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 TO SUCCESS 
 
 TALKS 
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 Forty witnesses to success 
 
 3 1924 031 432 192 
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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031432192 
 
FORTY WITNESSES 
 TO SUCCESS 
 
 TALKS TO YOUNG MEN 
 
 BASED UPON SIX HUNDRED ANSWERS IN EVIDENCE OB- 
 TAINED FROM FORTY STATESMEN, LAWYERS, MER- 
 CHANTS, BANKERS, MANUFACTURERS, JUDGES, 
 SCIENTISTS, AND INSTRUCTORS AS TO 
 THE CAUSES OF SUCCESS OR 
 FAILURE IN LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES TOWNSEND 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH AND 
 COMPANY (Inc.) 
 
 182 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
Copyright, 1S94, bv 
 Anson D. F. Randolph & Company (Inc.). 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 n. o. Jenkins' son, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
TO 
 
 mv tiJife 
 
 WHOSE INTEREST IS AX INSPIRATION, 
 I DEDICATE THESE WORDS. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The gathering together of many mental rays 
 and drawing them to a focus is no new thing in 
 either the book world or in magazine literature. 
 Itseemstobeacharacteristicof the century'send 
 for people to crave the opinions of many minds, 
 as converged upon some one field of thought. 
 
 This mode of literary treatment was certain- 
 ly not inaugurated by the pulpit, but there is 
 no reason why the pulpit should not fall in 
 line with the ideeu A casual conversation with 
 a seminary classmate. Rev. William S. Jerome, 
 not only reminded me of the power that such 
 a method would have with young men, but 
 furnished me with more than one valuable hint 
 for the evolution of the idea. 
 
 The four lectures that constitute this little 
 volume are the resultant of such a method as 
 used in my pulpit for four consecutive Sunday 
 evenings. I use the word "resultant" advis- 
 edly, for the testimony of the fact that they 
 were each listened to by an average of eight 
 
 (5) 
 
6 NOTE. 
 
 hundred men, and most of them young men, 
 was a proof to me that this collocation of widely 
 gathered opinions was productive of " a force 
 which was the joint effect of two or more 
 forces," — and that is what Webster defines a 
 " resultant " to be. I have reason to believe 
 that this resultant force was an inspiration to 
 many hundreds of young men ; and it is with 
 the earnest desire that the scope of that inspi- 
 ration may be widened, that these four lectures 
 are thrown into this form and given to young 
 men at large. 
 
 For years the youth of our communities have 
 honored the ministry by giving careful heed to 
 our special discourses " to young people." It 
 subtracts nothing from the dignity of our office 
 that we should occasionally add to our own 
 words and our own thoughts the carefully ex- 
 pressed opinions of the laity upon the great, 
 burning, vital questions connected with getting 
 on in life. 
 
 When bankers, merchants, journalists, law- 
 yers, and scientists consent to become prophets 
 to the young, we need not wonder that multi- 
 tudes will attend upon their interpretations of 
 life's meanings. 
 
NOTE. 7 
 
 I take this opportunity of thanking the forty- 
 eminent leaders in all walks of life whose an- 
 swers to my questions have made it possible 
 for me to address such cogent and significant 
 arguments to the young men of this genera- 
 tion. To them belong the many verbal and 
 written assurances of thankful appreciation that 
 have been addressed to me. 
 
 These lectures were prepared for the use of 
 the lips rather than the use of the press ; 
 for prophecy rather than print. The conse- 
 quent style needs therefore no further apology, 
 and only the additional confession that they 
 are given to the public just as they were orig- 
 inally delivered, barring the elimination here 
 and there of words and phrases solely adapted 
 to the uses and demands of public speech. 
 
 C. T. 
 
 Woodland Church Study^ 
 Clgyeland, Ohio. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Yokes in Youth, 13 
 
 How TO Succeed, 53 
 
 How TO Fail, 88 
 
 Religion and Business, . . . .112 
 
I. 
 
 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in 
 his jo«/,^.— Lamentations iii. 27. 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 At the beginning of this course of lectures, 
 it is right and proper that I should make a 
 confession of the exact motives that impelled 
 me to this particular line of investigation and 
 compilation of facts. 
 
 Society is filled with a great army of young 
 men, enthusiastic, earnest young men who see 
 life stretching way out before them, who know 
 that they are to have part and lot in the great 
 struggle of existence, who desire to make the 
 most of themselves in the great battle, and 
 are fearful of making mistake ; they wish to 
 make no fatal errors of choice ; they desire to 
 make no false starts ; and so, standing as they 
 do upon the threshold of what they hope will 
 be success, and peering anxiously into the 
 untried and unfathomed future, they long for 
 some word that will be of material assistance 
 to them ; some word that will be more than 
 
 a guess, more than a "perhaps." 
 
 (13) 
 
14 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 Ministers of the Gospel are accustomed to 
 address themselves to this army of young 
 men ; these men of God know that no safer 
 guide-posts can be erected than those built 
 and hewed out of Bible timber; and so it is no 
 uncommon thing for the ministry to especially 
 address itself to the young, — and young men 
 in particular. 
 
 But I utter no new thought, and make no 
 startling confession when I say that to 
 a large extent ministers are students of 
 books rather than men, of dogmas rather 
 than dollars ; they are not to be blamed 
 for this; they have been called, educated, or- 
 dained to proclaim the privileges of a higher 
 and celestial citizenship, and the reality of a 
 city which hath foundations whose Maker and 
 Builder is God. I admit that the times have 
 greatly changed, — that the ministry is gradu- 
 ally taking unto itself a new complexion in this 
 regard, — that God's faithful pastors are forging 
 ahead into the front ranks of civic leaders, but 
 the truth still remains that with greater or less 
 verity, there runs a streak of impracticability 
 through the sacerdotal order, and men would 
 rather follow our advice with respect to the 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. I 5 
 
 best way of attaining celestial citizenship than 
 of avoiding business assignment. 
 
 This is not altogether true, because the type 
 of character that is invariably held up in Chris- 
 tian pulpits is in itself a safeguard in all man- 
 ners of life ; but I think it goes without saying 
 that the voice of the successful layman is 
 peculiarly pleasant to a young man who wants 
 to know how to succeed. And when I use that 
 word " succeed," I am not going to juggle with 
 it in this course of lectures. I do not propose 
 to undertake the difficult and philosophical 
 task of portraying the success that goes about 
 with rags for raiment, and gets along on two 
 meals a day. Neither will I go over the old 
 ground of demonstrating that a great deal of 
 what the world terms "success" is, after all, 
 the veriest failure. I will presuppose that you 
 have all that in mind, and are familiar with 
 that entire branch of thought. 
 
 We will look at things just as we see them, 
 and just as we find them in life. We will 
 admit that when a young man starts out, he 
 wants to reach a goal that ninety-nine men out 
 of a hundred regard as a successful goal. 
 
 Time is too precious to spend much of it in 
 
l6 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 finding the success that may nestle away in 
 mediocrity. Young men want to eventually 
 become leaders; they want to stand in the 
 front ranks ; scores and hundreds of the finest 
 men in the world will fail in that ; the shaking 
 down of life will distribute them quite a ways 
 away from the very front ranks ; it may even 
 drive them into assignment, pigeon-hole them, 
 send them to the rear. This in itself is abso- 
 lutely no disgrace, and may even have in it 
 the elements of rare virtue ; I know a man 
 whose very honesty made him an apparent fail- 
 ure. But in this course of lectures I propose 
 to deal with success, as commonly interpreted ; 
 with getting ahead in life ; with attaining unto 
 leadership. 
 
 And yet I might as well say now, that I am 
 not going to indulge myself or you in any vain 
 recipes for getting rich, or anything like that ; 
 I prefer to leave that to gypsies and fortune- 
 tellers. What I shall do will be to simply 
 make a diagnosis of men who have struck the 
 bull's-eye in the target of life. I shall be in the 
 main simply the mouthpiece of a large number 
 of such bull's-eye hitters ; if there is to be any 
 eloquence, it will be the eloquence of the story 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 1 7 
 
 of their lives ; if there is to be any argument, 
 it will be the cold logic of the events of their 
 lives. 
 
 In preparation for this, I have taken my lexi- 
 cons, concordances, commentaries, and homi- 
 letic books and for the time being thrown 
 them aside. But I have seized hold of men, 
 and because they were kindly and willing, I 
 have stood them up and read them like books. 
 Their story transcends any novel that could be 
 penned by the hand of man; their history 
 contains truths that are a whole encyclopedia 
 of character. 
 
 With this introduction, you will understand 
 the spirit in which I caused to come to me 
 from the hand of the printer, the following 
 document : 
 
 " My Dear Sir : — For the sake of the young men 
 of our city, many of whom will be influenced by the 
 conclusions which I desire by this means to obtain, I 
 respectfully hope for your kind co-operation in the 
 matter, and ask you to answer all, or such a portion as 
 you choose, of the accompanying questions. 
 
 " It is my purpose to speak to young men during the 
 coming winter, and this assistance from you will be 
 the most practical and influential which I could em- 
 ploy. What young men want and need are FACTS, 
 
I 8 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 and not any mere ministerial rhetoric or imagining ; for 
 this reason I turn to you for this help. The conclu- 
 sions to be drawn from the methods and habits of 
 men who have succeeded, furnish the best advice and 
 instruction to those who are about to enter active life. 
 I will not use your name in connection with your re- 
 sponse, but will consider and treat it as strictly confi- 
 dential. 
 
 " Earnestly hoping and trusting that this plan will 
 so appeal to you as to elicit a somewhat free and full 
 response to the questions, I remain, 
 " Respectfully yours, 
 
 "Charles Townsend, 
 
 " Pastor of the Woodland Ave. 
 Presbyterian Church." 
 
 And then followed in this document a list of 
 questions designed to open up to view the 
 mainsprings of success; questions which, if an- 
 swered, would throw a whole flood of electric 
 light on the triumph of life; no less than fif- 
 teen such questions were incorporated in this 
 circular ; and while not an one could be deemed 
 impertinent, yet each one was deeply personal, 
 and touched right upon the very quick of life. 
 Exactly what these questions were will appear 
 in the on-goings of these lectures. 
 
 As soon as this document reached me from 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 19 
 
 the hands of the printer, I caused to be com- 
 piled a long list of the most successful men in 
 the ranks of Cleveland ; men who stood at the 
 very head ; business men, professional men, 
 men in the arts and sciences, men upon the 
 judicial bench ; men, the totality of whose for- 
 tunes would mount up into the millions, and 
 the totality of whose brain power would keep 
 apace in like degree. 
 
 This list was made up for me with a view to 
 these things solely ; religion, creed, denomina- 
 tion, color, politics were not taken into account 
 for a second. Then to this list were added by 
 me names of equally prominent men in the 
 East, until, when I scanned it at its comple- 
 tion, I saw not only the classifications that I 
 have noted, but I saw added to it prominent 
 journalists, leading statesmen, and learned sci- 
 entists. 
 
 The list being thus complete, there remained 
 nothing for me to do but to address the docu- 
 ments to the men, enclose a stamped envelope 
 for a reply, mail the same, and await events. 
 
 You will share with me the great curiosity 
 that I had in the matter ; whether these bright 
 stars in the galaxy of life would condescend to 
 
20 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 focus their shining upon the pulpit of the 
 Woodland Avenue Presbyterian Church ; 
 whether they would think it worth their while 
 to share with hundreds of young men with life 
 before them the secrets of their success. 
 
 I had not long to wait ; within twenty-four 
 hours the responses began to come in ; then 
 they began to pour in ; until, in due time, no 
 less than forty were heaped on my study desk ; 
 and since each document contained a grist of 
 fifteen questions, a very slight arithmetic will 
 show you that we enter upon a dissection and 
 an analysis of no less than six hundred affirma- 
 tions from many of the leaders of society, 
 dealing with the great subject of SUCCESS IN 
 Life. 
 
 That there were some who paid no attention 
 whatever to the document in question com- 
 piled as it was, and for the purpose that it was, 
 and sent as it was, is a commentary from which 
 you may each draw your own conclusions. 
 
 Yes, they began to come in, in great num- 
 bers ; sometintes the sender would accompany 
 the filled-out document with a few extra and 
 suggestive words. One apologized for dictat- 
 ing his replies from a sick-bed to an amanuen- 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 21 
 
 sis ; one thought that some of my " conun- 
 drums " were rather hard, but that he would 
 answer them to the best of his ability ; another 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 " Your plan appeals to me and I hope it will 
 to others. I shall be amply repaid if my an- 
 swers be the means of helping even one young 
 man to a better life. I believe that the masses 
 can only be reached in just such businesslike 
 ways as this." 
 
 Another expressed himself as follows : 
 
 " I trust that you will find these many expres- 
 sions of great value in holding forth to your men 
 the paths of true succeae and broad influence in 
 business life. I beg to add my early and con- 
 tinued interest in your church, and its success 
 in that part of our own city to which you have 
 been called as pastor." 
 
 Another says : 
 
 " I have no doubt you are pursuing the right 
 plan to arrive at FACTS." 
 
 Indeed, almost every document that came 
 back was found to contain &t the end some 
 foot-note expressive of approval at this method 
 of helping young men, and of interest in the 
 outcome of the experiment. 
 
22 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 And now that you are in touch and sympa- 
 thy with my ideas and intentions with respect 
 to this course of four lectures, we will proceed 
 to get down to the foundation of the whole 
 matter, as we are forced to by the nature and 
 character of the replies received, and face the 
 truth which seems to be undeniable, that the 
 writer of Lamentations was right when, hun- 
 dreds and thousands of years ago, he said : 
 
 " It is good for a man that he bear 
 the yoke in his youth." 
 
 I do not think that the v/riter of our text 
 imagined for a moment that the period of 
 youth was the especial period of life for the 
 bearing of yokes. Youth, manhood, old age, 
 — each period has its peculiar burdens. The 
 young may not be able to understand or sym- 
 pathize with the cares and responsibilities of 
 those more advanced in life, but the passing of 
 each successive year will be a revelation that, 
 no matter what be his circumstances, a man is 
 never free from some kind of a yoke, to the very 
 day of his death. 
 
 But the text-idea seems to be this : that the 
 existence of a burden, a yoke, is of peculiar and 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 23 
 
 intrinsic benefit to a young man. It some way 
 or other has a hand in making him abetter kind 
 of an individual. 
 
 There are two things connected with the 
 yoke-bearing youth that I propose to deal 
 with ; one is the matter of early environment, 
 the other is the question of early educational 
 privileges. 
 
 Take, first, the matter of early environment ; 
 only eight of the forty successful men who 
 have written to me were born in cities; all the 
 remainder were born in the rural districts ; 
 twenty-two in the country (on farms), and ten 
 in country villages. 
 
 Their boyhood was passed largely in the 
 same surroundings; eighteen continued to live 
 on the farm, three moved from farms into vil- 
 lages, thirteen in all, and the eight in the cities 
 received an addition of only one ; so we see 
 the boyhood of these men was largely passed 
 in the same environment as their childhood ; 
 and when they began their migration into 
 cities, as they did in due time, it was at the 
 average age of sixteen. There seems to me to 
 be a tremendous significance in this overwhelm- 
 ing majority of our successful men who were 
 
24 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 born in the country and passing their boyhood 
 in the country. It is entirely fair to assume 
 that this proportion of forty will hold good in 
 four hundred or four thousand. 
 
 What, then, are we to make out of it? 
 Surely we cannot say to the young men of the 
 cities : " You have made a great mistake in 
 being born in a city ; only the country-born 
 boys succeed in this world ; so get out of the 
 city as fast as you can ; head out for some farm 
 or cross-roads ; settle down there with the 
 vegetables and the cattle and the hay-fields, 
 and in due time you may become great." 
 
 No, we cannot say that, because, in the first 
 place, there is no especial inherent virtue in 
 country life ; and, second place, if such advice 
 were followed, it would be at too late a period 
 to be of any practical use. For the majority 
 of our successful men did not stay in the coun- 
 try any longer than they were obliged to ; they 
 shook the dust of the fields from off their feet 
 about as soon as they could ; at the average 
 age of sixteen they became emigrants to the 
 cities. 
 
 But the points we can hold up to the young 
 men are these: The thing that gave the coun- 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 25 
 
 try birth and boyhood their value was the 
 stern disciphne that such a Hfe afforded ; I will 
 show you later on what that discipline was 
 like ; how it drove the iron into the boyish 
 souls ; how it cut them like emerj', and polished 
 them like a diamond. But the cutting, and the 
 rubbing, and the shaping, and the polishing 
 turned out the men of the age. 
 
 The trouble with too many city boys is that 
 they want to skip such preparation and yet be- 
 come as diamonds ; they want to shine without 
 being polished, and cut without being ground. 
 I have seen enough of young men in cities to 
 know that although there may not exist for 
 them the same kind of hard environment that 
 the life and birth in the country would face up 
 to them, yet there do exist, often, just as real 
 disadvantages to overcome, just as genuine bar- 
 riers to burn away in a city, as any country 
 boy had to contend with in rural districts. 
 
 The coming generation is going to be filled 
 with great and successful men. Perhaps, thirty 
 years from now, it may occur to some pastor 
 to undertake just the same task that I have 
 performed here ; and if he does, I feel sure that 
 when he sits down to look over the returns of 
 
26 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 his social census, he will find that a majority of 
 his correspondents were born in cities. I do 
 not believe that country birth is always going 
 to " have the call " upon the achievement of 
 success. But I do believe that from now on to 
 the end of the world successful men will be 
 found to have borne the yoke in their youth in 
 the great majority of instances. Only two 
 men of all the forty who wrote to me confessed 
 that their parents were well-to-do, and that 
 they had no youth-yoke to bear. 
 
