Successful men of today and what they say of success

Front matter

SUCCESSFUL

MEN I OF TO-DAY

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Contents

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Intkoductiok iii

I. Choosing a Birthplace 13

II. Parents And Poverty

Every character is the joint product of nature and nurture.-- Gakfield.

Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify ; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can ha^jpen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my acquaintance I never knew a man to be drowned who was worth the saving. It is the pride of every American that many cherished names, at whose mention our hearts beat with a quicker bound, were worn by the sons of poverty who conquered obscurity and became fixed stars in our firmament. There is no horizontal stratification in this country like the rocks in the earth, that hold one class down below forevermore, and let another come to the surface to stay there forever. Our stratification is like the ocean, where every individual drop is free to move, and where from the sternest depths of the mighty deep any drop may come up to glitter on the highest wave that rolls. — Garfield.

Average Britons reverence pedigree ; average Americans, performance ; the highest Britons, ancestry ; the highest Americans, achievement. — Joseph Cook.

The replies speak of other circumstances over which we have no control, besides birthplaces, that help to make men.

Two seeds are planted in the same environment of soil and sunlight. One grows into an oak, and the other becomes only a cabbage-bead. Shortly after Chief-Justice Chase had gone for the first time to Washington, he was returning to the "West. ' The train stopped at a little station in Virginia, and he was informed that it was the birthplace of Patrick Henry. He immediately left the car and stood upon the platform, admiring the magnificence of the scenery that opens before the traveller. He said, " What an atmosphere ! What a view ! What

PARENTS AND POVERTY. 23

glorious mountains ! No wonder that Patrick Henry grew here." One of the natives, who was standing by his side, quietly replied, "Yes, sir, but as far as I have heard, that landscape and those mountains have always been here ; but we haven't seen any more Patrick Henrys.^'' Men differ in nature as well as surroundings. The nature of the seed that is planted has more to do with its success than the atmosphere in which it grows. We happen to know that in Patrick Henry's favorable environment his noble mother had a mightier influence than his native mountains. Like mother, like man.

Several of our successful men name ' ' a good mother' ' and " faithful training" among the causes of their success. That many others did not do so is due to the tendency that makes us forget to thank God for our commonest and greatest blessings, such as air and light. Peter Cooper's success is partly explained in the fact that his mother was " a rare blending of sweetness and fire."

If you would be successful, select not only a country birthplace, but also a good grandmother. Heredity is mightier than homestead. " The just man walketh in his integrity : his children are blessed after him." You are selecting a good grandmother, or the opposite, for the coming man in your wedding of to-day, besides selecting a secret of your own success * or failure, as is intimated in some of these replies — for instance, that of a wealthy New Yorker, who says, " To marry early and well I consider one of the sources of success." On the other hand, " selfish and extravagant wives" and " unhappy marriages" are given among causes of failure, and also " postponing marriage and getting into bad habits." " The man without a home is more dangerous than an asp or a dragon," says the proverb. " A large majority of the criminals are bachelors " echoes every prison report, Lamartine's trinity, the father, the mother, and the child, tends to make every family a ".holy family." Brutal natures are softened by

"Little hands on breast and brow, To keep the loving heart-cords tender."

Marriage is a part of a young man^s environment which he can largely control. If he cannot choose his grandmother, he can at least choose a wife. " If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

Another favoring environment of boyhood is a moderate allowance of poverty, which was the trainer of Girard, Stewart, Astor, and Vanderbilt. It is often spoken of in biographies as a disadvantage which was overcome, but when one of the *' wealthy curled darlings of our nation" overcomes the perils of early abundance, he is a yet more exceptional victor. Seventy-three per cent of our successful men belonged to families so poor that they had to work most of the time out of school hours, which to these boys were generally few. They were not great because they had little schooling, but in spite of it. I regard the putting of children into business before they have a good education, except in cases of necessity, as a piece of robbery, cutting off the future income of the man to gain a pittance from his boyhood, which is also imperilled by handling money too early, with all its temptations to dishonesty and vice. " Going into business too young" is given by John Wanamaker among the causes of failure in life.

Many of our great men went to school but three or six months in the year, and most of them left school altogether before they were sixteen, because of the necessity that they should help their parents or pay their own way. Seventy per cent of all my correspondents entered upon business between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.

Necessity is the mother of inventors. " Poverty is the mother of all the arts." " Hunger teaches many things."

