do not know how to do in the best manner, that which they have to do.
Perhaps a good definition of education, as the word is applied to a
working man, may be that he knows how to do that which he has to do, in
the very best way.
Education may be of three kinds, viz.:
That of the _schools_.
_Self-education._
That of _trade_ or _business_.
_That of the schools._ And this is the best of all; for the whole
of one’s time is given to it; and if you are so inclined you may go
through the whole course, as provided in this school. And all this with
text-books, instruments and other appliances, absolutely free of cost.
A boy, therefore, who passes through the entire course of study here,
has superior opportunities of acquiring a most substantial education.
Certainly the education of the schools is the best; and let me urge you
with all seriousness to make the best use of your opportunities. You
can never learn as easily as now. You are young. You are not burdened
with cares. Do not relax your efforts in the least; do not yield to
weariness; do not think you know enough already; do not be impatient
lest others of your own age, who have already left school to go to
work, get ahead of you in trade or in any kind of business; if they
have the start of you, they may not be able to keep it; and depend
upon it, in the long run you will overtake and pass them, other things
being equal, if you have a better school education than they have. When
you are told that young men who are well educated are thereby unfitted
or unwilling to take the lowest places in trade or business, do not
believe it. I know the contrary. The better the school education you
have, and the more you know, the more valuable you will be to your
employer.
Another kind of education is called, but most inaccurately,
_self-education_. All that I mean by it is, that education which one
acquires without teachers. As so defined, it may be divided into two
parts, viz.: the incidental and the direct.
Let me speak first of the _incidental_.
I mean by this that education that comes to us from society.
You cannot live alone, and you ought not to if you could. You seek
companions, or other persons will seek you. Let your associates be
those whose friendship will be an instruction to you, rather than
simply a means of social enjoyment. There are young people of both
sexes who, without being vicious, are utterly weak and foolish, idle
and listless, drifting along a current, the end of which they do not
care to think of. They are living for this life only, with no thought
of the future, no ambition, mere butterflies, who float in the sunshine
when the sun is shining, but who, in a dark and cloudy day, are bored
and miserable, and utterly useless. Sometimes they are pleasant enough
to chat with for a few minutes, but to be shut up to such companionship
as this, would be intolerable. Society has a large element of this
description, and you are likely to see it in your daily life.
But this is not the worst phase of life among the young people with
whom you may be thrown. There are worse elements than this. There are
those who are depraved to a degree quite beyond their age; who have
given themselves up to work all uncleanness with greediness; who put
no restraint on their inclinations; in whose eyes nothing is pure or
sacred; who have no respect for that which is wholesome or decent;
who are the devil’s own children, and who are not ashamed of their
parentage. And to such baleful, deadly influences and associations will
you be exposed, my young friends, and you may not be apprised of their
true character until it is too late.
But there are _direct_ means of education, so called.
The first of these which I mention is the use of books. This is
unquestionably the best means. I am supposing that you have some taste
for reading; if you have not, it is hardly worth while for me to speak,
or for you to listen. I know some people who rarely read a book, and I
pity them. They seem to think that all that is necessary to read is the
daily newspaper. I do not say that such persons are necessarily very
ignorant, for very much may be learned from the daily paper. But the
newspaper does not pretend to supply all that you need, to fit you for
a life of business, either as a dealer in merchandise, a professional
man or a mechanic. No; you must read books, not only for entertainment
and recreation, but for information and culture, which you can obtain
nowhere else. If there is no public library within your reach, seek out
some kind-hearted man or woman who has books, and who will be willing
to lend them to one who is in search of knowledge. I well remember a
gentleman in my early life who did this kind office for me before I was
able to buy books, and there are such now who will do the same for you.
If you have little knowledge of books, you ought to ask the advice
of some practical friend to point out such as you may most safely
and properly read. For if left to your own judgment or taste, you
will probably waste valuable time, or be discouraged by an attempt to
read something not immediately necessary or appropriate. But do not
attempt to follow an elaborate plan of reading, such as you will find
detailed in some books, for you are very likely to be discouraged
by the greatness of the task. Such lists, I fancy, are made out by
scholars who have read almost everything, and to whom reading is no
task whatever, and who have plenty of time. Do not attempt to read
too many books, nor too much at a time, and do not be disappointed or
discouraged if you are not able to remember or put to good account all
that you read. You cannot always know what particular kind of food
has afforded you the most nourishment. You may rest assured, however,
that as every morsel of food that you take and are able to digest does
something to build up and develop your system, or repair its waste, so
every book or paper that you read, that is wholesome, does something,
you may not know how much, to strengthen or develop your mind.
