CHAPTER THREE
THE COURAGE OF INDUSTRY
ANYBODY can drift, but only the man or woman of courage can breast the current, can fight on upstream.
It is so easy to be idle or to work listlessly. Average folks drift heedlessly into occupations in which they have no special interest and for which they have as little fitness. Most people waste their evenings or use them to little profit: it never occurs to them that each day they waste precious hours. They give more thought to schemes to do less work than to attempts to increase output.
And so they show their weakness, their unfitness for bearing responsibility, their cowardice when the world is calling for courage.
Worth-while work demands the finest kind of courage, and with perfect fairness work gives back courage to those who put courage into it.
I
BEGINNING
"Yes, he's a right good worker, when you once get him started," a country newspaper editor said to a friend who was inquiring about a boy who had been in the office three months. "Watch him now; you'll see what I mean."
The boy had just brought from the express office the package of "patent insides," as the papers for the weekly edition of the newspaper, already half printed in the nearby city, were called. With a sigh he dragged these up the stairs and laid them on the folding table. With another sigh he contemplated the pile and thought how much time would be required to fold the eight hundred papers. After lengthy calculation he stopped to read a column of jokes from the top paper in the pile. At least five minutes passed before the first paper was folded. At the end of ten minutes he had succeeded in folding perhaps twenty-five papers. When the noon hour arrived not one third of the task was completed.
While he ate his lunch he was thinking of the dread ordeal of the afternoon—six hundred more papers to be folded! Would he ever be done? He was still pitying himself as he walked slowly back to the office. Just before reaching the doorway into which he must turn, he spied an acquaintance. He made his way over to the boy who had attracted him, not because he had anything to say to him, but that he might delay a little longer the moment of beginning work at the folding table.
"What are you going to do?" he asked idly of the boy, who had taken off his coat and was rolling up his sleeves.
"The boss wants me to sort that lot of old iron," was the reply.
"What, that huge pile! It will take you a week, won't it? Just think how much of it there is!"
"No, there isn't time to think how much of it there is," was the reply. "And what would be the good? Not a bit of use getting discouraged at the very start, and that is what would happen if I didn't pitch in hard. The job is going to be done before night—that is, if I'm not interrupted by too many loafers coming in to ask fool questions."
The boy from the printing office was about to resent this speech of the boy at the iron pile, but he thought better of it. "Perhaps there is something in what he says," he said to himself, as he went up the stairs. "Suppose I try to pitch in hard."
So he surprised the foreman by beginning at the pile of six hundred papers as if he was to be sent to a ball game when he finished. And he surprised himself by finishing his task in a little more than an hour.
The lesson he learned that day stood him in good stead when later he was taking his first difficult examination in a technical school. His neighbor stopped to look over the paper from beginning to end, and was heard to mutter, "How do they expect us to get through ten questions like these in an hour's time?" The boy from the printing office had no time for such an inquiry, but began work at once on the first question, without troubling himself about those that came later until he was ready for them.
So it was when, his technical course completed, he was confronted by his first great railroad task, the clearing up of a wreck that looked to his assistants like an inextricable tangle. After one good look at it he pitched in for all he was worth, thus inspiring the men who had felt the task was impossible, and within a few hours the tracks were clear.
The ability to pitch in at once on a hard job is one characteristic of the man who accomplishes tasks that make others sit up and take notice. John Shaw Billings, the famous librarian, had this ability. To a friend who praised him for the performance of what others thought to be a most difficult task, he said:
"I'll let you into the secret—it is nothing really difficult if you only begin. Some people contemplate a task until it looks so big it seems impossible, but I just begin, and it gets done somehow. There would be no coral islands if the first bug sat down and began to wonder how the job was to be done."
II
PURPOSE FORMING
One of the interesting points the fascinated reader of biography comes to look for is the first hint of the formation of the purpose that later characterized the life of the subject. There is infinite variety, but in every case there is apt to be something that takes the purposeful reader back to the days when his own ambition was taking shape.
For instance, there is Daniel Boone. One would not be apt to select him as an example of one whose life was ruled by a purpose deliberately formed and adhered to for many years. Yet he had his vision of what he desired to accomplish when, at twenty-one years of age, he was marching from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to join Braddock's company. On the way he met John Finley, a hunter who had traveled through Ohio and into the wild regions to the south. His tale of Kentucky fired Boone's imagination, and the two men planned to go there just as soon as the trip to Fort Duquesne was at an end. It proved impossible to carry out the plan for many years, but Boone never lost sight of his purpose, and ultimately he carved out the Wilderness Road and opened the way for the pioneers to seek homes in the Kentucky Wilderness.