Thurlow Weed was so poor in boyhood that on a cold March day he had to wrap pieces of cloth about his bare feet in place of socks and shoes. Thus shod, he walked several miles in the wintry cold to borrow a history of the Reformation. Luxury raises few such men, but many a " barefoot boy" has climbed

PARENTS AND POVE-KTY. 25

the ladder of success by sheer energy and honesty — " Adastra, per aspera." A fair start in life, as in numerals, is 0.

Nelson W. Aldrich, the Senator from Rhode Island, is said to have entered the city of Providence in the same modest manner that the illustrious Whittington entered London — on foot, and with his clothes slung over his back. Being a bright, active youth, he soon procured employment in a wholesale grocery house ; but, with a genius superior to his station, he rose in life, till he is now, at forty, the head of one of the largest firms in the State, and a Senator.

Elihu Burritt is another typical child of poverty. He was a poor boy, the son of a farmer, the youngest of ten children. He became an apprentice in a blacksmith shop at eighteen. He was eager to study, and so bought some Greek and Latin books, carrying them in his hat or his pocket, and learning from them as he worked at the anvil. From these he went to French, Spanish, and Italian. He always had his book near him, and improved every spare moment. He studied seven languages in one winter. He taught school for a year, but his health failing, he went into the grocery business. Soon his money was all swept away by losses. He left New Britain, his native town, and walked to Boston, and then to Worcester, where he again took up the anvil, not ashamed to earn an honest though humble living. This lack of success at twentyseven so shaped his life as to make him a scholar rather than a man of business absorbed in money-making. When he was thirty years of age he had learned all the language of Europe and several of Asia, such as the Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaidaic. Governor Edward Everett, of Boston, offered him a course in Harvard University, but he replied that he preferred to work with his hands while he studied. He soon began to lecture, and everybody was eager to hear " The Learned Blacksmith." He lectured sixty times the first winter, and then went back to his anvil. After this he visited Europe several times ; was our consul at Birmingham, England ; became the warm friend of John Bright, Richard Cobden, and other eminent men ; wrote books, lectured, edited newspapers, and was always foremost in visiting the poor and aiding them. He started a course of " Penny Readings" for the poor in his own town, which a thousand persons attended. He was a most earnest Christian ; built a chapel at his own expense, and often held meetings himself. He was never married, but was devoted to his sister and nieces. He believed that it is not genius that wins places for people, but hard work and a pure life. He always chose the best of associates, believing that a boy's friends make or spoil him. He died recently, at sixty-eight years of age, beloved by the people of two hemispheres. Where there is a will to be good and great, there is surely a way.

These facts about the advantages of poverty in boyhood have a message for the rich, which is well expressed by one of my correspondents, a New York merchant, who says :

" I believe one fruitful cause of injury to young men of good standing in society is the lavish amount of pocket-money their parents allow them when they are boys.

" In boys of fine fibre it leads to extravagance and ignorance of the true value of money, and in those of a coarse grain it leads to dissipation and the devil. I think all parents, however well to do, should give a fixed allowance per week to their sons, so long as they support them, and that it should always be small. The piossession of money at a time when a tempter comes is often the leaven of hell."

Another favoring environment, already hinted at in speaking of poverty, is learning to work regularly, if only for an hour or two a day, at a very early period of life. This habit of early industry is even more powerful than a country environment in preparing a boy for the hard work of winning success, as may be seen from the fact that while only fifty-seven per cent of the successful men come from the country, seventy -three per cent of them, including many of the city and village boys, were accustomed to regular work out of school hours. In several cases boys who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths had the spade of early and regular labor put in their hands by

PARENTS AND POVERTY. 27

wise parents. It was so with Congressman Darwin R. James. One of our most distinguished college presidents, in replying that he did no regular work out of school hours during his boyhood, remarks, " I consider this a matter of regret." He recognizes the value of early habits of industry, apart from their relations to poverty, as a preparation for a noble manhood.

Milton Bradley, the well-known Springfield publisher, calls attention to the fact that the coming woman needs to be trained to work, as weU as the coming man, if his failure is to be prevented. He writes : '^ I think domestic troubles and worry are prominent hindrances to proper work in a great number of cases, and this comes largely from want of proper practical training of the girls in their department of life. The introduction of machinery and the division of labor have robbed the boys of their trades, and the introduction of Irish machines in our homes has robbed the girl of a chance to learn housekeeping. So systematic education in both becomes necessary."

