Every young man and woman of reasonable intelligence is, or ought to be, possessed of a laudable ambition to be self-sustaining. To win a competency, to secure the necessities, to have even the luxuries of life, is perfectly praiseworthy, provided they are obtained in a legitimate manner. Every rational man seeks the occupation, trade or profession which ensures the profitable employment of his best talents, and the science which discloses to the youth at the beginning of his education what those talents are and how they may be developed to perfection in early manhood, and in what profession, trade or occupation he will display the greatest ability, confers upon him the greatest favor within the gift of knowledge, from a financial standpoint. That Phrenology does this, and more, it is the purpose of this lecture to show.
The world is apt to measure a man’s success by the amount of money he accumulates. That is properly one element of success, but it is not all. The real criteria of a man’s success in business are, 1st, the volume and quality of his work; 2d, the compensation he receives for it; and 3d, the pleasure he derives from it.
Pugilist.
Illegitimate.
Business is legitimate or illegitimate. A legitimate business contributes to the welfare of society, as well as to the support of the individual who follows it. The cobbler who mends shoes and the genius who builds a steamship are equally legitimate, though one contributes only to the comfort of a country neighborhood and the other promotes the welfare of a continent. Both may be successful within the limits of widely different capacities. An illegitimate business promotes temporarily the financial interests of the individual at the expense of the health, morals and wealth of the public. In my public and private examinations I have directed thousands of young men and women into channels of legitimate business. The fact is, there is such a tremendous demand for skilled labor in all departments of legitimate employment that it is difficult to find material to fill it. We hear much of the warfare between capital and labor, and strikes frequently paralyze the channels of legitimate trade, but the cause of the difficulty lies not in any real or imaginary conflict between capital and labor. The solution lies in the fact that every branch of legitimate labor is burdened with incompetent workmen, men who are in wrong occupations, who were never intended by nature for such work as the branches of trade they infest, and the skilled workmen are obliged to carry the load; while capital is often in the hands of those unfit to be trusted with its use, who manipulate it merely as the instrument of oppression and wrong, until the social discord is produced. If men were all graded to their proper vocations, if capital were entrusted only to those of financial skill, and labor, in its various departments, assigned to those of proper qualifications, every man would be employed at a fair remuneration, and the burden of pauperism would fall from the backs of our skilled workmen. There are too many men in the learned professions who would do better at the forge and on the farm. There are preachers who ought to be blacksmiths, and lawyers who would look better and feel better hoeing potatoes. There are those at the anvil and the plow who can succeed better in literature and art.
Lawyer.
Young man, it is infinitely more to your credit to be a successful blacksmith, if that is in accordance with your endowment, respected by everybody within a radius of twenty miles because you can shoe a horse better than anybody else, than it is to be starving in an attic as a briefless lawyer, or lounging about the country as a minister of the gospel, eating yellow-legged chicken at the expense of the sisters, when you have no ability to preach.
Minister.