you will now see that a perfectly-balanced and well-cared-for body is necessary to produce a clear-thinking brain; that it is impossible to bring out the best in you unless you have the best of tools with which to work. no machinist would think of trying to do good work with dull, rusty or weak tools, and the most valuable tools of all are those which we are endowed with—hands and brains.
the boys in the past—many of the unsuccessful men of to-day, though not by any means through their own fault—were brought up under a false idea of democracy. matters were not as well understood as they are now, and the progress made all goes to benefit the boys of to-day. there is a fairly good reason why we have had so many dissatisfied youths in the past who are the failures to-day. it is because these men as youths were never fitted for the work in the world they could best do.
the error was in the false idea of the teachers that all boys’ brains were made of the[125] same workable stuff, and all that was necessary was to give to each and every boy the same teaching and then turn him loose to try to make a happy career.
of course in many, too many cases, there was nothing the boy could find to do that meant anything to him. he could hang around corners, smoke cigarettes and hear stories and words of injury to any healthy youth. he could find some job in a store or perhaps office work, but fitted for real work and happiness in that work, he never was. such a boy had really wasted valuable time in school, and it was not strange that when he left school he had no sense of the value of time. and such a boy often left school with an idea that he was not as bright as some other boys; this was the commencement of a state of discouragement all through his life—the reason he felt himself a failure.
yet all these unfortunate lads were the equal of those who had graduated with high honors in latin or history, only the things they could do best had never been given them to do.
if a boy disliked latin or history and could not come up to the teacher’s idea of the interest he should have in these studies, he was too often considered lazy or stupid. if that boy was interested in mechanical drawing and[126] happy in such work, no matter, he must do his latin, and disliking it, he, of course, neglected it.
this line of treatment went on throughout the boy’s school-life if he attended a public school, and generally he left disgusted and untrained for anything. then he found there was really no place for him in the world, nothing but some small clerkships or other uncongenial work, and being continually dissatisfied, of course, never made a success in anything—just a living. as he grew older such a youth soon dropped into habits of drinking, or worse habits, worked like a machine day in and day out, not much caring how things went, so long as he received his weekly pay envelope.
the thousands of men of this kind with whom i have talked, were discouraged from the start. as boys they were always blamed for being useless, when, in fact no efforts had ever been made to make them useful.
with you boys of the present day all this is to be different. every one of you can now find education and training in what you are fitted to do. ideas are rapidly changing, as are methods. you are aware by this time that vocational schools are being rapidly established, and i hope to soon see the day when all academic high schools are retained only for those who are going to college and from there to the[127] professional schools. of course you should all go to a high school, but to a high school where the foundation for some practical vocation, trade or business career is thoroughly taught.
i am frequently asked by young men, “do you advise me to go to college?” the answer is easily understood when i say: “never be sent to college.” here is where much of the harm has been done—the boy has been sent to college when in reality he wanted, or needed, to go to some institution where his particular talents could be trained. for we each and every one are born with some particular talent, something in us which makes us able to do a certain thing better than the other man. if we were all equal in the matters of thinking and doing,—that is, if we all did the same thing,—how far would the world progress?
so this brings us down to the question, what is the basis for success? what is it the boy needs to progress every day in the trade or vocation he has chosen?
i have already told you, but purposely repeat it, no boy or man can be a success unless his heart and complete interest are in his work. the most difficult part of the problem is at the beginning. your father or mother[128] wants you to be a lawyer or minister, your teacher says you have great talent for a medical career, but you do not care for any one of these professions. you find it hard to really know just what to do, and i sympathize with you all. i think that those who see you from the outside, who look upon you just as a real boy and have no such relations to you as parents or teachers, are in fact the best judge of what you are capable of being fitted for in a life’s career. go and advise with some successful man who knows you in your play and daily life, but do not take his advice if it is something he likes and you detest. you will soon have to be your own master, and now is a good time to commence. but fit yourself for something, you must. notice how everything around you is fitted by nature and then trained by man, to do its work. the bulldog is not taken out in the field to nose for game; the draft horse is not taken to the trotting track; the canary bird is not trained to catch eagles. no, each and every kind has its special work to do in making the world go around, and each of us has to be trained according to our talents. just because we all have two legs and arms does not indicate that we are all the same—just human beings all turned out from the same mold. arms are made for one man to use them in a certain line of work that another[129] man cannot, with success, use his. and so on.