 Yes, the city boy may have and does have 
 his own peculiar deficiencies to overcome, and 
 the overcoming of which is going to make a 
 man of him. It would even be a bad thing to 
 remove them from him or to have them re- 
 moved except as the boy himself succeeds in 
 getting them out of the way. 
 
 I often think of the story Abraham Lin- 
 coln used to tell of his own boyhood ; how one 
 day he and his brother were plowing corn 
 down on a Kentucky farm, Abraham driving the 
 horse, and his brother holding the plow. The 
 horse was a very lazy horse, but suddenly he 
 took it into his head to rush across the field at 
 such a speed that young Abraham, long-legged 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 2/ 
 
 as he was, could hardly keep up. When they 
 reached the other side of the field, Abraham 
 found an enormous chin fly on the horse, and 
 in the kindness of his heart knocked it off ; 
 his brother asked him the reason for his knock- 
 ing it off: "To save him from suffering," re- 
 plied the young Lincoln. "Why," said his 
 brother, " that was the only thing that made 
 him go." 
 
 It is so with youngmen, whether theyare born 
 and raised in the country or in the city ; they 
 need something that galls in order to get them 
 up to their best speed ; and no matter at what 
 age of life a young fellow finds himself, he ought 
 to be putting forth his very best eflforts. 
 
 The time for young men to " go " is when 
 they are young. Abraham Lincoln said that 
 the thing that saved this country was the com- 
 ing forward of the young men to her rescue. 
 I think of Napoleon Bonaparte appointed Gen- 
 eral-in-Chief of the army of Italy before he 
 was twenty-seven years of age ; of Isaac New- 
 ton making his greatest discovery when he was 
 twenty-three ; of George Washington, support- 
 ing himself by surveying, amid the greatest 
 physical hardships, at the age of sixteen; of 
 
28 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, managing a ferry across the 
 Ohio, at the mouth of Anderson Creek, when 
 he was but sixteen years old, and receiving six 
 dollars a month for it. The difficulties of any 
 young man's environment need never be as 
 insurmountable barriers to his success, as we 
 will see the further we go. 
 
 At first sight, we would say that the chief 
 disadvantage to birth in the country, especially 
 thirty or forty years ago, would be found in 
 the matter of exceedingly limited educational 
 advantages, barriers which do not exist to-day 
 with respect to boys who are city-born. It is 
 therefore with a great degree of interest that 
 we turn to an examination of the life-story of 
 forty successful men, to see what was their ex- 
 perience in this respect. Nothing seems more 
 prophetical of future failure than to see a boy 
 yoked up to the disadvantage of a deficient 
 early education. And as I examine the con- 
 fessions of my forty correspondents, the whole 
 question of education, its scope and value, will 
 be revealed ; we will hear what these men 
 have had to say concerning its quality, calibre, 
 and its bearing on the matter of success. 
 
 We naturally go back, first, to their earliest 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 29 
 
 advantages or disadvantages ; their privileges, 
 or lack of them, in boyhood days. 
 
 Only six speak of their early advantages 
 as being good ; many refer to them as being 
 very limited, and the great majority give 
 us a picture of exactly how limited they 
 were. 
 
 Almost all of them started out with the re- 
 stricted privileges of the common or district 
 school of thirty or forty years ago. We people 
 of to-day, quite often, when we want to have 
 a good time, not infrequently arrange traves- 
 ties of the old-fashioned school of that period ; 
 and on the tickets of admission, we spell the 
 word " skule " and pronounce it " skewl "; 
 and we dress the performers up in the anti- 
 quated costumes of our father ; and we rig up 
 as good an imitation as we can of the old- 
 fashioned pedagogue, and instruct him how 
 to act in the ways of old ; and we arm him 
 with a birch rod — the like of which our chil- 
 dren to-day never see ; and then we invite our 
 friends to come and make merry. 
 
 Our travesty is harmless and often genuinely 
 mirthful ; but be it known , that with three or 
 four exceptions, that type of school was the 
 
30 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 intellectual nursing-place of our forty great 
 men ; they have told me so. 
 
 " I think that there are few schools in the 
 country now," says one man, " but what are 
 far better than the schools of my boyhood 
 period." One of the foremost business men of 
 Cleveland told me in his letter that as a boy 
 he " never ciphered beyond the rule of three." 
 Another one gives us a picture of himself as 
 for four years he walked a distance of two and 
 a half miles to obtain the meagre advantages 
 of his district school. I sometimes think of 
 that as I pass along our streets and see the 
 troops of children skipping merrily along over 
 the short distance between their homes and 
 their schools. 
 
 It seemed to me, as I thought upon these 
 things, and then thought upon the quality and 
 calibre of the men to whom I addressed my- 
 self, that not only was their youth marked by- 
 a probable deprivation of fine intellectual ad- 
 vantages, but that in some way they must have 
 made up for that loss in later years ; because 
 education counts heavy in all success, and since 
 they succeeded something must have been done ; 
 the breach must have been filled in some way. 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 3 1 
 
 And so I addressed to them all, this ques- 
 tion : If deprived in your youth of proper and 
 adequate educational advantages ; by what 
 means did you subsequently make up for this 
 deprivation f 
 
 That I was not far wrong in my assumption, 
 is shown by the fact that only three out of 
 forty confessed to no lack of early advantage. 
 One of those three gave as a reason for this, 
 that he had been blessed with an educated 
 father who gave him a part of his own enthu- 
 siasm for study ; while another of the three 
 says : " I was so taught to use my time by my 
 parents, that I cannot say that I ever lacked 
 for an advantage." 
 
 Parents, fathers, mothers, it is true that 
 our schools to-day are magnificent ; that our 
 public school system is the glory of our age ; 
 that in the main they are managed by compe- 
 tent, skillful, and consecrated men and women 
 as teachers, — but yet I ask you : Does this 
 justify us in taking our own hands off the brain- 
 lever of our children, and turning entirely over 
 to comparative strangers the whole burden of the 
 intellectual care and stimulus of our children ? 
 No ; surely not ; we should follow their course ; 
 
32 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 keep posted in what they are doing ; see that 
 they are reaping as much as possible of the 
 great advantages of their schools ; not that we 
 can or should keep abreast of them, for while 
 we are applying our old-fashioned learning to 
 the maintenance of the family and the preser- 
 vation of fortune, they, the children of our 
 loins, the but so recent graduates of our nur- 
 series; are going way ahead of us in the 
 modern and '" new-fangled " ways of calcula- 
 tion and study, so that when we sometimes sit 
 down with them to confidently help them out 
 in an arithmetical puzzle, or algebraic laby- 
 rinth, we find that we and our children are a 
 little group on the modern Tower of Babel, 
 each failing to understand the language of the 
 other, or the ways of the other's methods. 
 The days of Rollo and Grimke are forever 
 past ; and yet it is not so much the question 
 of the " how-ness," as the " what-for-edness." 
 Not so much methods as results ; and educa- 
 tion is for results, after all ; it is not so much 
 how to demonstrate a theorem or solve a tan- 
 gled equation, as " HOW WILL YOU USE IN 
 LIFE YOUR TRAINED BRAIN "; and right here 
 the parents of to-day can follow in the wake of 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 33 
 
 the two men from whom I quote ; teach your 
 children how to use their time, and give them 
 a part of your own enthusiasm. 
 
 With this slight digression, I come back to 
 the main thought : how did our thirty-seven 
 men subsequently make up for the lack of ad- 
 vantage in their youth ; and I think every one 
 of us finds an appeal here, for a great and prac- 
 tical question in every life is how to make up, 
 how to make up for what we have lost. 
 
 And we are confronted at once with the more 
 or less hearty confession of six men, that, in 
 their opinion, they have never succeeded in 
 quite catching up ; there may be undue mod- 
 esty in this, and doubtless, if you knew who 
 they were, you would say that these six men 
 unduly depreciate themselves, for no one 
 would be in suspicion of such a fact, if they 
 themselves did not say so. But I am inclined 
 to think that not a man out of the entire forty 
 would think that he had entirely made up 
 for early disadvantages ; yet they have all 
 done so magnificently in the matter, after all, 
 that we are interested in knowing what the 
 plan of their lives was, in this regard. 
 
 An ex-leader in the House of Representa- 
 
34 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 tives, who is at present one of the foremost 
 lawyers in the East, although eighty-four years 
 old, says : '' I have read instructive books at 
 every leisure half-hour during all my days." 
 Many of the men speak upon this point ; 
 " reading "; " reading in spare hours ''; " careful 
 study in evenings and on holidays "; " reading 
 the very best books ; taking advantage of spare 
 time "; " by years of special and technical study 
 and reading." 
 
 One man said : " I read up first along the 
 line which gave me the best knowledge of the 
 business I was in." Another made up by 
 " close observation and care to associate with 
 those better educated than myself." Young 
 men, what a wealth of suggestion there is in 
 this thought ! If a fellow wants to make up, 
 if he wants to catch up, he had better make 
 his associates to be among minds and manners 
 that are a grade higher than his own ; to 
 CATCH UP, you must REACH HIGH ; a fellow 
 can never get higher by simply stepping along 
 on a dead level ; he is constrained to reach 
 hold of something a peg higher, better 
 than he {■&, and tJian pull ; some of your asso- 
 ciates are no better than you are ; some of 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 35 
 
 them are not as good as you are ; the point is, 
 they will not help you any. A better man 
 than you will make you a better man. I 
 tell you, with your life ahead of you, it's 
 worth your while to let some of your com- 
 panions go ! — they may object for a bit, and 
 may make it hard for you ; but the great rule 
 of success is to make the most of yourself ; 
 the great secret of success is to get unyoked 
 from what is going to pull you down. If you 
 are climbing a mountain, and your foot gets 
 entangled in a creeper, you reach down into 
 your pocket, pull out your jackknife, and cut 
 it off. That's often what a fellow has to do 
 with his companions, if he wants to rise higher. 
 " It is well for a young man to keep himself 
 honorably in the eyes of the public." 
 
 It is said that " the first step the Devil takes 
 in seeking to compass a young man's destruc- 
 tion, is to give him a fool for a companion." 
 
 How many such companion-fools there are 
 in the world ! How they boast themselves in 
 knowledge of the world, of " straight-tips," of 
 " places about town," of " things to see " 1 
 
 But their knowledge is a net spread for feet 
 that ought to go in better directions. 
 
36 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 Many a young man thinks that a good ideal 
 is some fellow who makes a boast of Sabbath- 
 breaking, or of being fast ; who thinks scepti- 
 cism is smart, and profanity a big accomplish- 
 ment. I wonder why some young fellows 
 think that they add to their bigness by mak- 
 ing themselves as much like devils as possible. 
 
 It is recorded that Lord Brooke was so 
 proud of his friendship with Sir Philip Sydney 
 that he chose for his own epitaph the words : 
 " Here lies the body of Sir Philip Sydney's 
 friend." I wish we could all make our friend- 
 ship to be worth something like that to our 
 associates. 
 
 Another man of the forty made up by 
 " using common-sense with a purpose to suc- 
 ceed." And an honored judge on the bench, 
 whose decisions command universal respect, 
 and whose learning is broadly admitted, not 
 feeling quite sure that he has fully made up, 
 says that he is still studying law, and mental 
 and moral science. Yet I have conversed with 
 " sweet girl graduates " who gravely talked to 
 me about their education being " finished." 
 
 I note with a degree of interest, that out of 
 our forty men, only eight have taken a full 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 37 
 
 college course, and three others followed 
 college courses in part ; of these three, one 
 was forced to leave by reason of financial prob- 
 lems, but the other two adduced no reasons ; 
 and since they adduce none, we are forced to 
 see visions (though we are not old men) of 
 the wave of exuberant human nature, then, as 
 now, rising in prankish billows, and breaking 
 over the jagged rocks of some old pedagogues, 
 who, resenting the same, rose up in wrath, as 
 pedagogues have a way of doing, and listening 
 eagerly for farewells, as too exuberant youth 
 have a way of sometimes uttering them. In 
 other words, perhaps they were suspended. 
 Be all this as it may, seventy -five per cent, of 
 our forty men are not college men. 
 
 I have no desire or intention to enter into a 
 discussion here concerning the relation of a 
 college education to success. All things being 
 equal, every young man ought to go to college, 
 stay at college, get the most he can out of col- 
 lege, leave his airs and nonsense behind him at 
 college, and come forth into the world and be 
 a man. 
 
 But I said, "all things being equal." To 
 thousands of ambitious young men all things 
 
38 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 are not equal ; they can no more go to college 
 than they can take thought and add to their 
 stature. What of them ? Is the lack of a col- 
 lege education going to narrow the scope of 
 their future possibilities ? I am led to think of 
 the seventy-five per cent, of my correspondents 
 who are leaders in the world to-day, but who 
 never entered colleges as students. But that is 
 to-day, to-day linked with the past ; — how about 
 the future ? A recent writer has well spoken 
 upon this point : " No college on earth ever 
 made a business man ; the knowledge acquired 
 in college has fitted thousands of men for pro- 
 fessional success, but it has also unfitted thou- 
 sands of others for a practical business career." * 
 I say to young men, go to college if you 
 can ; but if you cannot, do not think for a sec- 
 ond that you will fail for lack of it. You must 
 not lie awake nights over this. The more we 
 see and hear about colleges these days, the 
 more may we imagine that a fellow's manhood 
 will not suffer overmuch by a deprivation of a 
 strict college course. The record for the past 
 month is as follows : 
 
 * Edward Bok in the Cosmopolitan, 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 39 
 
 At Tuft's College in Medford, Mass., rooms 
 were " stacked," e. g. , their contents were heaped 
 together in a pile on the centre of the floor, and 
 any and all things of value ruined by having water 
 and oil poured over them, causing damage to the 
 extent of hundreds of dollars. At Princeton, a 
 student was pounded to death with blows given 
 by boxing gloves. At New Haven, a prize 
 fight was given under the auspices of certain 
 Yale students. Recently, Harvard students 
 gave an ovation to Corbett, the champion 
 pugilist of the world. At Cornell, one colored 
 woman was poisoned to death by the fumes of 
 chlorine gas, and several students nearly killed 
 by the same agent, in the providing of the 
 requisite amount of college humor. 
 
 A prominent business man writes : " I have 
 had associated with me both kinds of young 
 men, collegiate and non-collegiate, and I must 
 confess that the ones who had a better knowl- 
 edge of the practical part of life were those 
 who never saw the inside of a college, and 
 whose feet never stood upon a campus." 
 
 Let no young man feel that he has an un- 
 bearable yoke about his neck because he lacks in 
 being a college man. Think of our seventy-five 
 
40 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 per cent, who are leaders and yet hold no college 
 diploma. If a young fellow has Success in 
 him, it is going to come to the surface whether 
 or not he ever kicked his heels on a campus- 
 fence. Well has it been said : " It is not the 
 college education, it is the young man." I so 
 often think of this when I see a five-thousand- 
 dollar education thrown away on a five-hundred- 
 dollar young man. 
 
 It sometimes is a good thing for the hand of 
 God to gently but firmly lead a young fellovv 
 away from college. Here is what a man writes 
 me : " Prepared for college ; wanted to study, 
 graduate and become a doctor. Was unable 
 to go on account of deaths in family, and 
 scarcity of money. At the time, I thought 
 this was luck dead against me, but now 
 think it a blessing of Providence in shaping 
 my pathway to the direction of mechanics, 
 of which at that time I knew little, but since 
 reaHze I was born for ; and thus a fair business 
 man was made, where only a third-rate pill- 
 maker might have resulted, had I been allowed 
 to follow the course of Hfe I had planned for 
 myself." 
 
 Yes, we want all the education we can get. 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 41 
 
 " If a fellow empties his purse into his head, 
 no man can take it from him." Well has the 
 great Everett said : " Education is a better 
 safeguard of Liberty than a standing army. If 
 we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we 
 must raise those of the recruiting sergeant." 
 
 But if you cannot get as much of it as you 
 want, or as the boy across the street gets, do 
 not sit down and think that he is going to be a 
 success and you a failure ; he a hitter of life's 
 bull's-eye, you sending arrows far from the 
 mark; he a five-thousand-dollar fellow, just be- 
 cause his father has five thousand dollars to 
 put upon his education. It may not be so 
 when the census is taken thirty years from 
 now ; you may be one of the correspondents, — 
 he may be encouraging his wife to take 
 boarders. 
 
 We have already caught a glimpse of the 
 fact that with the majority of my forty corre- 
 spondents there was deprivation in youth of 
 proper educational advantages ; it would be 
 strange, therefore, if another peep into their 
 early lives did not disclose other yokes being 
 borne by them in their j'outh. 
 
 When I sent out my printed questions to 
 
42 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 these men, I wondered if there was much 
 glamour or romance to their early days ; if 
 there was much rosy tint to the shining of their 
 sun ; but now, I do not wonder any more ; I 
 know; and I am going to let you young men 
 know. Some of you think that you are having 
 a pretty hard time in life, and perhaps you are ; 
 but I want you to go back with me into the 
 early romances of my correspondents — and 
 then measure up your case with theirs ; span 
 the yokes that were around their necks, and 
 then say honestly whether, in comparison, 
 your neck is not circled by a dollar satin neck- 
 tie. 
 