The Atlanta Constitution recently described four of its newsboys, brothers in blood and pluck, whose eaily habits of industry have insured their success :

" These four boys started a few years ago selling newspapers. They made ten cents apiece the first morning they went to work, and for two winters thereafter they went barefooted through the snow and sleet in the freezing dawn on their morning rounds. ¥rom the very first they saved a certain percentage of their earnings, which they wisely invested in Atlanta real estate. The oldest of them is now eighteen years of age, and the youngest twelve. They have supported an invalid father and their mother all the time, and now have property worth considerably over $5000, houses from which the rent is $20 a month, and $200 stock in a building and loan association. They have educated themselves the meanwhile, remaining from school this year in order that they might work the harder and build a home for their parents, that is to have a front parlor and a bay window in it. These little fellows have been carriers, newsboys, errand boys, and apprentices about the Constitution office, and one of them is now assistant mailing clerk. Their net savings from their sales and salaries, exclusive of their rents, has been $20 a week for this year. Next year they can do better, and by the time the oldest of the brothers is of age they ought to have a comfortable little fortune.

" What these boys have done other boys can do. The whole secret is steadiness, sobriety, industry, and economy."

What a characteristic story of poverty and pluck is that of Andrew Carnegie ! His father, a Scotch weaver who worked with hand-looms, thrown out of employment by improved machinery, came to Pittsburg when " Andy " was but ten years of age. The boy went to work as a bobbin-boy at 11.20 a week. At thirteen he was promoted to the post of engineer of the factory engine. At fourteen he became telegraph boy, and was promoted at sixteen, for quick intelligence, to the post of telegraph operator at a salary of 1300 a year. About this time his father died, and the support of the family devolved on him. He soon got a dollar a week extra for copying telegrams for the papers, which he called his " first bit of capital." His salary went for household expenses, but the dollar surplus he invested wisely, first in the express business, then in sleeping- cars, and, finally, as an outcome of his management of transportation in the Civil War, in a plant to manufacture iron railway bridges. And so by alertness and economy and untiring energy he came to be the world's most distinguished manufacturer and philanthropist, putting as much talent into giving as he had before put into getting.

Another conqueror of poverty was John Hay, who, having graduated from law school, became secretary to President Lincoln, and was so poor that when Mrs. Lincoln objected to his eating at her table, he frankly said he could not eat anywhere else, and would eat at second table if he must. The poor youth became the American Secretary of State and the world-famed " Golden Rule Diplomatist."

STATESMEN

III. Will And Work

If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it. Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up. A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck. Luck is an ignis fatuus. You may follow it to ruin, but never to success. — Gabfield.

"Wake the strong divinity of soul,

That conquers chance and fate. — Akenside.

There is a good deal of truth mixed into the false proverb that " Circumstances make men," which is nevertheless only a wolf in wool.

In the ascertained facts as to the larger percentage of men out of jail and in success from the country than the city, from good mothers than bad, from the ranks of the poor than fron: those of the rich, from those who early learned to work than from all others, there is a good deal of wool to weave into the proverb ; and yet it is not " all wool a yard wide," but a damaging half-truth — that is, a lie.

Nine tailors cannot make a man with all this wool, without his own will and work. When a man will, he will. " They can who think they can." " Character is a perfectly educated will."

Whether a boy is from farm or city, rich or poor, weak or strong, talented or not, will and work are sure to win. Wishes fail, but wills prevail. Labor is luck.

All men are not born equal, the Declaration of Independence to the contrary notwithstanding. But the inequality can be greatly lessened by will ard work. The city boy has greater

32 SUCCESSFUL MEliT OF TO-DAY.

odds against him in his physical and moral environment than the country boy, but it is not always the boat that gets tho choice of position that wins the race. President Chadbourno put pluck in place of his lost lung, and worked thirty-five years after his funeral had been arranged. Longfellow succeeded without the advantage of an early struggle with poverty or the plough. He was a city boy, as also Neal Dow, Schuyler Colfax, President Eliot, Peter Cooper, and Charles Francis Adams. Moses was not spoiled by being a cultured city boy in a bad environment. You can win as he did, by loyalty to God, even in a city home.

The villages, which include about thirty-three per cent of our population, have been the training-places of only twenty-three per cent of our successful men— a less favorable report than even the cities- -due perhaps to the fact that village boys lack at once the country boy's discipline of work and the city boy's educational opportunities. But even from the villages have come such men as President White of Cornell, President Seelye of Amherst, John Sherman, Governor Chamberlin, and Governor St. John.

It is a great disadvantage to have weak or unworthy parents, but even such odds may be overcome. A hare inherits a swifter pace than a snail, but the snail may distance him in the end by slow and sure progress day after day. It is not usually the most brilliant scholar in a college class that wins the valedictory or the highest place in after life. His very smartness is his peril, for he depends upon it rather than upon hard work, which is the winning horse in the race of life, much as he seems to lag at the start. Smartness is far behind him on the home-stretch.

