Meaning Of The Service Ideal

“Work’s a grand cure for all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind – honest work which you intend getting done.” – Thomas Carlyle.

“What is meant by the service ideal? The author of the ‘Meaning of Rotary’ quotes several versions varying in word, but identical in spirit.

The Egyptian expressed it: ‘To seek for others the good one desires for oneself.’ The Persian: ‘Do as you would be done by.’ Buddha: ‘One should seek for others the happiness one desires for himself.’ Confucius: ‘What you would not wish done to yourself, do not unto others.’ Mohammed: ‘Let no one of you treat his brother in a way he himself would dislike being treated.’ The Greek: ‘Do not that to a neighbor which you would take ill from him.’ The Roman: ‘The law imprinted on the hearts of all men, is to love the members of society as themselves.’ The Hebrew: ‘Whatsoever ye do not wish your neighbor to do to you, do not unto him. This is the only law; the rest is mere exposition of it.’ Lastly, Jesus of Nazareth: ‘All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’

Clearly it cannot mean that whose who are wedded to the service ideal believe that wealth has no legitimate uses.

The Rotary conception of the service ideal, as the writer understands it. Is placing service first in the sequence of events; in other words, he who professes to be a devotee to the service ideal must fix his eye on the service he is to render and not on the dollar he is to receive. When the dollar is placed in proximity to the eye, it is difficult to see beyond. Dollar cornering per se is stupid procedure.”

“While there are all too many professional men whose service fails to measure up to specifications, it is nevertheless the case that students of law, medicine, and theology are taught that the privilege of practicing their professions entails certain obligations which must be borne. The lawyer must remember that he is an officer of the court in the administration of justice. The physician, that he is first of all a servant of mankind. The preacher, that his is a sacred trust.

Lawyers must respond to the call of the court to defend gratuitously, impecunious prisoners; the physician must give a percentage of his time to patients who are unable to pay; the tradition of the ministry permits no discrimination between the prosperous and the indigent; and other professionals have their responsibilities.

A young lawyer recently, referring to an intricate law case which had been in progress for three years, said to the writer, ‘That was a wonderfully interesting case. I would have been willing to have handled it for nothing, if it had been necessary,’ It was the tradition of the bar which made the viewpoint possible. The young man loved his work. What wonders could be achieved if all men were in love with their work. The service ideal would quickly prove its practicability. ”

Humane societies have frowned upon the use of dogs, cats, monkeys, guinea pigs, and rats for experimental purposes. To medical men the practice seems amply justified in the advancement of science. That they are sincere in their viewpoint there can be no doubt. Many of the profession have jeopardized, and even sacrificed, their own lives through performing experiments upon themselves. If the doctrine of “Service above Self” seems to some too Utopian for practical purposes, they will do well to think of these highlights of the medical profession.

The practice of medicine and the practice of law have had the benefit of time-honored traditions. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, promulgated on oath to be taken by his followers which rings true to the highest concepts of the present day, and the Justinian standards for the practice of law were no less idealistic.

Emerson’s cryptic utterance: “All men are as lazy as they dare to be,” will stand considerable dilution.

Vocational training has accomplished much in the direction of enabling young men to find the work for which they are best adapted. The entire outlook upon life can frequently be changed for the better by shifting an employee from work he does not like to work that he enjoys. Progressive employers now recognize this fact and make the most of it.

The writer recalls the case of a man, a lover of the outdoors, who found himself working listlessly from morning to night in an indoor occupation; he had not been able to achieve success. He took himself and his prospects into account one day. Six months later he was engaged in work in his natural environment and success was soon attained.

Vocational guidance experts contend that in the United States only four men out of one hundred are properly placed in business. If their contention is anywhere near true, the fault can be corrected and the millennium will be discovered.

Who is there to whom work makes no appeal? If there are such, they are to be pitied. The minds of Galileo, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pasteur, and Edison were not concerned with pecuniary gain. The greatest contributions to social welfare and understanding have been gratuitous. The labor of the masters has been inspired by a passionate love of exploration of new fields of service. Maeterlink’s “Blue Bird” delightfully portrays the happiness which comes from unselfish service. Lives of service are lives of happiness. Take two children of the same family: for one reason or another, one is taught to serve the other. Though the parents may not realize it, the one who learns to serve will have all the advantage in later years. In service there is happiness. In the vast number of human activities there are opportunities for all types of service. This from Anthony Adverse: “One never realizes the fulfillment of life until he loses the sense of self in service.”

