The Young Man and the World

by Albert J. Beveridge

We have come to that state of enlightenment where the people want to know not only that they are getting the best goods or best service, but that the business which supplies either is run all right. Who can doubt that in the universal mind there is a question as to the moral element in American business?

This is nothing but the composite conscience of the American people demanding that American business shall not only be conducted ably, but also that it shall be conducted honestly. It is a force which you must take into account. It will be a glorious asset for you if you will pay enough attention to it to understand it.

But you must mingle with the people yourself in order to comprehend this source of power. Do not sit alone in your room and read about the people; that is no way to learn about them.

Remember that no workable constitution was ever written exclusively by scholars. Recall the ordinance for the government of Carolina devised by the philosopher Locke. It failed; yet it reads well. Time and again theorists with highest purpose and broadest book wisdom have formulated laws for the good of mankind which would not work.

Most statutes that live and operate have had their origins among men of the soil as well as men of the study. The point I am making is that learning and accomplishments will do no good if you do not connect them with the people.

Is not this why so many reformers retire disappointed—men and women of finest excellencies of purpose and practical and fruitful thought—they have insisted in projecting their reforms from office or parlor upon the masses without knowing those masses? It is as impossible for the wisest man to be a statesman by confining himself to his study and his weighty volumes and his careful abstract thinking, as it is to be a chemist by reading about chemistry.

The laboratory, the test-tube, the actual contact with the real materials and forces in nature, are essential to the scientist of matter. This is much more true of the art of government. No man ever lived so wise that association with the millions would not enrich his wisdom mightily. And thus, page after page, we might go on pointing out the value of contact with the people, whom, after all, it ought to be your highest purpose to serve in some way.

For in all your doings never forget that, build you ever so cunningly, young man, you have builded in vain if the work of your hands has not helped humanity. Every occupation, trade, business, employment has its reason in service of the people.

Grocery man, harness-maker, carpenter; doctor, lawyer, or railway man; farmer, miner, or journalist; actor on the stage, teacher in the school-room, preacher in the pulpit—all your effort is for the service of the people, the ministering to their needs, the enlightenment of their minds, the uplifting of their souls. And I insist, therefore, that you shall know with the knowledge of kinship this humanity with whom you are to work and for whom you are to work.

Spend some time with Nature, too. The people and Nature—they alone contain the elemental forces. They alone are unartificial, unexhausted. You will be surprised at the strength you will get from a day in the woods. I do not mean physical strength alone, but mental vigor and spiritual insight.