Alexander Hamilton was but twelve years old when he wrote from his home in St. Croix, in the West Indies, to a friend in America:
"I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hope of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it, but I mean to prepare the way for futurity."
Not for a day did he lose sight of his purpose. The opportunity he sought came years later. He sailed for America, and began the career that led to usefulness and fame.
As a boy Robert Fulton was ambitious. He had two dreams. He wished to go to Europe to study art, and he wished to buy a farm for his widowed mother. For these objects he saved every dollar he could. On his twenty-first birthday he took his mother and sister to the home he had bought for them, and later in the same year he sailed for Europe.
When Peter Cooper was making his way against odds in New York City he felt the need of an education. But he had to work by day and there was no night school. Night after night he studied by the light of a tallow candle. And while he studied, his life purpose was formed: some day he would make it easy for apprentice boys to secure an education after working hours. Many years passed before he was able to carry this purpose into effect. By this time the apprentice system had been displaced, but he felt that young people still needed the school he had in mind. In 1859, nearly fifty years after his own boyhood struggle, he founded Cooper Union, in which thousands have had the opportunity "to open the volume of Nature by the light of truth—so unveiling the laws and methods of Deity that the young may see the beauties of creation, enjoy its blessings and learn to love the Being from whom cometh every good and perfect gift."
As a boy Abraham Lincoln made up his mind "to live like Washington." He was twenty-two years old when, in New Orleans,—where he had taken a flatboat loaded with produce—he saw a slave auction and spoke the never-to-be-forgotten words: "If ever I get a chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard." Thirty-five years later came his chance, and he did "hit that thing hard" with the Emancipation Proclamation.
Alexander Graham Bell's life ambition was to teach deaf children how to articulate. Funds were short. That he might have more funds he engaged in experiments that led to the invention of the telephone. When the telephone instrument was given the attention it deserved at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876, the inventor wrote triumphantly to his parents: "Now I shall have the money to promote the teaching of speech to deaf children."
James Stewart, the Scotch boy who became a famous missionary in South Africa, was fifteen years old when, one day while following the plow in Perthshire, he began to brood over the future. "What was it to be?" The question flashed across his mind, "Might I not make more of my life than by remaining here?" Then he said, "God helping me, I will be a missionary." At another time, while hunting with a cousin, he said "Jim, I shall never be satisfied till I am in Africa with a Bible in my pocket and a rifle on my shoulder, to supply my wants."
James Robertson was a school teacher in Canada when he became a Christian. On the Sunday he was to take his vows as a follower of Christ, he walked two miles to church with a friend who has told of his memories of the day thus:
"As we went along the Governor's Road there was a bush, 'Light's Woods,' on the south side of the road. Robertson suggested that we turn aside into the bush, not saying for what purpose. We penetrated it a short distance, when, with a rising hill on our right and on comparatively level ground, the tall maples waving their lovely heads far above us, and the stillness of the calm, sunny day impressing us with a sense of the awful, we came to a large stone. Robertson proposed that we engage in prayer. We knelt down together. He prayed that he might be true to the vows he was about to take, true to God and ever faithful in his service."
From that day the young man's purpose was inflexible. He would be a minister. He did not dream of conspicuous places in the church. When the temptations came to seek place and position, he wrote to Miss Cowing, who had promised to be his wife, "We are no longer our own. The time for self is gone for us."
William Duncan likewise was tempted to seek a position of prominence. When he decided to become a missionary, his employers sought to dissuade him. "You have one of the keenest brains in England," one of them said. "Don't you see you are making a fool of yourself?" "Fool or no fool, my mind is made up, and nothing can change it," was the positive reply. And he set his face like a flint, and in time began the wonderful work that has written his name indelibly in the history of the Indians of Western Canada and Alaska.
Washington Gladden was a country newspaper man in Owego, New York, when he united with the church, and began to make definite plans for a larger future than he had yet dreamed of. First he went to the Academy and then to college, with the ministry always in view.
George Grenfell, who became a missionary in Africa, was thirteen years old when he began to think of devoting his life to work for others. The reading of Livingstone's first book turned his thoughts to Africa.
William Waddell was fifteen years old when he became a Christian. At the time he was working for a ship-joiner at Clydebank, Scotland. The ambition took possession of him to become a missionary to Africa. Neither lack of education nor scarcity of funds was allowed to stand in his way. He kept at his work until he saw an advertisement asking for men to go to the Orange Free State to assist in building a church. He volunteered, and, as a layman and a mechanic, began his wonderful career in Africa.
