The Young Man and the World Part 8

What does all this mean? It means that in our relations we have become cosmopolitan. Therefore we Americans ought to know other languages than our own. Charles Sumner said that if he had to go through college again he would study nothing but modern languages and history. Of course I do not presume to advise you who are reading this paper to do that, although it is precisely what I should do if I were going through college again. But I do advise you to do this: Acquire at least two languages in addition to your own--French and German.

Indeed, you ought to have three languages besides your own--French, German, and Spanish. For, consider! Here is Mexico, our next-door neighbor--its people speak Spanish; Cuba, a kind of national ward of ours--its people speak Spanish. The people of our possessions in the Pacific speak Spanish; of Porto Rico, Spanish; of the Central and South American "Republics"--with all of whom we are destined, in spite of ourselves, to have relations of ever-increasing intimacy--all speak Spanish.

And French? You can travel all over Europe intelligently if you speak French. And German--the language that is going to make a good race with English itself as the commercial language of the world is German.

For example, you can go all through _commercial_ Russia without a guide if you speak German. You can get along in any port of the Orient if you speak German. So you can if you speak English, it is true. And think of how many millions of excellent people in our own country are still German-speaking (although our German citizens are so splendidly patriotic that they acquire English just as soon as they possibly can).

But the point is, that your usefulness in every direction will be increased by a knowledge of the languages. The other things that you study in college you will largely forget, anyhow; and, besides, you study them princ.i.p.ally for the mental discipline in them. But if you get a language, and get it correctly, thoroughly, you can find enough use for it to keep brushed up on it. And of course you can read it all the time, whether you have a chance to talk it or not.

It is impossible to use words sufficiently emphatic in urging the study of history. _You cannot get too much history in college and out of it._ Sir William Hamilton was right--history is the study of studies. The man who occupies the chair of history in any college ought to be not only an able man, he ought to be a great man. If ever you find such a professor, make yourself agreeable to him, absorb him, possess yourself of him.

This final word: Mingle with your fellow students. Talk with people, with real people; those who are living real lives, doing real things under normal and natural conditions. Do all this in order that you may keep human; for you must not get the habit of keeping to your room and believing that all wisdom is confined to books. It is not. All wisdom is not confined to any one place. Some of it is in books, and some of it is in trees and the earth and the stars.

But so far as _you_ are concerned most of it is in human touch with your fellows; for it is _men_ with whom you must work. It is _men_ who are to employ you. It is _men_ whom in your turn you are to employ. It is the world of _men_ which in the end you are to serve. And it is that you may serve it well that you are going to college at all, is it not?

Be _one_ of these _men_, therefore; and be sure that while you are being one of them, you are one indeed. Be a man in college and out, and clear down to the end. Be a man--that is the sum of all counsel.

_2. The Young Man who Cannot Go_

But what of the young man who stands without the college gates? What of him upon whom Fate has locked the doors of this a.r.s.enal of power and life's equipment? "Why does not some one give counsel and encouragement to the boy who, for any one of a thousand reasons, cannot take four years or four months from his life of continuous toil in order to go to college?" asked a young man full of the vitality of purpose, but to whom even the education of our high schools was an absolute impossibility.

After all, for most of our eighty millions, the college is practically beyond their reach. Even among those young men who have the nerve, ability, and ambition to "work their way through college," there are tens of thousands who cannot do even that, no matter if they were willing for four years to toil at sawbuck, live on gruel, and dress in overalls and hickory shirt.

I have in mind now a spirited young American of this cla.s.s whose father died when his son was still a boy, and on whose shoulders, therefore, fell the duty of "supporting mother" and helping the girls, even before his young manhood had begun. For that young man, college or university might just as well be Jupiter, or Saturn, or Arcturus.

Very well. What of this young man? What of the myriads of young Americans like him? What hope does our complex industrial civilization, which every day grows more intense, hold out to these children of hard circ.u.mstances, whose muscles daily strain at the windla.s.ses of necessary duty?

I repeat the question, and multiply the forms in which I put it. It is so pressingly important. It concerns the most abundant and valuable material with which free inst.i.tutions work--the neglected man, he whom fortune overlooks. It is a strange weakness of human nature that makes everybody interested in the man at the top, and n.o.body interested in the man at the bottom. Yet it is the man at the bottom upon whom our Republican inst.i.tutions are established. It is the man at the bottom whom Science tells us will, by the irresistible processes of nature, produce the highest types after a while.

The young Bonaparte proved himself a very wizard of human nature when he exclaimed: "Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack." And did not the Master, with a wisdom wholly divine, choose as the seed-bearers of our faith throughout the world the neglected men? Only one of the apostles was what we would term to-day a "college man"--St. Luke, the physician. What said the Teacher, "The stone which was rejected to the builder, has become the chief of the corner."

Yes--the neglected man is the important man. We do not think so day by day, we idle observers of our Vanity Fair, we curbstone watchers of the street parade. We think it is the conspicuous man who counts. Our attention is mostly for him who wears the epaulettes of prominence and favorable condition. Therefore most articles, papers, and volumes on young men consider only that lucky favorite-of-fortune-for-the-hour, the college man.

