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- “IF YOU WANT TO GATHER
- HONEY, DON’T KICK OVER THE
- BEEHIVE”
- On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New
- York City had ever known had come to its climax. After
- weeks of search, “Two Gun” Crowley - the killer, the
- gunman who didn’t smoke or drink - was at bay, trapped
- in his sweetheart’s apartment on West End Avenue.
- One hundred and fifty policemen and detectives laid
- siege to his top-floor hideway. They chopped holes in
- the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the “cop
- killer,” with teargas. Then they mounted their machine
- guns on surrounding buildings, and for more than an
- hour one of New York’s fine residential areas reverberated
- with the crack of pistol fire and the rut-tat-tat of
- machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an over-
- stuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand
- excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it
- ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New
- York.
- When Crowley was captured, Police Commissioner
- E. P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado
- was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered
- in the history of New York. “He will kill,” said the
- Commissioner, “at the drop of a feather.”
- But how did “Two Gun” Crowley regard himself? We
- know, because while the police were firing into his
- apartment, he wrote a letter addressed “To whom it may
- concern, ” And, as he wrote, the blood flowing from his
- wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In this letter
- Crowley said: “Under my coat is a weary heart, but a
- kind one - one that would do nobody any harm.”
- A short time before this, Crowley had been having a
- necking party with his girl friend on a country road out
- on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the
- car and said: “Let me see your license.”
- Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut
- the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying
- officer fell, Crowley leaped out of the car, grabbed the
- officer’s revolver, and fired another bullet into the prostrate
- body. And that was the killer who said: “Under my
- coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do
- nobody any harm.’
- Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he
- arrived at the death house in Sing Sing, did he say, “This
- is what I get for killing people”? No, he said: “This is
- what I get for defending myself.”
- The point of the story is this: “Two Gun” Crowley
- didn’t blame himself for anything.
- Is that an unusual attitude among criminals? If you
- think so, listen to this:
- “I have spent the best years of my life giving people
- the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time,
- and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”
- That’s Al Capone speaking. Yes, America’s most notorious
- Public Enemy- the most sinister gang leader who
- ever shot up Chicago. Capone didn’t condemn himself.
- He actually regarded himself as a public benefactor - an
- unappreciated and misunderstood public benefactor.
- And so did Dutch Schultz before he crumpled up
- under gangster bullets in Newark. Dutch Schultz, one of
- New York’s most notorious rats, said in a newspaper interview
- that he was a public benefactor. And he believed
- it.
- I have had some interesting correspondence with
- Lewis Lawes, who was warden of New York’s infamous
- Sing Sing prison for many years, on this subject, and he
- declared that “few of the criminals in Sing Sing regard
- themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you
- and I. So they rationalize, they explain. They can tell
- you why they had to crack a safe or be quick on the
- trigger finger. Most of them attempt by a form of reasoning,
- fallacious or logical, to justify their antisocial acts
- even to themselves, consequently stoutly maintaining
- that they should never have been imprisoned at all.”
- If Al Capone, “Two Gun” Crowley, Dutch Schultz,
- and the desperate men and women behind prison walls
- don’t blame themselves for anything - what about the
- people with whom you and I come in contact?
- John Wanamaker, founder of the stores that bear his
- name, once confessed: “I learned thirty years ago that it
- is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my
- own limitations without fretting over the fact that God
- has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.”
- Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally
- had to blunder through this old world for a third of a
- century before it even began to dawn upon me that
- ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize
- themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it
- may be.
- Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive
- and usually makes him strive to justify himself.
- Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s
- precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and
- arouses resentment.
- B. F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved
- through his experiments that an animal rewarded for
- good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain
- what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished
- for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that
- the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not
- make lasting changes and often incur resentment.
- Hans Selye, another great psychologist, said, “As
- much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation,”
- The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize
- employees, family members and friends, and still
- not correct the situation that has been condemned.
- George B. Johnston of Enid, Oklahoma, is the safety
- coordinator for an engineering company, One of his re-sponsibilities
- is to see that employees wear their hard
- hats whenever they are on the job in the field. He reported
- that whenever he came across workers who were
- not wearing hard hats, he would tell them with a lot of
- authority of the regulation and that they must comply.
