Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/131

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manship is the one career that kindles the imaginations and genius of the young. It is a perfectly respectable career for one who has something valuable to sell.

We touch now on what is most dangerously wrong in the moral incentives and tendencies of the younger generation. Its one categorical imperative, "Learn to sell yourself," means, being interpreted, "Get your value recognized by society." Publicity managers, business psychologists, sales-engineers, and their kind and kindred, who are legion, have made the atmosphere of our times tense with pressures upon every young person to get his value recognized. If a new popular religion were founded to-day, the first book of its gospel would undoubtedly treat of the psychology of salesmanship. The spirit of this gospel has already invaded the void left by the new universe constructed with no "insides." The young person responds with an intoxication, seldom sobered by any consideration whatever of the really quite primary questions whether he has any value, and, if not, whether by dint of some old-fashioned exertion, he may acquire some. The emphasis of the selling-slogan is, at least for a young generation, off: it just misses the head of the nail and strikes with a resounding whack