PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2572, 8 July 1903, Page 83

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

"LETTERS OF A SEUF-MADE MERCHANT TO HIS SON," ■with the sub-title, " Being the Letters Written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham, and Company, Pork Packers in Chicago, Familiarly known on 'Change as ' Old Gorgan Graham,' to His Son Pierrepont, facetiously known to his Associates as ' Piggy,' " is one of the breeziest and most commonsense books that I have read for a long time. The book is dedicated to "Cyrus Curtis, a Self-made Man," but who the writer is I do not know. The author, however, certainly has made a study of human nature. Supposing , I leave Reciprocity, Preferential Trade, Tlie Far East Question, The Middle East, and The Near East Question, and so on, alone, and give you the tit-bits of it? The first chapter opens with "Piggy" at college, and his father writing his first letter to him. I'll call my first heading EDUCATION, and group around it a few pieces on that subject strewn through the book. The beginning of the letter reads like this : — "Your ma got back safe this morning, and she wants me to be sure to tell you not to over-study. and I want to tell you not to under-study. What we're sending you to Harvard for is* to get a little of the education that's so good and plenty there. When it's passed round you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You'll find that education's the only thing lying round loose in the world, and that it's about the only thing a fellow can have as mush of as he's willing -to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight, and the screwdriver lost." In another place the writer says : — "Education is a good deal like eating — a fellow can't always tell which particular thing did him good, but he can usually tell which one did him harm. After a square meal of roast beef and vegetables, and mince pie, and water melon, you can't just cay which ingredient is going into muscle, but you don't have to be very bright to figure out which one started the demand for painkiller in your inside, or to guess next morning whicn one made you believe in a personal devil the night before. And so while a fellow can't figure out whether it's Latin or algebra, or history, or what among the solids that is building him up in this place or that, he can go right along feeding them in and betting that they're not the things that turn hie tongue fuz;sr. It's down among the sweets, among his amusements and recreations, that he's going to find the stomach ache, and it's there that he wants to go slow and to pick and choose. "Does a college education pay? Does it pay to feed in pork trimmings at five cents a pound at the hopper and draw out nice cunning little ' country ' sausages at 20 cents a pound at the other end? Does it pay to take a steer that's been running loose on the range and living on cactus and petrified wood till he's just a bunch of barbwire and sole-leather and feed him corn till he's just a solid hunk of porter-house steak and oleo oil? You bet it pays. Anything that trains a boy to think, and to think quick, pays ; anything that teaches a boy to get the answer before the other fellow gets through biting his pencil pays. College doesn't make fools ; it develops them. It doesn't make bright men ; it develops them. A fool will turn out a fool, whether he goes to college or not, ! though he'll probably turn out a different sort of a fool. But while the lack of a college education can't keep a fool down, having it will boost the bright one up. "I don't expect you to cairy off all the education in sight — I knew you'd leave a little for the next fellow. But I want you to form clear mental habits, just as I want you to have clean, straight physical ones. Because I was run through a threshing mill ■ttheu I was a boy and didn't begin to get ihe straw out of my hair till I was past 30, I haven't any, sympathy with a lot of these old fellows who go around bragging of their ignorance and paying that boys don't need to know anything except addition and the ' best policy ' brand of honesty. "If there's anything worse than knowing too little, it's knowing too much. Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and burst, and then, of course, there's nothing left. Poverty never spoils a man, but prosperity often does. It's easy to stand hard times, because that's the only thing you can do, but in the good times the fool-killer has to do the night work." It seems to me that this, and much more, that the self-made merchant has to write on education comes in rather opportunely just now when the young New Zealander has such splendid opportunities fov getting a good education: With primary, secondary, and technical education free, and university education within the reach of the majority, it will be a pity if all who can do not get a 6upply of the only good thing that isn't screwed down tight. THE AVERAGE MAN. After describing a friend called Bill, a big, healthy, hard-working man, but very poor, the merchant says : — "But the Bills ain't all in the butcher business. I've got some of them right now in my office, but they will never climb over the railing that separater the clerks from the executive. Yet if they would put in half the time thanking for the house that they give up to

hatching out reasons why they ought to be allowed to overdraw their salary accounts, I- couldn't keep them out of our private offices with a pole-axe, for they would double their salaries and' my profits in a year." In another chapter the merchant is evidently afraid that his son is going to be just the average man, and he pours himself out thus: — "I don't want to bear down hard on you at the beginning of your life on the road ; but I would feel a great deal happier over your showing that you would make a downright failure or a clean-cut success once in a while, instead of always just skinning through in this way. It looks to me as if you were trying only half as hard as you could, and in trying it's the second half that brings success. If there's one piece of knowledge that is of less iise to a fellow than knowing when he's beat, it's knowing when he's done just enough work to keep from being fired. Of course, you are bright enough to be a half-way man, and to hold a halfway place on a half-way salary by doing half the work you are capable of, but you've to add dynamite and gmger and juice to your equipment if you want to get the other half that is coming to you. You have got to. believe that the Lord made the first hog with the Graham brand burned in the skin, and that the drove that rushed down the steep place was packed by a competitor. You've got to know your goods from A to Izzard, lrom snout to tail, on the hoof and in the can. You've got to know 'em like a young mother knows baby talk, and to be as proud of 'em as the young father of a 121b boy, without really thinking that you are stretching it 41b. You've got to believe | in yourself, and make your buyers* take stock in you at par and accrued interest. You've got to have the scent of a bloodhound for an order, and the grip of a bulldog on a customer. You've got to feel the same personal solicitude over a bale of goods that strays off to a competitor as a parson over a backslider, and hold special services to bring it back into the fold. You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to bed with satisfaction. You've got to eat hog, think hog, dream hog— in short, go the whole hog, if you're going to win out in the porkpacking" business. That's a pretty liberal | receipt, I know, but it's intended for a fellow who wants to make a good-sized pie. And the only thing you find in pastry that you don't put in yourself is Hies." BUT DON'T WORRY. "I hear a- good deal about men who won't take vacations, and who kill themselves by overwork, but it's usually worry or whisky. It's not what a man does during working hours, but after them, that breaks down his health. A. fellow and his business should be bosom friends in the office and sworn enemies out of it. A clear mind is | one tfiat is swept cl«an of business at 6 o'clock every night, and isn't opened up for it again until after the shutters are taken down next morning. I've put a i good deal more than work into my business, and I've drawn a good deal more than money out of it ; but the only thing I've I ever pub into it which didn't draw dividends in fun or dollars is worry. That is a branch of the trade that yon want to leave to your competitors. I've always found worry a blamed sight more uncertain than horse-racing — it's harder to pick a winner at it. You go home worrying because you're afraid that your new fool clerk forgot to lock the safe after you, and during the night the lard refinery burns down ; you spend a year fretting because you think Bill Jones is going to cut you out with your best girl, and then you spend ten worrying because he didn't. You worry because your business is going to smash, and your health busts up instead. Worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don't get any satisfaction out of your smartnebs. A busy man has no time to bother with it. He can always find plenty of old women in skirts or trousers to spend their days in worrying over their own troubles and to sit up nights waking his." Shrewd common sense, isn't it? I have a few more selections I'll piece together next week.