- As a result he would get sullen acceptance, and often
- after he left, the workers would remove the hats.
- He decided to try a different approach. The next time
- he found some of the workers not wearing their hard hat,
- he asked if the hats were uncomfortable or did not fit
- properly. Then he reminded the men in a pleasant tone
- of voice that the hat was designed to protect them from
- injury and suggested that it always be worn on the job.
- The result was increased compliance with the regulation
- with no resentment or emotional upset.
- You will find examples of the futility of criticism bristling
- on a thousand pages of history, Take, for example,
- the famous quarrel between Theodore Roosevelt and
- President Taft - a quarrel that split the Republican
- party, put Woodrow Wilson in the White House, and
- wrote bold, luminous lines across the First World War
- and altered the flow of history. Let’s review the facts
- quickly. When Theodore Roosevelt stepped out of the
- White House in 1908, he supported Taft, who was
- elected President. Then Theodore Roosevelt went off to
- Africa to shoot lions. When he returned, he exploded.
- He denounced Taft for his conservatism, tried to secure
- the nomination for a third term himself, formed the Bull
- Moose party, and all but demolished the G.O.P. In the
- election that followed, William Howard Taft and the Republican
- party carried only two states - Vermont and
- Utah. The most disastrous defeat the party had ever
- known.
- Theodore Roosevelt blamed Taft, but did President
- Taft blame himself? Of course not, With tears in his
- eyes, Taft said: “I don’t see how I could have done any
- differently from what I have.”
- Who was to blame? Roosevelt or Taft? Frankly, I don’t
- know, and I don’t care. The point I am trying to make is
- that all of Theodore Roosevelt’s criticism didn’t persuade
- Taft that he was wrong. It merely made Taft strive
- to justify himself and to reiterate with tears in his eyes:
- “I don’t see how I could have done any differently from
- what I have.”
- Or, take the Teapot Dome oil scandal. It kept the
- newspapers ringing with indignation in the early 1920s.
- It rocked the nation! Within the memory of living men,
- nothing like it had ever happened before in American
- public life. Here are the bare facts of the scandal: Albert
- B. Fall, secretary of the interior in Harding’s cabinet,
- was entrusted with the leasing of government oil reserves
- at Elk Hill and Teapot Dome - oil reserves that
- had been set aside for the future use of the Navy. Did
- secretary Fall permit competitive bidding? No sir. He
- handed the fat, juicy contract outright to his friend Edward
- L. Doheny. And what did Doheny do? He gave
- Secretary Fall what he was pleased to call a “loan” of
- one hundred thousand dollars. Then, in a high-handed
- manner, Secretary Fall ordered United States Marines
- into the district to drive off competitors whose adjacent
- wells were sapping oil out of the Elk Hill reserves.
- These competitors, driven off their ground at the ends of
- guns and bayonets, rushed into court - and blew the lid
- off the Teapot Dome scandal. A stench arose so vile that
- it ruined the Harding Administration, nauseated an entire
- nation, threatened to wreck the Republican party,
- and put Albert B. Fall behind prison bars.
- Fall was condemned viciously - condemned as few
- men in public life have ever been. Did he repent?
- Never! Years later Herbert Hoover intimated in a public
- speech that President Harding’s death had been due to
- mental anxiety and worry because a friend had betrayed
- him. When Mrs. Fall heard that, she sprang from her
- chair, she wept, she shook her fists at fate and screamed:
- "What! Harding betrayed by Fall? No! My husband
- never betrayed anyone. This whole house full of gold
- would not tempt my husband to do wrong. He is the one
- who has been betrayed and led to the slaughter and crucified.”
- There you are; human nature in action, wrongdoers,
- blaming everybody but themselves. We are all like that.
- So when you and I are tempted to criticize someone
- tomorrow, let’s remember Al Capone, “Two Gun”
- Crowley and Albert Fall. Let’s realize that criticisms are
- like homing pigeons. They always return home. Let’s
- realize that the person we are going to correct and condemn
- will probably justify himself or herself, and condemn
- us in return; or, like the gentle Taft, will say: “I
- don’t see how I could have done any differently from
- what I have.”
