=ETIQUETTE IN “REVERSE GEAR"=

Etiquette, remember, is merely a collection of forms by which all personal contacts in life are made smooth.  The necessity for a “rough” man to become polished so that he may meet men of cultivation on an equal footing, has an equally important reverse.  The time has gone by when a gentleman by grace of God, which placed him in a high-born position, can control numbers of other men placed beneath him.  Every man takes his place to-day according to born position plus the test of his own experience.  And just as an unlettered expert in business is only half authoritative to men of high cultivation, so also is the gentleman, no matter how much he knows of Latin, Greek, history, art and polish of manner, handicapped according to his ignorance on the subject of another’s expertness.  Etiquette, in reverse, prescribes this necessity for complete knowledge in every contact in life.  Through knowledge alone, does one prove one’s right to authority.  For instance: 

A man in a machine ship is working at a lathe.  An officer of the company comes into the shop, a gentleman in white collar and good clothes!  He stands behind the mechanic and “curses him out” because his work is inefficient.  When he turns away, the man at the lathe says, “Who was that guy anyway?  What business has he to teach me my job?” Instead of accepting the criticism, he resents what he considers unwarranted interference by a man in another “class.”

But supposing instead of standing by and talking about inefficiency, the “gentleman” had said, “Get out of there a moment!” and throwing off his coat and rolling up his silk shirt sleeves, he had operated the lathe with a smoothness and rapidity that could only have been acquired through long experience at a bench.  The result would be that the next time he came on a tour of inspection that particular man (as well as all those who were witnesses of the former scene) would not only listen to him with respect but without resentment of his “class,” because his expertness proved that he had earned his right to good clothes and silk shirts, and to tell those beneath him how work should be done.

The same test applies to any branch of experience:  a man who knows as much about any “specialty” as an expert does himself, makes the “expert” think at once, “This man is a wonder!” The very fact that the first man is not making the subject his specialty, intensifies the achievement.  Everything he says after that on subjects of which the second man knows nothing is accepted without question.  Whenever you know as much as the other man, whether you are socially above, or below him, you are on that subject his equal; when you know more than he does, you have the advantage.

=THE SELF-MADE MAN AND WORLD-MADE MANNERS=

It is not in order to shine in society that grace of manner is an asset; comparatively few people in a community care a rap about “society” anyway!  A man of affairs whose life is spent in doing a man’s work in a man’s way is not apt to be thrilled at the thought of putting on “glad” clothes and going out with his wife to a “pink” tea or a ball.