Do the Right Thing Always

By Mrs. A. J. Wilder

"It is always best to treat people right," remarked my lawyer friend.

"Yes, I suppose so, in the end," I replied inanely.

"Oh of course!" he returned, "but that was not what I meant. It pays every time to do the right thing! It pays now and in dollars and cents."

"For instance?" I asked.

"Well for the latest instance: a man came to me the other day to bring suit against a neighbor. He had good grounds for damages and could win the suit, but it would cost him more than he could recover. It would make his neighbor expense and increase the bad feeling between them. I needed that attorney's fee, but it would not have been doing the right thing to encourage him to bring suit, so I advised him to settle out of court. He insisted but I refused to take the case. He hired another lawyer, won his case and paid the difference between the damages he recovered and his expenses.

"A client came to me a short time afterward with a suit worth-while and a good retainer's fee, which I could take without robbing him. He was sent to me by the man whose case I had refused to take and because of that very refusal."

Is it possible that "honesty is the best policy" after all, actually and literally? I would take the advice of my lawyer friend on any other business and I have his word for it that it pays to do the right thing here and now.

To do the right thing is simply to be honest, for being honest is more than refraining from short-changing a customer or robbing a neighbor's hen roost. To be sure those items are included, but there is more to honesty than that. There is such a thing as being dishonest when no question of financial gain or loss is involved. When one person robs another of his good name, he is dishonest. When by an unnecessary, unkind act or cross work, one causes another to lose a day or an hour of happiness, is that one not a thief? Many a person robs another of the joy of life while taking pride in his own integrity.

We steal from today to give to tomorrow; we "rob Peter to pay Paul." We are not honest even with ourselves; we rob ourselves of health; we cheat ourselves with sophistries; we even "put an enemy in our mouths to steal away our brains."

If there were a cry of "stop thief!" we would all stand still. Yet nevertheless, in spite of our carelessness, we all know deep in our hearts that it pays to do the right thing, tho it is easy to deceive ourselves for a time. If we do the wrong thing, we are quite likely never to know what we have lost by it. If the lawyer had taken the first case, he might have thought he had gained by so doing, for he never would have known of the larger fee which came to him by taking the other course.

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. "Do the Right Thing Always." Missouri Ruralist,  (June 20, 1918): page 11.

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