FROM THE BEGINNING of human intercourse there have been exchanges of Values, but probably they have all been of a physical nature. Once there was no money, and other things had to be used for payment in sales and trades. In the material world, it sometimes happens that payment is made in equivalents that are neither money nor property. At a church fair kisses are sold at so much each to raise money for a good cause. This may be classed as a service or a favor. The husband who gave up his liberty for the joy of possessing a wife, and who remains out so late at night that he cannot adequately explain his absence, finds a way to buy peace and reconciliation by gifts of jewelry, or a fur coat, or a trip to Florida or abroad; this being an exchange of material value for a smile, a kiss and forgiveness. Some wives handle these situations so skilfully that they do a land office business, as Westerners say. But the real worth of marriage will have departed. So with wedlock that rich old fools purchase when they bring royal gifts to maidens fair in exchange for their consent to marry. Animal appetites destroy the judgment, and there is no magnetism to guide them off the shoals.

We have seen in the preceding lesson that there are three kinds of Values; the Physical, the Plebeian, and the Patrician. The first of these was disposed of in that lesson. When it succeeds it is because policy is the ruling power. The husband who provides a home and support in exchange for the services of a woman who is a good cook and housekeeper, is following the law of policy; and she is doing the same. It is a very important exchange of Values; and there is no denying the great fact that any kind of Values that are fairly exchanged are nearly always fruitful in permanent content; while the lack of mutual Values even of a magnetic character is one-sided and permanency is threatened. The Magnetic Values are:

1. Plebeian; or

2. Patrician.

In this division we do not intend to present the plebeian values as unworthy. On the other hand they are all of them of the utmost worth in their class. Let us look at some of them:

1. A married man who furnishes home and support to the woman whom he has married in exchange for her cooking and housework, is following out the law of policy in a very equitable bargain. But both he and she may be totally lacking in Magnetic Values.

This principle is valuable.

To possess these Values of the plebeian class, he should be:—

Neat, well-dressed even in his lounging hours, clean, polite, considerate, generous, sympathetic, helpful, good-dispositioned, cheerful, of proper taste in most things if not in all, observant of the rules of good form and etiquette as far as his mode of life demands, decent in his language, free from profane or obscene talk or suggestion, dignified when he should be, and respectful of the views and beliefs of others. His breath should not be foul; his teeth should have no ulcerated roots, or rotten cavities; his nose and throat should be free from catarrh; hi3 tonsils should not be discharging pus; and he should not be suffering from intestinal poisoning which is sure to find its way to his breath and skin.

These are just practical suggestions of the Values that make a man personally desirable to a woman.

Refinement in life has no limit.

Good taste need not drive a man into classical music or classical literature; but the fool that invented jazz music, the fool that plays jazz music, the fool that dances to jazz music and the fool that willingly listens to jazz music, belong one and all to that hopeless class of vapid minds that are never capable of possessing Magnetic Values in any department of life; for they are skim-coated thinkers that lack the basic elements of greatness in any degree. You never see the solid sense of any respected man or woman jigging itself away to such semi-crazy contortions of music.

2. A married woman should be all that the man should be as far as we have described his plebeian values. We call them plebeian because they may be adopted, assumed, worn for a day or on special occasions; yet when so exhibited they do exert a most powerful magnetic influence toward winning success. Of course the abiding kinds are the patrician, for they grow into a person and are not taken on or dropped as convenience and policy may decree. These we shall discuss later

It is claimed that marriage and employment are the two greatest influences in the world. It is because of marriage that the race remains on earth; and this institution includes home and home support, raising and furnishing supplies for home; also it includes the blood relationships of all kinds, with endless ties. Employment involves the employer and the employee; but in the sense in which we use it, the services of professional skill, as of the lawyer, the doctor and the dentist are not included. They belong to their own class. Business and industrial enterprises require the employing of many millions of people in this country, and of millions in any other large country.

