The Chief Scoul Talks

Taranaki Daily News, 10 May 1930, Page 25 (Supplement)

The Chief Scoul Talks

THE MAN WHO STUCK TO IT.

(By Lt. Gen. Lord Baden-Powell.)

Year after year the thrushes say the same thing to scouts and guides “Stick to It,” “ Stick to It.” This motto always reminds me of one of the veiy best scouts I ever knew, and that was the late Lord Strathcona. He has been dead a good many years now, but his memory will never die, for he left behind him work which will always be associated with his name. . He began life as a-poor boy m Scotland and he ended up by being one of the richest men in Britain—not the richest in money only, but what is moie important, in having the admiration and affection of a vast number of his fellow-countrymen. When he was eighteen he went out to Canada . as plain Donald Smith, and there joined the Hudson Bay .Trading Company. This company used to buy fur skins from the trappers and Indians, and its trading stations were built in out of the way places in order to be near the hunting grounds of these people. These stations were all fortified posts icadj for defence against attack. Youna Smith was sent up to a place called Mingan, right away up in t.ie

..........no. North-East of Canada, in Labrador, a cold, bleak, dreary country. After he had been there for some time his eyes began to give him great trouble and he° feared he was going blind. There was no doctor or anyone else to consult so he started off to make his way down to Montreal to Bee a doctor. He took with him as guides two half-breed India ns. For weeks he toiled through the awful wilderness, among snow and ).’•uds, but at last he reached Montreal. lio you think 3 they made a hero of him? ’ His employers rounded on him for quitting his post without leave and told him to go back at once. At first he felt, like many of us would have done, so angry that he was on the point

of leaving the whole thing, and of throwing, up the service of the Hudson Bay Company. But on second thoughts he felt that after all the managers were right. . They had put him there to have charge of valuable stores and important work and it was his duty t.O stick there and not come into civilised parts for his own sake. So he accepted the wigging and started back on the lona-dreary journey to his gloomy post in°Labrador. But he had luckily been able to see a doctor and had got his eyes put right. It was an awful journey—so bad that the two guides gave way under tlieir hardships and died. But Donald Smith stuck to it ancb&truggled on and in the; end he just managed to get to his post, worn out and exhausted. THE SECRET OF SUCCESS. ZThat sticking to it was the secret of his success. For thirteen years he stuck to his job in that awful countij. And then his employers saw that he was so strona on doing his duty that they , promoted him to higher and moie iin* portant work, till in the end he became chief factor or head manager of-, the company. ■; Then came the idea of maxing the Canadian Pacific Railway right across Canada. People said it was a mad scheme: that -it would never pay to make a railway across that vast wilder- ~ ncss, which, in those days, had not been properly explored. But Donald Smith _ looked far ahead and saw the time when - England would be overcrowded with ■ people, and corn-growing, cattle-rais-ina land would be needed for colonists. So° he put his savings into the railway and worked hard to make it a success. Everything seemed to go against it.. But he stuck to it and fought against all difficulties, until in the end he won through. And to-day that railway, the Canadian Pacific, is one of the great-. <?st in tho world and hoc made Canada a ar eat country peopled by thousands of British colonists. So he amassed his; fortune, and later on, in return for his splendid work for the Empire. Donald Smith was made Lord Most men cease work when they reach the age of sixty or seventy, but Lord Strathcona did not, He still eon-- ( tinned to stick to it for twenty or thirty years longer than most men, and he was at' work in- his office only a few days before he died at the age of, ninety-four. Every day in his office he stuck to it. He went there early every morning and I seldom left before seven; often he would [be there till nine. When all the neighi touring offices in Victoria Street, ! London, had ha<lJ;Wr. lights-turned off ' and their doors closed for the night, ! Lord Strathcona’s window was seen to i be brilliantly lighted up, so much that the policeman and others thereabout called it “The Lighthouse.” Now why should a man go on working overtime like that? He was no longer seeking to make money. He had enough of that and to spare. It was simply because ho considered it was his*. duty and so he stuck to it.