But this paper is addressed to the neglected man. I would have speech with those young men with stout heart, true intention, and good ability, who labor outside those college walls to which they look with longing, but may not enter.

"Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack."

Ah, yes! Very well. But what was a soldier of France in Napoleon's time to a young American to-day? If Joubert, from an ignorant private who could not write his name, became one of the greatest generals of the world's greatest commander, what may you not become! Joubert did it by deserving. Use the same method, you. There is no magic but merit.

First, then, do not let the conditions that keep you out of college discourage you. If such a little thing as that depresses you, it is proof that you are not the character who would have succeeded if you had a lifetime of college education. If you are discouraged because you cannot go to college, what will happen to you when life hereafter presents to you much harder situations? Remember that every strong man who prevails in the merciless contest with events, faces conditions which to weaker men seem inaccessible--are inaccessible.

But it is the scaling of these heights, or the tunneling through them, or the blasting of them out of their way and out of existence, which makes these strong men strong. It is the overcoming of these obstacles day after day and year after year, as long as life lasts, which gives these mighty ones much of their power.

What is it you so admire in men whom you think fortunate--what is it but their mastery of adversity after adversity? What is that which you call success but victory over untoward events? Do not, then, let your resolution be softened by the hard luck that keeps you out of college.

If that bends you, you are not a Damascus blade of tempered steel; you are a sword of lead, heavy, dull, and yielding.

Next to Collis P. Huntington, the railroad man of the last generation, whose ability rose to genius, was President Scott of the Pennsylvania System. He thought, with Mr. Huntington, that a college training was unnecessary; and his own life demonstrated that the very ultimate of achieving, the very crest of effort and reward may be reached by men who know neither Greek nor Latin, nor Science as taught in schools, nor mental philosophy as set down in books.

Colonel Scott was a messenger-boy--just such a messenger-boy as you may see any day running errands, carrying parcels, doing the humble duties of one who serves and waits. From a messenger-boy with bundle in his hand, to the general of an industrial army of thousands of men, and the directing mind planning the expenditure of scores of millions of dollars belonging to great capitalists--such was the career of Thomas Scott.

Very well, why should you not do as well? "Because my compet.i.tors have college education and I have not," do you answer? But, man, Colonel Scott had no college education. "Because the other fellows have friends and influence and I have none," do you protest? But neither President Scott nor most monumental successes had friends or influence to start with. Don't excuse yourself, then. Come! Buck up! Be a man!

"I am greatly troubled," said to me the general superintendent of one of the most extensive railroad systems in the world as we rode from Des Moines, Iowa, to Chicago. "I am greatly troubled," said he, "to find an a.s.sistant superintendent. There are now under me seven young engineers, every man a graduate of a college; four of them with uncommon ability, and all of them relatives of men heavily interested in this network of railroads. But not one of them will do. Three nights ago all of them happened to meet in Chicago. While there all of them went out to have what they called 'a good time' together--drinking, etc.

"That, in itself, is enough to blacklist every man for the position of my a.s.sistant and my successor. This road will not entrust its operating management to a man who wilfully makes himself less than his best every day and every night. Besides this, each of them has some defect. One is brilliant, but not steady; another is steady, but not resourceful--not inventive--and so forth and so on. We are looking all over the United States for the young man who has the ability, character, health, and habits which my a.s.sistant must have."

This general superintendent, under whose orders more than ten thousand men daily performed their complex and delicately adjusted functions, is fifty-five years of age. Now listen to this, you who cannot go to college: This man started thirty-eight years ago as a freight-handler in Chicago at one dollar per day for this same railroad company, which was then a comparatively small and obscure line. Ah! but you say, "That was thirty-eight years ago." Yes, and that is the trouble with you, is it not? You want to _start in_ as superintendent of a great system or the head of a mighty business, do you not? Very well--get that out of your head. It cannot--it ought not--to be done.

If you are willing to work as hard as this man worked, as hard as President Scott of the Pennsylvania System worked; if you are willing to stay right by your job, year in, year out, through the weary decades, instead of changing every thirty minutes; if you are willing to wait as long as they; if you are willing to plant the seed of success in the soil of good hard work, and then water it with good hard work, and attend its growth with good hard work, and wait its flowering and fruitage with patience, its flowering and fruitage will come. Doubt it not.

For, mark you, this man at the time he told me that his System was looking all over the United States for a young man capable of being his a.s.sistant, had seven high-grade college men on his hands at that very moment. He would have been more than delighted to have taken any one of them.

Also, he would have taken a man who had not seen a college just as quickly if he could have found such a one who knew enough about operating a railroad, and had the qualities of leadership, the gift of organizing ability. It did not matter to this superintendent whether the a.s.sistant he sought had been to college or not, whether he was rich or poor.