The professional schools teach the student that character is the most reliable foundation upon which to build a successful future; that success must depend upon the quality of service rendered.

The Bar Associations and Medical Societies of many cities, states and nations, have for years been engaged in round-ups of shysters and quacks, with the end in view of purging their professions of their degrading influence. 

To be sure there is special reason why the practice of law and medicine must, in good conscience, be kept pure. The relationship of lawyer and client, doctor and patient, are essentially trust relationships. In order to benefit from the lawyer’s advice the client must have implicit confidence, both in the ability and in the integrity of his lawyer; if he lacks faith in either, the purposes of the employment are impaired, if not entirely destroyed. A lawyer who betrays such sacred trust is an enemy of society and it is the duty of the authority granting him license to with draw his privileges through disbarment proceedings initiated by his fellow practitioners.

The trust involved in the relationship of doctor and patient is even more sacred, if such thing is possible. The duty motive and the profit motive frequently are in conflict. The surgeon who would unnecessarily operate upon an afflicted patient would merit the anathema of his fellow surgeons, and if the circumstances were known, it doubtless would be visited upon him; and yet surgical operations have undoubtedly frequently been performed, not because the patient needed the operation, but because the doctor needed the money; and it has probably as frequently been the case that lawsuits have been started not because the clients’ interests were best served by so doing, but because the lawyer could thereby assure himself of a substantial fee.

It is the Chinese custom to pay the physician while the patient remains in good health rather than during illness, from which fact one may make his own inferences.

Professional men frequently encounter one difficulty which business men seldom have to face, and that is the opposition of their clients.

A business man is not called upon to refuse to sell his customer the goods he desires, while the professional man frequently is. To institute a lawsuit merely because a client demands it and is willing to pay for the service would be a violation of the lawyer’s oath and the lawyer cannot justify himself for the acceptance of the mandate on the theory that if he does not accept it some other lawyer will. A lawyer must not forget that he is an officer of the court, that the court is supported by the public for the purpose of dispensing justice and not for the purpose of working injustice. The machinery of the law may be used to prosecute under proper conditions but never to persecute.

The minister of the gospel frequently faces conditions which make it necessary for him to choose between preaching his own doctrines and preaching the doctrines of his supporters. Frequently, the temptation to surrender his own views in favor of others probably less intelligent and less conscientiously, thoughtfully, and prayerfully arrived at, is almost overwhelming. The interests of his family tempt him to surrender his leadership or at least to compromise it. Many a poor minister has refused to do either, preferring to resign his post to another willing to obey orders.

Frank Lamb in “Rotary, a Business Man’s Interpretation,” quotes Ruskin in “The Roots of Honor”— who, writing of the soldier, the pastor, the physician, the lawyer and merchant, said that it is the duty of each, on due occasion to die for his profession; the soldier rather than leave his post in battle; the physician, rather than leave his post in plague; the pastor rather than teach falsehood; the lawyer rather than countenance injustice. What the “due occasion” for the merchant is, has not been so clearly defined; it’s for him to decide.

But Ruskin goes on to say that to obtain profit is no more the function of the merchant than that of the clergyman; that the stipend is a necessary adjunct, but not the object of the life of either the clergyman or the merchant.

Ruskin does not attempt to point out to the professional politician his due occasion, but we find the professional politician, as a rule, most desperately in earnest when he is building his political fences; perhaps that is his due occasion.

The results obtained by Bar Associations and Medical Societies have not all been attained at once. They represent the cumulative effect of years of vigorous action.

Is there an essential reason why the work of the professional societies should not be paralleled by organizations of business men? Some one may answer, “Business cannot be placed on a plane with the practice of law and medicine, because the practice of law and medicine is personal service; the lawyer and physician have themselves only to account for, while business employs hundreds and even thousands of men and women.

Business is already becoming professionalized. Since the state of California passed its licensing law regulating operations in real estate, thousands of real estate sharpers have been put out of business and many other states are following suit.

What is there about business to render it immune to the service ideal? Even labor organizations are now proclaiming the dignity of labor, and why should they not?