Employment is divided into several grades: that of the common laborer being the lowest; that of the skilled artisan next higher; that of the expert still higher. In business the employees are generally those of common labor, and clerks or salesmen. Then come office employees, and a variety of others in countless lines. Railroad, industrial and other corporations offer employment to men and women; but mostly to men.

In every kind of employment there is a large magnet, invisible but felt and recognized by magnetic employees, which is hung at the top of the whole system, and which exerts a great drawing power over all who are below it; seeking to draw them up, up, always up. This drawing power possesses the highest magnetic value in human existence.

An employee who meets in a perfunctory manner the duties of his work, who gets through the hours from start to finish each day, who does no more than he needs do in order to keep his position may be said to be exchanging physical values for physical values. But if he seeks to better himself by a genuine faithfulness to his work and takes an interest in it, he is exchanging plebeian values for the hope of betterment. But this is not all that he can do. The great magnet that hangs overhead is not drawing him up.

The merely perfunctory employee, who gets through the hours with the least wear and tear on his energies, is too numerous to be described. Generally he is a cigarette smoker, known to medical experts as a cancer spreader; for it has been demonstrated that the fearful present day increase of cancer is due to the inhalation of cigarette smoke. This fact is not widely known; but the habit that is now so common among the laboring classes of lighting from ten to twenty cigarettes every hour is gradually working against their interests. A construction concern that employs twelve hundred carpenters, when there is a slackening of their work, always dismisses the cigarette smokers first, and retains those that do not indulge in this habit; and in hiring others later on as business gets better, avoids employing those who are addicted to this habit.

A construction company that hired over sixteen hundred men, by observation ascertained that those who spent time enough each hour to light a dozen or more cigarettes, required nearly half their time to accomplish this perpetual feat; and in these days when labor is demanding three hundred percent more than normal wages, if half the time is wasted in lighting cigarettes, then the wages are doubled by that condition beyond the price demanded.

Similar reports show that with each cessation of activity in business or construction, the men who will be the first to lose their jobs are the cigarette smokers. There is now a growing understanding among great employing concerns that the non-smokers will be retained even when there is not enough work for them to do rather than lose them.

We looked three years ago into a vast office building where on one floor a large number of men were employed. Recently we again looked there and made the following inquiry: "Where are the cigarette smokers?"—The answer came, "Hunting jobs elsewhere. We have no rule against smoking, but we found that the mistakes and the slow work were chargeable to the men who used cigarettes. Instead of discharging them, we gradually let them go as the work slackened, and put on non-smokers as it became brisk again. All other offices that we know about are doing the same thing. The cigarette is sapping brain, blood and vitality out of strong men and making them slaves to the habit; and we do not wish to have slaves work for us."

There are millions of men employed in department stores and in places of retail business; and the cigarette smoker is barred from them; and, where he refrains during working hours but is known to indulge in the habit outside, he is the first to lose his position when a change is made.

Magnetism is the opposite of slavery; and a habit that makes a slave of a man is a barrier to the attainment of magnetism.

Addicts of any bad habit make the specious claim that, at least outside the hours and places of employment they may do as they please; so they make themselves unfit for day work by night orgies of various kinds. We cited the case of a large number of young women employees in a great office floor, many of whom were gaping while trying to work; indicating that they were wasting their physical, mental and nervous energies by late hours at night. These women were gradually eliminated from their positions, although many of them were helping to support dependent parents. The question arose, did it pay to sacrifice golden opportunity for the greed of exhausting pleasures?

Employers now have a way of learning how those who work for them spend their time outside the employment; not intending to spy on their help, but to be able to advance those whose habits are good; for it is the fairest scheme in the world to help those who are trying to help themselves.

True character can bear being watched.

The head of one of the great corporations of this country told us that it was their policy to advance their employees who were of good habits and were efficient, until they became independently wealthy; and cited the history of one company that made thirty men millionaires in the course of their employment, and were enabled to do so because their private lives were investigated and given consideration in connection with their faithfulness as employees. Magnetic values always win success.