One of the ablest and noblest lawyers of New York City is the son of an ignorant Irish drayman. One of my schoolmates in early boyhood was the son of a weak-minded donkey-driver of the village. He is now a prominent teacher in Massachu setts. Many of our eagles had no better nests.

On the other hand, a grandson of Patrick Henry recently

WILL AND WORK. 33

turned up as a vagrant at Memphis police head- quarters. He possesses a fine education, but is intemperate. Blood will tell — sometimes.

After all, it is better to make our descendants proud of us than to be proud of our ancestry. Ascent is better than descent. Better be the foundation of a new pyramid than the tapering apex of an old one.

Too much poverty or riches is an unfavorable environment, but Kitto was born in apoorhouse, and Mayor Low of Brooklyn was not spoiled in a home of wealth. Secretary Brewster also was '' reared in comparative affluence."

It is a proper subject for regret that every son does not in youth, like the boys of the ancient Jews * — the wealthiest as well as poorest — learn some whole trade, which he can use, if necessary, in manhood, and which will in any case develop muscle and habits of industry. A boy's studies would be made

* " "We should especially direct our attention to earning a livelihood by a trade or handicraft, by husbandry or tending cattle, as did our forefathers. Even the judges, kings, and prophets in Israel were husbandmen— for example, Gideon, Saul, Elisha, etc. The patriarchs, Abraham, etc., were shepherds. The wisest of the Talmudists M'ere handicraft men— for instance, Rabbi Hillel was a woodcutter Rabbi Judah was a smith."

He who does not let his child learn a trade paves his way to thievery. — Talmud Kedushin 29.

[From " Doctrines of Faith and Morals for Jewish Schools," et3., pp. 138, 162.]

It might also be urged in favor of learning a boy a whole trade that he may thus be saved from the many disadvantages, mental as well as monetary, of the mDdern machine-shop, whereby the division of labor a man cannot make a whole pin, but spends his life in making heads or points only, having no joy or intellectual exercise in his monotonous work, and being unable to take up any other work when his department has an oversupply. In such places, as Buskin has well said, " We manufacture everything except men." Garfield echoes that sentiment, saying to young men, " Do not, I beseech you, be content to enter upon any business which does not require and compel constant intellectual growth."

more effective by combining with them at least an hour or two of systematic manual work. If physical education were thus combined with mental and moral culture, we should not have so many sickly ministers, editors, and ts?.chers. whose weak bodies stagger under the work which is put on them by their strong minds — " too heavy for the animals they ride." Nor should we have so many criminals, for " No trade" is the Open Sesame of our jails. Some years ago I found ninety per cent of the convicts in the Massachusetts State prison at Charlestown had come in by that password. But even those who lack the vigor which comes from early habits of labor may win by will and work, in spite of this unfavoring environment.

An unmarried man works against great odds, but Alexander H. Stephens, Elihu Burritt, and ex-Vice-President Ferry were successful bachelors. More remarkable still, Socrates, Milton, and John Wesley succeeded in spite of bad wives. On this list it will not be safe to enumerate any who are living.

It is a great disadvantage to enter upon professional or even business life without a thorough education. I have examined the educational record of the seventy foremost men in American politics — cabinet officers, senators, congressmen, and governors of national reputation — and I find that thirty-seven of them are college graduates, that five more had a part of the college course but did not graduate, while only twenty-eight did not go to college at all. As not more than one young man in five hundred goes to college, and as this one five hundredth of the young men furnish four sevenths of our distinguished public officers, it appears that a collegian has seven hundred and fifty times as many chances of being an eminent governor or congressman as other young men. In this connection it may be said incidentally that five sevenths of these public men are lawyers, one seventh are in mercantile life, one tenth are editors, and the other two were professional soldiers. And yet, while a college training is so great an advantage, the non-graduates include Edmunds, Sherman, St. John, Randall, Kelley, Teller, Hiscock, Proctor Knott, Levi P. Morton, Cornell, Fos-

WILL AND WORK. 35

ter, Mahone, Hale, Brown, Simon Cameron, James, Windom, and Ferry of Michigan — all of them peers of the graduates among the seventy.