The writer is convinced that business of the future will jealously guard its good name, even to the point of driving its crooks into tall timber to keep company with the shysters of the legal profession and the quacks of medicine. Organizations operating under the name of “Better Business Bureaus” are in fact already doing effective work to that end.

Rotarians believe that their own respective businesses afford the average man the most available means of serving society; that in his own business one is necessarily an expert, while he may be a veritable tyro in the field of charities. Moreover, business is near at hand; it is unnecessary for a business man to explore Kamchatka or the South Sea Islands for an opportunity to do his part in making this a better world to live in; ordinarily he can render better service in trying to discover new means of kindling the fires of hope and ambition in the hearts of his own employees.

Rotarians believe that the world owes no one a living but that everyone should have an opportunity to earn one. Rotary encourages every member to activity in his trade association, particularly in work relating to ethical standards. The writer is a member of the American Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association, the Chicago Bar Association, and for two years had the honor of being chairman of the committee on professional ethics of the latter, a member of other committees, a delegate of the Chicago Bar Association to the International Congress on Comparative Law at the Hague, and a member of the international Committee of the American Bar Association. All positions afforded remarkable opportunities to carry the Rotary ideal of service to his profession. There are between eight and nine thousand lawyers in the city of Chicago, and the Chicago Bar Association has been doing titanic work in raising the standards of practice. Nearly three hundred lawyers have been made to walk the plank because they would not observe the canons of good practice. Rotarians have not merely been active in professional and trade associations; they have created many national trade associations in the United States and some in other countries.

The worship of wealth has been one of the greatest obstacles in the work of promoting acceptance of the service ideal. It is so general, so much a matter of course, that the “big” man has meant the rich man. He who lacked great possessions has had to be content to remain small, and it matters little what his contribution to human welfare may have been. We have even gone so far as to use the expression “What is Jones worth?” when what we wanted to know is, how much he possessed. There is no uncertainty about the meaning of the answer: “He is said to be worth one million dollars.” His rating is entirely on his possessions. No allowance is made for the man. Per haps to those who know Jones best, that manner of rating him does him no injustice.

During the course of a recent conversation with the writer, Rotarian Frederick G. Smith of Omaha impulsively inquired: “What real need can any man have of one million dollars? Why one million dollars, more than one million walking-sticks, neckties, or one million of anything else?” The best case I could make was to say, “Custom, habit, I suppose.” If it were the custom to measure a man’s worth by the number of walking-sticks or neckties he possessed, the walking-stick and necktie factories would be working three shifts, night and day. Children work strenuously piling up heaps of sand, not because there is any scarcity of sand, but because they want to have piles of sand of their own, higher than the piles of other children. Children pile sand, men pile gold, but their motives are not far different; possession, coupled with the admiration and envy of those who do not possess. Of the two, the children are in one respect, at least, the wiser. There is no disagreeable aftermath to the accumulation of sand, while there is to the accumulation of gold, as King Midas learned to his sorrow in the days of old. Acquisitiveness is not compatible with the service ideal.

It is not as though the subordination of the profit motive to the service motive had never taken place before. There is nothing revolutionary about it. The doctrine is as old as the hills. For generations there have been individuals whose service motives have been so dominating that they could not see beyond them. Spinoza was tendered a gift of one thousand dollars by an admiring and grateful follower. It was promptly refused because the great philosopher thought that his poverty was essential to the fulfillment of his high purposes.

An American magazine offered Mr. Einstein a sum of money so large for an article that he became angry, as angry as it is possible for one of so serene a nature to be. His words were: “What do they take me for, a prize-fighter?” When Princeton University informed Mr. Einstein what his salary was to be, he exclaimed: “Preposterous” nor would he accept the position until the amount had been greatly reduced.

But one might say, the examples that have been cited are those of great geniuses who live in worlds of their own; they have their own compensations. It is quite different with us; we have to get ours as we go along. We are here once only and if we don’t have a good time now, we never shall.

If we stop, however, to think the thing through we shall realize that the service motive dominates the lives of mil lions of men and women who are not geniuses. If a person wants big money and the things that money will buy, will he ever, for instance, go into the educational field? Think of the school teachers who are content to give so much for so little.