David Lloyd-George was an orphan in Wales when he determined to be a lawyer. So he read, under the guidance of his shoemaker uncle, and when he was fourteen he was ready for the preliminary examination. For six years more he continued his preparation. Before he was twenty-one he set out on the career that has made him the leader to whom King and people of England alike turned eagerly.
These men found their place and did their work, not because they sought great things for themselves, but because they lived in the spirit of the advice given by a celebrated Canadian to a company of young people:
"You cannot all attain high positions: there are not enough to go around. You cannot all be preachers or premiers, but you can all do thoroughly and well what is set you to do, and so fit yourselves for some higher duty, and thus by industry and fidelity and kindness you can fill your sphere in life and at last receive the 'Well done' of your Lord."
III
USING TIME WISELY
A remark made by an acquaintance in the street car showed such familiarity with the work and trials of the busy conductor that inquiry followed.
"Yes, I was a conductor once," the man said, "but I had my eye on something else. At night I took a business course, and soon was able to take a position with a railroad company."
"That was fine!" was the answering comment. "How you must have enjoyed resting on your oars as you reaped the fruits of extra toil."
"Enjoyment—yes! But rest—no!" came the reply. "I wasn't done. I still had my evenings, and I kept on studying. The things I learned in these extra hours came in handy when the Superintendent asked me to become his secretary."
Service in the railroad office was interrupted by enlistment in the army, although the worker was well beyond the age of the draft. "How could I think of anything but service at the front?" he said, with a matter-of-fact accent. While in the service the habit of study in spare hours persisted; becoming familiar with the military manual he attracted the attention of his officers, and was marked for added responsibility. At the close of the war he resumed his work for the railroad and entered a technical school which provides night courses for the ambitious.
Forty years of age, and still learning!
An employer has written of an employee who, ten years ago, was securing fifteen dollars per week. But he was studying, and he soon attracted the attention of the head of the business, who called him "a rough diamond." He knew that the ambitious man seemed to lack some of the vital elements of success. But he watched him as he took evening courses in business psychology and salesmanship. "This man is paid by me to-day from $12,500 to $15,000 a year," was the gratifying conclusion of the employer's story.
A great executive recently told in a magazine article of a young man in the office of his employment director who attracted attention because of an exceptionally pleasing personal appearance. Before the director saw him the executive asked him what he was studying. "When I left school," was the reply, made with something of a sneer, "I promised myself I would never open a book again as long as I lived, and I'm keeping my promise."
The executive was about to leave the office for a two weeks' vacation. First, however, he wrote a few words about the applicant, placed them in a sealed envelope, and left this with the employment director, to be kept for him. On his return he asked about the applicant, by name. The answer came, with prompt disgust:
"That fellow was the limit! Fired him two days after he was hired. Dead from the neck up!"
Then the sealed letter was produced and the message enclosed was read:
"You will hire A—— H—— on his looks. Within two weeks you will fire him. He's dead from his neck."
A writer in Association Men has made a comparison between two men, and the way they spent their leisure:
"Here is my friend Chris Hall—that is not his real name, but I assure you he is a real person. I like Chris, and so does everybody who knows him. He is honest and kind and clean, but in spite of these splendid characteristics he never makes progress. Five years ago he was promoted to his present position, and he draws as salary just about what he did then. And there is no prospect that he will ever draw much more. Yet he could make himself worth four times as much in a very short while—$200 a week instead of $50—if he would only fit himself for the job ahead. But he lives entirely in the present. Perhaps the best way to describe him is to give his diary for a week, a record of how he spent his time when not actually working. And, please notice that everything he did was perfectly legitimate and honorable; but also notice, that everything was for immediate personal pleasure:
Monday—Rainy evening; went to bed early after playing a while with the kids.
Tuesday—Strolled over to see Mollie's brother, who is just back from France; he looks well but would not talk much about the fighting; advised him not to hurry about getting a job, as he deserved a good long spell of rest after the hard campaign.
Wednesday—Left office early; first big league game this year; went around to the club and talked it all over with the boys after supper.
Thursday—Office closed all day on account of parade of returning troops; took Mollie and children to see it; awfully tired and went to bed early.
Friday—Sold my two Liberty Bonds which I had bought on installments; Mollie needed summer dresses and there were several small debts I had to pay; took Mollie to the movies after supper.
Saturday (afternoon)—Whole family went to Seaside Park by steamer—children enjoyed it for a while but soon got tired and fretful; what with the heat and the crowds and the late hour of getting home it really didn't pay.
