Part 9 (1/2)
Stevenson, who invented the steam-engine, was not a college man. He was the son of a fireman in one of the English collieries. As a boy, he was himself a laborer in the mines. Undoubtedly the greatest engineer America has yet produced was Captain Eades, whose fame was world wide; yet this Indiana boy, who constructed the jetties of the Mississippi, built the s.h.i.+p railroad across the Isthmus of Panama and other like wonders, never had a day's instruction in any higher inst.i.tution of learning than the common schools of Dearborn County.
Ericsson, who invented the _Monitor_, and whose creative genius revolutionized naval warfare, was a Swedish immigrant. Robert Fulton, who invented the steamboat, never went to college.
And take literature: John Bunyan was not only uneducated, but actually ignorant. If Milton went to college, I repeat that Shakespeare had no other alma mater than the university of human nature, and that Robert Burns was not a college man. Our own Was.h.i.+ngton Irving never saw the inside of any higher inst.i.tution of learning. I have already noted that the author of ”Thanatopsis” went to college for only a single year.
Among the writers, Lew Wallace, soldier, diplomat, and author, was self-educated. John Stuart Mill, who is distinguished as a philosopher, is innocent of a college training. James Whitcomb Riley, our American Burns, is not a ”college man.” Hugh Miller, the Scotchman, whose fame as a geologist is known to all the world of science, did not go to college.
Take statesmans.h.i.+p. Henry Clay wrested his education from books, experience, and downright hard thinking; and we Americans still like to tell of the immortal Lincoln poring over the pages of his few and hard-won volumes before the glare of the wood-fire on the hearth, or the uncertain light of the tallow dip. Benjamin Franklin got his education in a print-shop.
In American productive industry, the most conspicuous name, undoubtedly, is that of Andrew Carnegie; yet this great ironmaster, and master of gold as well, who has written as vigorously as he has wrought, was a Scotch immigrant. George Peabody, the philanthropist, never was inside a college as a student. He was a clerk when he was eleven years old.
At least three of the most astonis.h.i.+ng though legitimate business successes which have been made in the last decade in New York were made by men not yet forty-five years old, none of whom had any other education than our common schools. I am not sure, but I will hazard the guess that a majority of the great business men of Chicago never saw a college.
These ill.u.s.trations occur to the mind as I write, and without special selection. Doubtless, the entire s.p.a.ce of this paper might be occupied by nothing more than the names of men who have blessed the race and become historic successes in every possible department of human industry, none of whom ever saw the inside of either college or university.
But all of these do not prove that you ought not to go to college if you can. Certainly you ought to go to college if it is possible. But the lives of these men do prove that no matter how hard the conditions that you think surround you, success is yours in spite of them, _if you are willing to pay the price of success_--if you are willing to work and wait; if you are willing to be patient, to keep sweet, to maintain fresh and strong your faith in G.o.d, your fellow men, and in yourself.
The life of any one of the men whom I have mentioned is not only an inspiration but an instruction to you who, like these men, cannot go to college. Consider, for example, how Samuel B. Raymond established the New York _Times_. He wrote his own editorials; he did his own reporting; he set his own type; he distributed his own papers. That was the beginning.
One of the most successful merchants that I know opened a little store in the midst of large and pretentious mercantile establishments. He bought his own goods; he was his own clerk; he swept and dusted his own storeroom, and polished his own show-cases. He was up at five in the morning, and he worked to twelve and one at night, and then slept on the counter. That was less than thirty years ago. To-day he is at the head of the largest department store in one of the considerable cities of this country, _and he owns his store_.
This is an ill.u.s.tration so common that every country town, as well as London, Paris, and New York, can show examples like it. And, mark you, most of these men were weighted down with responsibilities as great as yours can possibly be, and hindered by obstacles as numerous and difficult as those which you have confronting you.
Yet they succeeded brilliantly. The world rewarded them as richly as any graduate of any university who went to his life's work from the very head of his cla.s.s. For you know this, don't you, that the world hands down success to any man who pays the price. Very well, the price is not a college education. The price is effectiveness, and the college is valuable only as it helps you to be effective.
Here is a true picture of our earthly work and its rewards: Behind a counter stands the salesman, Fortune, with just but merciless scales.
On the shelves this Merchant of Destiny has both failure and success, in measure large and small. Every man steps up to this counter and purchases what he receives and receives what he purchases. And when he buys success he pays for it in the crimson coin of his life's blood.
This is a sinister ill.u.s.tration, I know, but it is the truth, and the truth is what you are after, is it not? You can do about what you will within the compa.s.s of your abilities; but you accomplish all your achievings with heart-beats. This is a rule which has no exceptions, and applies with equal force to the man who goes to college and to him who cannot go. What is that that some poet says about the successful man:
”... Who while others slept Was climbing upward through the night.”
So do not let the fact that you cannot go to college excuse yourself to yourself for being a failure. Do not say, ”I have no chance because I am not a college man,” and blame the world for its injustice. What Ca.s.sius exclaimed to Brutus is exactly applicable to you:
”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
So do not whine as to your hard fate; do not go to pitying yourself.
No whimper should come from a masculine throat.
A man who does either of these things thereby proves that he ought not to succeed--and he will not succeed. Indeed, how do you know that these fires of misfortune through which you are pa.s.sing are not heat designed by Fate to temper the steel of your real character. Certainly that ought to be true if you have the stuff in you. And if you have not the stuff in you, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, and all the universities of Germany cannot lift you an inch above your normal level. ”You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear” is our pithy and brutally truthful folk-saying.
”What do you raise on these shaly hills?” I asked one time of that ideal American statesman, Senator Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut.
”Manhood,” answered this great New Englander, and then he went on to point out the seemingly contradictory facts that a poor soil universally produces stern and upright character, solid and productive ability, and dauntless courage.
The very effort required to live in these ungenerous surroundings, the absolute necessity to make every blow tell, to preserve every fragment of value; the perpetual exercise of the inventive faculty, thus making the intellect more productive by the continuous and creative use of it--all these develop those powers of mind and heart which through all history have distinguished the inhabitants of such countries as Switzerland and New England. ”And so,” said Connecticut's great senator, ”these rocky hills produce manhood.”
Apply this to your own circ.u.mstance, you who cannot go to college because you must ”support the family,” or have inherited a debt which your honor compels you to pay, or any one of those unhappy conditions which fortune has laid on your young shoulders.
Most men with wealth, friends, and influence accept them as a matter of course. Not many young men who are happily situated at the beginning, employ the opportunities which are at their hand. They don't understand their value. Having ”influence” to help them, they usually rely on this artificial aid--seldom upon themselves. Having friends, they depend upon these allies rather than upon the ordered, drilled, disciplined troops of their own powers and capabilities.
Having money, they do not see as vividly the necessity of toiling to make more.