POVERTY AS A DISCIPLINE.
By J. G. Holland
WE often hear it said of a man that he has had great advantages. We have meant by this simply the advantages which wealth could buy—university training, travel, high society, unlimited books, etc. It is not often that we hear poverty spoken of as an advantage, yet we believe it to be demonstrably true, that, of all the advantages which come to any young man, this is the greatest. The young man who is saved from the effort of making his own way in the world, and the necessity of establishing his own position, is denied the most powerful stimulus to labor and development. The young men who are coming every year out of the colleges and the professional schools of the country, and starting into active life, will win success or sink into failure, mainly in accordance with the amount of stimulus under which their education has been acquired. If they have been obliged to labor until they have learned the value of money; if they have been forced into close economies, and learned, also, how difficult it is to keep it; if they have grown up with the consciousness upon them that everything they hope for in the world must be won by their own unaided force and industry; if they have acquired thrifty habits and self-helpfulness and self trust—they enter life with great and most assuring advantages. No amount of wealth given to a young man can possibly give him so good a prospect of a true success as poverty that has secured such advantages as these. Twice within the easy memory of this generation, a man who started at the lowest extreme of the social scale, has risen to be the President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln rose from his nest of leaves in a Western log-cabin, to be twice the elected ruler of the nation, at a most momentous period of the national history, traversing in the passage every degree of the social scale. The poor frontiersman's child, the flat-boatman, the day-laborer, the indigent student, the humble country lawyer, the politician, the stump-speaker, the legislator, the statesman, the President, and chief of one of the greatest armies the world has ever seen—who believes for a moment that, had he been rich at the start, he would have ended where he did? It was the discipline of poverty that made him what he was. It gave him a profound sympathy with the people, most of whom are engaged in a struggle with poverty from the cradle to the grave. It stimulated and trained his powers to their highest development, and it helped him to form those habits of industry and economy that are essential to the best success. James A. Garfield, whom we have just laid in the tomb with tears of affectionate reverence, was another instance of the beneficial influences of poverty. He rose from as low a place as Lincoln, and took even a higher flight than he. The most brilliant man who ever occupied the presidential chair, and rapidly becoming the most admired and best beloved ruler in the world, he was mourned when, in realizing one of the many coincidences that existed between his life and that of Lincoln, he was murdered by an assassin, as man was never mourned before. His marvelous accomplishments and powers won for him the respect of the great, and his sympathy with the humble drew to him the hearts of the world.—J. G. Holland.