 I asked my correspondents whether, in their 
 boyhood, they worked to assist their parents, 
 or to support themselves. There were only 
 seven out of the entire forty who did not have 
 to work during their boyhood ; of the remaining 
 thirty-three, twenty-one worked to assist their 
 parents, seven supported themselves entirely, 
 five did both ; we have, therefore, a total of 
 thirty-three out of our forty men whose boy- 
 hoods were given over to hard toil. 
 
 Let us look at the age of these young work- 
 ers for a moment ; one of the most prominent 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 43 
 
 makers of scientific instruments in this country- 
 writes that he worked until he was seventeen, 
 and then entered a shop to learn his trade. 
 
 An honored judge on the bench says : "At 
 nine I worked in summer on the farm to help 
 pay my winter schooling ; from fifteen to 
 seventeen I taught school in winter, to aid my 
 own schooling the rest of the year." 
 
 A veteran warhorse of the Republican party 
 says : " I worked on a farm until I was nine- 
 teen, and for the next five years I helped 
 through haying." 
 
 A prominent merchant says : " I did a man's 
 work from my fifteenth year." 
 
 One of the foremost editors of the East 
 says : " I worked barefoot on a farm until I 
 was thirteen years of age." 
 
 Note this record of five men : " I supported 
 myself after I was sixteen years of age." 
 " Began supporting myself at nine." " I sup- 
 ported myself from the age of fourteen." " I 
 was brought up to work, and to do all disagree- 
 able tasks willingly." "Worked summers from 
 twelve years of age until sixteen, and after that 
 constantly." 
 
 It is noticeable that only one out of all these 
 
44 » YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 thirty- three boy-workers makes mention of the 
 fact that he enjoyed the work ; all the rest are 
 non-committal upon that subject ; it makes no 
 difference either way ; if he enjoyed it, he was 
 to be congratulated ; and if the rest did not, 
 and yet worked, it only bespeaks the heroism 
 that goes on with its duty, and does it, just be- 
 cause it must be done. That is the way a 
 great many people in the world have to do 
 their work, and after all it is a species of hero- 
 ism that has its reward. 
 
 But I want to look a little closer into these 
 work years, these boyish work years of our 
 great and successful men. 
 
 With seventeen of them, this work was farm 
 work, the hardest kind of work in the world, 
 at least it so seems to me. Look at the re- 
 plies of these men and get a few little sketchy 
 pictures out of them, portraying what farm life 
 was like, little word-pictures that I will quote 
 for you : 
 
 "'Haying, riding horse to the plow, and culti- 
 vating corn and potatoes." He became a judge. 
 
 " Farming, janitor work, teaming, sawing 
 wood, mail-carrier three miles and back, daily." 
 He became a leading capitalist. 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 45 
 
 "Gardening, sawing wood, general work 
 about the place, and helping in my father's 
 store." He became a leading merchant of 
 Cleveland. 
 
 " Farming, chopping, clearing boards, ditch- 
 ing, damming, and improving my father's small 
 farm." He sits upon the judicial bench to-day, 
 honored of all men. 
 
 " Lumbering and farming." This gentleman 
 can afford to confine his office hours to two 
 hours daily, at the present time. 
 
 And so the story goes on ; seven entered 
 stores as clerks ; two or three were diligent in 
 learning their trade at mechanical pursuits, and 
 are to-day leading manufacturers ; one tells me 
 the story of his apprenticeship, earning thirty 
 dollars a year, and about twenty dollars more 
 carrying about New-Year addresses, and to-day 
 he is a leading Eastern editor. 
 
 I fail to see an idle, shiftless boyhood among 
 all the forty. It seems to be a good thing that 
 men should bear the yoke in their youth. 
 There seems to be virtue in emery and grind- 
 stones ; the rough diamond gets no beauty, 
 and sends out no shining in being simply 
 wrapped up in cotton ; young men waiting 
 
46 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 about for something fine to turn up, are in 
 danger of becoming turn-ups themselves; if 
 they are waiting around to catch a glimpse of 
 some royal road to success, some short-cut that 
 will land them in the front ranks ahead of 
 others, they are apt to become the shrivelled- 
 up living skeletons of misguided ambition. I 
 defy you to draw any other conclusion from 
 out of the story of the forty lives. Boys, 
 think of it ! Of all these men, the average age 
 at which they began entire self-support was 
 seventeen years and eight months ! Cut loose 
 from parental help, started out in the world 
 for themselves, began the battle of life single- 
 handed, at the average age of seventeen years 
 and eight months ! It all reads like a ro- 
 mance. It is a romance of the past ; is it to 
 be the romance of the future? Perhaps not 
 in entirely the same way ; times are changing, 
 have changed, in some measure ; but there is 
 one thing, young men, to which there should 
 never come a change, and that is, the indom- 
 itable spirit of perseverance that should actuate 
 every young man. 
 
 That there may come a little bit more of 
 inspiration to you out of the wonderful story I 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 47 
 
 am giving you, I want to pull aside the curtain 
 a trifle more. 
 
 At the age of twenty-three, a subsequent 
 leader in the U. S. House of Representatives 
 was studying his law, and paying off a mort- 
 gage on his father's house at the same time. 
 
 One of the most prominent leaders in the 
 city of Cleveland, who was clerking it at the 
 age of seventeen in a country store, and who 
 " wanted the place badly," so he writes, threw 
 up his job and vValked nine miles to his home 
 after dark because he would not submit to 
 draw whiskey and give the same to men work- 
 ing for his employer. 
 
 Another man, when he was twenty, and 
 " thereafter for many years, supported a family 
 of six, consisting of mother, brother, and four sis- 
 ters, until the sisters were all married." You will 
 notice that, whether in purposeful humor or not, 
 he specifies that period as one of " many years." 
 
 " Went into a bank at eighteen, and have 
 remained there in some capacity for thirty-four 
 years since," writes another. 
 
 Another gentleman gives me an epitome of 
 his forty-five years of continuous service in a 
 bank of which he is now the president. 
 
48 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 Another man started out in a large iron con- 
 cern at the age of seventeen, and is now the 
 largest stockholder in the same ; he says that 
 he has never been helped except by loans from 
 friends, upon every dollar of which he paid 
 interest. 
 
 Take all these experiences and unravel them ; 
 get at the core and centre and heart of them ; 
 put upon the field of your microscope the 
 pathetic stories of some of our most valued 
 men supporting themselves from tender years 
 like thirteen, and, in one instance, ten. What 
 is going to be the result of your diagnosis? 
 That boyhood and youth is no time for the 
 yoke? That it will make no difference what 
 you do before you are twenty ? That, some 
 way or other, things will be made up to you ? 
 No, young men ! Your manhood is going to 
 grow right up out of your boyhood, just as 
 surely as the character of the tree is going to 
 grow up out of the nature of the thing planted. 
 Perseverance, courage, grit, usefulness, deter- 
 mination in youth are going to make the man ; 
 and vice versa. 
 
 I fail to read in the Bible that the prodigal 
 son ever became the head of the house. I fail 
 
YOKES IN YOUTH. 49 
 
 to read in nature that wild oats ever produce 
 good wheat ; I fail to read in the romance of 
 the forty men that a shiftless boy ever made a 
 leader of society, or that a single one of our 
 forty boys ever failed to become one. 
 
 I know full well that there have been many 
 boys, many young men, apparently just as deter- 
 mined, just as self-sacrificing, just as gritty, 
 who have failed in the great race, the great 
 combat of life ; and if I had the story of their 
 lives, I might be able to give you the reason. 
 But I shall never be able to tell you, for I 
 would lack the courage to approach forty other 
 men and in cold blood ask them to tell me 
 why they have become failures. This is one 
 of the great mysteries of life, but the mys- 
 tery would vanish, in most cases, if we could be 
 permitted to honestly dissect the past of such 
 men. Somewhere there is the secret of it, 
 though no eyes save God's can ever see it. But if 
 I want to analyze success, I propose to address 
 myself to successful men. I would rather lift 
 you up by pointing you up. 
 
 Young man, the prevailing sentiment that is 
 occupying your mind to-night, is going to be 
 the determining character of your manhood ; 
 
50 YOKES IN YOUTH. 
 
 in the heat of your blood, you are to form in- 
 clinations in which you will afterward per- 
 severe through the power of habit. Beware 
 of the kind of drafts you are now drawing upon 
 the future, for they will be paid in kind, 
 says one, about thirty years after date. A 
 man sometimes visits a grave and thinking of 
 its occupant, wishes he had treated him better 
 in life. That is the way many an old man 
 thinks of his youth. 
 
11. 
 
 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 51 
 
I have fought a good fight, I have finished 
 my course, T have kept the faith.— 2 TIMOTHY 
 iv. 7. 
 
 52 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 I PROPOSE to deal with the subject of suc- 
 cess. I do not desire to handle this subject 
 ethically, or philosophically, or rhetorically ; but 
 I propose to deal with it by aid of the practical 
 helps afforded me by a personal canvass of the 
 lives of forty of the most eminently success- 
 ful men in this and other communities. These 
 men have told us something about their youth 
 and young-manhood ; they told us of the pri- 
 vations connected with their birth and early 
 environment; we saw from what they sprang; 
 how that, with very few exceptions, they were 
 all country boys ; we caught glimpses of the 
 poverty that surrounded them in those days ; 
 of the inadequate education that was their lot, 
 and how they subsequently made up for that 
 lack. 
 
 In other words, we were permitted to be- 
 
 (53) 
 
54 
 
 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 hold the great and startling truth that it is 
 well for a young man to bear the yoke in his 
 youth. This is an expression found in the 
 Bible, and as such, we have all had the habit 
 of saying " Amen " to it, whether we really felt 
 it so or not. But the lives of forty great and 
 successful men proved to us the truth of the 
 Scriptural statement ; we were made to see 
 that a yoke in youth was followed by a crown 
 in maturity. I think that as we attended to 
 the interesting narrations going into that 
 proof, we not only learned a great many new 
 facts, and had our eyes opened to a good many 
 new revelations, but many of us were impressed 
 with one thought that seemed to rear itself 
 right out of the whole matter ; the absurdity 
 of many of the statements and reproaches so 
 often set forth to-day by the hired and paid 
 orators of the cause of labor as they array 
 themselves over against the cause of capital. 
 
 All of our successful men were found to be 
 graduates from the very ranks of labor them- 
 selves ; we saw plainly that the cradle of sub- 
 sequent success and power and influence was 
 not a cradle lined with velvet, but with horse- 
 hair ; that with my correspondents, capital 
 
How TO SUCCEED. 55 
 
 was not hereditary, but acquired, and acquired 
 by years of incessant toil and self-denial. So 
 then, the forty men who are addressing us 
 during the course of these lectures, are not the 
 darlings of society whose infant hair was 
 curled on greenbacks, but men whose youth 
 was as hardy, as full of toil and bitterness, and 
 deprivation as that of any man to-day who 
 spends his time in endeavoring to mass the 
 toiling multitudes in array against the numbers 
 of employers and capitalists. 
 
 I have no word, no syllable of defence to 
 offer in extenuation of capital injustice when- 
 ever it is sought to be exerted against the 
 cause of labor and of production ; I do not 
 even desire, in these lectures, to weigh the pros 
 and cons of financial, social disorder. I simply 
 assume the following positions : I know that 
 there is such a thing in the world as legitimate 
 success ; I know that this country of ours is 
 full of successful men ; I know that hundreds 
 of young men of to-day want to be the suc- 
 cesses of the future ; and I know that the best 
 way to find out how to reach that goal is 
 to catechise the men who have already at- 
 tained. 
 
56 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 And so our question is the question of Suc- 
 cess ; how to obtain it ; how forty men have 
 attained it. I think we will find it deeply in- 
 teresting; for I have nothing to offer you 
 from men who would like to attain it ; or who 
 thought they were going to obtain it ; or from 
 men who nearly obtained it ; or from men who 
 will probably some day obtain it ; but my 
 message is from men who are there ; and they 
 are the men to whom we want to listen. 
 
 The word " success " occurs with peculiar 
 rarity in the Bible, and yet the thing itself 
 is there all through the book ; and the men are 
 there who succeeded ; and so, for an initial 
 thought I have turned to the final words of a 
 man who, in the largest and truest sense, was 
 one of God's great successes, Paul ; — and out 
 of his triumph, we hear him say : " I have 
 fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 
 I have kept the faith "; and in that cry of 
 triumph, we find the essential and intrinsic 
 elements of all true success ; to fight ; to fin- 
 ish ; and to keep. Can you think of any single, 
 possible element of modern success that is not 
 wrapped up in one or more of those three ele- 
 ments of triumph, fighting, finishing, and 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 5/ 
 
 keiping ? — I think not ; they combine every- 
 thing ; and so, as we proceed to hear again the 
 great, romantic, and often pathetic story of 
 forty successful lives, may the echoes of that 
 battle-cry of Paul keep going on and on 
 through our minds ; may they be as the cords 
 on which we shall fasten every thought, the 
 strings upon which shall form every crystalliza- 
 tion, the lens through whose focussing power 
 we shall analyze every phenomenon of success- 
 ful life and living. 
 
 I have termed this lecture: " How to Suc- 
 ceed." The thought has occurred to me that 
 perhaps that title is a misnomer. It may be 
 that I should have written it : " How forty men 
 have succeeded." I cannot, nor can any man, 
 give positive rules whereby, if you follow them, 
 an assured success can be guaranteed. Suc- 
 cess depends upon the man and not upon the 
 rule; we find no great mills propelled by 
 the water of Niagara 'River that is diverted and 
 run through sewers ; but run it through great 
 tunnels and water-wheels, and you will get the 
 power for giving life to the machinery of a 
 city. Give to an imbecile a hundred dollars 
 for purposes of investment, and we look for no 
 
58 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 great returns in profit. An ignoramus can 
 take a fine steam-lathe and with it he will work 
 out absurdities and failures. Intelligence and 
 consecration must be behind principles, how- 
 ever good ; rules, however many. Principles 
 are the backbone of character; but a backbone 
 must have some sort of a foundation, and ribs 
 themselves are no good if they have to be tied 
 on. So we continue to make our researches 
 into these eminently successful lives, feeling 
 all the time, and all the same, that what we 
 find and what we deduce cannot and will not 
 be regarded in the light of a cure-all or a save- 
 all ; but if I notice forty arrows all flying 
 toward one point, it is safe for me to assume 
 that at that point there is some kind of a tar- 
 get ; if forty birds are winging their way to 
 one field, I am sure that there is something 
 there for them to eat ; and if the trend of certain 
 forty lives hits point-blank upon success, then 
 pardon me if I say that a man is a fool to persist 
 in taking any other course. 
 
 In our first lecture, when we considered 
 the question of youth and the bearing of hard 
 yokes in youth, we were necessarily forced to 
 look at the yoke of a crude and insufificient 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 59 
 
 early education. We saw that mental priva- 
 tions were the almost universal rule in the 
 lives of the men whom we were considering. 
 We also saw what these men subsequently did 
 in their determinations to make up for their 
 early disadvantages. The discussion of those 
 points naturally opened up the subject of edu- 
 cation as a whole, and its part as played in the 
 drama of life. I do not desire to again touch 
 upon that ground, or even to recapitulate the 
 deductions made. 
 
 But there was a further aspect of the subject 
 of education which was not touched upon, and 
 which is vital to the proper grasp of a young 
 man upon life, and that is, the amount and kind 
 of education demanded by success to-day. And 
 so I put this question to the men of success, 
 and received forty replies to it : State, from 
 your experience, the amount and kind of educa- 
 tion you deem necessary and indispensable to 
 the success of the young man of to-day. 
 
 You will notice the phraseology ; not the 
 young man of yesterday, or the young man of 
 thirty years ago, or the young man twenty 
 years hence ; but the young man of to-day. 
 I wanted my correspondents to focus their 
 
6o HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 experience upon the problems of life that will 
 be thrown right up at young men Monday 
 morning, as they go out into life, whether it 
 be to prepare for it in school, or to share in it 
 at the work-bench or counter. 
 
 First, let us hear what my correspondents 
 say as to the amount of education. Their re- 
 plies are unequivocal : " All that circumstances 
 will permit, and the best that can be obtained." 
 " All that one can possibly get. The best 
 information is the one that usually wins 
 success." 
 
 " We cannot be too well educated, though ex- 
 perience shows that very illiterate men may 
 have great business success." " An education 
 as liberal and as extensive as possible." " As 
 much as possible," so writes one of the fore- 
 most polytechnic instructors in the country ; 
 " as much as possible, for the conditions of a 
 young man's success are growing more difficult 
 year by year, owing to so much competition." 
 Another testifies, saying : " The very best and 
 most complete education possible." 
 
 I need not take time to give any further 
 evidence from the letters I have received con- 
 cerning the general statement of the value of 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 6l 
 
 an education, for the thing itself is axiomatic ; 
 but it is when we come into the question of 
 the kind of education required, that we ap- 
 proach the domain of the practical and the 
 especially beneficial. 
 
 I notice that these practical men with whom 
 I have been corresponding have a tendency to 
 draw the line between the professional and the 
 business life. 
 
 A man who represented his party for years 
 on the floor of the House of Representatives 
 says : " If life is to be mercantile or mechan- 
 ical, a common-school education will do ; but 
 if professional, the very highest ediicatitjn is 
 demanded." 
 
 A prominent and wealthy merchant says : 
 " I think the education that can be obtained 
 at our public schools quite sufficient to insure 
 success in most lines of business." 
 