- On the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln
- lay dying in a hall bedroom of a cheap lodging house
- directly across the street from Ford’s Theater, where
- John Wilkes Booth had shot him. Lincoln’s long body
- lay stretched diagonally across a sagging bed that was
- too short for him. A cheap reproduction of Rosa Bonheur’s
- famous painting The Horse Fair hung above the
- bed, and a dismal gas jet flickered yellow light.
- As Lincoln lay dying, Secretary of War Stanton said,
- “There lies the most perfect ruler of men that the world
- has ever seen.”
- What was the secret of Lincoln’s success in dealing
- with people? I studied the life of Abraham Lincoln for
- ten years and devoted all of three years to writing and
- rewriting a book entitled Lincoln the Unknown. I believe
- I have made as detailed and exhaustive a study of
- Lincoln’s personality and home life as it is possible for
- any being to make. I made a special study of Lincoln’s
- method of dealing with people. Did he indulge in criticism?
- Oh, yes. As a young man in the Pigeon Creek
- Valley of Indiana, he not only criticized but he wrote
- letters and poems ridiculing people and dropped these
- letters on the country roads where they were sure to be
- found. One of these letters aroused resentments that
- burned for a lifetime.
- Even after Lincoln had become a practicing lawyer in
- Springfield, Illinois, he attacked his opponents openly
- in letters published in the newspapers. But he did this
- just once too often.
- In the autumn of 1842 he ridiculed a vain, pugnacious
- politician by the name of James Shields. Lincoln lamned
- him through an anonymous letter published in
- Springfield Journal. The town roared with laughter.
- Shields, sensitive and proud, boiled with indignation.
- He found out who wrote the letter, leaped on his horse,
- started after Lincoln, and challenged him to fight a duel.
- Lincoln didn’t want to fight. He was opposed to dueling,
- but he couldn’t get out of it and save his honor. He was
- given the choice of weapons. Since he had very long
- arms, he chose cavalry broadswords and took lessons in
- sword fighting from a West Point graduate; and, on the
- appointed day, he and Shields met on a sandbar in the
- Mississippi River, prepared to fight to the death; but, at
- the last minute, their seconds interrupted and stopped
- the duel.
- That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln’s
- life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealing
- with people. Never again did he write an insulting
- letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that
- time on, he almost never criticized anybody for anything.
- Time after time, during the Civil War, Lincoln put a
- new general at the head of the Army of the Potomac, and
- each one in turn - McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker,
- Meade - blundered tragically and drove Lincoln to pacing
- the floor in despair. Half the nation savagely condemned
- these incompetent generals, but Lincoln, “with
- malice toward none, with charity for all,” held his peace.
- One of his favorite quotations was “Judge not, that ye be
- not judged.”
- And when Mrs. Lincoln and others spoke harshly of
- the southern people, Lincoln replied: “Don’t criticize
- them; they are just what we would be under similar
- circumstances.”
- Yet if any man ever had occasion to criticize, surely it
- was Lincoln. Let’s take just one illustration:
- The Battle of Gettysburg was fought during the first
- three days of July 1863. During the night of July 4, Lee
- began to retreat southward while storm clouds deluged
- the country with rain. When Lee reached the Potomac
- with his defeated army, he found a swollen, impassable
- river in front of him, and a victorious Union Army behind
- him. Lee was in a trap. He couldn’t escape. Lincoln
- saw that. Here was a golden, heaven-sent opportunity-
- the opportunity to capture Lee’s army and end the war
- immediately. So, with a surge of high hope, Lincoln ordered
- Meade not to call a council of war but to attack
- Lee immediately. Lincoln telegraphed his orders and
- then sent a special messenger to Meade demanding immediate
- action.
- And what did General Meade do? He did the very
- opposite of what he was told to do. He called a council
- of war in direct violation of Lincoln’s orders. He hesitated.
