(There are people who do not believe good or great things are unattainable, even in the face of great opposing power or circumstance. Where would we be as a society or a nation or an economy if there only such people? Dr. Crane has the same questions. And some answers. Although his list of accomplished impossibilities is a century old, our lifetime’s experiences validate what he wrote.)
IT CAN’T BE DONE
If you’re looking about for something to do, something big, something that will bring you fame and money, find something that can’t be done, and do it.
Whoever is at work that can be done is not indispensable. If he quits, seven others are in line to take his job.
But the man who can do what can’t be done is not to be dispensed with. The business cannot get along without him.
Advertise for applicants for a job in your store…a job any industrious person can hold, and next morning the street will be black with the crowd of seekers.
Advertise for a man who will tell you in a day how to increase your net profits or decrease your expenses ten percent, and all you will need at your door is a policeman to handle the cranks.
Particularly in the higher realm of endeavor, in the domain of thought and of morals, it is the impossible that is essential, dominant, needed.
Conscience always points to what is beyond our capacity.
Reason invariably demonstrates that what should be done is the impractical.
The world progresses only as mankind does what can’t be done.
The eight-hour day, says Mr. Forbes, was socialistic, anarchistic, and absurd when first advocated. Nothing could be more impossible. Still, it lay on the conscience of the humane employer as well as upon the desire of the worker; and it was realized, and without any tremendous upheaval of the industries concerned.
It was once said that seven-day work could not be done away with in the steel industry. The nature of the business demanded continuous labor. Give steel workers a Sabbath rest? It can’t be done. Yet it was done…
Against every demand of humanity it has been objected, “It can’t be done.”
You can’t treat prisoners like human beings, they said, and for centuries the vile birds of horror and cruelty befouled every penitentiary. Today militant reformers are doing the impossible, and the cursed ramparts of humanity are crumbling.
Men could not spread religion without quarrelings, torture, force. But is being done.
Plagues could not be prevented, the ignorant common people could not be educated, little children could not be spared from stunting labor, sweatshops could not be abolished, corporal punishment and trial by torture could not be brought to pass, slavery, dueling, and gladiatorial games could not be abated. At some time or another practical men held all these things impossible.
And now they sagely tell us that war cannot be evaded; nations must have war; to expect to abolish war is ideal, fanatical, theoretical, impossible.
Very well. If it’s impossible, let’s do it.