Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1876 — Will He Succeed? [ARTICLE]

Will He Succeed?

In nine cases out of ten, no man’s life will be a success if he does not bear burdens in his childhood. If the fondness or the vanity of father or mother kept him from contact with hard work; if another always helped him out at the end of his row; if, instead of taking his turn at pitching off, he mowed away all the time —in short, if what was light always fell to him, and what was heavy about the same work to some one else; if he has been permitted to shirk till shirking has become a habit—unless a miracle is wro f his life will be a failure, and the blame will not be half as much his as that of weak, foolish parents. On the other hand, if a boy has been brought up to do his part; never allowed to shirk any legitimate responsibility, or permitted to dodge work, whether, or not it made his back ache, or soiled his hands, until bearing heavy burdens became a matter of pride, the heavy end of the wood his from choice —parents, as they bid him good-by, may dismiss their fears. His life will not be a business failure. The elements of success are his, and at some time and in some way the world will recognize his capacity. Take another point. Money is the object of the world’s pursuit. It is a legitimate object, it gives bread, and clothing, and homes, and comfort. The world has not judged wholly unwisely when it has made the position a man occupies to hinge more or less on his ability to earn money, and somewhat upon the amount of his possessions. If he is miserably poor, it either argues some defect in his business ability, some recklessness in his expenditures, or a lack of fitness to cope with men in the great battle for gold. When a country-bred boy leaves home, it is generally to enter upon some business the end of which is to acquire property, and he will succeed just in proportion as he has been made to earn and save in his childhood.

If all the money he has had has come" of planting a little patch in the spring, ana selling its produce after weary months of watching and toil in the fall, or from killing woodchucks at six cents a head, or from trapping muskrats, and selling their skins for a shilling; setting snares in the fall for game, ana walking miles to see them in the morning before the old folks were up; husking corn for a neighbor, moonlight evenings, at two cents a bushel; working out an occasional day that hard work at home has made possible —he is good to make his pile in the world On' the contrary, if the boy never .earned a dollar; if parents and friends always keep him in spending money—pennies to buy candy and fish-hooks, satisfy his imagined wants —and he has grown to manhood in the expectancy that the world will generally treat him with similar consideration, he will always be a makeshift; and die fault is not so much his as that of those about him, who never made the boy depend upon himself—did not make hiip wait six months to get money to replace a lost jack-knife. Everybody has to rough it at one time or another. If the roughing comes in boyhood, it does good; if later, when habits are formed, it is equally tough; but not being educational, is generally useless. And the question as to whether a young man will succeed in making money or not depends not upon where he goes or what he does, but upon his willingness to do “his part,” and upon his having earned money, and so gained a knowledge of its worth. Not a little of this valuable experience and knowledge the country boy gets on the old farm, under the tutelage of parents shrewd enough to see the end from the beginning, and to make the labor and grief of children contribute to the success of subsequent life.— Humane Journal.