Fifty years in Wall Street
financial depression has been seen, and the long-distance view is
certainly more encouraging than at any time during the last six months.
Business men have now no reason to feel otherwise than confident. I
firmly believe that recuperation will be quicker after the recent panic
than was experienced after any of the previous great panics since the
one of 1857.
Now is the time for the timid to develop bravery, for the strong to aid
the weak, for the ignorant to be willing to learn from the wise. Let us
all work together for the common good, and the upward tide will bear us
all along towards better times and lasting prosperity. Panics come in
cycles and it will be years before another one can strike us. Let the
worker give his best services to his employer. Let the employer grant
justice and fair pay to the worker and to all, and the nightmares and
storms of the past year will be forgotten or remembered only as a lesson
taught by experience, which will serve to teach us not to overdo in the
future but to temper enterprise with conservatism.
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CHAPTER LXXXV.
AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS.[11]
Footnote 11:
An address by Henry Clews, LL.D., to the students of Yale University,
New Haven, Conn., November 1, 1907.
_Mr. Chairman and Students of Yale University_:
As you gentlemen of good old Yale are studying American social
conditions, I am glad to have the opportunity of addressing you, and I
congratulate you on the prestige you will derive from graduating at so
great and famous a university. You are now on the threshold of American
citizenship and have good reason to be proud of the prospect before you,
with its unlimited possibilities.
Surely it is a privilege that you all value, and can hardly overvalue,
that of becoming American citizens, and thus forming a part of this free
and glorious Republic, where the gates of opportunity are thrown wide
open to you, and the golden harvest of success stands ready to be reaped
by the worthy and deserving, who are able and willing to do good work,
and work hard in their chosen calling. I may reasonably predict that
some of you will become leaders of thought, trade, science, literature
or art, and that will be your ample reward. I base my prediction on the
fact that you are not here because you are compelled to be, but because
you have a thirst for knowledge, for information, or suggestions that
may be of use to you in this connection, and are willing and anxious to
work hard to attain what you desire. The first requisite to attain
success in any form is this willingness to study and work for what you
want, so, being equipped with this necessary quality at the start, you
are prepared to make headway in the battle of life.
The pessimist is abroad in this fair land of ours, in these days,
preaching the gospel of discontent, and a favorite text is that the
young man has now no show, or little chance to get on in life. Do not be
misled or discouraged by such a false doctrine. There never was a time
when brains were at a greater premium than at present, nor courage,
education, industry, and energy more requisite or in greater demand. The
harder you have to struggle to complete your education, the better
fitted you will be for that battle of life, for in your youth you will
have attained victory over the obstacles which lie in the path of
success. Disappointments may embarrass you, but you must conquer them,
instead of allowing them to conquer you. Every victory, thus won, will
be an incentive to further efforts and achievements, and will provide a
stepping stone to success.
Right here, let me impress upon you that the foundation stones of real
success in life are industry, honesty, and truthfulness. These are
jewels which every man can possess, if he cares to. Do not be honest
because it pays, or as a matter of policy. Be honest because you are
conscientious, and it is right to be honest and a reproach to be
dishonest. A man who is honest and truthful in all things is the highest
type of manhood, and commands respect in every walk of life.
While you are still young, I advise you to have an ideal. Make up your
mind what you are best suited for, and strive with all that is in you to
perfect yourself for the work of such a position or profession. While it
is the almost universal desire to become rich, remember that there are
other things in life more to be desired than great wealth. Whether
amassed in Wall Street or elsewhere. Few of the great authors,
scientists, professors, or inventors have been wealthy men, yet they
were great public benefactors, and their names will live in the pages of
history long after the very rich men of the world have been forgotten.
Learn well the history of your country. Study the science of Federal,
State, and Municipal government. Study also finance and banking. Whether
you go into Wall Street or not, it will be useful to you. Before you
leave Yale, try to inform yourselves on all the subjects that will make
you useful citizens, as well as competent, practical workers. School
yourselves to be polite and courteous under trying circumstances.
Politeness is one of the strongest allies one can have in his dealings
with his fellow-men. It is not only so in my field of activity—Wall
Street—but everywhere.
Read only good books. Libraries are now so plentiful that—even if you
have not one of your own—good books are within the reach of all, and
here at Yale you, of course, have an embarrassment of riches from the
Greek and Latin classics to modern literature.
While you are improving your minds, take good care of your bodies. You
are not yet too old for me to give you points. Exercise all you can in
the open air. Cleanliness of body, and neatness of dress, even if you
are not millionaires and your clothes are threadbare, will often be
taken as a guarantee of good character. Be thrifty and economical, even
if you cannot equal Russell Sage, and never get into debt, if you can
help it.