There are books that you read for entertainment or recreation, and
that are written for that purpose only. You may read such; indeed, you
ought to read them, for you need, as everybody else needs, recreation
and amusement, and there is much of the purest and best of this that
you can get from books. But you must not make the mistake of supposing
that most, or even a very large proportion, of your reading can be of
this character. You would not think of making your daily meals of the
articles of food that you enjoy as the sweets of your meals. You would
not think of living on sponge-cake and ice-cream for a regular diet.
You might as well do so, as to read only the light and humorous matter
that was never intended for the mental diet of a working man. No. If
you would attain the real object of reading and study, you must read
and study books and papers that tax the full powers of your mind to
understand them. This will soon strengthen the quality of your mind,
even as the exercise of your muscles in work or play will develop a
strength of body that the idle or lazy youth knows nothing of.
If you would know how to make yourself master of any book that you
read, form the habit, if the book is your own, of making notes with
a pencil in the margin of the pages; but if the book is not your
property, or in any case, take a sheet of paper and write at the end
of every chapter questions on the matter discussed, and the answer to
such questions will probably bring out the author’s meaning so fully
that you will have _absorbed_ the book and made it your own; for, as an
eminent American author has said, “thought is the property of whoever
can entertain it.”
I said just now that the daily newspaper does not pretend to supply all
that you need to fit you for a life of business, either as a dealer
in goods, or as a mechanic or clerk. But the daily paper is a most
important means of education――so important that no one can afford to
ignore it. Now-a-days one cannot be well informed who does not read
the newspaper. The whole world is brought before us every morning and
evening, and, if we do not read the news as it comes, we shall not
know what we ought to know. It is not necessary to read everything in
a daily paper; there are some things that it will be better for you
not to read. You need not read all the editorials, brilliant as some
of them are, for sometimes they discuss subjects that are not at all
interesting nor useful to you. The newspaper from which I make the most
clippings is one which is the fullest of advertisements, but which
sometimes has nothing whatever in it that I read. But when it does
discuss a subject of interest, it is apt to leave nothing further to be
said.
But to read with the most advantage one ought to have within easy reach
a dictionary, an atlas and, if possible, an encyclopedia. Then you can
read with profit, and the mere outlines which the newspaper gives can
be filled up by reference to books which give more or less complete
histories.
The political articles which appear in the height of a campaign are
hardly worth reading, unless you think of entering politics as a
money-making business, which I sincerely hope none of you think of
doing. And I am sure that the full accounts of crime, and especially
the details of police reports and criminal trials, you will do well to
pass by and not read. I really believe that a familiarity with these
details prepares the way, in many instances, for the commission of
crime, just as the reading of accounts of suicide sometimes leads to
the act itself.
Some of the best minds in our country, and in the world, are now
employed in writing for the periodicals and magazines. No one can be
well informed without reading something of the vast amount of matter
which is thus poured out before him. I have not named the newspapers
nor the magazines which you may read with the most profit; but your
teachers can advise you what to read. Rather is it important for you to
know what _not_ to read. Many of the most popular and the most useful
books that have been published within the last quarter of a century
have appeared first in the pages of a weekly or monthly paper. The best
thoughts of the best thinkers sometimes first see the light in such
pages.
Besides the newspaper and the literary magazine, there are scientific
periodicals, which are of essential value to a worker who wishes
to be well informed in any of the mechanical arts. The _Scientific
American_ is, perhaps, the best of this class, both in the beauty of
its illustrations and in the high quality of its contributions. The
_Popular Science Monthly_ is a periodical of a wider range and more
diversified character. These periodicals, if you are not able to
subscribe for them as individuals or in clubs, you may find in the
public library. But let me urge you to turn away from “dime novels.”
Not because they are cheap, but because they are often unwholesome
and immoral. The vile, fiery, poisonous whiskey which so many wretched
creatures drink until the coatings of the stomach are destroyed, and
the brain is on fire, is no more fatal to the health and life, than
is the immoral literature I speak of, to the mind and soul of him who
reads. There is an abundance of good literature that is cheap――do not
read the bad.
Having now spoken of the education you may get in the schools, and that
which you may acquire for yourselves, if you have the pluck to strive
for it, either in the society which you cultivate, or more directly
from books, whether read as an entertainment and recreation, or,
better still, by careful study; or through the daily newspaper, or the
periodical, whether literary or scientific; or, what is best of all,
that which is decidedly religious; I turn now to the education which
you will acquire when you work day by day at your trade or business.