 A prominent Eastern banker says: "A 
 young man should have such an education 
 as can be obtained under our present public 
 school system." 
 
 A present member of Congress says : " To 
 one who is fond of investigation, a very small 
 amount of education will do for a start, but 
 
62 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 the average young man should at least go 
 through the High School." 
 
 A leading manufacturer says : " A business 
 man should have a thorough knowledge of 
 mathematics and grammar, and all else pos- 
 sible." 
 
 A wholesale coal merchant, doing a business 
 of millions, says : " Our public school system 
 furnishes sufficient basis ; academy is better, 
 and college is good." 
 
 A large proportion of my correspondents 
 echo the sentiments of the following gentle- 
 man, who has made a large fortune on the 
 Great Lakes : " Our common-school system of 
 to-day is good enough for any young man un- 
 less he wishes to follow some one of the pro- 
 fessions." 
 
 A great majority of my correspondents pay 
 the highest tribute to the value and worth of 
 our entire public school system ; and if their 
 encomiums be true, it will well pay this day and 
 generation to keep a most vigilant and watch- 
 ful eye upon the integrity of that magnificent 
 bulwark of our American privilege, the public 
 school 1 It must be preserved stainless and 
 spotless ; it must be beyond the taint of pol- 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 63 
 
 itics and the aroma of sectarianism ; no woman 
 should enter it to teach because of her faith, 
 or man be debarred from it because of his 
 creed. The government and control of this 
 educational system should be as far removed 
 from the contaminating touch of the political 
 " heeler " or " boss," as the heavens are high 
 above the earth. 
 
 I do not think that the entire subject of the 
 bearing of education upon success can be bet- 
 ter expressed than in the following words of 
 one who stands foremost in the community : 
 " While some men have been very successful 
 with very little education, the best average re- 
 sults are doubtless obtained by means of a 
 liberal education with special preparation for 
 special callings. Practical experience accom- 
 panied with proper mental training brings bet- 
 ter results than either alone." 
 
 It would be impossible to obtain the opin- 
 ions of forty men in different occupations in 
 life, and have all those forty opinions agree in 
 every respect. If they did so agree, we would 
 lose in our estimation of them. In this entire 
 subject of education, as treated in this manner, 
 I do not find perfect unanimity of opinion ; 
 
64 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 there are a few dissenting voices even from the 
 sentiments thus far shown ; and so, to any 
 young man who sees before him hardly more 
 than the possibility of obtaining the " Three 
 R's," concerning which some of my correspond- 
 ents speak of as being indispensable, — if there 
 is a young man who sees before him the possi- 
 bilities of only the most limited education, and 
 the prospect of having to earn his bread and 
 butter at the earliest possible day, I direct to 
 you the words of one of the most successful 
 men of Cleveland : " My observation leads me 
 to think that the successful business man is he 
 who struggles along without much help, and 
 who begins to have his business early in life." 
 
 And if any young man thinks he is going to 
 fail, or half fail in the future, just because he 
 cannot see ahead of him the possibility of a 
 college education, I call attention to these per- 
 haps too radical words, written by the proprie- 
 tor of one of the largest iron works in the East : 
 " Except for professional life, the average col- 
 lege of to-day is harmful for practical success 
 in business and mechanical life. This should 
 not be so, for the business man cannot know 
 too much, and college training should be of 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 65 
 
 great assistance to him ; but because of false 
 notions and theories that seem to be constant- 
 ly inculcated into the minds of college boys, I 
 should not want any boy of mine to attend 
 college, unless preparing for some one of the 
 professions." 
 
 I do not altogether approve the logical se- 
 quence of the above argument ; one virould 
 naturally deduce from it the thought that if 
 a young fellow is going to enter one of the 
 learned professions, then it will be all right for 
 him to enter into college and soak in all the 
 poisons that college life may have ; but as for 
 a business man, he must not be contaminated ! 
 I hardly think, however, that my correspondent 
 would endorse that strict application of his 
 line of reasoning. But to return to what he 
 says : " There are notable exceptions to this 
 rule, generally attributable, I think, to the 
 home influence of the young man being strong 
 enough to counteract the effect of the poisons 
 sure to be encountered in the air of college 
 life." 
 
 After all, I think we will all agree with a 
 learned instructor who wrote me, saying: "The 
 better the education, the better will be the real 
 
^ How to SUCCEED. 
 
 success attained ; I mean, not measured by the 
 money standard only, but in the best and tru- 
 est sense, — a well-rounded life." 
 
 A most prominent citizen hit the nail on the 
 head, it seems to me, when he said : " Let the 
 young man get all the education he can, pro- 
 vided that when he is ready to begin the 
 practical part of life, he is ready to begin at 
 the bottom of the business which he proposes 
 to take up." Therein lies a great deal of 
 the trouble with quite a good many of our 
 college graduates. They think, too many 
 of them, that as soon as they escape with a 
 diploma from some college, that all they have 
 to do is to go immediately out into the world 
 and edit a metropolitan newspaper, or become 
 the president of some vast system of railways, 
 or take immediate charge of some enormous 
 wholesale business ; they are inflated with the 
 thought that they ought to become judges of 
 the Supreme Court at once. But I notice that 
 the theological student who thinks himself a 
 worthy successor to Talmage, generally gets 
 sifted out to some country cross-roads, and the 
 fellow who can give my forty correspondents 
 pointers on life, gets faced up with some day- 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 6/ 
 
 book behind the counter. The Lord knoweth 
 them that are His, and He knoweth them that 
 are their own, and He knoweth them that are 
 another man's ; and with surprising sameness 
 the divine eye beholds the college graduate 
 beginning, whether he wants to or not, some- 
 where around the first round of the ladder. 
 
 As I have said before, it is not the College, 
 but the Man ; it is not the education, but 
 what the fellow proposes to do with it, and to 
 get out of it. And I have been reminded of 
 the fact that when Moses descended from Mt. 
 Sinai, with the tables of the law under his 
 arm, he came upon the children of Israel wor- 
 shipping a hideous golden image ; and Moses 
 was wroth ; and he called Aaron to an account 
 for the thing ; and Aaron, in the simplicity of 
 his nature, excused himself by saying : " The 
 people just took off their gold ornaments, and 
 I cast them into the fire, ,and behold, there 
 happened to come out this calf, this golden 
 calf." You see how it is ; it is not the Col- 
 lege, it is the Man. Too often good gold is 
 poured into the University, and the product 
 is ancient Israelitish gilt veal. 
 
 I am sure that as we leave the subject of 
 
68 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 education at this point, and the bearings of 
 education upon success, and go on to an exam- 
 ination of certain positive and practical and 
 every-day qualities that our forty men say have 
 had to do with their success in life, — I am 
 sure that my words will evoke the closest at- 
 tention and be followed with great interest. 
 These men are successful nineteenth century 
 men ; and this is a practical nineteenth century. 
 
 We are not so much concerned with the ele- 
 ments of success in the life of Abraham, as 
 we are with what gave success to the life of 
 Abraham Lincoln. We are turning the pages 
 of a supremely interesting library, — only the 
 volumes of that library are men, not books. 
 
 Consider the rich chapters we are now about 
 to open, which came, and must have come, in 
 response to a question like this : From your 
 own experience, what do you consider the ele- 
 ments of success in your business, profession, or 
 calling? 
 
 The elements of success ! I well remember 
 that in that interesting stoiy, entitled " Three 
 Men in a Boat, — to say nothing of the Dog," 
 the hero of the story, found, or thought he found 
 it necessary to go off for a prolonged outing be- 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 6g 
 
 cause he had been reading up on the subject 
 of his health, and had come to the conclusion 
 that he was the victim of each and every dis- 
 ease concerning which he had been reading, 
 except one ; he had them all, save a disease 
 known in England by the name of " waiting- 
 maid's knee." 
 
 I am afraid that the various elements given 
 me by our forty men as the secrets of their suc- 
 cess in life will even far outnumber the diseases 
 of the man whom I have mentioned. Yet I 
 am sure that you cannot fail to be interested 
 in the list of the various elements of success 
 as given us by these men. I shall take and 
 read you the whole list ; fortunately they are 
 all subject to classification, and have been so 
 classified. I shall now give you, in other words, 
 all of the secrets of success that have been 
 given me that were expressed in just a word 
 or two ; many of them, of course, were repeated 
 over and over again. 
 
 Ambition Appreciation of 
 
 Application privileges 
 
 Attention Broad informa- 
 
 Agreeable man- tion 
 
 NERS Character 
 
70 
 
 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 Character dis- 
 cernment 
 
 Careful obser- 
 vation. 
 
 Cute ability to 
 understand. 
 
 Capacity 
 
 Decision 
 
 Determination 
 
 Diligence 
 
 Early hours 
 
 Economy 
 
 Energy 
 
 Earnestness 
 
 Education 
 
 Eternal vigil- 
 ance 
 
 Firmness 
 
 Frugality 
 
 Favorable time 
 
 Favorable loca- 
 tion 
 
 Good habits 
 
 Good judgment 
 
 Good handwrit- 
 ing 
 
 Giving value for 
 
 VALUE 
 
 Good luck 
 
 Good health 
 
 Good principles 
 
 Hard work 
 
 Honesty 
 
 Honest service 
 
 Hi(;h aim 
 
 Industry 
 
 Integrity 
 
 Intelligence 
 
 Improving oppor- 
 tunities 
 
 Knowledge of 
 men 
 
 Loyalty 
 
 Moral training 
 
 Method 
 
 Mastery of details 
 
 No speculation 
 
 Opportunity 
 
 Order 
 
 Perseverance 
 
 Promptness 
 
 Punctuality 
 
how to succeed. 71 
 
 Purpose Self-confidence 
 
 Poverty Thoroughness 
 
 Patience Tact 
 
 Push Temperance 
 
 Pluck Will-power 
 
 Religious training Watchfulness 
 Reliability Whole-heartedness 
 
 Sobriety Willingness to 
 
 Sagacity work 
 
 There, young men, are the qualities laid 
 down wherein and whereby we are to succeed ! 
 It is a marvellous list ; the man who could 
 possess every one of those things ought to 
 succeed, — in earth and in heaven ! But I do 
 not believe that a single one of my forty corre- 
 spondents possessed them all — no, or anywhere 
 near them all. But the main point is, that 
 they all possessed enough of them to succeed. 
 
 It is a marvellous list ! And the beauty of 
 it is, that it is given us by men who have suc- 
 ceeded — by the leaders of society — by our 
 wealthiest men — by our most learned men ; — 
 by leaders at the bar and at business, and in 
 the professions and in the sciences. I, a sim- 
 ple minister whose occupation is largely books 
 and meditation, — I have not evolved this list 
 
72 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 for you out of my inner consciousness, or my 
 commentaries, or any such thing ; no, this list 
 comes to you from the inside offices of banks 
 and factories and counting-houses ; it comes 
 from the rooms of colleges and from the ju- 
 dicial bench, and from the legislative halls of 
 States and of the United States ; it comes 
 from the editorial sanctums of great daily 
 newspapers. For this reason I hold it up 
 before your attention. 
 
 Sixty-seven different qualifications for suc- 
 cess. Do they discourage you ? Do they 
 make you tremble ? Do they lead you to 
 think that it's no use, — you can never acquire 
 all these, or exercise them ? Of course you 
 cannot ; the man was never born who could 
 shake hands with them all. But I propose to 
 look them well over and see just how near we 
 can come to perfection. Some of them are 
 born in a man and can be had in no other way. 
 Some are an acquirement. Here are the things 
 mentioned that, in my opinion, if you lack 
 them, if they are not at all in your nature, you 
 can never cultivate them : 
 
 " Character discernment," or the ability to 
 read character in your fellow-men ; " decision " 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 73 
 
 or " determination " of character ; and akin to 
 these are " energy " or " earnestness." If a 
 man is born into the world and the rudiments 
 of these things are not in him, if by nature he 
 shifts and veers about like a weather-cock, I 
 do not think that in after-life he can do any- 
 thing better than simply imitate them. Anoth- 
 er is, " good judgment," or the ability to choose 
 the right and best thing, say nine times out of 
 ten. If this exists in men it seems to be an in- 
 born thing. So, also, with " reliability." The 
 only thing that will give that to a fellow, if he 
 lacks it, is a good, sound conversion. " Sagac- 
 ity"; "self-confidence"; "tact"; can these 
 things be acquired, if there is no inborn rudi- 
 ment of them ? I think not ; if a fellow does 
 not think there is anything in him, you can 
 rest assured that the world is not going to 
 think differently, either. If a fellow does not 
 know by instinct when to do the proper thing, 
 er when to hold in suspicion a dangerous thing, 
 — it he does not have it in him how to go to 
 work to get on the right side of people and 
 things and measures, I do not think he can be 
 taught. 
 
 But sum these apparently impossible acquire- 
 
74 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 ments all up ; make a list of them ; how many- 
 are there ? — Just seven ; seven out of sixty- 
 seven things that we are told enter into suc- 
 cess. Is there anything to be afraid of here ? 
 I think not. If all the others can be acquired, 
 and there is not one of the other sixty that 
 cannot be acquired, even if you lack them ; 
 I think that every young man has a right to 
 look up, not down. 
 
 When these forty men wrote me out of their 
 experience what they considered the essential 
 elements in their own success, I received some 
 very shrewd and significant replies. 
 
 The honored and venerable ex-U. S. Con- 
 gressman, to whom I have before made refer- 
 ence, said : " Intelligence and sobriety, with 
 early hours at night. The only road to old age 
 and wealth leads directly over the bed." 
 
 Think of this, you young men, who think that 
 you can habitually spend half or three-quarters 
 of the night that you need wherein to gather 
 strength for the toil of the morrow, in social 
 dissipation, or still worse ; and then imagine 
 that it will not tell on your work the next day. 
 It will, for a surety ; it will reduce your aver- 
 age. 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 75 
 
 Another man gives a high regard to punctu- 
 ality in trivial matters. How many people 
 there are who do not think it a very important 
 thing to keep an engagement to a minute ; 
 who think that if they are five or ten minutes 
 late it will not make much difference. 
 
 A prominent banker writes me : " The 
 young man who, by attention to the interests 
 of his employer, makes himself so important 
 that the employer cannot get along without 
 him, is making a great success for himself." 
 Another one of my correspondents tells me 
 that he did just that very thing, and as a result, 
 he says that he came in time to own the busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Some young men are inclined often to find 
 a great deal of fault, I think, because they have 
 so little money at their command. I do not 
 blame them ; it is a comfortable thing to have 
 money to spend ; you may have it some day, 
 if you can say " amen " to the remark of one 
 of my correspondents, that " success demands 
 poverty enough in early life to learn the value 
 of money." 
 
 Without comment, I want to go on and read 
 you a few of the significant and valuable hints 
 
76 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 that some of the forty correspondents have 
 given me with respect to the secret of success. 
 
 " Strict attention to business ; no engaging 
 in outside enterprise whose management is in 
 other hands." 
 
 " Fitting one's self to do one thing well, and 
 sticking to it. The tendency of the present 
 time is to specialties." 
 
 " Take advantage of opportunities as they 
 offer, — not waiting for such as may never 
 come." 
 
 Here is testimony from a man who began at 
 the bench and ended by being a capitalist and 
 giving employment to hundreds : 
 
 " Thorough mastery of all the details of the 
 business ; constant appreciation, giving good, 
 full value for payments received, and a fair 
 equivalent for labor employed." 
 
 Here is another equally significant, and from 
 an equally significant man : 
 
 " A high standard of character, integrity, care- 
 ful and methodical attention to the duties in- 
 volved, courteous manners to all, a good and 
 legible handwriting, and an intelligent and 
 thoughtful purpose to do the best service pos- 
 sible for one's employers." 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. "JJ 
 
 Why does another man speak of " early edu- 
 cation in habits of economy " ? Because if it 
 is not learned early, it is not truly learned at 
 all. Yet how many young men there are who 
 think that a " hail fellow well met " is the type 
 of about the finest fellow in the world ! 
 
 I wish we could all drink in the deep signifi- 
 cance of the following words from one of the 
 foremost men of the city of Cleveland : 
 
 " It is essential that a man's employment be 
 a calling ; the Caller is bound to provide the 
 elements of true success when he calls." 
 There is no such success as that which comes 
 from committing our ways unto the Lord. 
 
 I find a great deal of common sense in the 
 words of a man who stands at the head of a 
 great business concern in the East : " It is 
 essential to study and learn principles from men 
 who have succeeded, and not yielding to the 
 teachings of men who would like to succeed, or 
 who would have succeeded but for this thing or 
 that." 
 
 But you see that that is just what we 
 are doing in this investigation : studying prin- 
 ciples from men who have succeeded ; there is 
 a great deal of advice upon this point given in 
 
78 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 this world by mere theorists, some of whom 
 are found in the ranks of labor, and some who 
 are not ; but the people from whom we want 
 to hear, are the men who have shot a quiver- 
 ing arrow right into the eye of the target ; 
 and we are listening to forty such. 
 
 You will bear in mind that the only rule 
 that guided me in selecting my correspondents 
 was the rule of an apparent success ; I cared 
 nothing for politics or religion, or any such 
 thing in the matter of my mailing list : so oc- 
 casionally, I have read in the responses, things 
 that perhaps I would not personally and fully 
 endorse ; yet it is only fair that we should lis- 
 ten to every man ; here is what such an one 
 says : 
 
 " My profession being that of a monopolist, 
 the essential thing is to know how to take ad- 
 vantage of our bad laws. Generally speaking, 
 success in life depends a great deal on chance, 
 but the chances are more in favor of the man 
 who puts his whole heart in his work." 
 
