the hard wisdom of the world, and he had the genius of the great
captain for choosing men. No business general ever selected his
lieutenants with more accurate judgment. His opinion on men and
affairs was always worth while. And he thought young men who meant to
do anything except in the learned professions wasted time by going to
college.
So when, searching for my final answer to the question this moment
being asked by so many young Americans, "Shall I go to college," I
answer in the affirmative, I do so admitting that a negative answer
has been given by men whose opinions are entitled to the greatest
possible respect.
I admit, too, that nearly every city--yes, almost every town--contains
conspicuous illustrations of men who learned how to "get there" by
attending the school of hard knocks. Certainly some of the most
distinguished business careers in New York have been made by young men
who never saw a college.
You find the same thing in every town. I have a man in mind whose
performances in business have been as solid as they are astonishing.
Twenty years ago he was a street-car conductor; to-day he controls
large properties in which he is himself a heavy owner; and a dozen
graduates of the high-class universities of Europe and America beg the
crums that fall from the table of his affairs.
In his Phi Beta Kappa Address Wendell Phillips cleverly argues that
the reformers of the world, and most of those whose memories are the
beloved and cherished treasures of the race, were men whose vitality
had not been reduced by college training, and whose kinship with the
people and oneness with the soil had not been divorced by the
artificial refinement of a college life. But Phillips was bitter--even
fanatical--on this subject; and was, in himself, a living denial of
his own doctrine.
Remember, then, you who for any reason have not had those years of
mental discipline called "a college education," that this does not
excuse you from doing great work in the world. Do not whine, and
declare that you could have done so much better if you had "only had
a chance to go to college." You can be a success if you will, college
or no college. At least three of those famous masters of business
which Chicago, the commercial capital of the continent, has given to
the world, and whose legitimate operations in tangible merchandizing
are so vast that they are almost weird, had no college education, and
very little education of any kind.
I think, indeed, that very few of America's kings of trade ever
attended college. There are the masters of railroad management, too.
Few of them have been college men, although the college man is now
appearing among them--witness President Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania
System, a real Napoleon of railroading, who, I hear, is a graduate of
the German universities and of American polytechnic schools.
Burns did not go to college. Neither did Shakespeare.
Some of our greatest lawyers "read law" in the unrefined but honest
and strengthening environment of the old-time law office. Lincoln was
not a college man; neither was Washington. So do not excuse yourself
to your family and the world upon the ground that you never had a
college education. That is not the reason why you fail.
You can succeed--I repeat it--college or no college; all you have to
do in the latter case is to put on a little more steam. And remember
that some of the world's sages of the practical have closed their
life's wisdom with the deliberate opinion that a college education is
a waste of time, and an over-refinement of body and of mind.
You see, I am trying to take into account every possible view of this
weighty question; for I know how desperate a matter it is to hundreds
of thousands of my young countrymen. I know how earnestly they are
searching for an answer; how hard it will be for hosts of them to obey
an affirmative answer; how intense is the desire of the great majority
of young Americans to decide this question wisely. For most of them
have no time to lose, little money to spend and none to waste, no
energy to spare, and yet are inspired with high resolve to make the
best and most of life. And I know how devoutly they pray that, in
deciding, they may choose the better part.
Still, with all this in mind, my advice is this: Go to college. Go to
the best possible college for _you_. Patiently hold on through the
sternest discipline you can stand, until the course is completed. It
will not be fatal to your success if you do not go; but you will be
better prepared to meet the world if you do go. I do not mean that
your mind will be stored with much more knowledge that will be useful
to you if you go through college than if you do not go through
college.
Probably the man who keeps at work at the business he is going to
follow through life, during the years when other men are studying in
college, acquires more information that will be "useful" to him in his
practical career. But the college man who has not thrown away his
college life comes from the training of his alma mater with a mind as
highly disciplined as are the wrist and eye of the skilled swordsman.
Nobody contends that a college adds an ounce of brain power. But if
college opportunities are not wasted, such mind as the student does
have is developed up to the highest possible point of efficiency. The
college man who has not scorned his work will understand any given
situation a great deal quicker than his brother who, with equal
ability, has not had the training of the university.
A man who has been instructed in boxing is more than a match for a
stronger and braver man unskilled in what is called the "manly art."
That is your college and non-college man over again with muscle
substituted for brain.
Five years ago I saw the soldiers of Japan going through the most
careful training. They were taught how to march, how to charge, how to
do everything. I shall never forget the bayonet exercises which an
officer and myself chanced upon. They were conducted with all the
ferocity of a real fight; no point was neglected.
With all their fatalism and the utter fearlessness thereof, the
Japanese could not have bested the Russians if to their courage and
devotion they had not added years of painstaking drill, which an
American soldier would have considered an unnecessary hardship. Very
well. A college education is precisely that kind of a preparation for
the warfare of life.