Let me beg of you to consider the great value of truthfulness in all
your training. Hardly anything will help you more to reach up towards
the top. And when you are at the head of an establishment of your
own or somebody else’s (and I take it for granted you will be at the
head some day), whether it be a workshop or factory of any kind, or
a store, no matter what, a fixed habit of keeping your word, of not
promising unless you are certain of keeping your promise, will almost
insure your success if you are a good workman. How many good mechanics
have utterly failed of success because they have not cared to keep
their promises? A firm of high reputation agrees to supply certain
articles of furniture at a time fixed by them. The time comes but the
articles do not come. A call of inquiry is made and new promises are
made only to be broken. Excuses are offered and more promises given;
then incomplete articles are sent; then more delays, until, when
patience is nearly exhausted, the work is finished. Then comes the bill
and there is a mistake in it. The whole transaction is a series of
disappointments and misunderstandings. Will you ever incline to go to
that place again?
It is usual for miners of coal to place their sons, as they become ten
or twelve years of age, at the foot of the great breakers to watch
the coal as it comes rattling and broken down the great wire screens,
and catch the pieces of slate and throw them to one side and allow
only the pure coal to pass down into the huge bins, from which it is
dropped into the cars and taken to market. To an uneducated eye there
is hardly any perceptible difference between the coal and the slate.
But these little fellows soon become so quick in the education of the
eye, that they can tell in an instant the difference. When the boy
grows older he graduates to the place of a mule driver, and has his car
and mule, which he drives day by day from the mouth of the mine to the
breaker. Then when he begins to be of age he fixes his little oil lamp
in the front of his cap, and goes down into the mines with his pick
and becomes a miner of coal. It seems a dreary life to spend most of
one’s time under the ground, shut out from the sunshine and from the
pure air. And most of these men having no education, and never having
been urged to seek one, are content to spend all their days in this
manner. But occasionally there is one who feels that he is capable of
better things than this. And I know one at least, who began his work
at the foot of a coal breaker and worked his way up through all these
stages, as I have told you, and who determined to do something better
for himself. So he gave much of his leisure (and everybody has some
leisure) to study; nor was he discouraged by the difficulties in his
way. He persevered. He rose to be a boss among the men; then having
saved some money, instead of wasting it at the tavern, he bought his
teams, and then bought an interest in a coal mine, and became a miner
of his own coal, and had his men under him, and has grown to be a rich
man, and is not ashamed of his small beginnings nor of his hard work.
This is only one instance of success in rising from a low position to a
high one.
The same thing is going on all around us and we see it every day. It
would hardly be proper to give you names, but I could tell you of many
within my own knowledge who, from positions of extremely hard labor and
plain living, have risen to be the head men in shops and other places
which they entered at the lowest places. Such changes are continually
occurring. And there is no reason whatever, except your indifference,
to prevent many of you from becoming, if God gives you health, the
head men, in the places where you begin work as subordinates or in
very low positions. And I tell you what you know already, that there
is plenty of room for advancement. It is the lowest places that are
full to overflowing. Who ever heard of a strike among the _chiefs_ of
any industry? No, indeed. They have made themselves indispensable to
their employers and they don’t need to strike. And there is hardly a
youth who cannot by strict attention to business, and conscientious
devotion to the interests of his employer, make himself so invaluable
that he need not join any trades union for protection. Do the vast
army of clerks in the various corporations, or in the great commercial
houses, or in the public service, or in the army and navy――do these
people ever band themselves in any associations like the trades unions?
They know better than that; they accomplish their purposes in better
ways. If the working classes, so called, were better educated, they
would not suffer themselves to be led by the nose by people who will
not themselves work, who will not touch even with their little fingers
the burdens which are crushing the life out of the deluded ones whom
they are leading to folly. It is a true education that is needed, a
true conscience that must be cultivated, to enable men to do their own
thinking, and to determine for themselves what are their best interests.
I urge you all to seek that higher and better education which will make
you true men. You have now the great advantage of the education of the
school. I have tried very simply, but not the less earnestly, to show
you how you can fit yourselves for high places. It is for you to say
whether you will avail yourselves of these plain hints. No earthly
power can force you to do that which you will not do. You may lead a
horse to a brimming fountain of water, but if he is not thirsty, no
coaxing nor threatening nor beating can make him drink. I may show you,
to demonstration, the abundant fountain of learning, but I can’t make
you drink, or even stoop to taste the stream, if you are not thirsty.
I can’t make you study, however great the advantage to you, or however
much they who are interested in you desire that you should.
Every year this question which I have been pressing upon you becomes
more and more important. The great colleges of the country are
graduating their thousands of students, many of whom will compete
with you for the high places in the mechanic arts. So are the public
schools of the country sending out hundreds of thousands, many of them
having the same aim. Technical schools, teaching the mechanic arts, are
multiplying. Great changes have been made recently in our own city in
this respect. The Spring Garden Institute is doing a noble work in this
way. Our own college is moving in the same direction, and soon it will
be sending out its hundreds every year to compete for places in the
shops, with this great advantage, that you Girard boys have a school
education――the best that you are able to receive, and you must not let
any others go ahead of you.
