagerly reached up into one of the pigeon holes of his desk and took out a paper.
”I have sketched out what seems to me like a program such as Jesus might go by in a business like mine. I want you to tell me what you think of it:
”WHAT JESUS WOULD PROBABLY DO IN MILTON WRIGHT'S PLACE AS A BUSINESS MAN”
He would engage in the business first of all for the purpose of glorifying G.o.d, and not for the primary purpose of making money. All money that might be made he would never regard as his own, but as trust funds to be used for the good of humanity. His relations with all the persons in his employ would be the most loving and helpful.
He could not help thinking of all of them in the light of souls to be saved. This thought would always be greater than his thought of making money in the business. He would never do a single dishonest or questionable thing or try in any remotest way to get the advantage of any one else in the same business. The principle of unselfishness and helpfulness in the business would direct all its details. Upon this principle he would shape the entire plan of his relations to his employees, to the people who were his customers and to the general business world with which he was connected.
Henry Maxwell read this over slowly. It reminded him of his own attempts the day before to put into a concrete form his thought of Jesus' probable action. He was very thoughtful as he looked up and met Wright's eager gaze.
”Do you believe you can continue to make your business pay on these lines?”
”I do. Intelligent unselfishness ought to be wiser than intelligent selfishness, don't you think? If the men who work as employees begin to feel a personal share in the profits of the business and, more than that, a personal love for themselves on the part of the firm, won't the result be more care, less waste, more diligence, more faithfulness?”
”Yes, I think so. A good many other business men don't, do they? I mean as a general thing. How about your relations to the selfish world that is not trying to make money on Christian principles?”
”That complicates my action, of course.”