He cared no more about that than he cared whether the man for whom this place was seeking was a blond or a brunette. The only question that he was asking was, "Where is the man who is equal to the job?"

And that, my young friend, is the question which all industry is asking in every field of human effort; that is the question your Fate is putting to you who are anxious to do big work, "Are you equal to the job?" If you are not, then be honest enough to step out of the contest. Be honest enough not to envy the other young men who are equal to the job.

Yes, be honest enough to applaud the man who is equal to the job and who goes bravely to his task. Don't find fault with him. Don't swear that "There is no chance for a young man any more." That's not true, you know. And remember always that if you do all you are fitted for, you do as well as your abler brother, and better than he if you do your best and he does not.

A young man whom fortune had kept from college, but who is too stout-hearted to let that discourage him, said to me the other day: "I don't think that a college education confers, or the absence of it prevents, success. But I do think that where there are two men of equal health, ability, and character, that one will be chosen who has been to college, and to this extent the college man has a better chance." This is true for the ordinary man--the man who is willing to put forth no more than the ordinary effort.

But you who read--you are willing to put forth extraordinary effort, are you not? You are willing to show these favored sons of cap and gown that you will run as fast and as far as they, with all their training, will you not? You are willing--yes, and determined, to use every extra hour which your college brother, _thinking he has the advantage of you_, will probably waste.

Very well. If you do, biography (that most inspiring of all literature) demonstrates that your reward will be as rich as the college man's reward. Yes, richer, for the gold which your refinery purges from the dross of your disadvantages will be doubly refined by the fires of your intenser effort.

In 1847 two men were born who have blessed mankind with productive work which, rich as are now its benefits to the race, will create a new wealth of human helpfulness with each succeeding year as long as time endures. Both these men have lived, almost to a day, the same number of years; both of them are still alive; both of them have labored in neighboring sections of the same field. They are alike, too, in character, almost duplicates in ability. Here, then, is material for a perfect comparison.

Mark, now, the parallel. One of them was a college man, the son of a noted educator and himself a professor in the University of Boston. He used the gifts which G.o.d gave him for that purpose, and as long as the transmission of human speech continues among men, the name of Alexander Graham Bell will be rightly honored by all the world.

The other of these men could no more have gone to college than he could have crossed the Atlantic on a sheet of paper. You who read this never had to work half so hard as this man worked when he was a boy.

Your patience will never be so taxed and tested as his patience was and is. But who can say that your efforts and your persistence will not be as richly rewarded according to your ability as his ceaselessness has been repaid, if you will try as hard as he has tried, and use every ounce of yourself as effectively as he has used himself?

At twelve years of age he was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway.

That didn't satisfy him. The mystery of the telegraph (and what is more mysterious?) constantly called him. The click of the instrument was a voice from an unknown world speaking to him words far different from those recorded in the messages that instrument was transmitting.

And so Thomas A. Edison, without a dollar or a friend, set himself to work to master the telegraph and to explore the mysteries behind it.

Result: the duplex telegraph and the developments from that; the phonograph, the incandescent electric light, and those numerous inventions which, one after another, have confounded the bigotry and ignorance of the world.

Edison and Bell, Bell and Edison, one a college man and the other a laborer without the gates, unlike in preparation but similar in character, devotion, and ability, and equal winners of honor and reward at the hands of a just if doubting world.

Of course I might go on all day with ill.u.s.trations like this. History is brilliant with the names of those who have wrought gloriously without a college training. These men, too, have succeeded in every possible line of work. They are among the living, too, as well as among those whose earthly careers have ended.

The men who never went to college have not only built great railroads, but also have written immortal words; not only have they been great editors, but also they have created vast industries, and piled mountain high their golden fortunes; not only have they made epoch-making discoveries in science, but they have set down in words of music a poetry whose truth and sweetness makes n.o.bler human character and finer the life's work of all who read those sentences of light.

Among the fathers who established this Government, the greatest never went to college. Hamilton was not a college man. Washington, to this day the first of Americans, never even attended school after he was sixteen years old. Of the great founders of modern journalism--the four extraordinary men whom their profession to this day refers to as the great journalists--only one was a college graduate--Raymond, who established the New York _Times_. Charles A. Dana, who made the New York _Sun_ the most quoted newspaper of his generation, was not a college graduate. William Cullen Bryant, who gave to the New York _Evening Post_ a peculiar distinction and preeminence, went to college only one year.

Samuel Bowles, who founded the Springfield _Republican_ and made its influence felt for righteousness throughout the Nation, attended a private inst.i.tution for a while. James Gordon Bennett, the editor whose resourceful mind sent Stanley to the heart of African jungles to find Livingstone, was never a college student.

Horace Greeley, that amazing mind and character, who created the New York _Tribune_, and who, through it, for many years exercised more power over public opinion than any other single influence in the Republic, never went to college; and Greeley's famous saying, "Of all horned cattle, deliver me from the college graduate," remained for a quarter of a century a standing maxim in the editorial rooms of all the big newspapers of the country.