But mind you, these Japanese soldiers and their officers were in
earnest. They meant to show the world that, small as they are in
stature and recent as their adoption of modern methods has been, they
nevertheless would try to be the highest type of soldier that ever
marched to a battle-field. If you go to college, young man, you have
got to be in earnest, too. You have got to say to yourself, "I am
going to make more out of what is in me than any man with like ability
ever did before." You cannot dawdle--remember that.
Imagine every day, and every hour of every day, that you are in the
real world and in the real conflicts thereof, instead of in college
with its practise conflicts, and handle yourself precisely as you
would if your whole career depended upon each task set for you. If you
mean to go to college for the principal purpose of idling around,
wearing a small cap and good clothes, and being the adoration of your
mother and your sisters on your vacation, you had a good deal better
be at work at some gainful occupation. College is not helping you if
that is what you are doing. It is hurting you.
Go to college, therefore, say I; but go to college for business. Those
drill years are the most important ones of your life.
Be in earnest, therefore. I know I have said that before; yes, and I
am going to say it again. For if you are not going to be in earnest,
quit--get out. Resolve to get absolutely everything there is to be had
out of your college experience, and then _get it_. _Get it_, I say,
for that is what you will have to do. Nobody is going to give it to
you.
The spirit with which you enter college is just as important as going
to college at all. It is more important. For if a man has the spirit
that will get for him all that a college education has to give, it
will also make him triumph in a contest with the world, even if he
does not get his college education. It will only be a little harder
for him, that is all.
But if a man has not that mingled will and wish for a college
education flaming through his young veins that makes him capable of
any sacrifice to get through college, I do not see what good a college
education will do him--no, nor any other kind of an education. The
quicker such a man is compelled to make his own living without help
from any source, the better for him.
So if you mean business, but have not decided whether it is better for
you to go to college or not to go to college, settle the question
to-day by deciding to go to college. Then pick your college. That is
as important a matter as choosing your occupation in life. One college
is not as good as another for _you_. A score of colleges may be
equally excellent in the ability of their faculties, in the
perfection of their equipment.
But each has its own atmosphere and traditions; each has its
personality, if you may apply such a word to an institution. And you
want to select the place where your mental roots will strike in the
earth most readily, and take from the intellectual soil surrounding
you the greatest possible amount of mental force and vigor.
Take plenty of time to find out which, out of a score of colleges, is
the best one for you. Study their "catalogues"; talk to men who have
been to these various institutions; read every reputable article you
can find about them. Keep this up long enough, and you will become
conscious of an unreasoned knowledge that such and such an institution
is not the place for _you_ to go. Finally, write to the president or
other proper officer of the colleges you are thinking of attending.
You will get some sort of an answer from each of them; but if it is
only three lines, that answer will breathe something of the spirit of
the institution. Of course the great universities will answer you very
formally, or perhaps not at all. Their attitude is the impersonal one.
They say to the world, and to the youth thereof: "Here we are. We are
perfectly prepared. We have on hand a complete stock of education.
Take it, or leave it. It is not of the slightest concern to us."
I have no quarrel with that attitude. These institutions are going on
the assumption that you already have character and purpose; that you
already know what you are about. They are ready for you if you are
ready for them. And if you are not ready for them, if you are only a
rich person or a mere stroller along the highways of life, what is
that to them? Why should it be anything to them? Why should it be
anything to anybody? The world is busy, young man; you have got to
make yourself worth while if it pays any attention to you.
Making sure always that the college of your choice is well equipped,
select the one where you will feel the most at home. Other things
being equal, go where there are the most men in whose blood burns the
fire which is racing through your veins. Go to the college in whose
atmosphere you will find most of the ozone of earnestness. It may well
be that you will find this thing in one of the smaller colleges, of
which there are so many and such excellent ones scattered all over the
Nation.
Certainly these little colleges have this advantage: their students
are usually very poor boys, who have to struggle and deny themselves
to go to college at all--young men whose determination to do their
part in the world is so great that hunger is a small price to pay for
that preparation which they think a college education gives them; men
whose resolve to "make something of themselves," as the common saying
goes, is so irresistible that they simply cannot endure to stay away
from college.
Such men have hard muscles, made strong and tense by youthful toil;
great lungs, expanded by plow in field or ax in forest; nerves of
steel, tempered by days of labor in open air and nights of dreamless
slumber, which these hypnotics of Nature always induce. These men have
strong, firm mouths; clear, honest eyes, that look you straight and
fair; and a mental and moral constitution which fit these physical
manifestations of it.
