SOUND ADVICE TO BOYS—AND TO ALL
IN New York City, May 9, Mr. Charles M. Schwab, a remarkably successful business man, spoke to the graduating class of a trade school. The chairman introduced him “as a man who had fought battles and won victories in the struggle of life, and therefore was well qualified to give boys advice founded on practical experience.” Then Mr. Schwab gave the following sound advice, which is good for all people:— “I will speak to you just as if you had come to my office asking for advice. And the first thing I will say to you is, Come alone. Don’t come with somebody’s backing. Learn to rely upon yourself. That is the first lesson. If you come indorsed by somebody of influence, it always will leave room for others to say that whatever position you may get you got by influence, and not because of your individual merit. No true success is built on influence. You must win your positions for yourself.” “Then here is another thing that is essential: you must do what you are employed to do a little better than anybody else does it. Everybody is expected to do his duty, but the boy who does his duty, and a little more than his duty, is the boy who is going to succeed in this world. You must take an interest in what you are doing, and it must be a genuine interest.” Here Mr. Schwab told a story, which everybody understood referred to himself. Afterward he told another story, which it was equally well understood referred to H. C. Frick. The stories follow:— “There were ten boys employed by a concern once, and one night the manager said to his subordinate: ‘Tell the boys they are to stay a little longer to-night—tell them that they are to stay until six o’clock. Don’t tell them why. Just tell them that and watch them.’ So this was done, and when six o’clock came, there was just one boy who was wholly interested in his work, and was not watching the clock to see what time it was. That boy was the one the manager wanted, and he was taken into the office, and as he continued to manifest the same interest in his work, he was promoted until at last he got quite a responsible place.” “Then there was another boy. He began carrying water, and he did it so much better than any other boy, seeing to it always that the men had good water, cool water, and plenty of it, that he attracted attention to himself. He was taken into the office, where he became in time superintendent, and then general manager, and he is now the man that is at the head of the great Carnegie company, with thousands of men under him. As a boy he did more than the ordinary run of boys did, and so attracted attention, and that was the secret of his first step upward.” “I was in a bank down-town the other day when a newsboy came in and sold the banker a paper. After he had gone out, the banker said to me: ‘For two years now that boy has been coming in here at the time I told him to come—two o’clock. He does not come before two nor after two; but at two precisely. He has sold me a paper every week day in that way when I have been here, without330a break. He sells it for just one cent—its price. He neither asks more nor seems to expect more. It is a cold commercial transaction. Now, a boy that will attend to business in that way has got business in him. He does not know it yet; but I am going to put him in my bank, and you will see that he will be heard from.’” “Another thing, boys, and that is, Get an early start. The boy in business who starts with a manual school education at seventeen or eighteen will get a start that the boy who goes through college will never catch up with, other things being equal. That does not apply to the professions, of course; only to business. Out of forty men I know who are great leaders in the business world only two are college graduates.”