“But, in my second term, I was disillusioned. A climatic disturbance dried up the lake, free delivery wiped out the postoffice, and the child died,—and I found myself back at the very place whence I had started!”
THE STRANGE RESULT OF A LECTURE.
A few years ago Mr. Dolliver was invited to deliver a lecture in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, before the Young Men’s Christian Association Lyceum. In each city, the hall was crowded wherein he spoke, some fifteen hundred young men attending. His topic was, “Chances for Young Men.”
“That,” said he to me, “was a favorite topic with me. I believed in young men, and liked to talk with them, knowing full well that if one can stir them up to energy and ambition, he is doing a grand work in the world.
“Well, I have not changed my opinion since the delivery of that lecture; but, when I got back to Washington to resume my congressional duties, a week later, I began to hear from those particular young men. Letters began to pour in on me. They came in bunches of twos and threes; then in dozens, and finally in basketfuls. Every St. Paul and Minneapolis young man who had heard me declare that this is the young men’s age, wrote that he fully agreed with me,—and asked me to get him a government job!”
Mr. Dolliver’s services to his party were particularly great in the controversy over the Porto Rican change of front by the administration. The president had, in his message to congress, in December 1899, favored the extending of unrestricted trade opportunities to the Porto Ricans; but, later, seeing that such a course was opposed by many influential persons, and by several strong arguments, he advised the imposition of light duties and the application of the proceeds to the island’s own use. In the conflict which at once arose in congress, Dolliver’s strong and eloquent plea alone saved the measure from defeat.
HIS IDEA OF GENUINE SUCCESS.
When I asked him what the true idea of success is, he replied, without a moment’s hesitation:
“Money-making is the cheapest kind of success. It doesn’t indicate the highest development, by any means. I will give you a simple illustration, embodied in an incident which occurred this very day. A friend of mine, a professional gentleman of high mental attainments, had been offered a salary of ten thousand dollars a year by a corporation engaged in transportation. He was strongly tempted to take it, for he is working for the government at a salary of only five thousand dollars. He admitted to me, however, that he is capable of far greater usefulness, in his present work, than he would be in the employment of the railroad. Thereupon I strongly advised him to reject the larger offer, and he has done so. My reason was simply that money does not measure one’s place in the world, one’s mental triumphs, or one’s usefulness to humanity.”