And these are just the kind of men among whom you ought to spend your
college life, if you are one of the same kind--and perhaps much more
if you are not.
Fellows like these believe in the honor of men, the virtue of women,
the sacredness of home, and that the American people have a mission
in the world marked out for them by the Ruler of the Universe--though
this is not a fair distinction since all Americans believe in these
high, sweet things of life and destiny. It is a faith common to all
Americans and monopolized by no class.
But you know what kind of a man you are, and therefore you will find
out, if you search with care, what college is the best for you. I
insist upon the importance of this selection. It is a real, practical
problem. You will never have a more important task set you in
class-room, or even throughout your entire life, than to select the
college which is going to do you the most good. So go about it with
all the care that you would plan a campaign if you were a general in
the field, or conduct an experiment if you were a scientist in the
laboratory.
This one word of definite helpfulness on this subject: Do not choose
any particular college because you want to be known as a Yale man, a
Harvard man, a Princeton man, or any other kind of man. Remember that
the world cares less than the snap of its fingers what particular
_college_ man you are.
What the world cares about it that you should _be_ a man--a real
_man_.
It won't help you a bit in the business of your life to have it known
that you graduated from any particular college or university. If you
are in politics, it won't give you a vote; if a manufacturer, it will
not add a brick to your plant; if a merchant, it will not sell a
dollar's worth of your goods.
Nobody cares what college you went to. Nobody cares whether you went
to college at all.
But everybody cares whether you are a real force among men; and
everybody cares more and more as it becomes clearer and clearer that
you are not only a force, but a trained, disciplined force. That is
why you ought to go to college--to be a trained, disciplined force.
But how and where you got your power--the world of men and women is
far too interested in itself to be interested in that.
When you do finally go to college, take care of yourself like a man. I
am told that there are men in college who have valets to attend them,
their rooms, and their clothes. Think of that! Don't do anything like
that, even if you are a hundred times a millionaire. Of course _you_
won't--you who read this--because not one out of ten thousand young
Americans can afford to have a valet in college--thank heaven!
Don't do any of the many things which belong to that life of
self-indulgence of which the keeping of a valet in college is a
flaring illustration. Don't let kind friends litter up your room with
a lot of cushions, and such stuff. The world for which you are
preparing is no "cushiony" place, let me tell you; and if you let
luxury relax your nerves and soften your brain tissues and make your
muscles mushy, a similar mental and moral condition will develop. And
then, when you go out into real life, you will find some sturdy young
barbarian, with a Spartan training and a merciless heart, elbowing you
clear off the earth.
For, mark you, these strong, fearless, masterful young giants, who are
every day maturing among the common people of America, ask no quarter
and give none; and it is such fellows you must go up against. And when
you do go up against them there will be no appealing to father and
mother to help you. Father and mother cannot help you. Nobody can help
you but yourself. You will find that the cushion business, and the
mandolin business, and all that sort of thing, do not go in real
life.
Consider West Point and Annapolis. My understanding is that the men
whom the Nation is training there for the skilled defense of the
Republic, and who therefore must be developed into the very highest
types of effective manhood, are taught to clean and polish their own
shoes, make their own beds, care for their own guns, and do everything
else for themselves. Do you think that is a good training for our
generals and admirals? Of course you do.
Well, then, do you imagine that you are going to have an easier time
in your business or profession than the officers in our army and navy?
Don't you believe it for a minute. You are not going to have an easier
time than they. You are going to have a great deal harder time. And by
"hard time" I do not mean an unhappy time. Unhappy time! What greater
joy can there be for a man than the sheer felicity of doing real work
in the world?
While I am on this subject I might as well say another thing: Do not
think that you have got to smoke in order to be or look like a college
man. A pipe in the mouth of a youth does not make him look like a
college man, or any other kind of man. It merely makes him look
absurd, that is all. And if there is ever a time on earth when you do
not need the stimulus of tobacco, it is while you are in college.
Tobacco is a wonderful vegetable. It is, I believe, the only substance
in the world which is at the same time a stimulant and a narcotic, a
heart excitant and a nerve sedative. Very well. You are too young yet
to need a heart stimulant, too young to need anything to quiet your
nerves.
If at your tender age your nerves are so inflamed that they must be
soothed, and if at the very sunrise of your life your heart is so
feeble that it must be forced with any stimulant, you had better quit
college. College is no place for you if you are such a decadent; yes,
and you will find the world a good deal harder place than college.
Cut out tobacco, therefore. For a young fellow in college it is a
ridiculous affectation--nothing more. Why? Because you do not need
tobacco; that is why. At least you do not need it yet. The time may
come when you will find tobacco helpful, but it will not be until you
have been a long while out of college. As to whether tobacco is good
for a man at any stage of life the doctors disagree, and "where
doctors disagree, who shall decide?"