But a new god has arisen to rival the money-god in the reverence of the great masses of people. One doesn’t hear so much about millionaires today. The new god is in some respects more pervasive than the money-god. It is the god of indulgence and pleasure. It is more pervasive than the money-god because it is within the reach of greater numbers. It requires determination and sacrifice to accumulate a million dollars or even a lesser sum; but indulgence and pleasure call for little determination, little sacrifice. It is the most simple thing in the world to become a pleasure-seeker. Little children could give their elders lessons in the art if their elders needed them, which, generally speaking, they do not.

It is still fashionable to worship mere things, which we hope will in one way or another contribute to our pleasure. Prosperity is still coveted and poverty is in anguish mourned. We are forgetful of the fact that adversity is and always has been the great character builder; that no strong nation was ever reared on prosperity. Prosperity leads to mental and physical indolence, and is the forerunner of destruction. Ancient Rome exemplified this fact better than any other nation. Scotland and the New England states are fitting illustrations of what rigors of climate and barrenness of soil can accomplish in character building, and yet we, who are old enough to know better, still yearn above all else for great material prosperity.

The late Charles Steinmetz, wizard of mathematics and the world’s foremost electrical engineer, was once asked by Roger Babson to state what line of research such as radio, aeronautics, power transmission, etc., in his estimation, promised most for humanity. His answer was that the greatest promise was not in any coming invention, but in spiritual forces, the greatest power in the development of men. He then stated that men would eventually find that material things do not bring happiness, and that when they do, the world will advance more in one generation than it has in the past four. This answer by the great scientist may seem an extravagant expression, but Steinmetz was not given to the use of extravagant terms. Exactitude was one of his most marked characteristics. What might spiritual forces accomplish? They might perhaps find a way to avert war. What invention could compare in value with the finding of a way to everlasting peace?

To Steinmetz, money was a means to an end merely and that end was the procurement of the necessities. Be yond that point, he feared it as a menace to the higher possibilities of life. He refused to accept any salary for his services, the value of which was beyond appraisal, but drew small sums from time to time as necessities presented themselves.

The late Luther Burbank, wizard of pollenization, told the writer that he had made millions for other people, very little for himself.

From time immemorial, the greatest of the great have proclaimed by word and deed their adherence to the doctrine which Rotary had summed up in the words, “Service above Self.” Who shall say that the Rotary goal is unattainable?

“If profit and profit alone is the end sought by human effort,” said Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler in a report as president of Columbia University, “then society must reconcile itself to steady disintegration, constantly increasing the conflict between individual groups and nations, and eventual destruction.

“It is only when men rise above domination by the profit motive and learn to subordinate profit to service that the social, economic, and political orders begin to come in sight of a firm foundation and a continuing existence, with peace and happiness assured to the great mass of mankind.

“A very large part of the revolutionary spirit now in many lands would be quickly quelled could the mass of population be made to feel quite certain that in transacting the greater businesses of the world, the service motive comes first and the profit motive is subordinate to it.”

Henry Ford says that when folks find out that they can make more money honestly than they can dishonestly, they will be honest. It may, with as much truth be said, that when folks find out that they can get more happiness from culture than from wealth, they will have culture. The relative value of wealth and culture was pretty dearly shown in a great American city during the depression year of 1932, “Suicide Year.” During a period of twelve months a score or more of the city’s wealthiest men took their own lives. During the same period ten thousand school teachers, none of whom were possessed of wealth, worked without pay, owing to the desperate financial condition of the city, and not one of them committed suicide. In the case of wealth versus culture, wealth comes out second.

The teachers had a wholesome philosophy of life to fall back upon — the Rotary philosophy of service. They still had an abundance of work to do — more than ever before, in fact. And when days of leisure came they knew what to do with them. They had friends — not friends attracted by their possessions; friends to share their thoughts with them.

Many had friends of other varieties. Some had feathered friends with whom they held woodland trysts; some communed with other forms of tiny creatures. Their range of interests extended all the way from microscopic wonders to telescopic mysteries. In short, life never became irksome; they never knew ennui; they never felt the slightest indignation to terminate their great adventures.

