The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is
first must perpetually live in the white light of
publicity.
Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in
a manufactured product, emulation and envy are
ever at work.
In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the
reward and the punishment are always the same.
The reward is widespread recognition; the
punishment, fierce denial and detraction.
When a man’s work becomes a standard for the
whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts
of the envious few. If his work be merely mediocre,
he will be left severely alone—if he achieve a
masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a-wagging.
Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at
the artist who produces a commonplace painting.
Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing,
or build, no one will strive to surpass, or to slander
you, unless your work be stamped with the seal of
genius.
Long, long after a great work or a good work
has been done, those who are disappointed or
envious continue to cry out that it cannot be done.
Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were
raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank,
long after the big world had acclaimed him its
greatest artistic genius.
Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the
musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of
those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued
angrily that he was no musician at all.
The little world continued to protest that
Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big
world flocked to the river banks to see his boat
steam by.
The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and
the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that
leadership.
Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks
to depreciate and to destroy—but only confirms
once more the superiority of that which he strives to
supplant.
There is nothing new in this.
It is as old as the world and as old as the human
passions—envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire
to surpass.
And it all avails nothing.
If the leader truly leads, he remains the leader.
Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman,
each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his
laurels through the ages.
That which is good or great makes itself
known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial.
That which deserves to live—lives.

—from an advertisement in the Saturday Evening
Post, January 2, 1915; from the Cadillac Motor Car