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Show ;c :r"::"-'iiiiiil m v; '. v D-i ANdl U A IIMIIMlll'D ; . - j I By Eric Johnston An Aiiicrican Credo ( f.'j V.'tf.- This .lift'.- is mt W a .s.-iirx r.tnipi jxrrrjc f'rit- Johnston's nrw hook " A mn :t l'::.'i::iif'.(." Air. .'hnvrt-it l rrM.jY f f ol thr U, S. Cti.iml'fr ot I'ommrrcfi. ) ''I'MIK things a m;m bolievos most profomnlly tire rari'ly cm 1 tl.o suvt'cu'o of his mind or the tip ot" his toni'.uo. Newly acquired ac-quired notions, formulas learned by rote from books, decisions deci-sions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of tin1 moment- these are rie.ht on top of the pile, ready to be sampled and displayed in bright after-dinner conversation. Kilt the ideas Hint make up a man's philosophy of life ;uv somewhere way down below. They are imbedded imbed-ded in tho depths of his oxislonco. i Uesh of 1ms flesh and bono of his bono. 11 e in a y b e wholly unaware that bo possesses anything resembling resem-bling n philosophy philoso-phy of life. Probably Prob-ably he has not thought of it in such grandiose terms. Yet it was Eric Johnston foro sot oil' for the state university tit Seattle. To cover expenses, I got n job longshoring on the Seattle docks. Leaving niy law classes on Friday, I worked n ten-hour night shift on the docks, sleeping nil day Saturday, and another ton,-hour shift on Saturday night, sleeping nil day Sunday. The pay was 78 cents an hour. Later, a job ns law librarian at ?75 n month enabled me to quit longshoring nnd to get in more studying. In 1017 I was one of six seniors recommended by the university president at the request of the marine ma-rine corps, which was seeking officer offi-cer material. After training at Mare Island, I was sent to the marine base nt Quantico ns a second lieutenant lieu-tenant and bayonet instructor, subsequently sub-sequently returning to Mare Island in the same capacity. In 1919, with the proud title of captain, I was detailed de-tailed to the legation guard in Peking. Pe-king. Later I went on missions into interior China, Siberia, and Japan. Life in Peking was not unpleasant, and when the war ended I had resolved re-solved to make a career of the marine ma-rine corps. But the great intruder, accident, took a hand in the game. One afternoon in 1921, when I was in an unfrequented and hostile part of the Chinese capital on official business, I got into a row with natives na-tives and was clubbed over the head as my reward. A whole series of illnesses ensued, and for a year I knew the misery of many operations and the impatience of slow convalescence. convales-cence. Retired from the marines. I was back home in Spokane in 1922. The physicians had recommended that I do outdoor work. I therefore found a job peddling vacuum cleaners from door to door. Before long I was repairing them as well. Two years later I purchased the largest electrical contracting and retail re-tail appliance firm in the Northwest. My share of the capital for the shop had been made while I was in Peking, Pe-king, in pyramiding operations in foreign exchange that expanded $100 to $2,500. The capital for the big purchase came chiefly from an en-I en-I terprising taiiK. In 1929 I headed a trade organization organiza-tion called the Inland Empire Manufacturers' Manu-facturers' association, and in 1931 I became president of the Spokane Chamber of Commerce. Whatever the game, competition competi-tion is its soul. It is primarily in terms of competitions won and lost that I see my own business busi-ness history, when I take the trouble to look back on the land- " scape of these years. Contests for markets, contracts, building sites, credits. But there is another an-other side to free competition which critics and apologists for the American system alike almost al-most always overlook. Yet it is a side that every businessman i knows, and which I for one consider con-sider of the very essence of the capitalist system. I refer to cooperation. Every competitive com-petitive effort in our country also implies an immense cooperative effort. ef-fort. To beat the opposing team calls for the utmost collaboration in your own team. Managers, foremen, technicians, tech-nicians, workers, salesmen, advertising adver-tising men, lawyers, and a long list of others contribute to the growth of a business, share in its triumphs and its failures. I plead guilty of being a Kiwani-an, Kiwani-an, sharing all the sins of extravert good-fellowship, self-improvement, and community spirit which the so-called so-called intellectuals love to lampoon. I have no hesitancy in admitting affection af-fection for my fellow men. What is more, I see no contradiction between that and my personal ambitions; no hypocrisy, that is to say, in concern for the general good coupled with an interest in private advancement. ; Many Europeans, I can testify, I fail utterly tn understand this about Ann., i.