every man who has trained his particular talents to their highest point and then strives to widen them, is an aristocrat—a prince, whether he is a brick-layer or lawyer. he only sinks to the level of a commoner who has neglected that working stuff which is in him. and he does not neglect this if he is happy in his work, or rather, if it is pleasure instead of work.
this does not mean that all the preparatory work will be congenial or without real labor. no, much of the work that you have to do preliminary to that which is to bring you success, will be hard work—plugging work, full of disagreeable details, but all necessary to build the foundations.
the dirty, muddy work involved in digging for the foundation of some building that will be a pride to its architect, is disagreeable, but the architect must see that this work is properly done; must get right into the mud and dirt himself to know that every detail he has worked out is being rigidly followed. if the designer of the useful and beautiful building did not have constantly in his mind the results of all this digging, he would be a failure, he would never be a designer and builder of magnificent works for the future generations to admire.
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it is just so with everything you start out to do. start out with a high purpose and the common-sense idea that you have to learn all the details first—to do the digging before that purpose can be fully carried out.
concentration, constant concentration upon your goal is the only rule to follow. like football, you move toward the goal by punting, touchdowns, and penalties which put you back, but you have ever one end in view—to reach the goal. a willingness to take all the hard knocks and throw-downs with the mind’s eye fixed on the goal, is the kind of stuff which wins out.
never be a quitter.
concentration is absolutely necessary to get the power out of you and force it to do its work. as someone has said, if you will concentrate the rays of the sun by the means of a magnifying glass you can burn a hole in almost anything. if you focus all your forces on one thing you can do wonders.
don’t be a scatterer.
you do not all want to be mere office clerks, bundle wrappers, or what is far worse for your future, mere political petitioners hanging on to your job by petty and ofttimes crooked work. no, be something, do something that means a future for you.
“but,” you say, “how do i really know what[131] i want to do, how can i find out for myself what my future should be? you say not to always follow the advice of successful men if such advice does not agree with my ideas of what i should like to do.”
yes, here is a difficulty. let us see if we cannot solve it.
don’t make the mistake so many thousands of boys have made in the past, of confusing what you would like to be with what you are capable of doing. here is where so much of the trouble has arisen. you have in your mind, as an example, the success a young man is making in writing for the magazines and papers. you remember him when he was a youth and you were a small boy.
his success has stimulated you, and you think that you will be a writer or reporter. now the ambition is all very well, you have made up your mind what you want to be, but, and here comes the problem: are you fitted by nature, temperament and talent for such work? this is a matter you must solve for yourself, at least at first.
if you have done any writing at school, been connected with the school’s paper, or in any way found more pleasure in writing than you have in mathematics, more fun in reading than in loafing, real pleasure in putting together words and sentences so that they really sing[132] to you, then you probably have the talent for the hardest vocation or profession in the world—journalism or literature.
if all this is well proven to you—if you feel that you must write—then all the hard work at first will be willingly accepted. if the drudgery, petty details of learning the art of writing, is disagreeable, then it shows that while you have perhaps a desire to see your work in print you really have not the inborn talent.
now we come again to that question, “shall i go to college?” if you are going to make a strenuous attempt to become a writer, the answer is yes, by all means. even if after leaving college, and after a year’s trial at newspaper work, you find the petty details disagreeable and determine to drop the work, the college experience will be valuable to you, for your tastes show that in some line of intellectual work, you will be a success. and you will finally drop into just the vocation you are intended for, and finally make good.
if the inclinations of your tastes are towards mechanics, or electrical engineering, if every bit of your studies at the high school where language, literature or logic was a disagreeable task—if you fairly hated such studies—don’t think of going to a classical college. in such a case what you need is a technical[133] education. if you have the mechanical or scientific mind a course at a technical school puts you at once in the position to do.
