PLACE IN PUBLIC LIFE ONLY FOR PICKED MEN.
The Self-Made Have a Hard Time,
Those Born Rich Are Mostly Useless,
Says Speaker Cannon.
Somebody asked Speaker Cannon this question: "What would you say if a young man of intelligence, education, and force, undecided as to what he should adopt as a life career, should come to you for advice?"
Of his reply, as printed in the New York World, we quote the salient passages, answering the further query as to the advisability of going into politics:
I should say yes to the young man of intelligence, culture, and efficiency, if these things were crossed with patriotism. In the main those who go into public life are picked men, and by just so much as they are picked men they are ahead of the average. This is a fact in spite of the oft-repeated assertion that the representatives of the people are only of average grade.
If among a dozen young men, each of whom should decide to devote his life to the public service and should qualify and work hard and conscientiously for it, one—just one—should get himself into public life and sustain himself with credit to himself and benefit to the country, I should consider it a great return for the effort put forth.
The man who has to make his own way, who is without a competency to start with, and who enters public life these days before he has saved enough to live independently of his income as a public man, has a hard time before him.