The Book of Business Etiquette | Page 5

with it. Not
very far by, at any rate.
It is impossible now to separate courtesy and character. Politeness is a
fundamental, not a superficial, thing. It is the golden rule translated into
terms of conduct. It is not a white-wash which, if laid on thick enough,
will cover every defect. It is a clear varnish which shows the texture
and grain of the wood beneath. In the ideal democracy the ideal citizen
is the man who is not only incapable of doing an ungallant or an
ungracious thing, but is equally incapable of doing an unmanly one.
There is no use lamenting the spacious days of long ago. Wishing for
them will not bring them back. Our problem is to put the principles of
courtesy into practice even in this hurried and hectic Twentieth Century
of ours. And since the business man is in numbers, and perhaps in
power also, the most consequential person in the country, it is of most
importance that he should have a high standard of behavior, a high
standard of civility, which includes not only courtesy but everything
which has to do with good citizenship.
We have no desire for candy-box courtesy. It should be made of sterner
stuff. Nor do we care for the sort which made the polite Frenchman say,
"Excusez-moi" when he stabbed his adversary. We can scarcely hope
just yet to attain to the magnificent calm which enabled Marie
Antoinette to say, "I'm sorry. I did not do it on purpose," when she
stepped on the foot of her executioner as they stood together on the
scaffold, or Lord Chesterfield, gentleman to the very end, to say, "Give
Dayrolles a chair" when his physician came into the room in which he
lay dying. But we do want something that will enable us to live
together in the world with a minimum degree of friction.

The best of us get on one another's nerves, even under ordinary
conditions, and it takes infinite pains and self-control to get through a
trying day in a busy office without striking sparks somewhere. If there
is a secret of success, and some of the advertisements seem trying to
persuade us that it is all secret, it is the ability to work efficiently and
pleasantly with other people. The business man never works alone. He
is caught in the clutches of civilization and there is no escape. He is
like a man climbing a mountain tied to a lot of other men climbing the
same mountain. What each one does affects all the others.
We do not want our people to devote themselves entirely to the art of
being agreeable. If we could conceive of a world where everybody was
perfectly polite and smiling all the time we should hardly like to live in
it. It is human nature not to like perfection, and most of us, if brought
face to face with that model of behavior, Mr. Turveydrop, who spent
his life serving as a pattern of deportment, would sympathize with the
delightful old lady who looked at him in the full flower of his glory and
cried viciously (but under her breath) "I could bite you!"
When Pope Benedict XI sent a messenger to Giotto for a sample of his
work the great artist drew a perfect circle with one sweep of his arm
and gave it to the boy. Before his death Giotto executed many
marvelous works of art, not one of them perfect, not even the
magnificent bell tower at Florence, but all of them infinitely greater
than the circle. It is better, whether one is working with bricks or souls,
to build nobly than to build perfectly.

II
THE VALUE OF COURTESY
Every progressive business man will agree with the successful Western
manufacturer who says that "courtesy can pay larger dividends in
proportion to the effort expended than any other of the many human
characteristics which might be classed as Instruments of
Accomplishment." But this was not always true. In the beginning "big

business" assumed an arrogant, high-handed attitude toward the public
and rode rough-shod over its feelings and rights whenever possible.
This was especially the case among the big monopolies and public
service corporations, and much of the antagonism against the railroads
to-day is the result of the methods they used when they first began to
lay tracks and carry passengers. Nor was this sort of thing limited to the
large concerns. Small business consisted many times of trickery
executed according to David Harum's motto of "Do unto the other feller
as he would like to do unto you, but do him fust." The public is a
long-suffering body and the business man is a hard-headed one, but
after a while the public began to realize that it was not necessary