By John F. Di Leo -
When I was growing up in Chicago’s northern suburbs, one of our local heroes was the late, great W. Clement Stone, founder of Combined Insurance.
I recall being an awestruck college volunteer with the Young Republicans, manning the registration table at a Republican state convention, when Clem Stone came up to chat with us.
His story was the stuff of legend: starting from nothing during the Great Depression, selling insurance door-to-door, and from that humble beginning, he became the multimillionaire founder of one of the great Illinois corporations.
From time to time, we hear of others who also got their start that way: from life insurance to vacuum cleaners, from encyclopedias to pots and pans… The door-to-door salesman job of old was either a path to success in its own right or an opportunity to learn skills that would prove helpful in a multitude of other endeavors.
Whether selling newspapers or magazines, insurance or Fuller brushes, the door-to-door sales route provides an opportunity to hone the skills of salesmanship, entrepreneurship, personal interaction, and frankly, a certain resilience in the face of rejection, all of which are beneficial for success in any career.
While these opportunities still exist today, they are considerably diminished, as online shopping and other market changes have disrupted those industries.
But most upsetting, because it is inexcusable, is the barrier placed in its way by rampant crime.
Sure, there are still neighborhoods that are safe for door-to-door sales… But there are more and more neighborhoods that are not. And the problem grows every day.
- We import over a million people a year, both legally and illegally, and these numbers include an unhealthy percentage of people from violent and/or paranoid cultures.
- We have states like California that have intentionally thrown open their prison gates, releasing tens of thousands of known, convicted criminals onto the streets.
- We have city and county states’ attorneys like Illinois’ own Kim Foxx, who outright refuse to prosecute whole classes of crimes, ensuring that the criminal class knows that they have carte blanche to do as they please.
- And even in neighborhoods that would be safe for the door-to-door salesmen, residents are all too often afraid of the stranger at the door, for all the reasons above, and more, an understandable hesitation that places still another barrier in the way of the person with a door-to-door job.
With millions of criminals known to be on the loose from coast to coast, what parent today can encourage his children in door-to-door sales, or, for that matter, in other, similar, door-to-door jobs, like US census takers, pollsters, and political volunteers?
Again, the problem isn’t universal; there are still safe neighborhoods, though their numbers are shrinking.
With fewer and fewer safe zones, and more and more No-Go zones (due to Sharia, gang control, or a host of other dangers), the path to making a living from the door-to-door route is narrower every year.
The entrepreneurs who got their start that way become fewer and fewer, as these opportunities are removed. And the regular workers, doing desk duty for someone else’s company, are also at a disadvantage, as companies are not formed without the entrepreneurs to form them, and opportunities are reduced for employees who lack these special skills, of resilience and one-on-one interaction, that only the door-to-door path provides so well.
There are certainly other reasons, maybe bigger reasons than these, to oppose such dangerous policy choices as the modern American left advocates.. The lack of experience to be gained by door-to-door sales is far from the most compelling reason to oppose sharia law’s regional growth, the influx of gangland criminals from our open borders into our sanctuary cities, and the anti-incarceration quest of today’s leading Democrat politicians.
But this aspect shouldn’t be forgotten, either.
As our nation intentionally gets more dangerous – yes, intentionally, since it’s all thanks to the policies of the left – so much damage is done, so many changes occur without our notice.
Which massive new businesses, that would have employed tens of thousands, will not be started in the future, because their would-be founders did not get that first taste of entrepreneurship from door-to-door sales? How many wage slaves will linger in the lower middle class, because they never got the chance to become sales superstars, as Clem Stone did, just because they had the misfortune of growing up in a generation that encouraged lawlessness, robbing them of the opportunity to live in an environment safe for personal choices and advancement?
When people tell you that there are different families of issues… Foreign policy over here, criminal justice over there, social issues here, the economy over there… Don’t believe them.
Political issues are truly interrelated, and are centered on one question: whether they support the freedom of the individual law-abiding citizen to make the most of his life on earth as part of his community, or whether they crush it… whether policies are focused on personal freedom or on dependence and fear.
When he ran for, and won, the presidency, Barack Obama proudly declared that his goal was to “transform America.” He didn’t do it all himself, all alone, of course… But his side’s destructive transformation is certainly succeeding, and with the wreckage it continues to cause from coast to coast, it is nothing for any honorable American to be proud of.
Copyright 2019 John F Di Leo
John F Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer, transportation manager, writer and actor. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.
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