 I think we will challenge a part of that 
 statement, not because of piety, but because 
 thirty-eight other successful men have made 
 no reference to chance in the matter of success ; 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 79 
 
 they do not seem to think that Chance had 
 anything to do with it ; they gave us a com- 
 piled list of sixty-seven virtues, but only one 
 of them had anything to say of chance; on the 
 whole, therefore, I think it is a wise thing to 
 take the word of the thirty-eight men and not 
 depend much on chance. 
 
 Young men, why is it that I have brought 
 this theme to your attention ? Why is it that 
 I have undertaken the great labor of communi- 
 cating with these various forty successful men ? 
 It is that I may be a help to you in your suc- 
 cess in life. You cannot afford to pass these 
 matters over lightly ; I have given you things 
 that you must meet face to face. We are told, 
 and told with truth, that " it is more difficult for 
 the average young man, unassisted by capital 
 or influential friends, to make a success in life 
 now, than it was years ago, and it will, no 
 doubt, be harder in the years to come. This 
 grows out of the fact, largely, that competition 
 is increasing rapidly, and large capital and 
 strong influence are used to secure business." 
 
 But I want to tell you that if a young man, 
 without a cent in his pocket, will drink in 
 and absorb these foregoing principles he will 
 
80 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 possess not only a large capital, but the best 
 kind of a capital. A poor brain and a poor 
 heart are a thousand-fold more of a drawback 
 to a young man than a poor father. 
 
 It all depends upon the question whether a 
 young fellow wants to make a successful MAN 
 or a successful MACHINE. If a man, then you 
 must have these principles that go into man- 
 hood ; if a machine, then be content to be a 
 mere well-working automaton. If you want 
 to get up, " study the needs of the position 
 that is just above yours." Every young man 
 ought to be an understudy of the man that is 
 just above him. You must do more than 
 simply please ; you must make an actual de- 
 mand for yourself. You can take your posi- 
 tion in life, in business, and make a belt of it, 
 and slip that belt around your neck, and have 
 it run you as a machine, but it will not be 
 pleasant or profitable in the long run. 
 
 Mr. Bok, whom I have before quoted, said 
 that in New York the demand for the right 
 kind of young men is far in excess of the sup- 
 ply. " Positions of trust are constantly going 
 begging for the right kind of young men to 
 fill them." What is meant? Graduates of 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 8l 
 
 foot-ball teams ? Not necessarily, though 
 many of them are the right sort ; but men who 
 have in them the root principles that we have 
 been discussing. 
 
 A manufacturer said : " If the right kind of 
 a young man came along who could tell us 
 something about our business, do you think 
 we would let him slip through our fingers?'" 
 You may laugh at the thought of this; the idea 
 of your being able to tell your employer any- 
 thing about his business ; but a great many of 
 you could give him the batting record of Dan. 
 Brouthers ; you could tell him about the 
 three great battles of Corbett, and why it was 
 and how it was that he " put Mitchell to 
 sleep "; you could chat with him by the hour 
 concerning the history and advantages of the 
 " flying wedge " in foot-ball ; but if you would 
 study the table of markets as well as the column 
 of sports, — if you knew something about the 
 wheat production of Germany, and the oil pro- 
 duction of Russia, — if you would study the 
 theories of social science, these things would 
 give you a better grasp on the position that is 
 just above you, than any knowledge of turf, 
 ring, or oval records. 
 
82 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 In Other words, KEEP ABREAST OF THE POS- 
 SIBILITIES OF YOUR POSITION. Enter into 
 the spirit of the thing that is cut out for you. 
 New thoughts are born out of full brains ; 
 ambition is nothing unless there are rounds 
 in the ladder by which you can climb up. 
 Your business is to have the material ready so 
 as to put in those rounds yourselves. Remem- 
 ber that the men " occupying the most im- 
 portant positions in life to-day, are self-made 
 men ; men whose chief education has come to 
 them from contact with the world." The 
 time may come, in the twentieth century, 
 when the social leaders will be born to it, 
 made for it by their fathers ; but I doubt it ; 
 the world does not elect its leaders ; they are 
 self-elected and self-crowned ; there's a chance 
 for every one, and there's a chance for you. 
 
 I saw a sign displayed the other day, in one 
 of our large buildings : " The elevator has 
 stopped running ; better take the stairs." 
 Somehow, the words kept jingling in my brain 
 all day; " The elevator has stopped running ; 
 better take the stairs." What are you doing? — 
 waiting around for something to turn up? 
 Making no use of your time, until an opening 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 83 
 
 occurs? Relying on some one else to do for 
 you what you ought to do for yourself? 
 Dresuning golden dreams for the future ? — Ah, 
 my boy, " The elevator has stopped running ; 
 better take the stairs." 
 
 Forty men have spoken to }ou to-night ; 
 there was no elevator for them ; they climbed 
 up ; and if we are going to get up, we must 
 needs climb. 
 
 Forty men at the summit fought their way 
 up there from the bottom. Forty ! ^^'hy, the 
 world of history sparkles with the names of 
 such. Columbus was the son of a weaver ; 
 Homer, of a small farmer ; Demosthenes, of a 
 cutler ; Franklin, of a tallow-chandler ; Shake- 
 speare, of a dealer in wood ; Robert Bums was 
 a plowman ; Napoleon was of an obscure family 
 on Corsica ; John Jacob Astor sold apples on 
 the streets of New York ; A. T. Stewart swept 
 out his own store ; Cornelius Vanderbilt laid 
 the foundation of his vast fortune on a gift of 
 fifty dollars ; Lincoln was a rail-splitter, Grant 
 was a tanner, Garfield was a tow-boy on the 
 canal. 
 
 It has been said that cash cannot take the 
 place of character. ]\Iany young men find fault 
 
84 HOW TO SUCCEED. 
 
 with their hard times ; was it an easy thing to 
 learn to swim ? — No ; I nearly drowned when 
 I learned. The best thing to do is to throw a 
 young man overboard. No man ever so 
 drowned that was worth saving, says Rev. 
 Madison C. Peters. 
 
 I think that if we learn anything from the 
 story of the forty lives, it is this : that no suc- 
 cess is easily made ; these men all succeeded, 
 but they all worked ; worked hard from their 
 earliest years. But why not ? If we have the 
 spirits of young men, we have the spirit of all 
 this. I wish you success, but I wish it to you 
 in the right way, and I wish it to you for the 
 right ends. 
 
 I will not conclude this lecture with a list of 
 morals or of maxims ; I simply point you to 
 the men, and to their words. I selected them 
 because I knew that they had succeeded ; but 
 I did not know what they would say. To me, 
 there has come inspiration from their words ; 
 I want this inspiration to so take hold of and 
 possess you, that each one of you may look 
 through lenses of difificulty and through them 
 see the outlines of successful lives. 
 
 The twentieth century is waitingforyou ; your 
 
HOW TO SUCCEED. 8S 
 
 hands are to be the ones to help erect her first 
 pillars ; may those hands be pure ; may the 
 hearts behind them be consecrated to great 
 ends ; and may the pillars themselves be Cor- 
 inthian for symmetry, Ionic for delicacy, and 
 Doric for strength. At that time, most of my 
 correspondents will be in their graves; but 
 you will be alive, please God, to catch up and 
 worthily wear their mantles, if grace be in you. 
 
III. 
 
 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 86 
 
Looking diligently, lest any man /a^Z— HE- 
 BREWS xii. 15. 
 
 87 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 There is inborn in every man an earnest 
 wish to succeed ; to reach the goal at which 
 he will find power and influence ; to be honor- 
 ed by the world and looked up to by men. 
 There are people in the world who fear assign- 
 ment, business failure, more than they fear 
 eternal perdition ; who guard th^sir dollars with 
 infinitely more pains than they guard their 
 souls. But my purpose just now is not to draw 
 any parallels between the flesh and the spirit, 
 but to deal entirely with the subject of failure 
 as it lies this side of the grave. 
 
 I wish I might be able to prepare a lecture 
 on this subject derived from the testimony of 
 forty men who have failed. But I cannot do 
 that ; I cannot go to forty such men and ask 
 them to open their hearts and histories to me. 
 But just as I had as lief go to Prof. Sargeant, 
 professor of athletics in Harvard College, and 
 
 ask him how to steer clear of physical disabil- 
 
 (88) 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 89 
 
 ity, just as I had as lief go to an eminent 
 statesman and ask him for a diagnosis of a pot- 
 house politician, so do I feel myself free in 
 going to forty successful men and asking their 
 advice with respect to the things that lead to 
 loss. Every young man before me ought to be 
 ablaze with the desire to get on in the world ; to 
 shine in the firmament of men ; you want to be 
 guided by no light that fails ; you want a sort of 
 mental Goddess of Liberty erected in the har- 
 bor of your brain. You want the environment 
 to be flooded with good clear electric light. 
 Very well ; I have just this kind of illumina- 
 tion to bring you. 
 
 The forty gentlemen who have so kindly 
 consented to correspond with me upon these 
 themes have already spoken to you, through 
 me, upon the general subject of success. It 
 will be evident to you, that in a general line 
 of argument, the obverse of the general causes 
 of success will prove to be the general causes 
 of failure. Every mainspring of success is a 
 mainspring of failure when wound around the 
 other way. But in addition to that general line 
 of argument I am glad to say that I have even 
 better than that to offer you ; I have a large 
 
90 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 number of definite, clear-cut, undeniable reasons 
 set forth by my correspondents, telling with 
 cogency and power just how a young man can 
 start out in the world and make the least of 
 himself. I have taken the scores of answers 
 sent me on this point and given them some 
 sort of a general classification, and I have no 
 doubt but that we will all be impressed by the 
 deep significance of these replies. 
 
 Remember that my correspondents are not 
 old ladies ; that they are not superannuated 
 ministers ; they are not dealing in social 
 goody-goodies. They are not theoretical col- 
 lege professors, more familiar with the silver 
 question at Washington than with the silver 
 dollars in their own pockets. But our present 
 instructors are men who are standing in the 
 front ranks of the world to-day ; most of them 
 are quoted with large figures in Bradstreet ; I 
 do not say that in the future they may never 
 make assignment, for the Lord only knows 
 what a day may bring forth ; but they are not 
 making assignment now ; and even if some of 
 them ever should, it would in no wise vitiate 
 the strength of their words, for they all have 
 made at least one assured success in their lives 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 91 
 
 — a success which the future can never gain- 
 say. 
 
 Our entire lecture will deal with the replies 
 received to this one question : " What, in 
 your observation, are the chief causes of the 
 failure in life of business or professional men, 
 barring of course periods of national financial 
 depression ? " 
 
 First, I want to give you the collection of 
 reasons that were assigned in brief ; many of 
 my correspondents gave me reasons that were 
 expressed in a very few words. I have gath- 
 ered them all together in one long list ; some 
 of them may be, and doubtless are, repetitions 
 in other words of other statements ; but I have 
 put them down just as they appeared in the 
 replies of the men. And as we canvass 
 them, I want you to look at them as simply 
 a list of symptoms in a socially sick man. So 
 here they are ; causes of failures, expressed 
 briefly : 
 
 Bad habits ; bad judgment ; bad luck • bad 
 associates ; carelessness of details ; constant as- 
 suming of unjustifiable risks ; desire to become 
 rich too fast ; drinking ; dishonest dealings ; 
 dislike of retrenchment; dislike to say "no" 
 
g2 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 at the proper time ; disregard of the Golden 
 Rule ; drifting with the tide ; expensive habits 
 of life ; extravagance ; envy ; failure to appre- 
 ciate one's surroundings ; failure to grasp one's 
 opportunities ; frequent changes from one busi- 
 ness to another ; fooling away of time in pur- 
 suit of a so-called " good-time "; gambling ; 
 inattention ; incompetent assistants ; incom- 
 petency ; indolence ; jealousy. 
 
 And then comes a long list of " lacks "; study 
 them carefully : 
 
 Lack of attention to business ; of applica- 
 tion ; of adaptation ; of ambition ; of business 
 methods ; of capital ; of conservatism ; of close 
 attention to business ; of confidence in self ; of 
 careful accounting ; of careful observation ; of 
 definite purpose ; of discipline in early life ; of 
 discernment of character ; of enterprise ; of en- 
 ergy ; of economy ; of faithfulness ; of faith in 
 one's calling ; of industry ; of integrity ; of 
 judgment ; of knowledge of business require- 
 ments ; of manly character ; of natural ability ; 
 of perseverance ; of pure principles ; of proper 
 courtesy toward people ; of purpose ; of pluck ; 
 of perseverance ; of promptness in meeting 
 business engagements ; of system. 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 93 
 
 Then, too, other reasons beside the lack of 
 things were mentioned, such as : 
 
 Late hours ; living beyond one's income ; 
 leaving too much to one's employees ; neglect 
 of details ; no inborn love for one's calling ; 
 over-confidence in the stability of existing con- 
 ditions ; procrastination ; speculative mania ; 
 Sabbath-breaking ; selfishness ; self-indulgence 
 in small vices ; studying ease rather than vigil- 
 ance ; social demoralization ; thoughtless mar- 
 riages ; trusting your own work to others ; un- 
 desirable location ; unwillingness to pay the 
 price of success ; unwillingness to bear early 
 privations ; waste ; yielding too easily to dis- 
 couragement. 
 
 Young men, this is a highly significant list 
 of reasons for failure ; who is there of us who 
 can look into this list and say : " I answer up 
 to none of these things." If there is such an 
 one, he is too perfect to live. 
 
 When I take up the great mass of testimony 
 furnished me by my forty correspondents in 
 respect to reasons for failure, I not only find 
 this foregoing long list of specific reasons, but 
 when I sit down to analyze and dissect this testi- 
 mony, I find that there are certain things which 
 
94 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 seem to weigh with especial burden upon the 
 hearts and minds of a great many of my corre- 
 spondents. 
 
 One of these things is the curse to a young 
 man of a lacking concentration of his energies. 
 As a highly prospered coal merchant says : 
 " The rolling stone character is ever before 
 us." 
 
 Look into your Bibles ; the rolling stones 
 mentioned there were those that covered 
 graves. But what, after all, is a "rolling 
 stone" character? I have some good side- 
 lights to throw upon that from out of the 
 answers of my correspondents. 
 
 A statesman, whose name is known from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific, says : " Young men fail 
 by reason of associations which distract men's 
 thoughts from what should be the main pur- 
 pose of each particular life." The president 
 of a prominent Cleveland bank puts the same 
 thing in different words, when he says : " Too 
 many irons in the fire ; the ' one thing I do ' 
 sort of a man is the one that surely 'gets 
 there.' " A leading merchant puts the matter in 
 this shape : " Taking up a business of which one 
 knows nothing, and changing from one bust- 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 95 
 
 ness to another because of slight reverses." 
 In almost identical words with these, a man of 
 great social prominence and wealth says : " In 
 many cases I think failure comes from not stick- 
 ing to one thing. Too many changes are 
 made." 
 
 Young men, you see from what these gentle- 
 men tell us that concentration means collec- 
 tion into a central point ; compression into a 
 narrow space ; it means the state of being 
 brought to a point (Webster). When the Di- 
 vine man tells us that we cannot serve God 
 and mammon, He means Concentration. 
 
 These are days of keen competition ; days 
 when " forty winks " may mean failure. Too 
 many arrows in the quiver may mean the blunt- 
 ing of the edges of them all ; too many irons 
 in the fire may mean a cool side to every one 
 of them. I ask you : During business hours, 
 where are all your thoughts ? There is only 
 one business wherein they can afford to go 
 wool-gathering, and that is, the wool business. 
 
 The best endeavors are killed by too much 
 diversion of thoughts ; trying to do one thing 
 faithfully, and yet thinking of another thing. 
 It has been written that a " young man's per- 
 
96 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 sonal letters have no right to come to his office 
 address." And I will add, that a young man is 
 treading dangerous territory who is afraid to 
 have his mail delivered at any other place. 
 But apart from this, a man's business office is 
 no proper place for social visiting. By it there 
 will come a weakness to the integrity of calm 
 business thought. I think this is common 
 sense ; and a Representative of the United 
 States Congress writes me that " lack of com- 
 mon sense is far more disastrous than lack of 
 book-learning." 
 
 Speaking upon the subject of failure, I find 
 that the treasurer of one of the largest corpo- 
 rations in the country hits a great big thump- 
 ing bass note, when he says : " Failure often 
 comes from a desire to become rich too fast." 
 And a leading Eastern capitalist gives a com- 
 mentary on this thought when he says : " Also 
 the over-ambitious man who risks too much, 
 extends his time of credit too far, neglects to 
 pay cash, or at any rate to pay first as agreed." 
 There are ^ome things that this will lead to, 
 as surely as day will lead to night ; and 
 one of them is speculation ; speculation is 
 simply, who is going to get the wool? You, or 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 97 
 
 the other fellow ? And I notice that it so often 
 happens that it is the other fellow. 
 
 It is not only a moral and a spiritual thing 
 not to gamble, not to speculate, but it is a safe 
 thing. Everybody knows this, but the trouble 
 is that so many think that they will be the 
 hundredth lucky fellow. The Athenians had 
 their altar to the " Unknown God," and so has 
 America. He is a treacherous deity to wor- 
 ship ; keep at it long enough and you will fail ; 
 you may be fond of indulging in " flyers," but 
 many a man's " flyer " has had waxen wings 
 that melt too soon, and the thing becomes a 
 "tumbler." 
 
