Signs of the Times

A. Strassburger

Kafton News

A. Strassburger in an editorial
Kafton News for Kafton Sales Company
Van Nuys, California

The other day I heard an interview between the director of a sizeable skid row mission and a reporter which actually unfolded the secret behind success or failure. In brief, the secret is control or lack of it. "Who or what is to blame for skid row?" asked the reporter. The answer was, "Ninety percent of the men are to blame themselves because they refuse to control themselves." If 30 years' experience is any criterion, we can assume that the director of the Mission on Main Street, Los Angeles, has pegged the reason for most failures: lack of control!

Skid row is not a fable. And it is not a locality. It is an association of derelict thoughts. No one is forced to accept thoughts. One is attracted to associations only because already his thoughts run parallel.

Sometimes "skid rows" begin to appear among good businessmen. We all know that a man's thinking governs his business; then it's entirely up to him how the business fares, isn't it? Yet, we hear such expressions as: "We can't do anything about it. What's the use of struggling? Let's quit. It's too late to act. We can't fight back. There's no way out." Aren't these the first signs of drifting with negative associations? The next step is blaming conditions, blaming advice, education, wrong company, mistakes.... Isn't this refusal to control our thoughts?

... Over a hundred years ago, Abraham Lincoln cautioned the people to stick with right ideas. He advised: "Stick with a man when he's right; part from him when he's wrong."

Discouraging events do not have to break a man; they should spur him on to greater victories. George Washington faced much discouragement. According to one historian, Washington described the undisciplined recruits he was sent to command at Valley Forge as the kind that would "fly from their own shadows." Yet under his leadership, a war was won, a country was born and freedom to control ourselves was established.

Today, we still have freedom to control ourselves. It implies a responsibility. We are expected not only to control our own thoughts and thereby our businesses, but to clearly mark the way for others.

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February 22, 1964

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