Is it true in your community that the most useful citizens are those who care more about the excellence of their work than about what they receive for it?
Are there many vagrants in your community? Are there laws against vagrancy? If so, what are they?
Are there often many men out of work in your community? If so, why is it?
Is it ever difficult to get farm labor in your locality? If so, how do the farmers explain it?
What experience have the farmers of your locality had during and since the war in getting labor when it was needed? Did the government help them at that time? How?
It is of the greatest importance both to the individual and to the community that every citizen: (1) should be continuously employed in a useful occupation, (2) should be free and able to choose the occupation for which he is best fitted, and in which he will be happiest, and (3) should be thoroughly efficient in his work, whatever it is.
THE RIGHT OF THE COMMUNITY TO INDUSTRY
(1) The community has a right to expect every citizen to be industrious and productive, for only in this way can he be self- sustaining and at the same time contribute his share to the well- being of the community. Doubtless all who read this chapter are desirous of doing useful work. At the same time, it is easy for any of us to fall into the habit of thinking more about what we can GET than about what we can GIVE. There ARE people who habitually seek to do as little as possible for what they receive, or to get all they can for the least possible service. This applies not only to idlers who live entirely off the community without any service on their part, but also to those who have employment, but who seek to evade, by "time-serving" and otherwise "slacking," the full responsibility of service. We sometimes hear complaint in regard to public officials who draw good salaries without rendering adequate or honest public service in return, and to such we frequently apply the term of "grafter." But the principle is exactly the same when any person who has undertaken to do a piece of work fritters away his time or "loafs on the job."
SATISFACTION IN SERVICE
After all, the chief return that we get for our work is not the wages or the profits, important as they are to us, but the satisfaction of doing something that is worthwhile. If this pleasure is absent from the work we do, no amount of money returns can compensate us for it. The happy man is a busy man, an industrious man; and his happiness is more in the doing than in the mere fact of money returns.