 You all know how our land is flooded over with 
 schemes for quickly getting rich ; how many 
 things there are that promise to give a man 
 riches for a few dollars; and the thing held 
 out as bait is a dividend at a large rate per 
 cent. But we all like to be humbugged, es- 
 pecially if the bug is a gold one. A writer 
 puts this thing very tersely when he says : 
 " Know this : that no man will give you a dol- 
 lar for fifty cents, unless it is a counterfeit. 
 Gold mines never go begging for stockholders, 
 nor anything else that's good. A fine spring 
 
g8 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 chicken on your plate is worth a whole flock of 
 geese on the wing. Leave speculation alone to 
 the men who can afford to lose money." But 
 there are hundreds of young men who, for 
 years to come, will have no temptation to 
 speculate in railroad securities, western mort- 
 gages, grain, cotton futures, or silver holes 
 in the earth, for the simple reason that you 
 will not have money enough for the manipu- 
 lators to " let you in." 
 
 Many a young man tries to add to his in- 
 come by the pool-room ; and I know of no better 
 way of coaxing failure to come and sit on your 
 roof-tree than to frequent the pool-rooms of 
 our great cities. 
 
 I personally know of many young men, 
 and some professional men whose lives have 
 been blighted by frequenting the pool-room. 
 You see, it does not require much money ; you 
 are not obliged to be a millionaire to speculate 
 in a pool-room. Off somewhere, a few fast 
 horses will be trotting a race, and the fast 
 horses there mean the fast men in the pool- 
 room, for " fast horses make fast men," though 
 it is a shame that they should. 
 
 I have visited some young fellows in their 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 99 
 
 prison cells, who were brought there by trying 
 to get rich fast in the pool-room. If you want 
 to surely fail, just stick to that sort of thing ; 
 just forget that little poem of James Whit- 
 comb Riley, which runs like this : 
 
 WHO BIDES HIS TIME. 
 
 Who bides his time, and day by day 
 
 Faces defeat full patiently, 
 And lifts a mirthful roundelay. 
 
 However poor his fortunes be, — 
 He will not fail in any qualm 
 
 Of poverty — the paltry dime 
 It will grow golden in his palm. 
 
 Who bides his time. 
 
 Who bides his time — he tastes the sweet 
 
 Of honey in the saltest tear ; 
 And though he fares with slowest feet, 
 
 Joy runs to meet him drawing near ; 
 The birds are heralds of his cause, 
 
 And like a never-ending rhyme, 
 The roadsides bloom in his applause. 
 
 Who bides his time. 
 
 Who bides his time, and fevers not 
 
 In the hot race that none achieves, 
 Shall wear cool-wreathen laurel, wrought 
 
 With crimson berries in the leaves ; 
 And he shall reign a goodly king. 
 
 And sway his hand o'er every clime. 
 With peace writ on his signet ring, 
 
 Who bides his time.* 
 
 * " Old-Fashioned Roses," by James Witcomb Riley, p. 69. 
 
100 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 We see a man who is in too much of a hurry 
 to get rich ; things go too slow for him ; as 
 some of my correspondents say — " they are 
 unwilHng to pay the price of success, which 
 price is to bear early privations." So what 
 next ? The next and natural step in failure ; 
 as one of our most prominent and upright 
 judges says, " ambition to show for greater 
 force, moneyed or mental, than they actually 
 have." In other words, the peacock's feathers 
 in the jackdaw's tail. Many of my correspond- 
 ents speak of the same thing ; living beyond 
 one's means ; or, as a prominent lake merchant 
 puts it: " Spreading out too much, and spending 
 more than one's income." Nothing under 
 heaven save a miracle can prevent this sort of 
 thing from ending in a total smash-up. To 
 spend two dollars when you only have one 
 dollar legitimately, means either a business 
 credit that will some day be lost, or gambling 
 to make up for things, or else downright theft 
 and embezzlement. 
 
 Over-display is not only risky, but it's in bad 
 taste. There are too many plush curtains down- 
 stairs, and corn-husk mattresses up-stairs, in 
 this world of ours. Too many dollars spent 
 
now TO FAIL. lOI 
 
 for club fees, and shillings for the laundry. 
 Too many men trying to pass for wise, who in 
 reality are only half-wise ; over-display means 
 under-concealment some day. It is far better 
 to sail with ballast and centre-board, than to 
 leave them behind and crowd on too much sail ; 
 you may not go so fast, or cut so much of a 
 dash, but you are more likely to get there 
 dry. 
 
 I notice that a good many of my correspond- 
 ents speak of drink as a prolific cause of failure. 
 Some call it alcohol, some call it whiskey, 
 some rum, — but they all mean the same thing ; 
 they mean the occasional or the frequent be- 
 fuddling of the brain with liquor. 
 
 I speak of this now, not as a moral issue, 
 nor as a religious issue, but simply as a com- 
 mon-sense issue, since successful men tell me 
 that it leads to failure. I would be a fool to 
 spend my time at any certain place if I knew 
 that by remaining there long enough I would 
 contract small-pox; with all that my profession 
 means to me and others, I would be a fool to 
 indulge in any sport that would in due time 
 tend to make me blind or deaf. Why do 
 young men who want to get on in the world 
 
I02 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 fool with whiskey ? Why do they think that 
 they can dissipate one night and not fall under 
 the average the next day? " It is a rough but 
 true saying that a man cannot drink whiskey 
 and be in business." 
 
 Then, too, another great enemy of business 
 success is so-called " society "; the society that 
 thinks with its heels, and takes its nourish- 
 ment out of a bottle. One hour of that thing at 
 night breathes mildew over every three hours 
 of work the next day ; and those three hours 
 are either squinting toward success or failure. 
 Sleep is one of the most important ingredients 
 in the prescription for success; "Sleep is only 
 nature's banking system of principal and inter- 
 est." Squander it unworthily, and every time 
 you do, you lessen your bank deposit, and have 
 less to draw on for success. Do you want a 
 great lever in your hand for success ? Then 
 find it in a fresh and a clear brain. Do you 
 want to spike down a tie across the rails for a 
 smash-up? Then come to your daily work 
 with an aching brain, a muddled judgment, 
 and trembling nerves. It will only be a ques- 
 tion of time. 
 
 Now I turn again with renewed interest to 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 103 
 
 my great budget of correspondence, to see what 
 else our forty men have had to say concerning 
 the matter of failure. 
 
 A man who sat for a generation in the 
 House of Representatives wrote me that it often 
 came " from an unwise or unfortunate confi- 
 dence in others." I despise a man who goes 
 through the world holding every man in suspic- 
 ion ; who thinks with the old cynic that " every 
 man has his price." To trust nobody is to 
 prove yourself eminently unworthy of trust ; 
 but a man does not need to be a simpleton in 
 order to be trustful ; we simply have to use 
 our judgment. And a leading dry-goods man 
 remarks that failure often comes from poor 
 judgment ; from an inability to discern the 
 character of others. 
 
 Some have spoken upon the matter of thrift ; 
 as a certain millionaire puts it : " unwillingness 
 to economize on the start, hoping that some 
 fortunate turn in affairs will bring fortune and 
 fame." 
 
 Others, realizing that this lesson may be 
 over-learned, see a peculiar but a true reason 
 for failure, as a certain prominent man puts it, 
 " in a lack of ability to steer between the 
 
I04 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 Scylla of spendthriftness and the Charybdis of 
 miserliness." In other words, not to be too 
 stingy, or too generous. 
 
 This is a hard path to steer ; no man is so 
 despicable as the man who sponges ; who gets 
 all he can, and yields up nothing ; who saves 
 and hoards, and says with the leech, " give, 
 give," but gives nothing himself. That man 
 may not financially fail, but he will fail in every 
 other way. And after all, it is not all of life 
 to " have." 
 
 But on the other hand, there is the over- 
 generous man ; the kind of man that will take 
 the shirt off his back to give to the poor ; but 
 what is the use of it, after all, if he catches 
 pneumonia by it and dies ? There is the safe 
 middle course in which we ought to all try and 
 steer. 
 
 Yet one of my correspondents seems to think 
 that city boys are in no danger of steering 
 upon the rock of miserliness. This gentleman, 
 the proprietor of a large iron industry, says : 
 " Much failure comes from non-attention to 
 habits of saving, habits that are usually of 
 necessity instilled into the minds of boys 
 brought up in the country ; and from my ex- 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 105 
 
 perience," he says, " such habits are almost im- 
 possible to teach the city-bred boys." 
 
 I do not think that I would have put it quite 
 as strongly as that ;_ there is a great deal of 
 heroism in a fellow's being thrifty when he has 
 feo be ; but there is more virtue in a fellow's 
 being thrifty when he thinks it's best to be. 
 Rusticity almost invariably enforces thrift ; but 
 in a city, a fellow can more often choose for 
 himself whether he will be prodigal or miserly. 
 
 I would dislike to think it impossible to 
 teach thrift to a city boy. No, I will not think 
 so ; I think differently. I think that hundreds 
 of young men are learning and practicing this 
 lesson. 
 
 But there is one thing sure, and I think that 
 a leading capitalist hits the nail on the head 
 when he says : " Men fail when they are not 
 adapted to the work in which they are occu- 
 pied ; I am a believer in the truth that every 
 man should be called to his work, as was Paul ; 
 — though comparatively few are called to the 
 same work as was Paul." True enough; and 
 yet there is a certain luxurious sound to that, 
 is there not ? As if all young men could wait 
 around until just the thing for which they 
 
Io6 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 think themselves adapted turns up. Yet there 
 is nothing more important to you than to try 
 and find out the thing for which you are the 
 best adapted. Find out the thing you can best 
 do, and make that thing the order of your Hfe. 
 
 But this may take some time ; it may per- 
 haps take you clean up to your majority : what 
 then ? Shall you be in the meantime idle, earn- 
 ing nothing, just hanging around living on 
 your father, waiting for the revelation of an 
 adaptation ? By no means ; work at some- 
 thing, study at something, redeem the time ; 
 remember what some of my correspondents 
 said about constantly reading along some given 
 and instructive line, and in due time you will 
 see a vision and hear a voice ; and that vision 
 and voice will guide you on, and there will be 
 success rather than failure for you. 
 
 But the above pre-supposes some mental abil- 
 ity and shrewdness on the part of the young 
 man ; and I am reminded that a correspondent 
 gives as one reason for failure, the fact of 
 one's being " born without ability, or brain to 
 acquire it." 
 
 It looks to me as though that were rather a 
 polite definition of a fool : one born without 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 107 
 
 ability, or brain to acquire it. But there are 
 very few young men these days who cannot do 
 a great deal toward making up for early de- 
 ficiencies if they want to ; you remember how 
 much was said upon that point by my corre- 
 spondents in the first lecture. 
 
 But you may put to me the conundrum : 
 " Can a natural born fool ever become any- 
 thing else ? " And I am forced to give you 
 the honest and candid answer : " No ; I think 
 that he will have to live and die as he was 
 born." But you may press me further than 
 that : you may ask of me to tell you how a 
 natural born fool would act ; what he would 
 do in order to insure failure to himself and his 
 business career. 
 
 I am glad that I am not forced to answer 
 that question on my own responsibility ; but 
 that I have an answer gathered from the wealth 
 of correspondence that I have had upon this 
 subject of failure. So all I have to do is to go 
 back to the first part of this lecture and recall 
 some things that were given as sure elements 
 in failure ; if so, a man is a fool to let them 
 enter into his own make-up. But if he will 
 persist in being foolish, if he will insist on in- 
 
I08 HOW TO FAIL. 
 
 viting failure, then here is the way for him to 
 go about it : Form bad habits, and keep bad 
 associates ; let him drink and be dishonest, and 
 forget the Golden Rule ; let him fear to say 
 " no," and drift with the tide ; let him gamble 
 and indulge himself in laziness ; let him have a 
 lordly disdain for application and correct busi- 
 ness methods ; let him think himself to be fee- 
 ble, incompetent, worthless ; if he does, every- 
 body else will, — the world largely takes a man 
 at his own valuation ; let him sneer at early 
 discipline, laugh at holding a definite purpose, 
 and think that economy is good for only poor 
 people ; let him think that there is no especial 
 value in possessing a manly character, and in 
 having everybody think well of him ; let him 
 go through the world careless of people's feel- 
 ings, — a boor in society, — a trial to his own 
 best friends ; let him think that it makes no 
 difference if he keeps his engagements ten 
 minutes late ; let him procrastinate, — never do- 
 ing to-day what he can put off until to-morrow, 
 and never doing to-morrow what he can get 
 some one else to do ; let him drink and swear 
 and break the Sabbath ; let him forget or tram- 
 ple on the laws of virtue and purity ; let him 
 
HOW TO FAIL. 109 
 
 become a prodigal son, and live in open sin, 
 trusting that somewhere and sometime there 
 is a stable with a fattening calf in it waiting 
 for him. Let him lead that kind of a life, and 
 follow that kind of a program ! What are 
 these things ? The brand of Cain ? No ; they 
 are the marks of a fool ; yes, of a fool, because 
 not a single one of them is necessary. You 
 can all choose just the opposite things if you 
 want to. It is merely a question of choice ; 
 merely a question of " looking diligently lest 
 any man fail." 
 
IV- 
 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
"And showing mercy unto thousands of them 
 that love me and keep my commandments" 
 
 — Exodus xx. 6. 
 
 JII 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 We now reach the fourth and final lecture 
 in this course that has been devoted to the in- 
 trinsic subject of success in life. 
 
 Our first examination showed us the influ- 
 ence of youth and early discipline on the char- 
 acter of the subsequent life. Our second lec- 
 ture dealt with the fundamental principles of 
 success as such. Our third was a revelation of 
 what would prove and produce failure ; — and 
 now, in the final discourse on this theme, we 
 are naturally and logically brought face to face 
 with the bearing of religion upon success ; 
 and if, for the success and general well-being of 
 one, then for the multitude, for society at large. 
 During the course of these lectures we have 
 had forty of the best men in the community in 
 the witness-box. Any plaintiff with a panel of 
 forty such witnesses at his command would win 
 any possible suit at law in any possible court. 
 We now propose to hear them once more, and 
 finally ; and as our purpose is to speak con- 
 
 (112) 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. II 3 
 
 cerning the value of the most valuable thing 
 in the world, we rejoice that we are to have 
 along these lines the testimony of judges, sci- 
 entists, merchants, statesmen, journalists, and 
 college professors. 
 
 You readily believed these men when they 
 spoke to you about the relative values of edu- 
 cation for relative pursuits in life. When they 
 testified about the elements that would lead to 
 success, you believed them ; when they proph- 
 esied of the things that would nine times out 
 of ten develop failure, you have taken their 
 word ; and now I ask you, as they shall speak 
 upon THE WORTH OF RELIGION IN EVERY 
 LIFE, that you give them equally fair hearing 
 and endorsement. 
 
 Remember that these men are not evangel- 
 ists or pastors ; remember that they are not 
 from theological seminaries ; remember that 
 when I sent them my list of fifteen printed 
 questions I was absolutely ignorant concerning 
 the religious character of nine out of ten of 
 them, and hence did not send the questions to 
 men selected with a view of obtaining favor- 
 able religious testimony. If these men had 
 sneered at religion, or given it a secondary 
 
I 14 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 place, or even condemned it, I declare unto 
 you, you would have received their testimony 
 in your iiearing with utter impartiality. And 
 though, even as it is, I may not endorse every- 
 thing that I shall give you from them, yet I 
 will in perfect honesty give you the entire bur- 
 den of their testimony, suppressing nothing. 
 
 I have taken as the basal idea of this lecture 
 these words : " And showing mercy unto thou- 
 sands of them that love me and keep my com- 
 mandments." I take them because they seem 
 to explain to me many things. I do not say, 
 and I do not believe, that God is under any 
 pledge, any guarantee, to make all His servants 
 rich and prosperous, in the worldly sense ; I 
 will not say that the very best and most conse- 
 crated and purest Christian in the world has 
 any right to look up into the face of God and 
 repeat the old question of Peter : " Behold, we 
 have forsaken all and followed Thee ; what 
 shall we have, therefore ? " 
 
 The question of discipleship in this world, 
 is not " what we have," but what we are ; 
 not the big pocket-book, but the big heart ; 
 not the account-book free from bad debts, but 
 the heart free from bad sins. 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. II 5 
 
 Nevertheless I desire to be on record as say- 
 ing, that the indirect result of religion is very 
 often worldly prosperity ; and why not ? You 
 remember, perhaps, the long list of virtues I 
 gave you in the lecture on success, virtues 
 which my forty correspondents told us were 
 the essential elements of success ; very well ; 
 if religion inculcates most, if not all, of those 
 virtues, then religion is indirectly responsible 
 for a large measure of success. Common mor- 
 ality will do the same thing, but in a much 
 lesser degree. Many irreligious men, yes, many 
 wicked and humoral men, have become rich, 
 and are becoming richer every day. But I 
 want you to tear from your minds, as you 
 would a tumor from your body, the thought 
 that they are men of true success. 
 