Ruskin says that no really immortal work has been done in the world
since tobacco was introduced; but we know that this is not true. I
would not be understood as having a prejudice for or against the weed.
Whether a full-grown man shall use it or not is something for himself
to decide. Personally I liked it so well that I made up my mind a long
time ago to give it up altogether.
But there is absolutely no excuse for a man young enough to still be
in college to use it at all. And it does not look right. For a boy to
use tobacco has something contemptible about it. I will not argue
whether this is justified or not. That is the way most people feel
about it. Whether their feeling is a prejudice or not, there is no use
of your needlessly offending their prejudice. And this is to be taken
into account. For you want to succeed, do you not? Very well. You
cannot mount a ladder of air; you must rise on the solid
stepping-stones of the people's deserved regard.
And, of course, you will not disgrace yourself by drinking. There is
absolutely nothing in it. If you have your fling at it you will learn
how surely Intoxication's apples of gold turn to the bitterest ashes
in the eating. But when you do find how fruitless of everything but
regrets dissipation is, be honest with yourself and quit it. Be honest
with the mother who is at home praying for you, and quit it. But this
is weak advice. Be honest with that mother who is at home praying for
you, and _never begin it_. That's the thing--_never begin it!_
In a word, be a man; and you will be very little of a man, very little
indeed, if you have got to resort to tobacco and liquor to add to your
blood and conduct that touch of devilishness which you may think is a
necessary part of manliness. Indeed, between fifteen and thirty years
of age your veins will be quite full enough of the untamed and
desperate. I do not object in the least to this wild mustang period in
a man's life.
Is a fellow to have no fun? you will say. Of course, have all the fun
you want; the more the better. But if you need stimulants and tobacco
to key you up to the capacity for fun, you are a solemn person
indeed--"solemn as cholera morbus" to appropriate an American
newspaper's description of one of our public men. What I mean is that
you shall do nothing that will destroy your effectiveness. Play,
sports, fun, do not do that; they increase your effectiveness. Go in
for athletics all you please; but do not forget that that is not why
you are going to college.
Nobody cares how mad are the pranks you play. Take the curb and
snaffle off of the humors of your blood whenever you please; that is
all right. I never took much stock in the outcry against hazing. We
cannot change our sex, or the nature and habits of it. A young man is
a male animal after all, and those who object to his rioting like a
young bull are in a perpetual quarrel with Nature.
One thing I must warn you against, and warn you supremely: the
critical habit of mind which somehow or other a college education does
seem to produce. This is especially true of the great universities of
our East. Nobody admires those splendid institutions more than I
do--the Nation is proud of them, and ought to be. The world of
learning admires them, and with reason. Neither the English, Scotch,
nor German universities surpass them.
But has not every one of us many times heard their graduates declare
that a mischief had been done them while in those universities by the
cultivation of a sneering attitude toward everybody--especially toward
every other young man--whom they see doing anything actual, positive,
or constructive. One of the best of these men--a man with a superb
mind highly trained--said to me on this very subject:
"I confess that I came out of college with my initiative atrophied. I
was afraid to do anything. I was afraid I would make a mistake if I
did anything; afraid I was not well enough equipped to do the things
that suggested themselves; afraid that if I did try to do anything
everybody would criticize what I did; afraid that my old college mates
would laugh at me.
"And I confess in humility that I myself acquired the habit of
intellectual suspicion toward everybody who does try to do any real
thing. I find myself unconsciously sneering at young men who are
accomplishing things. Yes, and that is not the worst of it; I find
myself sneering at myself." That is pathos--a soul doubting, denying
itself. Pathos! yes, it is tragedy!
Confirm this confession by dropping into a club where such men gather
and hearing the talk about the ones who are doing things in the world.
You will find that until the men who _are_ doing things have actually
_done_ them, done them well, and forced hostility itself to accept
what they have done as good, honest pieces of work, the talk in these
clubs will be that of harsh criticism, sneering contempt, and prophecy
of failure. Guard against that habit night and day. You would better
become an opium-eater than to permit this paralysis of mind and soul.
Believe in things. _Believe in other young men._ When you see other
young men trying to do things in business, politics, art, the
professions, believe in the honesty of their purpose and their ability
to do well what they have started out to do. Assume that they will
succeed until they prove that they cannot. Do not discourage them. Do
not sneer at them. That will only weaken yourself. Believe in other
young men, and you will soon find yourself believing in yourself.
That is the most important thing of all: Belief in yourself. Have
faith in yourself though the whole universe jeers. "Trust thyself;
every heart vibrates to that iron string," is the sentence from
Emerson we used to write endlessly in our copy-books when we went to
school. And what a glorious motto for Americans it is!