An Analysis of the BP Disaster from 1923

“When the individual man drinks whiskey, enough to get drunk, we know that the alcohol has a certain peculiar effect upon the cells of the body, especially the nerves.

“Alcohol causes the little cells to swell out and enlarge. This causes the tiny particles of solid matter in the cell, upon which the vital, positive energy is carried, to fly further apart. The positive energy is scattered and the cell becomes dominantly ‘negative.’ Emotions are stirred up and mental pictures of all sorts formed in a chaos of Imagination. The man is given a sense of freedom from all natural limitations. His ego as well as his cells become expanded and for a time he imagines himself a most wonderful Master of all he surveys. Then the reaction comes—the alcoholic conditions lose their effect, contraction of the cells and the ego sets in and the nausea and headache of the ‘morning after’ arrive. Long habit of ‘going on a spree’ distorts the very shape of the cells and warps the whole man physically and mentally.

“So it is with the periodical ‘drunks’ of business. Sometimes the big men of business lose their self-control and indulge in a business drunk of [sic] profiteering. But the inevitable readjustment comes as it must always come. Man made laws may not be powerful enough to put these dangerous men where they belong, but the Natural Law always gets them. They must pay and do pay Nature even when they seem to ‘flourish like a green bay tree’; to those that have suffered from their depredations.

“Bigger man always come to take the place of these warped and twisted and self-belittled false Masters of Business. When human criticism cannot reach them, Nature does—and administers the penalty.

“The Law of Compensation invariably adjusts business disturbances as it does everything else. If you don’t believe this, you had better study Business progress for the past ten years—or any other period of the world’s history you choose.

“Mastery comes to him who aligns himself with the Natural Law of Business which provides that permanent success comes only to those who give service for service.”

*Excerpt from Joseph White Norwood’s Success Inevitable, published by long-defunct R. F. Fenno & Company in 1923.