 Success not only implies a bank account ; 
 it not only implies a large following of admir- 
 ers and perhaps imitators ; but it implies the 
 respect of all good men ; it implies the shed- 
 ding abroad of such an influence in the world 
 that the general average of good will be raised 
 higher ; it implies the development of the 
 Christlike image within, and supremely, the 
 bestowal of God's approval without. These 
 
Il6 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 things are elements in the best success ; to 
 possess them, one must be in the line of 
 God's love and God's commandments. And 
 to those who are standing in that line, who 
 are more or less blessed with spiritual ancestry, 
 and who themselves look up into the face of 
 God and say, " Our Father," — to them comes 
 supremely the mercy of God, which mercy, be- 
 ing analyzed, will be found to possess within 
 itself the hidden, brilliant thing called " suc- 
 cess." Therefore the fundamental thought : 
 " And showing mercy unto thousands of them 
 that love me and keep my commandments." 
 
 And now that I may have your hearty agree- 
 ment with me in all these propositions, I pro- 
 • pose to put my forty men into the witness-box 
 and let them give in their testimony. 
 
 As their attorney, I shall call them up ; but 
 they have not been coached by me ; they are 
 not that kind of witnesses ; neither am I that 
 kind of an attorney. I have not asked them 
 to give me any evidence favorable to my case. 
 I know now what they are going to say, but I 
 did not know, when I asked them to say it. 
 
 First, it is proper that we should find out 
 something about the witnesses themselves. 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 11/ 
 
 Who are they ? That you know already ; 
 you know their standing in the world of men ; 
 you know their leadership in the worlds of 
 business, finance, letters, professions, arts and 
 sciences, and in manufacture. 
 
 But who are they ? From what do they 
 come ? What is the parent stock ? What is 
 the message of their ancestry ? You cannot 
 separate these things from character and from 
 success, any more than the dealer in race-horses 
 will separate the character of the colt from 
 that of the sire. 
 
 Listen ; forty men means a total of eighty 
 parents ; and I find that sixty-six of these par- 
 ents were professing Christians ! Two were of 
 Jewish belief, and doubtless as devoted in their 
 faith as are we in ours. Of these eighty par- 
 ents, therefore, all but twelve were religious 
 people. And of those twelve, an honored cor- 
 respondent tells me there were two who were his 
 parents, and who were devoted Christians, but 
 who never made public confession of their faith. 
 
 But I look at our census returns again, and 
 note another interesting fact. In that total of 
 sixty-six parents who were professing Christians 
 (two other parents being loyal Jews and two 
 
11 8 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 others undoubtedly Christian, though not pro- 
 fessors), we find that the returns give the fol- 
 lowing division : thirty instances in which both 
 parents were professors, and six instances in 
 which but one parent was a professor. That 
 parent zvas invariably the mother I In other 
 words, thirty-six of my forty correspondents 
 had Christian mothers, and thirty-eight of 
 them had religious mothers. Only two irrelig- 
 ious mothers out of the forty ! 
 
 Oh, you mothers, who love your sons, and 
 croon over them when they are babies, and 
 watch over their cradles, as they who watch 
 for the morning, and dream dreams for them, 
 and in those dreams paint out for them such 
 futures, — futures wherein they, the sons of 
 your loins, will be the heroes of a coming gen- 
 eration, leaders among men, honored, looked 
 up to, successful in all things ; and yet you out 
 of Christ, — caring but little for God in the 
 world ! Does it mean nothing to you now, 
 when I tell you that thirty-eight out of my 
 forty correspondents had a religious mother, 
 and that seventy of these eighty parents were 
 religious parents ? 
 
 Parents, I tell you, you take an awful respon- 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. II9 
 
 sibility for the future of your children when 
 you keep yourselves out of Christ. I will say 
 nothing of your own responsibility ; of your 
 own loss ; but I plead with you, in their stead, 
 be ye reconciled to God. 
 
 It may be that many a little one is happy in 
 God's presence now, because God did not want 
 them to stay down here and grow up failures, 
 because of parents who themselves failed in 
 love for God. 
 
 I not only speak for the value of religious 
 ancestry, but I have shown you that value, 
 with a startling testimony that cannot be gain- 
 said. And I want now to put one witness on 
 the stand, — a man who controls large numbers 
 of men, and who stands at the head of a great 
 manufacturing concern in the east. He has a 
 piece of evidence to give that will make you 
 think. He says : " My ancestors were Luther- 
 ans from the Rhine, who, by reason of per- 
 secutions in Europe, came to this country and 
 settled in New York State in 17 10. And from 
 the time that Bishop Asbury preached through 
 that section of the country in 1765, to this, 
 there has not been a break ; each and every 
 man of our ancestry down to the present has 
 
I20 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 been a member of the Methodist Church. I 
 have at different times stood at the graves of 
 each ancestor of our line unto the eighth gen- 
 eration (three generations still living), and 
 thanked God for this unbroken line of Chris- 
 tian ancestry." " Truly," he adds, " the bless- 
 ings of the Father are to the thousandth 
 generation of those who serve Him." 
 
 Think of it ! Eight generations of men, in 
 direct descent, who loved God and kept His 
 commandments ! 
 
 Now with a knowledge of the ancestry of 
 my forty correspondents, I turn to the men 
 themselves — to see what they are. 
 
 There are those who say that they do not 
 believe in infant baptism ; or in any especial 
 giving of children to the Lord ; that they will 
 leave the whole matter to be decided by the 
 children themselves when they grow up. As 
 well say that you believe in giving no especial 
 direction to the young sapling in your garden ; 
 that you will leave the whole matter of direc- 
 tion to the tree itself to settle in afterlife. 
 
 Of my forty correspondents, thirty-five are 
 church-members ; only five declare themselves 
 to the contrary. 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 121 
 
 This is simply a wonderful proportion ; it is 
 a sharp two-edged sword ; one edge cuts into 
 ancestry, the other into success. Eighty-seven 
 and a half per cent, of our forty successful men 
 are religious men by open profession. If you 
 say that religion has no bearing for success in 
 life, I throw you down the challenge of this 
 remarkable proportion 
 
 I do not say that all of these men have been 
 saints ; I do not say that their characters are 
 flawless ; but I do say that they not only think 
 enough of religion to openly endorse it and 
 try to live by it, but they are not ashamed to 
 say so. Yet even they themselves lay claim 
 to no perfection. " Yes," says one of them, 
 " but I am a Laodicean Christian, I fear." 
 
 " I am," says another, " and have been for 
 forty years. But the Church and its surround- 
 ings have done more for me than I have for 
 it." Another says : " I have been a Christian 
 from boyhood ; but I fear that this has been 
 better for me than it has for the Church." So 
 you see there is no taint of self-righteous Phari- 
 saism with them. 
 
 But I notice running all through the testi- 
 mony upon the above point, a degree of great 
 
122 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 joy and gratitude in these men ; they speak as 
 though they were proud of their allegiance to 
 Christ. " I have been a Christian for sixty-six 
 years," says a celebrated statesman. Some of 
 them say that they have followed the Master 
 from the age of thirteen or fourteen. One has 
 been an elder in the Presbyterian Church for 
 twenty-five years. Another man of blessed re- 
 pute has been a Christian, so he writes me, for 
 seventy-three years ! Think of it ! He was 
 following Christ for a long time before some of 
 your grandparents were born ! 
 
 Now I come to these men, men whom I 
 think you will accord the honor of believ- 
 ing implicitly in their statements, and I ask 
 them the clear-cut, point-blank question : "Are 
 Christian Principles a help or a hindrance to 
 Business Success?" 
 
 To this I received thirty-seven emphatic 
 replies in the affirmative, and three rather 
 qualified replies which I will give you in due 
 time. The thirty-seven men seemed not to 
 be able to find strong enough words in which 
 to answer " yes." Their whole heart seemed 
 to go out in their anxiety not to be mis- 
 understood. 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 1 23 
 
 I will give you a letter I received bearing 
 on this one subject : 
 
 "My Dear Sir: 
 
 " I had a little experience in my early Christian life 
 which I can never forget, and which is in line with 
 the inquiries you send. 
 
 " I called to talk with a man of our church upon 
 the subject of his personal duty to Christ. He met me 
 kindly, but said that in his business a man could not 
 make a success if he was a sincere Christian — e. i;., the 
 methods of successful business prosecution could net 
 be truly Christlike either in word or in deed, because 
 the competition was too keen and too contentious. 
 
 " The opinion shocked me, and from that moment I 
 resolved that I would try to show him and others like 
 him, that a man can achieve a real success in business 
 life and yet be a true and earnest lover of the Lord. 
 
 " I have lived long enough to know that this can be 
 done, and I am glad to be able to say that whatever 
 success has come to me, has been very largely because 
 I have tried to carry out the precepts of Christ, and 
 be a living witness for the truth." 
 
 This is the deposition of my first witness. 
 You can step down, sir. Your name is known 
 all over this country ; you have amassed a 
 large fortune ; you have builded and deeded 
 over to trustees large educational institutions. 
 We now know how you made your money. 
 
 I will now call a judge to the witness-stand. He 
 says : " Christian principles are a great help." 
 
124 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 I now want the House of Representatives to 
 speak : " Christian principles teach morality, 
 and give a man elevated notions in regard to 
 himself and his duties, and save him from ex- 
 pense and injurious associations." 
 
 Let Judaism give its testimony : " Religion 
 should go hand in hand in every walk of 
 life ; its ennobling influence is of incalculable 
 benefit." 
 
 I will put three bankers on the stand at 
 once : " They are a most decided help ; they 
 beget confidence and compel respect." " As 
 a rule Christian principles are indispensable ; 
 even bad men recognize this." " In my opin- 
 ion always a help, never a hindrance." 
 
 " Christian principles are undoubtedly a 
 help," says a scientist. 
 
 I want two Unitarians to speak ; one a jour- 
 nalist, the other a capitalist. The editor says: 
 " Always helpful ; they are an inspiration for 
 the best, and a quickening power for laudable 
 ambition." " More helpful than otherwise," 
 says the capitalist. 
 
 I call up another judge, and I hear him say 
 that " they are a help for courage and com- 
 fort." 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 12$ 
 
 " The spirit of Christian principles, honestly- 
 applied, is always a help," says an ex-Congress- 
 man. 
 
 Listen for the three-second testimonies that 
 come to me from men all over the room, whom 
 I will not take time to put upon the stand : 
 
 " A help." " Unquestionably a help." " The 
 greatest possible help." " An excellent help — 
 the very best." " A great help if a man lives 
 up to them as he should." 
 
 But this won't do ; I want something strong- 
 er, and yet these are strong. And so I now 
 put a man upon the stand who employs thou- 
 sands of hands in his business, and stands in 
 the front ranks of a great industry. He says : 
 " I would not dare to undertake business ex- 
 cept by the help of religious principles." 
 
 Here comes a voice from off the great lakes: 
 " Living a Christian life and having faith that 
 God will bless and assist all those who trust in 
 Him, will insure success." 
 
 A prominent apostle of culture and art will 
 now take the stand. He says : "Christian prin- 
 ciples are a necessity to true business success." 
 
 Oh, how these testimonies do pour in ! I 
 have not time to tell you who the witnesses 
 
126 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 are ; but just hear them talk : " Christian prin- 
 ciples are more than a help ; — they are posi- 
 tively essential to real success. The Word of 
 God is the best business code ever published." 
 
 " They are a help," says another, " because 
 of the principle and nerve that they give one, 
 even if we did not take into account the prin- 
 ciple of Divine assistance in business, in which 
 I am a firm believer." 
 
 " Too true is it," says another man, " that 
 the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 Out of my forty correspondents, or rather 
 my forty witnesses, I propose to put three of 
 them on the stand at this point, whose testi- 
 mony I do not altogether like ; still, it is emi- 
 nently fair that we should hear them, for they 
 have been subpcened. 
 
 The first says : " Christian principles are 
 neither a help nor a hindrance." 
 
 This, I maintain, is an utter impossibility ; 
 the statement leaves no ground for any kind 
 of debate on that ; if he had said that they 
 were a hindrance, or a help, or somewhat of a 
 hindrance and somewhat of a help, we might 
 discuss the proposition ; but a thing that is 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 12/ 
 
 neither one thing nor the other, that neither 
 helps nor hinders, that is absolutely neutral, 
 does not exist ; Christian principles, however, 
 exist ; so I will appeal to you that the testi- 
 mony be stricken out. I believe you will sus- 
 tain me. 
 
 The next witness says : " Christian principles 
 are a help in this part of the world ; but I have 
 heard a Christian business man say that they 
 are not a help out in the far west." 
 
 This is a bit of hearsay evidence, but we 
 will not be too particular, because we want to 
 get at the exact facts in the case at all hazards. 
 I will take the ground that there are places in 
 the world, and there are occupations of certain 
 men at which and in which the application of 
 the principles of Christ will lead to apparent 
 failure. Two things are to be remembered : 
 you cannot run a mean business on pure prin- 
 ciples, — you cannot expect Christian ethics to 
 help you out in an unworthy calling, any more 
 than you can expect to become a richly devel- 
 oped follower of Christ by living your Christian 
 life according to the principles of the world. 
 Moreover, we are to hold this one truth right 
 up before our eyes, and not forget it — e. g., 
 
128 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 that success does not always mean stocks and 
 bonds. I think that the forgetting of that 
 accounts for the remark of that western man. 
 The Lord always pays, but, as one of my cor- 
 respondents says, " He does not always pay 
 his debts in money." But I can assure you 
 that if He does not, He will always pay them in 
 something better than money. And so if a 
 man says that Christian principles may not be 
 a help out west, I am led to think of other 
 things ; I remember that quinine is good for 
 fever ; and I believe it will be good for a fever 
 whether given in the swampy everglades of 
 Florida, or the poisonous districts of Panama, 
 or along the Congo, or in Ohio. If a certain 
 thing is a specific for any evil, it is an all-round, 
 all-the-time specific. It is so with Christian 
 principles. If they do good here, they can do 
 good anywhere on God's earth. If they will 
 salten things here, they will do it west of the 
 Mississippi. If they are a help here, they are 
 a help there. 
 
 The other witness of whom I spoke, sdys 
 this to you : " As far as the strictly personal 
 virtues like industry and sobriety are concerned 
 (and these are of course Christian teachings). 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 1 29 
 
 they are a help to business success. But as 
 far as the much more difficult virtues are con- 
 cerned, virtues whose attainment is, in my opin- 
 ion, the most important teaching of Christ, 
 such as dealing justly with all men, shielding 
 the down-trodden from the oppressions of the 
 unjust and the wicked, I do not think that 
 they are an aid to business success. It has 
 rarely been a profitable thing for a man to de- 
 vote himself to overthrowing vested wrongs." 
 
 I beg to differ with witness ; I will differ 
 with him root and branch. I do not say that 
 every time you shield the down-trodden, or 
 deal justly with men, you can put your hand 
 down into your trousers-pocket and find a little 
 gold dollar put there by the hand of God ; no, 
 I will not say that ; but I will say that if the 
 proposition of this witness were true, slavery 
 would be still existent in our national economy 
 to-day ; I will say that woman would be the 
 oppressed creature to-day that she was a few 
 centuries ago ; I will say that if his proposition 
 were true, and Christ had believed and taught 
 it, there would be at this moment no regener- 
 ated society, no liberties, no saved and ransom- 
 ed world. Every reform that has ever come, 
 
I30 RELIGION AKD BUSINESS. 
 
 every shackle that has ever been stricken off 
 from society, has been the outcome of a posi- 
 tion just the opposite to that taken by my at 
 least honest correspondent. I will contradict 
 him ; I will say that the most profitable thing 
 in the world is the overthrowing of any and all 
 vested wrongs. 
 
 The facts of Christian Foreign Missions are a 
 direct proof of this. Missions are based on 
 distinctively spiritual motives and aims ; the 
 conversion of souls and the lifting up of hearts 
 and intelligences are their end and aim. But 
 it has been proven by facts and figures, that 
 the cause of Christian Foreign Missions, by 
 opening up new countries, making new de- 
 mands for trade, has had an almost incalcula- 
 ble effect on the mercantile industries of this 
 country and of England. Millions of dollars, 
 for example, have been expended in our land 
 for the nineteenth century improvements and 
 appliances demanded by Japan and Siam, and 
 these countries were opened up to our business 
 markets by the entering wedge of the Bible in 
 the hands of the Missionary. 
 
 And so I take the more or less questionable 
 testimony of these three witnesses, and array 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. I3I 
 
 against it the great mass of evidence on the oth- 
 er side, the evidence of the thirty-seven, and 
 claim that I made my case. 
 
 But this only pushes the entire matter fur- 
 ther on. If the ancestry of my correspondents 
 is so overwhelmingly Christian, if the men them- 
 selves are professing Christians by such a tre- 
 mendous majority, if their testimony as to the 
 value of Christian principles in business success 
 is so almost entirely one way, we are forced to 
 take up as our concluding point, the vital ques- 
 tion which I put to them : " In your opinion, 
 does the well-being of society depend in any great 
 degree upon the existence, work, and endeavor of 
 the Christian church." 
 
