The Young Man and the World

by Albert J. Beveridge

The very effort required to live in these ungenerous surroundings, the absolute necessity to make every blow tell, to preserve every fragment of value; the perpetual exercise of the inventive faculty, thus making the intellect more productive by the continuous and creative use of it—all these develop those powers of mind and heart which through all history have distinguished the inhabitants of such countries as Switzerland and New England. "And so," said Connecticut's great senator, "these rocky hills produce manhood."

Apply this to your own circumstance, you who cannot go to college because you must "support the family," or have inherited a debt which your honor compels you to pay, or any one of those unhappy conditions which fortune has laid on your young shoulders.

Most men with wealth, friends, and influence accept them as a matter of course. Not many young men who are happily situated at the beginning, employ the opportunities which are at their hand. They don't understand their value. Having "influence" to help them, they usually rely on this artificial aid—seldom upon themselves. Having friends, they depend upon these allies rather than upon the ordered, drilled, disciplined troops of their own powers and capabilities. Having money, they do not see as vividly the necessity of toiling to make more.

"What's the use of my working; father did enough of that for our family," wittily said one of these young men. Having the training of the best universities very much as they have their food and clothing, these men are too apt to be blind to the greater skill this equipment gives them, and thus to neglect the using of it.

And so, young man—you who cannot go to college, you who are without friends and "influence"—your brother born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and trained by tutors, finished by professors, and clothed with all the "advantages," has not such a great start of you after all. For you are without friends to begin with. You have not inherited comrades and kindred hearts. You have inherited aloneness and solitude.

Very well, you must depend on yourself, then. If you have the right kind of stuff in you, you will make every ohm of your force do something for you. You will see to it that there is no wasted energy. You will economize every instant of your time, for you will understand, in the wise language of the common people, that "time is money"; and that is something, mind you, which the heir of wealth with whom you are competing does not understand at all. You know what an advantage your competitor, who is a college man, has of you; and this knowledge of yours, coupled with your college competitor's possible lack of it, turns his advantage over you into your advantage over him.

It is like a man who has a dozen shots for his rifle against another who has a hundred. The first will make every shot bring down his game, because he knows he must make every shot tell; he cannot waste a cartridge. But he of abundant ammunition fires without certain aim, and so wastes his treasure of shells until for the actual purposes of fruitful marksmanship he has not as many cartridges left as the man who started with fewer. Also his aim is not so accurate.

Or use an illustration taken from the earth. I well remember when a boy upon the fat alluvium of the Illinois prairie, how recklessly the farmers then exhausted the resources of their fields. So opulent was the black soil that little care was taken save to sow the seed and crudely cultivate it; and the simple prudences, such as rotation of crops, differential fertilizing, and the like, would have been laughed at by the farmer, heedless in the richness of his acres.

But the German farmer on his sandy soil could take no such risks. Every vestige of fertility that skill, science, and economy could win from the reluctant German field was secured. The German farmer had to woo his land like a lover. And so the unyielding fields of Germany returned richer harvests thirty years ago than a like area of the prodigally vital silt of the Mississippi Valley.

So what you have got to do, young man who cannot go to college, is to develop yourself with the most vigorous care. Take your reading, for example. Choose your books with an eye single to their helpfulness. Let all your reading be for the strengthening of your understanding, the increase of your knowledge.