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Keep at Your Work, and It Will Keep You
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Keep Away from the “Let Well Enough Alone” Crowd. Old “Well Enough”
Is the General of Calamity, Disaster and Disappointment.
There Is no Such Thing as “Well Enough.” No Matter How Good a Thing Is,
Work to Make It Better. For That You Were Put Here.
g'
pounded solemnly the foolish saying, “Let well
enough alone.”
This editorial, with the picture of old MR.
WELL ENOUGH, is intended to counteract
some of the harmful talk about being satisfied
with little.
Never be SATISFIED with anything. And
don't teach your children to be satisfied—keep
their minds free from the dull, discouraging
talk about “well enough."
To be satisfied, contented, approving your
self and approving conditions, is a sign of
smallness.
Men become great because they are not sat
isfied, because the more they get oi knowledge,
wealth or power the more they strive to get.
Columbus was not satisfied with the long
sea voyage to India—although others had been
satisfied for centuries. And because he was
not satisfied Columbus discovered America.
Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton were
not satisfied with the fairy stories about a flat
earth and all the hosts of heaven revolving
around our miserable little planet. And be
cause they were DISSATISFIED they gave
us our wonderful knowledge of astronomy and
our glimpse into the infinite—the greatest
thing that we possess.
t .• *
The inhabitant* of this country in 1776
f
T is true, strange and sad that
you hear all of the FOOLISH
things very often and so
rarely hear the wise things.
Everybody has heard re
peated over and over and ex-
were not satisfied. The Tories, the friends of
King George and the English Government, ad
vised the people of the United States to let well
enough alone. The Tories reminded the
American colonists that England would pro
tect them, England would make them great,
England would do everything.
But the colonists were not satisfied to be
taxed without representation, and because
they were dissatisfied this country is a nation
instead of being, like Canada, a colony gov
erned from across the sea.
* # «
Dissatisfaction is the only great motive
power in individual life, in national life, in com
merce, in politics.
Millions of years ago the creatures that in
habited the ocean, the only living things on
this planet, got dissatisfied and crawled up
on the land—hideous serpents and lizards—
dreadful things to look at they were at first.
BUT, LUCKILY, THEY WERE DISSAT
ISFIED.
Some of them became birds and learned
to fly.
Some developed wings with hooked joints
and gave us the bats and all the pterodactyl
family. Others developed into mammals, and
moved all over the face of the world, and event
ually man appeared in his turn to begin his
long career.
He appeared because the wisdom of Nature
had transplanted dissatisfaction, struggle and
ceaseless effort throughout all animal life.
And man from his first day began HIS
career of dissatisfaction and struggle. Be
cause he was dissatisfied and because he would
never consent to let well enough alone, he
struggled through the stone age, and the age
of bronze and the various primitive ages of
ignorance, brutality, superstition and cruelty
to his present degree of partial civilization.
And because man is and always will be
dissatisfied, his growth will continue until he
shall develop into a race worthy of this planet,
worthy of the wonderful possibilities that the
human race inherits.
a * «
Never let well enough alone. You might
as well be dead as contented. You were put
here to work for yourself and for others, and
especially for those that are to come after you.
The man who is letting well enough alone and
not trying to do better might as well be off the
earth and give his place to some one willing to
work. He does not deserve the noble work
done here BY THE DISSATISFIED before
he was born.
Only when man is very old, when his life
is practically all behind him, has he the right
to rest and think and, having finished his days,
look back on the past. And even then, on the
last day of his last year, the right kind of man
will preach wise dissatisfaction and ambition
to the young and go into his grave dissatisfied
with himself for not having done better.
♦ .* *
We might all be using hieroglyphics now.
But dissatisfaction gave us our alphabet, and
the written book and then the printed book
and shorthand and the typewriter and the
phonograph.
We might all be travelling across country,
with a backache, on a camel’s back like the
Queen of Sheba, if we had been satisfied with
camels and had not invented the two-wheeled
cart, then the four-wheeled wagon, the stage
coach, the steam engine, the express train,
the rubber-tired automobile and the flying
machine.
To-day the Queen of Sheba would call
King Solomon up on the telephone, make an
appointment for that afternoon and be home
in time for dinner—all because the kings and
queens and the ordinary people that have fol
lowed her were dissatisfied.
She too, was dissatisfied, poor lady. She
had heard about Solomon in all his glory and
was bound to go and look at him. Probably
travel was improved somewhat by her orders
when she came home aching all over.
« « «
Be dissatisfied with your work especially,
for it is what you DO that counts, not what
you think about yourself or what you imagine
you will do in future.
Be dissatisfied with your supply of infor
mation and try to get more, no matter how
much or how little you may have. The libra
ries are open and the knowledge is in them.
Be dissatisfied with what you do for those
that depend upon you or that have a right to
depend upon you.
Old Well Enough is a sleepy, harmful, dis
mal humbug. Don’t have him in your neigh
borhood. NEVER LET WELL ENOUGH
ALONE—MAKE IT BETTER.