Two Fun Facts About the Four-Way Test:
A Vocational Service Gem
Was the Four-Way Test divinely inspired? Has it ever been used to decide a court case? The answers may surprise you. Here are two fun facts you may not know about the Four-Way Test.
Rotary is not a religious organization and its famous Four-Way Test is nonsectarian in nature. But the test’s creator, Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor (who later served as RI President), was himself a man of faith who stated that the test came to him after he prayed:
“I leaned over my desk, rested my head in my hands and prayed. After a few moments, I looked up and reached for a white paper card. Then I wrote down the twenty-four words that had come to me: 1. Is it the truth? 2. Is it fair to all concerned? 3. Will it build good will and better friendships? 4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned? I called it The Four-Way Test of the things we think, say, or do.”
In 1932, Taylor presented his Four-Way Test to the board of the Club Aluminum Products distribution company, which was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, as part of his recovery plan for the company. It was intended as “a simple, easily remembered guide to right conduct – a sort of ethical yardstick – which all of us in the company could memorize and apply to what we thought, said, and did.” The company’s board (whose members were religiously diverse) adopted the test and the company did in fact recover. Taylor gave Rotary the right to use the test in the 1940s and the copyright in 1954. It is now a central part of the permanent Rotary structure around the world and used by Rotarians – and non-Rotarians – to encourage ethical behavior.
Non-Rotarians who use the Four-Way Test include the judicial system of the Republic of Ghana, which purportedly displays the test on billboards in its court premises. It is also displayed along major thoroughfares and other in public places in the Philippines, and in 2015 that country’s then Secretary of Justice (Leila de Lima) gave a speech entitled “Applying Rotary’s Four-Way test on the Philippine Justice System.” Thus, it seems entirely possible that a judge or member of a jury may have applied the test in deciding an aspect of a case, either consciously or unconsciously.
When we as Rotarians practice The Four-Way Test in our business and personal relationships, we are in fact engaged in a form of vocational service, which has always emphasized and promoted ethical standards and conduct through the Four-Way Test and the second Object of Rotary. So whether you realize it or not, you may already be performing vocational service in your community every day simply by remembering and following the Four-Way Test.
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