Sunday—In bed till nearly noon; read the papers; changed the soil in Mollie's potted plants; afternoon, Tom and his wife and Charlie Nichols and his best girl came over and all stayed to supper; strolled over to Mother's and found everyone there.
"Over against that let me put a few lines from the diary of Elihu Burritt:
Monday—Headache; 40 lines Cuvier's 'Theory of the Earth'; 64 pages French; 11 hours forging.
Tuesday—60 lines Hebrew; 30 pages French; 10 pages Cuvier; 8 lines Syriac; 10 lines Danish; 10 lines Bohemian; 9 lines Polish; 15 names of stars; 10 hours forging.
Wednesday—25 lines Hebrew; 8 lines Syriac; 11 hours forging.
"Who was Elihu Burritt? He was a New England blacksmith who worked on an average 10 hours a day at his forge; but who studied in his spare moments until he became known and honored all over the world as 'the learned blacksmith.' He became great—not by forging—but by the way he used his afterwork hours."
IV
WORKING HARDER
"It was the rule of his life to study not how little he could do, but how much."
These words were spoken of a great publisher and might have been made the text of the volume issued to commemorate the centenary of the business house founded by the man of whom they were spoken.
The young man was sixteen when his father drove him from their country home to the city, and apprenticed him to a firm of printers.
As an apprentice he and another young man were frequently partners in working an old-fashioned hand press. "One applied the ink with hand-balls, and the other laid on sheets and did the pulling. They changed work at regular intervals, one inking and the other pulling." The biographer who gives this description of the work of the two, adds that his hero was accustomed to remain at his press after the other men had quit work whenever he could secure a partner to assist him.
The young man's fellow worker was often persuaded to assist him in these extra efforts—usually much against his will. While he often felt like rebelling because of his partner's ambition to do his utmost for his employers, he could not restrain his admiration for the man's industry.
Once the unwilling partner said: "Often, after a good day's work, he would say to me, 'Let's break the back of another token (two hundred and fifty impressions)—just break its back.' I would often consent reluctantly but he would beguile me, or laugh at my complaints, and never let me off till the token was completed, fair and square. It was a custom for us in the summer to do a clear half-day's work before the other boys and men got their breakfast. We would meet by appointment in the grey of the early morning and go down to the printing-room."
Fellow workmen made sport of the ambitious young man, not only because of what they felt was his excessive industry, but because of his homespun clothes and heavy cow-hide boots. He seldom retorted, but once, when jests had gone further than usual, he said to a tormentor: "When I am out of my time and set up for myself, and you need employment, as you probably will, come to me and I will give you work." The man little thought the prophecy would be fulfilled, but forty years after, when the industrious apprentice was mayor of the city and one of the world's leading publishers, he was reminded of the promise made to the tormentor, and the promised position was given to him. The workman who believed in doing more than was expected of him had won his way to fame and fortune, while his derider had made no progress.
In 1817 the industrious apprentice asked a brother—who in the meantime had served his apprenticeship in a printing office—to go into business with him. Later two other brothers were taken into the firm. All were believers in the doctrine that had led the oldest member of the firm to success—the doctrine of doing as much instead of as little as possible.
Their readiness to work constantly enabled the four brothers, who started with little capital except their knowledge of their trade, to build up within a generation one of the world's greatest publishing houses. They improved every moment. But they were never tempted to work on Sunday; business was never so pressing that they would break into the day of rest, or make their men do so. In this they were only living in accordance with purposes formed during their days of working for others. It is stated of one of the brothers, whose employer rejoiced in his readiness to do hard work and plenty of it, that he was expected to work on Sunday, in order to get ready the catalogue of an auction sale which was to be held next day. "That I will not do," he said, respectfully but firmly: "I cannot work on Sunday." He did work till midnight; then—in spite of the threat that he would be discharged—he laid down his composing stick on the case. On Monday morning his employer apologized and asked him to return to work.
Thirty-six years after the founding of the house, it occupied five five-story buildings on one street and six on another street. Then a careless plumber started a fire that—within a few hours—destroyed the entire property. But the energetic men who knew how to work were not discouraged at the thought of beginning again. The night after the fire they met for conference. As they separated one of them remarked that the evening had seemed more like a time of social festivity than a consultation over a great calamity.
Business associates hastened to make offers of loans. Within forty-eight hours the firm was tendered more than one hundred thousand dollars. Publishers offered their presses, printing material and office room. Authors wrote that they were ready to wait indefinitely for pay, while employees not only made a like suggestion, but said they were willing to have their pay reduced. While none of these offers were accepted, they were greatly appreciated, for they told of the place the brothers had won for themselves by untiring industry and sterling integrity.