- He procrastinated. He telegraphed all manner of
- excuses. He refused point-blank to attack Lee. Finally
- the waters receded and Lee escaped over the Potomac
- with his forces.
- Lincoln was furious, “ What does this mean?” Lincoln
- cried to his son Robert. “Great God! What does this
- mean? We had them within our grasp, and had only to
- stretch forth our hands and they were ours; yet nothing
- that I could say or do could make the army move. Under
- the circumstances, almost any general could have defeated
- Lee. If I had gone up there, I could have whipped
- him myself.”
- In bitter disappointment, Lincoln sat down and wrote
- Meade this letter. And remember, at this period of his
- life Lincoln was extremely conservative and restrained
- in his phraseology. So this letter coming from Lincoln in
- 1863 was tantamount to the severest rebuke.
- My dear General,
- I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune
- involved in Lee’s escape. He was within our easy
- grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection
- With our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is,
- the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not
- safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so
- south of the river, when you can take with you very few-
- no more than two-thirds of the force you then had in hand?
- It would be unreasonable to expect and I do not expect that
- you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone,
- and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.
- What do you suppose Meade did when he read the
- letter?
- Meade never saw that letter. Lincoln never mailed it.
- It was found among his papers after his death.
- My guess is - and this is only a guess - that after writing
- that letter, Lincoln looked out of the window and
- said to himself, “Just a minute. Maybe I ought not to be
- so hasty. It is easy enough for me to sit here in the quiet
- of the White House and order Meade to attack; but if I
- had been up at Gettysburg, and if I had seen as much
- blood as Meade has seen during the last week, and if my
- ears had been pierced with the screams and shrieks of
- the wounded and dying, maybe I wouldn’t be so anxious
- to attack either. If I had Meade’s timid temperament,
- perhaps I would have done just what he had done. Anyhow,
- it is water under the bridge now. If I send this
- letter, it will relieve my feelings, but it will make Meade
- try to justify himself. It will make him condemn me. It
- will arouse hard feelings, impair all his further usefulness
- as a commander, and perhaps force him to resign
- from the army.”
- So, as I have already said, Lincoln put the letter aside,
- for he had learned by bitter experience that sharp criticisms
- and rebukes almost invariably end in futility.
- Theodore Roosevelt said that when he, as President,
- was confronted with a perplexing problem, he used to
- lean back and look up at a large painting of Lincoln
- which hung above his desk in the White House and ask
- himself, “What would Lincoln do if he were in my
- shoes? How would he solve this problem?”
- The next time we are tempted to admonish somebody,
- let’s pull a five-dollar bill out of our pocket, look at Lincoln’s
- picture on the bill, and ask. “How would Lincoln
- handle this problem if he had it?”
- /
- Mark Twain lost his temper occasionally and wrote
- letters that turned the Paper brown. For example, he
- once wrote to a man who had aroused his ire: “The thing
- for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak and I
- will see that you get it.” On another occasion he wrote
- to an editor about a proofreader’s attempts to “improve
- my spelling and punctuation.” He ordered: “Set the
- matter according to my copy hereafter and see that the
- proofreader retains his suggestions in the mush of his
- decayed brain.”
- The writing of these stinging letters made Mark Twain
- feel better. They allowed him to blow off steam, and the
- letters didn’t do any real harm, because Mark’s wife
- secretly lifted them out of the mail. They were never
- sent.
- Do you know someone you would like to change and
- regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in
- favor of it, But why not begin on yourself? From a purely
- selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than
- trying to improve others - yes, and a lot less dangerous.
- “Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s
- roof,” said Confucius, “when your own doorstep is unclean.”
- When I was still young and trying hard to impress
- people, I wrote a foolish letter to Richard Harding
- Davis, an author who once loomed large on the literary
- horizon of America. I was preparing a magazine article
- about authors, and I asked Davis to tell me about his
- method of work. A few weeks earlier, I had received a
- letter from someone with this notation at the bottom:
- “Dictated but not read.” I was quite impressed. I felt
- that the writer must be very big and busy and important.
