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Barometers of Success
1923 Convention message of Paul P. Harris, of Chicago, Ill.,
President Emeritus of Rotary International
To
my friends, Rotarians, assembled at the Saint Louis Convention,
greetings and best wishes. One thousand years are as but a day.
The life of Rotary when thought of as an incident of the ages,
is as but a measureless speck of time and yet, brief as it has
been, great changes have taken place. Nothing in nature stands
still. The evolutionary processes avail themselves of every
passing fragment of time. So in life, so also even in death, The
Rotary of today is different from the Rotary of yesterday and
the Rotary of tomorrow cannot, must not, be the same as the
Rotary of today.
When ambition has gone, when aspirations have expired, when hope
is dead, when men have ceased to grow, when sympathy no longer
exists in human hearts, when all dreams have faded and hearts
have grown cold, then and not until then shall we be able to say
"This is permanent Rotary."
Until then, Rotary will continue to evolve, becoming a little
finer, a little more serviceable, a little more articulate year
by year.
Let
the Rotary way be the quiet, unostentatious, modest
way. Let us not lay ourselves open to criticism by
boasting of our achievements. Rotary is capable of
cultivating a far finer sense. Good deeds never need
advertising. There is one proper use for publicity
and that is to create public sentiment whenever
public sentiment is necessary to enable us to
accomplish some worthy objective. If the public
needs to be educated as to Rotary, let that
education come from what we do and not from what we
say of ourselves. I am confident that Rotary is
capable of taking and maintaining this high ethical
position.
What we know as Rotary came into being in the year of our Lord,
1905, and yet long before that time the forces which made Rotary
possible were slowly gathering themselves together. Men had been
learning to judge their fellows more by their deeds and less by
their creeds than theretofore with the result that a more
friendly feeling was beginning to prevail.
While the literary contributions of early Rotary were not
imposing, the men who gathered together in small numbers in the
early days laid a firm foundation upon which to build. That
foundation still stands unshaken. Its four cornerstones were
integrity, sobriety, morality, and brotherly love, and upon that
firm foundation, it has been possible to raise a splendid
superstructure.
The advent of Rotary has marked a new era, an era when the
long‑suppressed yearnings of business men for opportunity to
share in spiritual leadership began to find realization. It has
been a period of wonderful progress because businessmen have
made idealism practicable. There has been so much of the
impracticable about the idealism of the past that many practical
but nevertheless high‑minded men have been disposed to eschew
the whole thing and resign themselves to the conclusion that
humanity is hopeless. Optimism at times has been considered a
sign of weak-mindedness and pessimism a sure indication of a
good sound brain.
There has been a time within the memory of many living today
when one would have been almost ashamed to deny the oft‑repeated
statement that the only dependable quality in the heart of man
is selfishness, abject and perpetual.
This was before the day of practical idealism, before the day of
practical leadership.
 As
I look back over the years of the life of Rotary and think of
its struggles, it seems to me that the optimists have always
eventually proven themselves right; that Rotary has always lived
up to the fondest hopes of her dearest friends ‑ and yet, of all
things, let us not be complacent. No worthy objective can be
gained without effort. We have a long, long, hot dusty row to
hoe, and the more seriously we view our undertaking, the more
certain our accomplishment. Oh, let us not be complacent! There
are ways and ways of doing things.
Let the Rotary way be the quiet, unostentatious, modest
way. Let us not lay ourselves open to criticism by
boasting of our achievements. Rotary is capable of
cultivating a far finer sense. Good deeds never need
advertising. There is one proper use for publicity and
that is to create public sentiment whenever public
sentiment is necessary to enable us to accomplish some
worthy objective. If the public needs to be educated as
to Rotary, let that education come from what we do and
not from what we say of ourselves. I am confident that
Rotary is capable of taking and maintaining this high
ethical position.
Two elements have contributed mightily to the success of Rotary.
They are: first, the friendships formed in Rotary; second, the
fact that many of our Rotary clubs have really done things; the
members have literally thrown off their coats an and pitched in,
not with a view to obtaining credit for themselves or for their
clubs but for the purpose of making this a better world in which
to live. To such activities we may trace the cause even of our
material growth. Of course everyone expects spiritual growth
from participation in such affairs, but I feel amply justified
in making the statement that even our wonderful material growth
has depended in no small measure upon it. It has been a
gratifying relief to a rather blasé world to see big business
men throw aside conventions and give passion for love and
justice, opportunity to express itself in humble deeds. We need
at times to get our ungloved fingers into the soil. The
friendships formed in Rotary are of inestimable value, not only
because of the fact that they give color to life, but also
because of their usefulness. How frequently we are lured through
the sheer magnetism of friendship to higher aspirations and
higher ideals, The love of friendship is so effective with some
men that it leads them either to the gates of paradise or to the
gates of hell. This potential force Rotary turns to good
account. This fact affords Rotary clubs their reason for doing
things at well‑chosen times, as a unit, as distinguished from
the things which all Rotarians are supposed to do as
individuals. Thus do Rotarians obtain their baptism of service.