After the fire the house became greater than ever, so that to-day it stands as an example of what "hard work coupled with high ideals" may accomplish. And to every young man the thought of it gives inspiration to follow in the steps of the founder who "made it the rule of his life to study not how little he could do, but how much."
V
ABUSING THE WILL TO WORK
There are times when the real test of a worker's courage is not his readiness to work but his will to curb the temptation to be intemperate in work.
When the word "intemperance" is mentioned most people think at once of strong drink; many people are unwilling to think of anything but strong drink. As if where there is no temptation to drink there can be no temptation to intemperance!
Paul had a different idea. When he wrote to the Corinthians, "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," he must have had in mind scores of different ways in which intemperance endangers success.
If people were to make a list of some of the aspects of intemperance that are characteristic of modern life, it is quite likely that a large proportion would omit one of the most serious of all—the intemperance of the man who lives to work, who drives himself to work, who is never happy unless he is working, who makes himself and others unhappy because he labors too long, and too persistently, perhaps with the result that his own promising career is wrecked and the industry of others is interfered with seriously.
One of the most striking illustrations of intemperance in work is supplied by the life of Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican, one of the famous editors of the generation beginning a few years after the Civil War.
Mr. Bowles was but eighteen years old when he had his first warning that his system could not stand the strain of the work to which a strong will drove him. His mother used to set a rocking chair for him at the table at meal-time, because, as she said, "Sam has so little time to rest." But the rocking chair was empty for months, when a breakdown sent him South for a long period of recuperation.
When he returned home he plunged into work with all his might. "He worked late at night; vacations and holidays were unknown; of recreation and general society he had almost nothing," his biographer says. For years his office hours began before noon and continued until one or two in the morning. Finally the strain became too great, and loss of sight was feared. Still he forced himself to work, and the injury to his brain was begun that was later to cause his death. He would take a bottle of cold tea to the office, that by its use he might aid his will to work when nature said, "Stop!" For a long time his only sleep—and it was sadly broken sleep—was on a lounge in the office, from two to six or seven in the morning. Then he would set to work again. "By his unceasing mental activity he wore himself out," the comment was made on his career. "For the last twenty years of his life his nerves and stomach were in chronic rebellion. Heavy clouds of dyspepsia, sciatica, sleeplessness, exhaustion, came often and staid long."
The intemperate worker knew what he was doing. Once he wrote to a friend, "You can't burn the candle at both ends, and make anything by it in the long run; and it is the long pull that you are to rely on, and whereby you are to gain glory." Persistent headaches, "nature's sharp signal that the engine had been overdriven," added to the warning. At last, when he was thirty-seven, he wrote: "My will has carried me for years beyond my mental and physical power; that has been the offending rock. And now, beyond that desirable in keeping my temper, and forcing me up to proper exercise and cheerfulness through light occupation, I mean to call upon it not at all, if I can help it, and to do only what comes freely and spontaneously from the overflow of power and life. This will make me a light reader, a small worker."
Well for him if he had kept his resolution. Still he drove himself to work beyond what his body and brain could stand. Then came paralysis. "Nothing is the matter with me but thirty-five years of hard work," he said. At the time of his death he was not fifty-one years old.
His friends could not but admire him for strength of will, for achievement in the face of ill health, for triumph, by sheer will-power, over every obstacle except the will that drove him to his death. He accomplished much, but how much more he might have accomplished if he had been temperate in his use of the wonderful powers of mind and body which God had given him!
In connection with this glimpse of the life of one who illustrates the disaster brought by the will to be intemperate, it is helpful to think of the life of another American man of letters whose will to be temperate in his treatment of a body weak and frail prolonged life and usefulness.
Francis Parkman, the historian, was never a well man after his trip that resulted in the writing of The Oregon Trail. In fact, he was a physical wreck at twenty-five years of age. He could not even write his own name, until he first closed his eyes; he was unable to fix his mind on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous system was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. However, in spite of this limitation, which became worse, if possible, instead of better, he managed to accomplish an immense amount of the finest literary work by doing what he could and stopping when this was wise. His will to take care of himself was given the mastery of his will to work. For forty-four years after the completion of The Oregon Trail he labored on, preparing history after history. He was seventy years old when he died, leaving behind him achievements that would have been a tremendous task for a man in perfect health.
To everyone is given the marvelous equipment of body and brain, as well as the will which makes possible their judicious investment or their prodigal waste in the struggle to make life count.