Strive to learn to do some one thing, in the line of your studies,
better than anyone else can do it, and you will have a specialty to
recommend you to a chosen career. Whatever you attempt to do, do it with
your whole soul—as Mr. Roosevelt, our strenuous and gifted President,
says: “Buck hard and hit the center of the line.”
I have been much impressed with the manual training schools, which have
recently been established in New York City. I wish that manual training
could be added to the course in every school and college. Mr. Booker
Washington has ably presented the plan in his Tuskegee Institution,
where every man to get an education must learn a trade, and every man
who learns a trade gets an education. It is a substantial personal asset
for rich or poor.
Because you live in a city, do not think that the country is less
attractive, and has no chance to grow like a town. The State of Texas
alone could give to every man, woman, and child in the United States a
full-sized building lot 20 × 100, and then, allowing for public
highways, have over one-third of the area of the State left for the
production of food supplies. The West, the Southwest, and the South, are
yearning for newcomers. Horace Greeley used to say: “Go West, young
man!” The emigrants from foreign shores will some day realize that there
is a welcome ready for them outside of cities. Colonies will be formed
and men of intelligence will be needed to rule and advise the newcomers;
and those of you who can speak a foreign language will be well fitted
for such a position. But you may aspire to the United States Senate, or
to become Wall Street millionaires.
The natural resources of our country are constantly being developed, and
men of brains and courage will be sought to lead the armies of workmen.
Every man cannot be a captain of industry, but a man of pluck and
education need not remain a private in the ranks very long. Still, avoid
that vaulting ambition that overleaps itself and falls on the other
side.
Whatever your calling may be, try to become your own master in your
younger days. Nothing will give you so much self-reliance as the habit
of relying on yourself. You may possibly fail at first, but great
successes are often built on failures, if the one who fails will profit
by the lesson. Bulwer Lytton tells us that in the bright lexicon of
Youth, there is no such word as Fail.
When you graduate, do not imagine that your education is completed.
Consider that you are just beginning to be able to learn, and that your
College life has simply been a period of training to put you in
condition for the real struggle for knowledge. Practice makes perfect in
all the professions.
See to it that you acquire some new point in knowledge every day that
will be of future value to you. This will mean 365 good ideas acquired
in a year, and every one of these ideas will be like money out at
interest, or like seeds planted in good soil. They will blossom and bear
fruit.
Do not believe that all men in politics are rascals, or weaklings, who
can be bought for a price. If you have the inclination, get into
political life and be a factor in the affairs of your district. Honest
and truthful men will be most welcome in this field, and may be of great
public service.
Do not be worried by the statements made by so many pessimists that
society, and the country at large, are on the verge of moral bankruptcy.
I tell you that the world is growing better every day, and good men are
held in higher respect than ever. Of course there are more rascals, and
more thieves, than there were fifty years ago, but that is because there
are far more people. The percentage of bad to good is relatively
smaller. Men who do wrong are found out oftener and sooner than they
were in the olden days, and the news of wrongdoing is carried all over
the land by telegraph and telephone and published broadcast in the daily
papers. A hundred years ago a man might commit a crime a thousand miles
from New York and we could not get the news of it in a month, even if it
was sent at all.
Use all your endeavors to suppress the use of profanity or obscenity in
public places or elsewhere. This is one of the crying evils of the day
and our women are never safe from the insults of having to listen to
talk that would not be tolerated in a first-class barroom. But of course
the present company is excepted. You are all gentlemen and scholars.
Be cheerful under adverse circumstances. Ella Wheeler Wilcox expresses
what I mean when she says:
“It’s easy enough to be pleasant,
When life goes by like a song;
But the man worth while
Is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.”
Whenever you see a chance to help a fellow-man who is not as well
equipped as you are, give him a lift up. If you do so, _you_ may forget
it, but _he_ never will, and you will secure a friend who will be
looking for a chance to do you a good turn.
An old clergyman used to preach that true religion consisted in doing
something good each day, so that when one went to bed at night, he could
feel that the world was a little better, or some one a little happier,
because he had lived that day.
Chemistry is going to play the important part in the next twenty-five
years that electricity has in the past quarter of a century. Fortune
awaits any man who can make use of waste material. Millions of dollars’
worth of this is thrown away every year because the mind of man has not,
as yet, been able to solve the problem of utilizing it. Students are now
at work to this end and who can tell but one of you may be the man who