institution, and the first high wind that happens along, you will be
uprooted and blown away in the blizzard's track--and probably you will
never know why. The letter only says, "Times are dull and we regret
there is not enough work," et cetera.

Everywhere you will find these out-of-a-job fellows. Talk with them and
you will find that they are full of railing, bitterness, scorn and
condemnation. That was the trouble--thru a spirit of fault-finding they
got themselves swung around so they blocked the channel, and had to be
dynamited. They were out of harmony with the place, and no longer being
a help they had to be removed. Every employer is constantly looking for
people who can help him; naturally he is on the lookout among his
employees for those who do not help, and everything and everybody that
is a hindrance has to go. This is the law of trade--do not find fault
with it; it is founded on nature. The reward is only for the man who
helps, and in order to help you must have sympathy.

You cannot help the Old Man so long as you are explaining in an
undertone and whisper, by gesture and suggestion, by thought and mental
attitude that he is a curmudgeon and that his system is dead wrong. You
are not necessarily menacing him by stirring up this cauldron of
discontent and warming envy into strife, but you are doing this: you are
getting yourself on a well-greased chute that will give you a quick ride
down and out. When you say to other employees that the Old Man is a
curmudgeon, you reveal the fact that you are one; and when you tell them
that the policy of the institution is "rotten," you certainly show
that yours is.

This bad habit of fault-finding, criticising and complaining is a tool
that grows keener by constant use, and there is grave danger that he who