- I wasn’t the slightest bit busy, but I was eager to make
- an impression on Richard Harding Davis, so I ended my
- short note with the words: “Dictated but not read.”
- He never troubled to answer the letter. He simply
- returned it to me with this scribbled across the bottom:
- “Your bad manners are exceeded only by your bad manners.”
- True, I had blundered, and perhaps I deserved
- this rebuke. But, being human, I resented it. I resented
- it so sharply that when I read of the death of Richard
- Harding Davis ten years later, the one thought that still
- persisted in my mind - I am ashamed to admit - was the
- hurt he had given me.
- If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow
- that may rankle across the decades and endure until
- death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism-
- no matter how certain we are that it is justified.
- When dealing with people, let us remember we are
- not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with
- creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices
- and motivated by pride and vanity.
- Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy,
- one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature,
- to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism
- drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide.
- Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so
- diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was
- made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his
- success? “I will speak ill of no man,” he said, " . . and
- speak all the good I know of everybody.”
- Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and
- most fools do.
- But it takes character and self-control to be under-standing
- and forgiving.
- “A great man shows his greatness,” said Carlyle, “by
- the way he treats little men.”
- Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent per-former
- at air shows, was returning to his home in Los
- Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in
- the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet
- in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft maneuvering
- he managed to land the plane, but it was
- badly damaged although nobody was hurt.
- Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to
- inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the
- World War II propeller plane he had been flying had
- been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline.
- Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic
- who had serviced his airplane. The young man
- was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed
- down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused
- the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused
- the loss of three lives as well.
- You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate
- the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot
- would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t
- scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead,
- he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and
- said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this
- again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”
- Often parents are tempted to criticize their children.
- You would expect me to say “don’t.” But I will not, I am
- merely going to say, “Before you criticize them, read
- one of the classics of American journalism, ‘Father Forgets.’ ”
- It originally appeared as an editorial in the People's
- Home Journnl. We are reprinting it here with the
- author’s permission, as condensed in the Reader’s Digest:
- “Father Forgets” is one of those little pieces which-
- dashed of in a moment of sincere feeling - strikes an
- echoing chord in so many readers as to become a perenial
- reprint favorite. Since its first appearance, “Father
- Forgets" has been reproduced, writes the author,
- W, Livingston Larned, “in hundreds of magazines and
- house organs, and in newspapers the country over. It has
- been reprinted almost as extensively in many foreign
- languages. I have given personal permission to thousands
- who wished to read it from school, church, and
- lecture platforms. It has been ‘on the air’ on countless
- occasions and programs. Oddly enough, college periodicals
- have used it, and high-school magazines. Sometimes
- a little piece seems mysteriously to ‘click.’ This
- one certainly did.”
- FATHER FORGETS
- W. Livingston Larned
- Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little
- paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily
- wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room
- alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper
- in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me.
- Guiltily I came to your bedside.
- There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross
- to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because
- you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took
- you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily
- when you threw some of your things on the floor.
- At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You
- gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table.
- You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you
- started off to play and I made for my train, you turned
- and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and
- I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders
- back!”
- Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I
- came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing
- marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated
- you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to
- the house. Stockings were expensive - and if you had to
- buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son,
- from a father!
- Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library,
- how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in
- your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at
- the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you
- want?” I snapped.
- You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous
- plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed
- me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that
- God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect
- could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the
- stairs.
- Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped
- from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me.
- What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault,
- of reprimanding - this was my reward to you for being a
- boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected
- too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of
- my own years.
- And there was so much that was good and fine and true in
- your character. The little heart of you was as big as the
- dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your
- spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night.
- Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side
- in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
- It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand
- these things if I told them to you during your waking
- hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum
- with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you
- laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I
- will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a
- boy - a little boy!”
- I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see
- you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that
- you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s
- arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much,
- too much.
- Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand
- them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do.
- That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism;
- and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To
- know all is to forgive all.”
- As Dr. Johnson said: “God himself, sir, does not propose
- to judge man until the end of his days.”
- Why should you and I?
- PRINCIPLE 1
- Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
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