There is hardly a conceivable disadvantage of birthplace, parentage, poverty, riches, or bodily condition that some of our successful men have not overcome, and, in the language of one of their mottoes, " What man has done man can do." Indeed, can is only another name for will. Will equals can. He that will can. " Strong men have wills ; weak ones have only wishes." Whatever disadvantages you may have, if you have also a will to work, you may checkmate them and win true success. In the battle of life there is a survival of the fittest, but not (among men at least) in the sense in which the materialist uses the term as applying to physical superiority. In the contest of wishes and wills, the wills win — not those who are strongest of body or even of intellect.

Materialistic evolutionists would make man (as they have God) a mere stick on the tide, that goes wherever it is carried, toward vice or virtue. When I bought pure milk of my milkman yesterday morning, according to this theory of Tyndall and others, I couldn't have bought it of anybody else, nor could my milkman have sold me chalk and water instead of pure milk. Our grandmothers, our food, our climate — in short, our environment — made it impossible for either of us to do otherwise than we did !

The facts of biography as well as our own consciousness veto this theory by showing that will and conscience make circumstances instead of being ruled by them. One of America's -prominent astronomers is only four feet high, and would hardly outweigh a boy of ten years. But there are few who could outweigh him in intellect and achievement. Alexander H. Stephens with a dwarf's body did a giant's work. With only a broken scythe, by sheer force of will and work, he overmatched in the harvest those who had fine mowingmachines. It might have been said of him, as of Candlish, " There's nae muckle o' him, but there's a deal in him." In-

(liana's greatest governor was Oliver P. Morton, who went on crutclies. " It is the mind that makes the man." Chief- Justice Chase in his boyhood gave little promise of his future career. He was near-sighted, had a bad impediment in his speech, and was stoop-shouldered, shambling and slouchy in his appearance and gait. Owing to the death of his father and the poverty of h.is mother he was adopted by his uncle. Bishop Chase, of Ohio. Estey, of organ fame, was given away at four years of age, and had no schooling worth mentioning, and yet he has won true success — not only money but public esteem — by will and work. Peter Cooper went to school bat one year, and then only half the time because of his parents' poverty and the necessity for him to work ; but will and work stored both his safe and his mind. His own struggles led him to found the Cooper Union for other children of poverty. Edmund Driggs, of Brooklyn, who is honored for what he is as well as for what he has, for his double worth, began his climb up the ladder as a common sailor. Senator Brown, of Georgia, was nineteen years old before he learned to read, but such odds did not prevent him from being a judge, governor, and senator. Orange Judd is another triumph of clear grit over environment. Without a dollar of help not earned by himself, or the prospect of any, he started for the school where he was to fit for college ; earned corn by working for neighboring farmers : carried ]t himself to the mill to have it ground, and brought back the meal to his room ; cooked it himself as mush ; milked a cow or two daily for his pint of milk per day ; and so lived on mush and milk as his chief subsistence for months together. Afterward he w^orked his own way through Wesleyan University and a three years' post-graduate course at Yale. Professor Townsend, of Boston University, the author of " Credo" and many other books, worked his way in similar fashion through Amherst, boarding himself at a cost of forty-five cents per week. It is related of Congressman W. W. Crapo that he helped to pay his own way through college by doing clerical work^ His father before him was too poor when a boy to buy

WILL AKD WORK. 37

books, and, being in want of a dictionary, prepared a manuscript one, walking from his home in the village of Dartmouth, Mass., to New Bedford to replenish his store of words and definitions from the town library. The father finally became a governor, and the son is likely to have the same title some day.

" Who loves his work and knows to spare, May live and flourish anywhere."

" Set a stout heart against a stiff hill," or, as the Japanese say in symbol language to their boys in giving them kites in the shape of fish. Be like the carp that swims upstream and jumps the waterfalls. Any one can drift with circumstances. It takes pluck to stem an unfavorable current.

There are few circumstances over which a strong will has no control. " A boa-constrictor woke up hungry from a three months' nap and caught a rabbit, which he bolted whole in the usual way. This did not satisfy the cravings of his capacious stomach, and so he went afield in search of further victuals, and presently came to a rail fence, which he essayed to get through. But the lump caused by the defunct though undigested bunny stopped him, like a knot in a rope, when his head and a few feet only of his body had passed between the rails. Lying in this attitude, he caught and swallowed another rabbit which had incautiously ventured within his narrow sphere of action. Now, what was the state of affairs ? He could neither go ahead nor astern through the fence, being jammed by his fore-and-aft inside passengers, and in this embarrassing position he was slain with ease. The boa-constrictor was controlled by circumstances which should have been controlled by him. He should have bidden the fence ' Good morning ' before swallowing the second rabbit."