(We recognize the true movers and shakers of our communities and our nation. They are the ones who influence the policies that shape our lives. Some have money. Some rely on personal integrity. Some know how the system works and what strings to pull.  But being influential is not just the bailiwick of those who walk the marble halls of government.  Dr. Frank Crane says we all can exercise—-)

PERSONAL INFLUENCE

Of all the forces that drive human beings, the greatest is personal influence.

By personal influence I mean that force that goes out from you, simply by virtue of what you are. It has nothing to do with what you do or say or try, except as these things express what you are.

Every person sends out what we might call dynamic rays or invisible electric-like impulses which are of such nature as to affect other persons. These rays from me can make other individuals gay or sad, good or bad, and so forth.

This is the only power that pulls souls, the only wind that bends them, the only fire that warms them, the only stream that bears them along.

Emerson said that “what you are preaches so loudly that I cannot hear what you say”; which is a striking way of stating that one’s unconscious influence far outreaches in effect one’s conscious effort.

It would be well if we would keep this in mind; it would save us a lot of futile busying.

For instance, reformers bent on saving the world should not be so hot and impatient seeing that there is no real saving that ever has been or ever will be done that is not the result of the influence radiating from good people.

Laws are dead and wooden, but when a man incarnates a law it begins to work on other men. The “Word” is of no force until it is “made Flesh.”

It is the personal influence of a teacher that affects all the real educating of the pupil. The wise man understood this who said that the best university was “a log with Mark Hopkins on one end and me on the other.”

I sometimes doubt if any real good has ever been done by didactic teaching or preaching. All the moral maxims in the world are poor beside one strong, sweet, normal life. And a good woman is worth, as a guide, the most select list of “virtues and their opposite vices.”

To create such a character in fiction as “John Halifax” or “Jean Valjean” or “Little Nellie” or the man in the “Third Floor Back,” is to exert a lasting and potent uplift agency, better than a thousand sermons.

It is fascinating to many minds, the idea of “doing good” and “working for the Lord,” and devoting one’s time wholly to inducing people to become better; but it is not practical. The only way to improve mankind is to be something that inspires them; your argument and exhortation are of small avail. Just as the only way to dispel darkness is to shine, and the only way to electrify iron is to be a magnet.

Goodness is a contagion; we must “catch” it, we must have it and “give” it.

When you say in your creed that you believe in God, your declaration is of no help to you or to others unless what you mean is this: That you believe in the inherent potency of goodness, that it will live down, outwear, and destroy evil; that justice, cleanliness, honesty, and kindness will win in the long run against fraud, dirt, lying, and cruelty; and that persons who are upright and altruistic get more joy out of every minute of their lives than idle, sporty, and self-coddling folk; and that there is altogether a vast tidal or subterranean movement in the human race toward health, strength, and beauty.

Therefore why worry over what you will say or do, since it makes no matter? Simply BE right, and then say whatever comes to your mind, and do whatever comes to your hand, and you cannot fail to do the most possible toward helping along.

(Last week, Dr. Frank Crane urged us to be active, to sell ourselves, to take command of our lives and expand our future opportunities.  This week, he suggests there’s another side to the story as he ponders—-)

IDLENESS: THE MOTHER OF PROGRESS_

Idleness is the mother of progress. So long as men were busy they had no time to think of bettering their condition.

Idleness is the mother of art. It was when men had leisure from the chase that they decorated the handles of their hunting-knives and the walls of their cave-dwellings.

Idleness is the mother of religion. It is in the relax and rebound from toil that men think of God.

We talk of all men’s right to work. There is a deeper right than that. It is the right to idleness.

The value of what we put upon the page of life depends upon the width of the margin.

The great, useful, redeeming, and lasting work of the world is that work which is a reaction from idleness. The continent of labor is barren. It is the little island of labor that is green and fruitful in the sea of leisure.

The curse of America is its deification of labor. Our little gods are the men who are ceaselessly forthputting.

Most of all we deify capital, which never rests, but goes on producing day and night.

We are so occupied in getting ready to live that we have lost the art of living.

With us a man is a fool if he sets about to enjoy himself before he has laid up a fortune. We count the woman happy when she has married money, and the child accursed when he has no inheritance.

Every morning we arise from our beds and charge bloodthirstily into the struggle. We all do it, millionaires and paupers. In his office the trust magnate sits at his scheming until his nerves are loosed, his arteries hardened, and his soul caked. The slaves of Rome never worked so hard as many of our laborers in mines and factories.

“After the Semitic fashion,” says Remy de Goncourt, “you make even the women work. Rich and poor, all alike, you know nothing of the joys of leisure.”

There ought to be two leisure classes, yea three: all children under twenty-one, all women, and all men over sixty.

The work of the world could be easily done by males between the ages of twenty-one and sixty. To accomplish this, all that is needed is to abolish militarism, that insane burden of men in idleness, abolish all piled-up wealth-units that keep husky males workless, and abolish our worship of activity.

Then there would be plenty of work for every man to keep him from want, and plenty of leisure for every man to preserve in him a living soul.

If I were czar of the world, no woman should work except as she might elect for her amusement; no child should do aught but play.

Among savages the women do all the work. In the coming civilization they shall do none. The progress of the race is the progress of the female from toil to leisure.

Every woman is a possible mother. She should have only to grow and to be strong. She should be the real aristocracy, the real Upper Class, to give culture and beauty to life. She should have time to attend to the duties of her eternal priesthood.

As for man, little by little, he also would lift himself from the killing grind of monotonous exertion. For he would make Steam and Electricity, and other giants not yet discovered, do the dirty work.

To bring all this to pass, you do not need to devise any cunning scheme of government, nor to join any party or specious ism. You need do only one thing.

And that is to establish Justice.

The end of fraud and wrong is fevered toil. The end of justice is the superior product of skill and genius, and their mother, leisure.