Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

"There are some men that make much more. A classmate of the writer entered college with about twenty-five dollars. As a freshman he had a hard struggle. In his junior year, however, he prospered and in his last ten months of undergraduate work he cleared above his college expenses, which were none too low, upward of $3,000.

"He made his money by advertising schemes and other publishing ventures. A few months after graduation he married. He is now living comfortably in Cambridge."

A son of poor parents, living in Springfield, New York, worked his way through an academy. This only whetted his appetite for knowledge, and he determined to advance, relying wholly on himself for success. Accordingly, he proceeded to Schenectady, and arranged with a professor of Union College to pay for his tuition by working. He rented a small room, which served for study and home, the expense of his bread-and-milk diet never exceeding fifty cents a week. After graduation, he turned his attention to civil engineering, and, later, to the construction of iron bridges of his own design. He procured many valuable patents, and amassed a fortune. His life was a success, the foundation being self-reliance and integrity.

Albert J. Beveridge, the junior United States Senator from Indiana, entered college with no other capital than fifty dollars loaned to him by a friend. He served as steward of a college club, and added to his original fund of fifty dollars by taking the freshman essay prize of twenty-five dollars. When summer came, he returned to work in the harvest fields and broke the wheat-cutting records of the county. He carried his books with him morning, noon and night, and studied persistently. When he returned to college he began to be recognized as an exceptional man. He had shaped his course and worked to it.

The president of his class at Columbia University recently earned the money to pay for his course by selling agricultural implements. One of his classmates, by the savings of two years' work as a farm laborer, and money earned by tutoring, writing, and copying done after study hours, not only paid his way through college, but helped to support his aged parents. He believed that he could afford a college training and he got it.

At Chicago University many hundreds of plucky young men are working their way. The ways of earning money are various, depending upon the opportunities for work, and the student's ability and adaptability. To be a correspondent of city daily papers is the most coveted occupation, but only a few can obtain such positions. Some dozen or more teach night school. Several teach in the public schools in the daytime, and do their university work in the afternoons and evenings, so as to take their degrees. Scores carry daily papers, by which they earn two and one-half to three and one-half dollars a week; but, as this does not pay expenses, they add other employments. A few find evening work in the city library. Some attend to lawns in summer and furnaces in winter; by having several of each to care for, they earn from five to ten dollars a week. Many are waiters at clubs and restaurants. Some solicit advertisements. The divinity students, after the first year, preach in small towns. Several are tutors. Two young men made twelve hundred dollars apiece, in this way, in one year. One student is a member of a city orchestra, earning twelve dollars a week. A few serve in the university postoffice, and receive twenty cents an hour.

A representative American college president recently said: "I regard it as, on the whole, a distinct advantage that a student should have to pay his own way in part as a condition of obtaining a college education. It gives a reality and vigor to one's work which is less likely to be obtained by those who are carried through college. I do not regard it, however, as desirable that one should have to work his own way entirely, as the tax upon strength and time is likely to be such as to interfere with scholarship and to undermine health."

Circumstances have rarely favored great men. A lowly beginning is no bar to a great career. The boy who works his way through college may have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life, and will often take higher rank in school, and in after life, than his classmate who is the son of a millionaire. It is the son and daughter of the farmer, the mechanic and the operative, the great average class of our country, whose funds are small and opportunities few, that the republic will depend on most for good citizenship and brains in the future. The problem of securing a good education, where means are limited and time short, is of great importance both to the individual and the nation. Encouragement and useful hints are offered by the experience of many bright young people who have worked their way to diplomas worthily bestowed.

Gaius B. Frost was graduated at the Brattleboro, Vt., High School, taught district schools six terms, and entered Dartmouth College with just money enough to pay the first necessary expenses. He worked in gardens and as a janitor for some time. During his course he taught six terms as principal of a high school, and one year as assistant superintendent in the Essex County Truant School, at Lawrence, Mass., pushed a rolling chair at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, was porter one season at Oak Hill House, Littleton, N. H., and canvassed for a publishing house one summer in Maine. None of his fellow-students did more to secure an education.

Isaac J. Cox of Philadelphia worked his way through Kimball Academy, Meriden, N. H., and through Dartmouth College, doing many kinds of work. There was no honest work within the limits of his ability that he would not undertake to pay his way. He served summers as waiter in a White Mountain hotel, finally becoming head-waiter. Like Mr. Frost, he ranked well in his classes, and is a young man of solid character and distinguished attainments.