Rotary is not of the communistic order; it is not of any particular political order; its membership includes many orders. Rotary can have no uniform or official opinion as to forms of government. Rotary concerns itself with what its members do, not with what governments do. Rotary seeks through the interchange of thoughts and experiences and through participation, individual and collective, in activities, to educate its members in matters of social significance in this particular period, in order that they may be able to more intelligently discriminate between the good and the bad, the temporary and the permanent, the wise and the unwise.

Many fathers who recognize the futility of great wealth as a means of obtaining happiness for themselves, still desperately continue to fight for it as a means of bringing happiness to their children, oblivious of the fact that a father’s companionship is worth more to them than untold riches. The best heritage a father can leave a son is the best education possible, and the priceless opportunity of earning his own living.

One day two men were discussing the merits of a brilliant young man, the only son of a very wealthy father. The young man was gifted, studious, modest, and sensible, and one of the men expressed the opinion that he possessed every quality requisite to greatness. “All but one,” said the other. “He has never suffered.” Cardinal Mercier put it: “Suffering accepted and vanquished, will place you in a more advanced position in your career, will give you a serenity which may well prove the most exquisite fruit of your life.”

Wise words! Fathers who shield their boys from every disappointment, all suffering, and every pain, also advertently shield them from life’s greatest privileges. The dean of men in a great university recently stated that ninety per cent of the failures in his institution were due to the indulgence of prosperous parents and the number of failures due to adversity were practically negligible. Thomas Arkie Clark had no desire to shatter a dearly beloved ideal in pointing out the mercilessness of indulgent parents. If the possession of great wealth is to result in the demoralization of our children, how can it possibly justify itself?

A formidable obstacle to international understanding and good-will is found in the varying practices in business matters. Differences in business codes frequently give trouble. But Emerson, at a time when business ethics were far below their present standard, said “After all, the greatest ameliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering trade.” The gulf between the Anglo-Saxon conception of business ethics and the Latin conception was thought by some to be so great that they despaired at times of success in the international field. Mere differences in customs were frequently given unjustifiable importance and they generally disappeared in the light of understanding.

One frequently hears expression of doubt as to the practicability of promulgating the spirit of service as a guiding principle in business. The phrases, “Human nature is human nature,” and, “Business is business,” still ring true to many, and exponents of less sordid doctrines are considered vagarists or hypocrites.

“Business is business,” the Little Man said,
“A battle where ‘everything goes,’
‘Where the only gospel is ‘get ahead,’
And never spare friends or foes.”
— Berton Braley.

Business of all things has been considered immune to the crusading spirit and some of the past performances of business amply justify the low appraisal of its virtues.

And yet, from the beginning of time there have been crusaders; men who have been willing to stake their all on principle. The sacrificial spirit exists in the hearts of business men, as it does in the hearts of educators, ministers, priests, and missionaries who from time immemorial have deliberately turned their backs upon the road to riches. Business has lacked only the esprit de corps, and that it is gradually gaining. The crusaders of the days to come will be business crusaders and when business undertakes a thing, it generally goes at the task with thoroughness.

The Americans, Rockefeller and Carnegie, and the Englishmen, Cadbury and Lever, were business crusaders. All four understood that wealth is a trust of which creditable account must be made. Thousands of lesser lights, have recognized the principle and given it expression, each in his own way. The present tendency of business crusaders is to give the toilers themselves, first consideration; to make sure that their factory and home surroundings are conducive to happiness.

“Life without labor is guilt,
Labor without art is brutality.”— John Ruskin.

Business is no longer a hit-or-miss undertaking; men seldom play “hunches” now. Nothing short of the most scientific methods will stand the competition of the present age. Many business establishments of today are better equipped for scientific research than the universities of generations past. Scientific management enables big business of the present period to pay higher wages and heavier taxes than ever before, and at the same time to respond to the hundred and one other demands made upon it.

Business practices have undergone particularly marked changes, and here the influence of Rotary has been strongly felt. Under the old order, a business man had but one thing to think about; that was how to get money. Today he faces a multilateral problem. He who would succeed must think much faster and deeper than the business man of past generations. He must stand four-square to the wind. He must be right with his customers, his employees, his competitors, with those from whom he buys goods, and with the public as well. It is no easy task, and yet most of the outstanding successes of the present age came as a result of the recognition of these manifold obligations. The exigencies of the times have challenged the resourcefulness of business, and business has risen nobly to the challenge.

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