Define Carelessness

Not long ago it was discovered that a girl had served twenty years for a twenty month sentence in a southern prison, because of the mistake of a court clerk who wrote "years," instead of "months," in the record of the prisoner's sentence.

The history of the human race is full of the most horrible tragedies caused by carelessness and the inexcusable blunders of those who never formed the habit of accuracy, of thoroughness, of doing things to the end. Multitudes of people have lost an eye, or an arm, or are otherwise maimed, because dishonest workmen wrought deception into the articles they manufactured, slighted their work, covered up defects and weak places with paint and varnish.

Everywhere over this broad earth we see the tragic results of botched work. Wooden legs, armless sleeves, numberless graves, fatherless and motherless homes everywhere speak of somebody's carelessness. The worst crimes are not punishable by law. Carelessness and slushiness, lack of thoroughness, are crimes against self, against humanity, that often do more harm than the crimes that make the perpetrator an outcast from society.

Where a tiny flaw or the lightest defect may cost a precious life, carelessness is as much a crime as deliberate criminality. If everybody put his conscience into their work, did it to a complete finish, the mangling and maiming of men and women, to a fraction of what it is at present, but it would also give us a higher quality of manhood and womanhood.

Most young people think too much of quantity, and too little of quality in their work. They try to do too much, and do not do it well. They do not realize that the education, the comfort, the satisfaction, the general improvement, and bracing up of the whole man that comes from doing one thing absolutely right, from putting the trade-mark of one's character in it, far outweighs the value that attaches to the doing of a thousand botched jobs.

We are so constituted that the quality which we put into our life-works affects everything else in our lives, and tends to bring our whole conduct to the same level. The entire person takes on the characteristics of one's usual way of doing things. The habit of precision and accuracy strengthens the mentality, improves our whole character.

On the contrary, doing things in a loose-joined, slipshod, careless manner deteriorates the whole mentality, demoralizes the mental processes, and pulls down the whole life. Every half-done or slovenly job that goes out of your hands leaves its trace of demoralization behind. After slighting your work, after doing a poor job, you are not quite th same person you were before. You are not so likely to try to keep up the standard of your work, not so likely to regard your word as sacred as before. The mental and moral effect of half doing anything, or carelessly doing things; its power to drag down, to demoralize, can hardly be estimated because the processes are so gradual, so subtle.

No one can respect themselves who habitually botches their work, and when self-respect drops, confidence goes with it. When confidence and self-respect have gone, excellence is impossible.