 Now I bid you attend to their answers. If 
 there is a business or professional man who has 
 never thought it worth while to openly support 
 the church, I want you to' listen ; if there is a 
 man who is a worker and a toiler, and has fallen, 
 into the miserable habit of thinking that the 
 church is of no value to the masses of working 
 people, I bid you listen ; if there is a person who 
 thinks the church is a jelly-fish sort of affair, I 
 want you to listen ; if there is a person who is 
 profiting ten thousand times more than you 
 
132 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 think by the very existence in your midst of 
 the church, and yet are content to never come 
 to it, to ignore it, or, perhaps, on the other 
 side, to come to it frequently, get all you can 
 out of it, and yet contribute nothing to its 
 support, getting all and giving nothing, I want 
 you to listen to what my correspondents have 
 to say. Perhaps you will consider it a privilege 
 after this to willingly support the church by 
 some contribution every time you enter its 
 doors. " Does the well-being of society depend 
 in any great degree upon the existence, work, 
 and endeavor of the Christian church ? " 
 
 A well-known scientist says : " I do not see 
 how society could hold together without the 
 cementing power of the Christian church. I 
 know that if any measures are to be concerted 
 for the welfare of men in this life, Christians 
 are the only ones who can be relied upon for 
 help and support." 
 
 A United States Congressman says : " It un- 
 doubtedly does, because churches are organiza- 
 tions where the efforts of many may be com- 
 bined and operated together." 
 
 One merchant says: " If theChristian churches 
 were blotted out, the world would retrograde." 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 1 33 
 
 A prominent Hebrew gentleman writes : 
 " Any church can and does aid materially if its 
 work is performed in a conscientious manner. 
 It is not so much a matter of faith or theory, 
 as of practice." 
 
 " In a large degree," says a bank president ; 
 " take the church out and what would you 
 have left? A man, not a Christian, said to 
 me : ' I would not live in a town without a 
 church.' " 
 
 A prominent capitalist says : " In my opin- 
 ion, the welfare of society depends almost ab- 
 solutely upon the church." 
 
 Another bank president, in a large city, says : 
 " It is the power of the Christian church in the 
 world that preserves society and the family." 
 
 One of your most prominent manufacturers 
 writes: " I would not want to live in a country 
 where there were no churches." 
 
 A half dozen prominent business men go on 
 record as follows : 
 
 " Without the church, all would be moral 
 confusion and chaos." 
 
 " Who would want to live for one year," says 
 another, " where there was no Christian church ? 
 The school and church make society what it is. 
 
134 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 Boasted morality would not exist long without 
 the Christian church." 
 
 Another says : " I think there is no organiza- 
 tion doing good, or trying to, except those 
 that are actuated by the teachings of Christ." 
 
 " Society would go to wreck without the 
 Christian church," says another. 
 
 " It would become fearfully demoralized," 
 declares another. 
 
 Listen to the brief but telling responses 
 which that question brought out : 
 
 " I certainly think it does." " Positively yes." 
 " Unquestionably." " Yes, in the highest de- 
 gree." "Yes, sir." "Yes, most surely." "Most 
 decidedly." " Most emphatically yes." 
 
 A Unitarian, a man who edits a large daily 
 journal in the East, says : " I would make affirm- 
 ative answer, if equipped with a thousand 
 tongues." 
 
 An honored judge says : "The church is for 
 our benefit, and the world could not afford to 
 part with it." 
 
 A prominent and wealthy manufacturer says : 
 " I am very decided in my opinion that society 
 is greatly in debt to the church"; and he 
 adds the significant words, " the value of the 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. IJS 
 
 church to society is much underrated by its 
 members, as well as by those who are not." 
 
 An honored capitalist writes : " Christ said, 
 ' Ye are the salt of the earth.' In the face of 
 that true, sublime, and, — as we are beginning 
 to see, — prophetic declaration, I can only an- 
 swer ' yes.' I can have no other opinion. All 
 you have to do is to take a map of the world, 
 or read a newspaper, or question your own ex- 
 perience. And it all depends solely upon how 
 nearly they manifest the spirit of Christ." 
 
 Another leader of society writes : " The 
 Christian church is the only safeguard of 
 society." 
 
 One of the most prominent lumber-dealers 
 in another city says : " The well-being of so- 
 ciety must depend entirely on the Christian 
 church, with Christ at its head. The world 
 will become better, so far as Christ is manifest 
 in the daily lives of His followers." 
 
 And now, men and brethren, members of a 
 large jury that for so long has listened most 
 patiently to me, I shall here rest my evidence. 
 Upon the points of success and failure, envi- 
 ronment, education, I have given you the mass 
 
136 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 of testimony gathered from six hundred an- 
 swers to pertinent questions. But at this con- 
 clusion, I have led you up to the mountain-top 
 of the whole thing ; and that mountain-top is 
 the pinnacle of religious principles as applied 
 to business life, and their bearings upon success. 
 The testimony that I have adduced in this fourth 
 and final case would carry to a successful issue 
 in any court of equity in the land. You have 
 been a fair-minded jury, and I believe that you 
 will give a verdict in behalf of righteousness. 
 
 There has been nothing more significant than 
 the marvellous testimony given to-night con- 
 cerning the worth to society and the bearing 
 upon success of Christian principles and the 
 Christian church. I do not believe that you 
 will declare for me a forfeited case for lack of 
 evidence. I believe that I have carried with me 
 the conviction of every fair-minded one of you. 
 
 But you cannot shut your eyes to this mat- 
 ter at this point, saying merely, " It has all 
 been very interesting"; I cannot let you go 
 with simply a mental endorsement of these 
 things, no matter how sincere and hearty it 
 may be. 
 
 If the things that you have heard from these 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 1 3/ 
 
 men are true, if Christian principles and the 
 Christian life are what these men say they are to 
 success, if such a tremendous majority of my 
 correspondents and their parents are professing 
 Christians, who of you can look for success, and 
 despise Christian principles and the Christian 
 church ? If eighty-seven and a half per cent, 
 of my correspondents, standing on the pinnacle 
 of success, are Christian men, will it pay a 
 young man to think that he can toss Christ 
 out of the equation of his life, and yet dream 
 of future power and influence ? 
 
 Moreover, I will say to you, that if these 
 things that we have heard are true, then the 
 very best champion of the church should be the 
 workingman ; yes, the toiling millions, the men 
 of brawn and muscle, — they should look to the 
 church as their very best friend ; for if the 
 principles upon which the qhurch is based are 
 principles that lead in their tendency to suc- 
 cess, if so great a proportion of our forty men 
 started from homes of poverty and boyhoods 
 of deprivation, and in company with Christ 
 finally came to where they are now, that fact 
 alone ought to show the workingman that the 
 church is for him and not against him ; for 
 
138 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 him, I mean, in that through the portals of its 
 pure principles, and the life of its Founder, 
 lies the road to triumph. Workingmen ! I do 
 not say that the church is faultlessly interpret- 
 ing the Christ of God ; God's own hand has 
 placed the treasure in earthen vessels ; but the 
 ideal of the church is the attainment of broth- 
 erhood and sonship ; no man fails who attains 
 these things, and if, in the attaining of them, 
 there comes the element of earthly success, as 
 with so many of my correspondents, then I say 
 that it is better for you in every way, to cast 
 in your lot with the Man from Nazareth. There 
 should be no conflict between labor and the 
 Capital of Heaven ; it is to your own best in- 
 terests to " seek peace and ensue it." 
 
 If the things that you have heard from my 
 correspondents are true, and the church is what 
 they say it is to the welfare of society, then 
 the State should hold the church in the pro- 
 foundest deference and respect. 
 
 If the principles of pure religion are the 
 things that fundamentally are preserving us 
 from anarchy, maintaining our bulwarks of 
 liberty, and preserving society to the point of 
 its best average, then the State should do all 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 1 39 
 
 in its power to promote the best interests of 
 the church; I say "the church"; and just 
 now I speak in the broadest ecclesiastical sense. 
 My thought rises higher than denomination, 
 or even sect ; there are pure and holy prin- 
 ciples in the creeds of all ; statesmanship must 
 not overlook the fact that society is permeated 
 by religion, and through religion is kept by the 
 power of God unto civil salvation. I am no 
 advocate of a union of Church and State ; in- 
 deed, I so earnestly champion a separation of 
 the two, in a political sense, that I view with 
 alarm the first faint indication of any hint that 
 way, — as, for example, the appropriation of 
 public moneys for sectarian institutions. 
 
 But the point I make lies deeper. We want 
 no financial civic aid ; thank God we can get 
 along without that ; but we want our rulers 
 and magistrates to remember that the con- 
 science of a nation, of this nation, is a religious 
 conscience ; that millions of people have the 
 citizenship of heaven as well as the citizenship 
 of earth ; and therefore, when it comes to 
 the legislation and the enforcement of laws, 
 we want the drama to be played with the 
 heaven of God for a background. I hear about 
 
I40 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 certain caterings to the " Irish " vote, and the 
 "German" vote; I hear about the fear of hurt- 
 ing the feelings of this class of men, and that 
 class of men. But what I want to hear more 
 about, is a catering to the vote that has back 
 of it a Christian conscience, and tenderness of 
 feelings that have within them the emotions of 
 an expected Paradise. 
 
 If the things which we have heard are true, 
 then the church, simply as a moral pillar of 
 society, should be supported by every repu- 
 table person in the community. They should 
 support it by their personal presence, no mat- 
 ter whether they can believe all its doctrinal 
 teachings or not, and they should support it 
 by their money, no matter whether they can 
 say "amen" to all its creed or not. And why? 
 Because it is a saviour of society ; a green 
 branch cast into a bitter pool ; a bulwark 
 against the encroachment of atll kinds of civic 
 evils ; it is a splint bandage for broken morals, 
 and quinine for systems filtered through with 
 the malaria of crime. You have heard what 
 my correspondents have said on this point. If 
 religion makes the community livable, if an 
 un-Christian man says that he would not dare 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. I4t 
 
 to live in a place where there was no church, 
 if rehgion is what makes it possible for wives 
 and daughters to enjoy their present liberties, 
 and if it is a lack of religion that plants the 
 saloon, and peoples your prisons and peniten- 
 tiaries, and that makes your taxation to be what 
 it is, then I say to you, even though you are not 
 personally a Christian, or any kind of a pro- 
 fessed believer, yet you ought to make a selec- 
 tion of some church that interests you, and 
 knowing what its aims are, you ought to per- 
 sonally connect yourself with it as an organiza- 
 tion, and systematically assist it with the con- 
 tents of your pocket-book. Of all the things in 
 the world, a church, no matter what be the flag 
 it waves — a church should be the very last thing 
 in the world to be crippled for lack of means, 
 or hindered in its plans and aims for lack of 
 money. If you only earn a dollar a week give 
 some percentage of whatever you earn to some 
 church where you are best pleased to attend. 
 
 If the things which we have heard are true, 
 then every man should believe in the church 
 and love it, and do so by first believing in 
 Christ, who is its head and founder. 
 
 Christianity is perfect, though not a single 
 
142 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 one of us who professes it are either perfect or 
 living perfect lives. But our ideals are abso- 
 lutely without flaw, because they are founded 
 upon the life and teachings of Him who went 
 about doing good. Our ideals are pure as 
 heaven ; in their entirety, they are beyond our 
 perfect and present grasp, but who wants any 
 ideals that can be completely grasped ! If so, 
 they would fail to allure us or lift us up. 
 
 But we serve a perfect Christ ; and we know 
 that when this little day of life is over, and the 
 shadows flee away, and the day-star, the bright 
 day-star of Eternity dawns for us, and we take 
 our first wondering look into the illimitable 
 fields of Paradise, that we will see Jesus ; and 
 then we shall be like Him, for we shall see 
 Him as He is. We plead a perfect future, and 
 confess to an imperfect pilgrimage toward it ; 
 but the Christ, whose we are and whom we 
 serve, has told us that His own perfection will 
 be cast about us, like a garment, covering a 
 multitude of sins ; and that garment is char- 
 ity — the divine love that came and suffered 
 here, doing for us a sacrifice that we could not 
 make. 
 
 We shall carry no eternal cross, for He 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. I43 
 
 has carried it for us. Our brows will bleed 
 with no eternal thorn-crown, for He has worn 
 one for us. There are no eternal rods for the 
 bended back of Memory, for He was beaten 
 with many rods, and spit upon, that we might 
 be saved. There is no eternal sepulchre for 
 the penitent soul, for He was dead and buried 
 for our sins in a rock-hewn tomb. 
 
 The whole world is resonant with the glad 
 acclaim of a risen Christ. I would that some 
 echo, faint, perhaps, but true, could sing a 
 Christ melody into every manly heart. I see 
 again the Drama of the Ages. Chanting an- 
 gelic choirs in the night sky of Bethlehem ; 
 prostrate kings before the stall of the humble 
 inn. This is the birth. 
 
 Quickly the scene shifts, and in a few years, 
 I see Him in the Temple, discoursing with the 
 doctors of the law. 
 
 Then in the progress of time, I see the brief 
 ministry ; but the ministry of what ? Of a 
 great heart, burning with love for humanity ; 
 of a sympathy that lent a ready ear to every 
 sinful man or woman, that brought strong men 
 in prostration at His feet, and lisping children 
 in laughter to His arms. 
 
144 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 I see the wonderful care for the feelings of 
 those who hated sin and yet knew not how to 
 turn from it ; I see the miracle-worker attest- 
 ing his Messiahship by wondrous things out of 
 the law of Nature, and equally wondrous things 
 out of the laws of God. I see the self-sacrifice, 
 the hunger and thirst — the weary marches over 
 desert roads — the loneliness of a misunderstood 
 man — the hunger for sympathy ; — I see the tears 
 flowing down His cheeks at the sorrowing woe 
 of the bereaved — and, finally, I see Him caught 
 by the hands of malice and envy, the victim 
 of a mock trial and perjured testimony; I see 
 the outrage of a purple robe and a reed sceptre 
 and a crown of thorns. 
 
 And at last I see Him, with the nails through 
 His hands and feet, and the spear thrust in His 
 side, and the awful thirst, and the jeers of 
 those who sat and watched Him there, and oh, 
 is it nothing to you as ye pass by ? For though 
 they took Him down, and buried Him in a gar- 
 den tomb, and in three days He rose and in 
 time ascended to His Father and your Father, 
 yet, for all that, and for the saving of your 
 very soul, He still hangs there, God's precious 
 victim, midway between earth and heaven, de- 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. I4S 
 
 spised and rejected of men, and environed by 
 two thieves for deatii companions. 
 
 He was despised and rejected by men. Who 
 were the men ? Jews, Greeks, Romans, — any 
 man who had heard His words and had seen 
 His deeds ; but rejection knows no centuries ; 
 and there are many to-day who are adding 
 themselves to the company of those who reject 
 the Saviour of men ; if you had lived then, 
 and thought then as you have been thinking, 
 lo, these many years, you would have been 
 among the number of those who said : " Cru- 
 cify Him." And you would have taken your 
 path beneath the feet of that victim on Gol- 
 gotha, and sneered as you passed by. For ye 
 who do not believe, do crucify Him daily, and 
 put Him to an open shame. " Come, now, and 
 let us reason together. Though your sins be 
 as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. 
 Though they be red like crimson, they shall be 
 as wool." 
 
 There have been the proceedings of a court- 
 room ; but while the principles of Christianity 
 have been up for trial, and you have heard the 
 witnesses testify as to their worth, the Christ 
 who gave them has been still hanging on His 
 
146 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 cross, lying in His tomb, and rising from His 
 death, for you. In the one case, we have the 
 testimony of forty men. In the other, we have 
 the testimony of a great multitude whom 
 no man can number, of all kindreds, and na- 
 tions, and tongues, and peoples. The martyrs 
 sing of Him at the stake, and the confessors 
 tell of Him in the arena. Eighteen centuries 
 speak of glad companionship in life, and the 
 sustaining wonders of the dying hour. The 
 great feast is spread. I beg of you and implore 
 you to come in now to the marriage of the 
 Lamb ; to share with Him your Time, that you 
 may live with Him your Eternity. But perhaps 
 you say, " Not now ; I will wait until I am old." 
 Let me show you to what you wait : across 
 the sun, the moon, the stars, will come a grad- 
 ual gloom, as there came to them at the Mas- 
 ter's death. Into the life there comes a rain, 
 and after the rain, not the blue heaven, but the 
 returning cloud. The hand reaches out and 
 gropes its way, and trembles. The mind looks 
 out upon the busy life, but sees not clearly or 
 well, for there is a darkened glass in the win- 
 dow and behind it there is a curtain, nearly 
 closed. 
 
RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 1 47 
 
 The man calls upon his soul and all that is 
 within him, for melody, for song. Once, an 
 opening bud in spring made his whole heart 
 fill with harmony ; but now, he calls upon 
 the handmaids of Music, but they will not 
 come. 
 
 Sorrowfully he picks his way, and the trem- 
 bling hand takes quick affright and rises with 
 impotent defense because of fear that is in the 
 way. His hair is white like the tree which blos- 
 soms snow. And shall this old man stumble 
 and falter his way up to the Great Captain and 
 say : " Lord, now for the first time put on me 
 the whole armor of God"? No, it is too late 
 for that. There is no use for it. The best 
 God can do for him is to hold him gently, ten- 
 derly, in a loving arm, and stroke his aching 
 brow while the silver cord is loosed for him and 
 the golden bowl is broken. 
 
 But I plead with you young men because ye 
 are strong. Blue follows your rain ; there is 
 no trembling to the keepers of your house ; no 
 curtained, darkened window. Give this light, 
 this strength, this vision, this tightly knotted 
 cord of silver, yes, the golden bowl of those 
 hearts of yours that contain so much that is 
 
148 RELIGION AND BUSINESS. 
 
 manly and courageous and beautiful, — give 
 these things to the service of the Christ of 
 Eden, of Calvary, of Paradise. Creation, Cru- 
 cifixion, and Redemption demand the first- 
 fruits of your lives. 
 
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