Look at the poor, ignorant people from abroad who sweep our
streets――look at the stevedores who load and unload the ships――look at
the men who carry the hod of mortar or bricks up the high and steep
ladders――look at the drivers and the conductors on our street cars,
the most hard worked people among us――and are you not sure that most
of these people are _un_educated? No one wants to be at the bottom all
the time. We may have been there at the first; but those who have made
the most progress are generally those who have had the best education.
I know that education is not a sure guarantee of success; many other
things enter into the consideration of the question; but I am saying
that, other things being equal, _he who knows the most will do the
best_. There are, alas, many instances of the sons of the rich, who
have been well educated, who have everything provided for them, who
have no stimulus, no spur; who have no regular occupation, and need not
have any; many of whom sink into idleness and dissipation, and their
fine education goes for nothing. But you are not of this class. You
will have to make your way in the world by your own exertions.
I shall fail of my duty if I do not say some words about such boys
as sometimes stand at the corners of the streets in large or small
companies and amuse themselves by smoking and chewing tobacco, telling
bad stories and making remarks upon those who pass by. I am sure much
of this arises from thoughtlessness; but I wish to point out the
exceeding impropriety of this behavior. I have known ladies to cross
the street and, at much inconvenience, go quite out of their way rather
than pass within hearing of these boys and young men. What right has
any one to make the streets disagreeable to any passenger, to block
up the way or make loose or rude remarks, or defile the pavement over
which I walk?
All this most serious waste of time is probably because no one has
particularly called attention to it. The time may come when you will
recall the words of advice which you hear to-day, and you may regret
when it is too late that you turned a deaf ear to what was said.
I have now tried, in as much detail as the time will permit, to show
the importance of that education which will enable you to rise in
your trade or business, whatever it may be, to the upper places; and
I have tried to show that a true ambition leads one to strive to be
_chief_ rather than a _subordinate_, to be a _foreman_ rather than a
_journeyman_.
But, after all, everything will depend upon yourselves and upon God.
There is no royal road to education; the very meaning of the word shows
this; the mind must be drawn out, worked over, developed, rounded,
hammered, somewhat as a blacksmith puts a piece of rough iron in the
coals, keeps it there until it is red-hot, then draws it out, lays it
upon his anvil and hammers it, turning it over and over, striking it
first on this side and then on that, rounding it off; then when it
cools thrusting it among the coals again, then hammering away again
until he has brought the rough piece of iron to the size and shape
he wishes, when he allows it to cool and harden. If you are willing
to work your mind into the shape you want it, you will surely bring
yourself to the front among active, ingenious and successful men. But
this means hard work, and work all the time.
Now if you mean to avail yourselves of any of the hints which I have
given you, if you really mean to succeed, if you are not content to be
workers low down in the scale of industry, if you mean to rise rather
than to be obscure, if you intend to be well-to-do men, instead of
living from hand to mouth, you must grapple with the subject with all
your might and keep at it all the time. And you must keep out of the
streets at night, away from the taverns and from the low theatres, and
from gambling dens, and from other places which I will not name; and,
in short, you must be true Americans, for there is no truer type of
manhood in all the world than a real American; and nowhere else in all
the world has a poor boy so good an opportunity to be and do all this,
as in our own good city of Philadelphia.
WILLIAM PENN.
October 22, 1882.
In the early autumn of the year 1682, a vessel with her bow pointing
towards the west was making her way slowly across the Atlantic
ocean. She was a small craft, rigged as a ship, and crowded with
emigrants. The discomforts of a long and tiresome voyage, the very
small accommodations, the horror of sea-sickness, were in this vessel
aggravated by the breaking out of that most awful of all scourges,
the small-pox. In a very short time, out of a population of one
hundred, thirty passengers died. No record is left of the incidents
of that voyage except this; but it is easy to imagine that all the
circumstances were as deplorable as they could well be.
After a weary time of head winds and calms, in about seven weeks, this
ship, the “Welcome,” came within the capes of the Delaware bay.
The most distinguished person on that little ship was William Penn.
He had left his home in England, embarking with his trusty friends in
a vessel only one-tenth the size of the ships of our American Line,
to come to Pennsylvania. He had bought the whole province from the
government of England for the sum of £16,000 sterling, which, measured
by our money, is about $80,000, and this money was due to him for
services rendered and money loaned to the government by his father, an
admiral in the English navy.
About the 24th of October the vessel reached the town of Newcastle,
where Penn landed and was cordially received by the people of that
little village. Afterwards they came farther up the river to Uplands,
now the town or city of Chester. Then, leaving the vessel here, they
came in a barge (Penn and some of his principal men) to the mouth of
Dock creek, the foot of what is now known as Dock street, where they
landed, near a little tavern called the Blue Anchor.