in art, music, literature, however, the situation is somewhat different. take the case of one who desires to be a writer, and the facts are the same for the other arts. a college education will not make a writer out of anyone. most men could spend their whole lives studying how to write, but in the end never be able to write. in other words, a college education simply gives you the tools for writing and shows you how to use these tools. the tools for writing are such lines of reading, thinking and verbal construction as education gives you. teaching you how to think clearly, calmly and justly, is what the college does for you. but if you have no original thinking powers, of what use are all these tools to you? you may have exceptional brain power, thinking qualities, but not along those lines necessary to make a successful writer, and so you are at a loss to know how to apply the tools given you. if you still struggle along in this false position you soon sink to the hack writer, the mind becomes clouded by failures and then comes the “down and out” state too often seen in those who have made the mistake of trying to be what they could never be.
let us take another case as an example of[134] what i mean. you really have talent for wood carving and finally decide that you will take up this vocation—an admirable one. you thoroughly understand that in order to become a good wood-carver you must first learn to use the tools, to know how to take care of them. after this you must learn all about the different kinds of woods, how they are prepared and what effects the weather and climate have upon them. when you have been through all this preliminary work, there must come a study of designs and the history of your vocation or art. this is your college education in preparation for good work and the success good work brings. you have been taught the use of every detail which goes to make up a good foundation for your career. you know how to use the tools and everything else is now up to you to make good. if your heart is in the work you will surely win out.
you will be apt to hear a lot about the cultural advantages of a college education; that it is never amiss in any calling. but right here comes a fact generally overlooked—you can receive a cultural education along any line you take up, and the better you apply yourself to your vocation, the better will your culture be.
in wood carving, for instance, there is much along the lines of art, painting and sculpture[135] to be learned. such progressive work may lead you to become a famous sculptor or decorator of the highest order. if you have wasted your time along the cultural lines needed for a writer or doctor, learned how to use their tools, but do not possess their mental equipment, failure is certain. the failures come from mental dissatisfaction.
get out of your minds the idea that there are only three or four professions which bring position and respect. this is a great mistake and is the cause for many poor doctors, the hordes of unscrupulous lawyers and weak-kneed ministers.
many of these failures would have been successful as carpenters, machinists, draughtsmen or contractors. but they all wanted to go or were pushed into holes they could not fit.
remember the old saying, “a round peg will not fit into a square hole.”
a trained machinist, one who takes delight in his trade, can rise far higher in worldly goods and the respect of his fellow-men than ever can a half-contented doctor. it is the same with an electrician, bridge worker, house painter, any and all trades where the man has learned to use his brain-tools and keeps sharpening them on the grindstone of pleasure.
don’t go into law or medicine unless you go into these professions for the love of the work.[136] you may not know it, but the income of the average doctor or lawyer is not that of even the paper-hanger or bricklayer. if you are determined to be a doctor for the love of the profession and the great good you can do—and most of you will have to do it free for the needy and poor—then you will be happy and also probably poor.
in law, medicine, or the ministry, a college education is absolutely necessary, both cultural and preparatory. if a doctor, you must spend four years at the medical college, a year or two in the hospitals, then finish by visiting the clinics of europe. by the time you are thirty years of age you are fitted to step into line with the best doctors.
and unless you can do all this—and it takes a lot of money—keep out. the days are passing when the boy can go from the high school to some cheap commercial medical college and take any kind of a stand among the educated doctors and the now enlightened communities. there is plenty of room in the world for the kind of a doctor i have first described, but absolutely no places waiting for the latter kind. these are not doctors, just medical warts, the sort of quacks we had a shot at in our last chat.
the boy who has business talents and tastes will, of course, be far better able to rise and[137] command positions if he possesses an education. but don’t make the mistake of thinking that a college education, just because it is a college education, will make a business man of you from the start. of two boys having equal business talents the one whose mind has been trained to think and who has mixed with all sorts of fellows at college, will probably have advantages for getting along that the non-college boy does not possess. but unless your father or someone back of you has money to spare, i believe that the average boy with commercial instincts does better in the end by getting into business early in life. he gets a better fitting for his career.
now i think you can readily understand the first rule for becoming a successful man. find out what your talents are, then fit yourself so that you can utilize all these talents. there are schools now being established where every boy can have this done. but he must work with pleasure. if you find you have made a mistake in your choice—and you will know this by being constantly dissatisfied—get out and try something else. keep trying until you find some vocation or trade which you go at with increased pleasure every day. when this state of mind has arrived you have found yourself.
