If I hire you to cook for me I expect my chops and baked potatoes on time, done to a turn and appetizing; I am not interested in the butcher’s mistake, nor the stove’s defect, nor in the misery¹ in your left arm. I want food, not explanations. You can’t eat explanations.

 

If I hire you to take care of my automobile², or factory, or shirtwaist counter, I do not want to hear why things are half-done; I want results.

 

So also if you come to me and hire me to 77 do a job of writing by the fifteenth of the month, you do not want me to show up on that day with a moving-picture story describing how I couldn’t do what I was paid for. You want the writing, and you want it first class, all wool and a yard wide.

 

This is cold, cruel, heartless talk. It is—to all second-raters and shirkers. But to real men it is a joy and gladness. They rejoice to make good themselves, they expect others to make good, and they like to hear preached the gospel of making good.

 

Mr. Yust, the Rochester librarian, in his report some time ago, spoke³ of the Parable⁴ of the Talents, in which we are told of the “three servants who had received talents, five, two and one, respectively. On the Master’s return they all rendered account of their stewardship⁵. The first two had doubled their capital. Each of them said so in fourteen 78 words, and their work was pronounced, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Servant number three had accomplished⁶ absolutely nothing, but he made a full report in forty-two words, three times as long as the other reports.”

 

There you have it. The less you do the more you explain.

 

EFFICIENCY!

 

Learn that word by heart. Get to saying it in your sleep.

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