Let us turn now for a moment to Rotary's distinctive
opportunity; the opportunity which its peculiar representative
form of structure presents; the opportunity to urge upon the
business world the importance of adopting service as the basis
of all professions and trades. Pursue this purpose to its
theoretical end and there will be little work left for
professional reformers to do. It is a very large order, and one
who seeks to give the ideal expression in his own business
affairs is confronted with two difficulties; in the first place,
the ideal is likely to seem more or less of an abstraction and
in the second place its application more frequently involves the
negative than the positive, but the difficulties in the way of a
worthy cause afford small justification for its abandonment. Is
this thing impossible? Yes. Absolutely impossible? Yes. Very
good then, it is the very thing we are bound to do. To encourage
the adoption of codes of ethics in the various trades is not
impracticable and it will help to popularize the Rotarian
business ideal. Rotary's peculiar formation, one representative
of each line of trade makes Rotary preeminently the best
organization with which to effect the purpose. It is safe to
assume that much which Rotary is unable to accomplish through
craft associations represented in its membership, it can
accomplish through the instrumentality of our public schools.
The exclusive representation plan of Rotary has provoked more
comment than any other feature; it is to the casual observer
perhaps the most conspicuous characteristic of Rotary. To
Rotarians, it is the governor in the mechanism of Rotary.
Ethically minded men have from time to time assailed it as
unethical and undemocratic but men of equally ethical minds have
arisen to defend it. All are agreed that in some good way the
benefits of Rotary must be made available to all people. The
words, "Go ye into the world and preach the gospel to every
people," have not lost their savor, but the church has its
divinity schools and we have our Rotary. The
limited‑representation plan imposes heavy obligations upon
members. It is a challenge to ourselves. It is the most
satisfactory means we have as yet discovered of accomplishing
the various purposes we have in mind. We must therefore be
honest in the application of the classification rules. There are
better means of favoring friends, and better means of extending
Rotary than through the process of breaking down
classifications.
Each Rotarian activity has its ardent champions and it is not
strange that we at times become so obsessed with a sense of the
importance of our own pet projects that it seems to us Rotary
ought to abandon everything else. We must learn to be moderate
in our demands upon those who do not entirely agree with us. We
may do well to think of Rotary as a manner of university with
various departments and varied forms of activities, social,
recreational, and educational, all departments filling certain
purposes and in combination calculated to turn out good
all‑around men well prepared for the requirements of the
particular civilization in which we live; well able to play
life's game for all that there is in it. The elective system of
studies has proven satisfactory in our colleges and I can see no
good reason why Rotarians should not be left more or less free
to select the activities best suited to their respective tastes
and aptitudes. The great accomplishment of our graduates must
necessarily be in their individual lives but in order that they
may be able to make the most of themselves individually, they
must learn to work collectively. This is a co‑operative age.
The value of a college course depends, not so much upon the
volume of knowledge one obtains as it does upon how well one
prepares himself for the demands of the times and upon the
ideals one acquires.
And so in Rotary the value of membership does not depend so much
upon the information which we gain from the addresses which we
are privileged to hear, as it does upon whether or not we gain
ideals of clean, vigorous, serviceable citizenship and the
ability to express such ideals in deeds which count.
The possession of wealth no longer constitutes the only
barometer of success; the service ideal is gradually gaining
ground. The time when rich men are the big men is passing.
Greatness, in the future, will depend not upon what one has been
able to get, but rather on what one has been able and willing to
give. Has one an abiding passion for truth and does one have a
persistent love of his fellow‑men; has one the courage of his
conviction and is he willing to make sacrifices for them? If he
possesses these qualities, then he will be a great man because
he will be a serviceable man, and the service ideal hangs as
high above the dollar ideal as Heaven is above earth.
I
know three men whose advanced years justify calling them old.
One of them has dedicated his life to the pursuit of gain and in
this respect he has been eminently successful but his ailments
are many and his days of happiness are of the distant past; the
curtains of night are closing down. The other two are Rotarians,
‑ one an American and the other a Briton. The American has given
himself unreservedly to the service of crippled children; the
chief interest in the life of the Briton is the promotion of
Anglo‑American friendship. These last two men seem to have found
the fountain of perennial youth. They have been rendering
unselfish service so continually and for so long a time that it
no longer involves any struggle with themselves. They take the
grade on high. Verily they are happy men. If our motto, "He
profits most who serves best," ever seems to any of us trite or
meaningless, we shall find renewed faith in the lives of such
men. Over and over again the truth of the words, "He who would
save his life shall lose it," is brought home to us. Whatever
else Rotary may bring there can be nothing more fair than the
promise of satisfaction which comes of the contemplation of
lives well spent. There is a soul stream in Rotary, may it be
kept ever pure.
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