But to read with the most advantage one ought to have within easy reach a dictionary, an atlas and, if possible, an encyclopedia. Then you can read with profit, and the mere outlines which the newspaper gives can be filled up by reference to books which give more or less complete histories.
The political articles which appear in the height of a campaign are hardly worth reading, unless you think of entering politics as a money-making business, which I sincerely hope none of you think of doing. And I am sure that the full accounts of crime, and especially the details of police reports and criminal trials, you will do well to pass by and not read. I really believe that a familiarity with these details prepares the way, in many instances, for the commission of crime, just as the reading of accounts of suicide sometimes leads to the act itself.
Some of the best minds in our country, and in the world, are now employed in writing for the periodicals and magazines. No one can be well informed without reading something of the vast amount of matter which is thus poured out before him. I have not named the newspapers nor the magazines which you may read with the most profit; but your teachers can advise you what to read. Rather is it important for you to know what not to read. Many of the most popular and the most useful books that have been published within the last quarter of a century have appeared first in the pages of a weekly or monthly paper. The best thoughts of the best thinkers sometimes first see the light in such pages.
Besides the newspaper and the literary magazine, there are scientific periodicals, which are of essential value to a worker who wishes to be well informed in any of the mechanical arts. The Scientific American is, perhaps, the best of this class, both in the beauty of its illustrations and in the high quality of its contributions. The Popular Science Monthly is a periodical of a wider range and more diversified character. These periodicals, if you are not able to subscribe for them as individuals or in clubs, you may find in the public library. But let me urge you to turn away from “dime novels.” Not because they are cheap, but because they are often unwholesome and immoral. The vile, fiery, poisonous whiskey which so many wretched creatures drink until the coatings of the stomach are destroyed, and the brain is on fire, is no more fatal to the health and life, than is the immoral literature I speak of, to the mind and soul of him who reads. There is an abundance of good literature that is cheap—do not read the bad.
Having now spoken of the education you may get in the schools, and that which you may acquire for yourselves, if you have the pluck to strive for it, either in the society which you cultivate, or more directly from books, whether read as an entertainment and recreation, or, better still, by careful study; or through the daily newspaper, or the periodical, whether literary or scientific; or, what is best of all, that which is decidedly religious; I turn now to the education which you will acquire when you work day by day at your trade or business.
Let me beg of you to consider the great value of truthfulness in all your training. Hardly anything will help you more to reach up towards the top. And when you are at the head of an establishment of your own or somebody else’s (and I take it for granted you will be at the head some day), whether it be a workshop or factory of any kind, or a store, no matter what, a fixed habit of keeping your word, of not promising unless you are certain of keeping your promise, will almost insure your success if you are a good workman. How many good mechanics have utterly failed of success because they have not cared to keep their promises? A firm of high reputation agrees to supply certain articles of furniture at a time fixed by them. The time comes but the articles do not come. A call of inquiry is made and new promises are made only to be broken. Excuses are offered and more promises given; then incomplete articles are sent; then more delays, until, when patience is nearly exhausted, the work is finished. Then comes the bill and there is a mistake in it. The whole transaction is a series of disappointments and misunderstandings. Will you ever incline to go to that place again?
It is usual for miners of coal to place their sons, as they become ten or twelve years of age, at the foot of the great breakers to watch the coal as it comes rattling and broken down the great wire screens, and catch the pieces of slate and throw them to one side and allow only the pure coal to pass down into the huge bins, from which it is dropped into the cars and taken to market. To an uneducated eye there is hardly any perceptible difference between the coal and the slate. But these little fellows soon become so quick in the education of the eye, that they can tell in an instant the difference. When the boy grows older he graduates to the place of a mule driver, and has his car and mule, which he drives day by day from the mouth of the mine to the breaker. Then when he begins to be of age he fixes his little oil lamp in the front of his cap, and goes down into the mines with his pick and becomes a miner of coal. It seems a dreary life to spend most of one’s time under the ground, shut out from the sunshine and from the pure air. And most of these men having no education, and never having been urged to seek one, are content to spend all their days in this manner. But occasionally there is one who feels that he is capable of better things than this. And I know one at least, who began his work at the foot of a coal breaker and worked his way up through all these stages, as I have told you, and who determined to do something better for himself. So he gave much of his leisure (and everybody has some leisure) to study; nor was he discouraged by the difficulties in his way. He persevered. He rose to be a boss among the men; then having saved some money, instead of wasting it at the tavern, he bought his teams, and then bought an interest in a coal mine, and became a miner of his own coal, and had his men under him, and has grown to be a rich man, and is not ashamed of his small beginnings nor of his hard work. This is only one instance of success in rising from a low position to a high one.
The same thing is going on all around us and we see it every day. It would hardly be proper to give you names, but I could tell you of many within my own knowledge who, from positions of extremely hard labor and plain living, have risen to be the head men in shops and other places which they entered at the lowest places. Such changes are continually occurring. And there is no reason whatever, except your indifference, to prevent many of you from becoming, if God gives you health, the head men, in the places where you begin work as subordinates or in very low positions. And I tell you what you know already, that there is plenty of room for advancement. It is the lowest places that are full to overflowing. Who ever heard of a strike among the chiefs of any industry? No, indeed. They have made themselves indispensable to their employers and they don’t need to strike. And there is hardly a youth who cannot by strict attention to business, and conscientious devotion to the interests of his employer, make himself so invaluable that he need not join any trades union for protection. Do the vast army of clerks in the various corporations, or in the great commercial houses, or in the public service, or in the army and navy—do these people ever band themselves in any associations like the trades unions? They know better than that; they accomplish their purposes in better ways. If the working classes, so called, were better educated, they would not suffer themselves to be led by the nose by people who will not themselves work, who will not touch even with their little fingers the burdens which are crushing the life out of the deluded ones whom they are leading to folly. It is a true education that is needed, a true conscience that must be cultivated, to enable men to do their own thinking, and to determine for themselves what are their best interests.
I urge you all to seek that higher and better education which will make you true men. You have now the great advantage of the education of the school. I have tried very simply, but not the less earnestly, to show you how you can fit yourselves for high places. It is for you to say whether you will avail yourselves of these plain hints. No earthly power can force you to do that which you will not do. You may lead a horse to a brimming fountain of water, but if he is not thirsty, no coaxing nor threatening nor beating can make him drink. I may show you, to demonstration, the abundant fountain of learning, but I can’t make you drink, or even stoop to taste the stream, if you are not thirsty. I can’t make you study, however great the advantage to you, or however much they who are interested in you desire that you should.
Every year this question which I have been pressing upon you becomes more and more important. The great colleges of the country are graduating their thousands of students, many of whom will compete with you for the high places in the mechanic arts. So are the public schools of the country sending out hundreds of thousands, many of them having the same aim. Technical schools, teaching the mechanic arts, are multiplying. Great changes have been made recently in our own city in this respect. The Spring Garden Institute is doing a noble work in this way. Our own college is moving in the same direction, and soon it will be sending out its hundreds every year to compete for places in the shops, with this great advantage, that you Girard boys have a school education—the best that you are able to receive, and you must not let any others go ahead of you.