-a. Many American proponents propo-nents of ideologies that have their iuuts in European experience have iuri'"''en this about America. But ;i :m-:i. t'ne "booster," the ir- i jle optimist all native A. ..ii products understand it. !t is mi i o:r:pletely a part of us, miccd. il at v e sense it without re- i' u, ;.i M-s'S. ' "2 I ? ' "ambers c Society I kv.-usc c live in a capitalist so-1 so-1 ciety, t.ll An.cu .ans are capitalists, precisely as all Germans and all Russians are collectivism in thai they live in a collectivist society. The fact that Hans Schmidt or Ivan Petrov may not relish the system oi concur in it does not exempt him; neither does the fact that he may consider himself ill-used and shortchanged short-changed by that system. But all Americans are capitalists in a deeper sense. In their psychology. psy-chology. In their innermost hearts and minds and nerves. They do not accept the status into which birth and fate have cast them, as the would have done under a feudal system of in an authoritarian setup there all the time. The truths he lives by, whether he knows it or not. Assumptions, preferences, and prejudices prej-udices so much a part of him that he has never felt the urge to explain or to justify them. A code of behavior be-havior that requires no act of explanation, ex-planation, because it is shared by his neighbors and rarely, if ever, disputed by public opinion. Rightly or wrongly. I can assure myself that in speaking for Eric Johnston I am speaking for a great legion of Eric Johtist?ns. What makes my essential ideas and hopes significant. 1 can tell myself, is not their quality of uniqueness but the fact that they are fairly typical, and certainly widespread. When the Horatio - Alger rags-to-riches tradition is referred to nowadays now-adays there is too often a note of derision in the speaker's voice. That seems to me both ungracious and unnecessary, because there are still two very remarkable facts about the celebrated Alger sagas of little tykes who grow into big tycoons. The first is that they are tue, not in the literal sense but in the symbolic sense. They truly express ex-press a commonplace of Ameri-cari Ameri-cari experience. Many of our Presidents have come from log cabins, from poor farms, out of boyhoods of want and drudgery. One other fact should be noted about our American folklore of success, suc-cess, and that is its youth. Horatio Alfeer only died in 1899. The customs cus-toms of other nations have their " "roots in an old, gnarled past, where-as where-as ours, good and bad alike, are comparatively fresh. Let us never , lose the consciousness of the youth and freshness of our American civilization! civi-lization! American Poverty Not a Serious Obstacle The second fact about the Alger tradition is that it is deeply American. Ameri-can. It comes as near as anything we have to a body of folklore. It embraces economic prowess, revolving revolv-ing around men who attained wealth for themselves or for their country by opening up new industries or new territories and devising new and better bet-ter ways of doing things. Americans Ameri-cans have not yet become accustomed accus-tomed to looking upon poverty as an insuperable, or even serious, obstacle. obsta-cle. The very air seemed to throb with the impulse of "making good." Selling Sell-ing papers while in grade school, later reporting for the Spokane Spokesman Review at three and a half dollars a column while in high school, working on the Seattle docks while in college, seemed to me less the signs of poverty than the proofs of opportunity and success to come. The penury in which I grew up was of the genteel variety without slum overtones. My ancestors fought in the Revolutionary war and my grandfather was a successful lawyer in the national capital, also farming a large acreage in gentlemanly style north of Keokuk, Iowa. My father, also originally from Iowa, was a chemist, or, as we would say today, to-day, a pharmacist. The depression of 1894 neatly finished off his modest flrugstore in Washington, D. C, and in 1896, a year after my birth, he took his family to the Northwest. He tried to rrr-'" go of it in Marysville, M- iw a ghosi town but af 18 monlb moved to Spol-.,., re he start ed another drua:-)-.. u. which netted only another failure, and finally a protracted illness overtook him tha' eventually caused his death. For my mother, the ways of t raw village of Spokane must ha been an ordeaL The mudholes, tht crudity of the new community, the unfamiliar burdens, contrasted with the ease of her upbringing. The illness ill-ness of my father meant that she was the sole support of the family She went to work in offices at that time, and in that place, in itself a kind of pioneering. But somehow all of it toughened her spirit without hurting its texture. Looking back at it all, I recognize that she must have known sharp fears and distressing defeats. Eut what she transmitted to her son was a little of the granite of her spirit and the velvet of her human sympathy. sympa-thy. An uncle of mine, a lawyer in Seattle, Se-attle, olleied to keep stair job open for ,f I would study law. Oil g: ;.di:atin; fro-,: h:eh . !, 1 t.cl c. |
