Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1870-12-13
ENCOyR1GE YOUNG MEN.

One of our exchanges in distant city
has an article in its columns about the "dry-
ing up of old business firms, which con-
taines some excellent ideas. 1t says there
are many firms which go on in business
and accumulate IL fortune, but when the
old partners retire and take their capital
with them their successors fail, or in other
words, "dry up" An instance of the
kind is given where the business was left
to the sons Of retiring merchant. The
old man had been successful, had won a
fortune and an honorable name, but he
had ESTABLISHED business to run in certain
channels and with large capital when
he went out his successors kept to the old
methods in which they had been trained,
but having no capital or an inadequate
one to support the business they "dried
up" in few years. Having no capital
they should have pursued different course
and not chung to the old ruts which they
were not able to follow but chained to
the ideas and methods of the old concern,
through failure to cultivate their own be-
cause of lack of encouragement by their
fathers, drying up was the result.
Instances like this of the bad result of
failure to encourage and advance young
men properly are common everywhere.
The old like to keep the staff in their own
hands as long as they can. They will put
no responsibility upon their sons, pay no
attention to their wishes or suggestions,
until at last they sink into the grave or the
discouraged youth has quit his home and
State to seek living elsewhere. 1t is
not all that is necessary to give young
man the nominal charge of a farm, store
or mill, but it is to defer somewhat to his
Judgment, to accept his plans, in fact to
allow him to become master of the bust
ness himself Then. if the old man re-
tires from the management entirely it is in
hands that have measured the situation
and know how to control it. There are
some men," says the exchange which we
refer to, 'in business who, by strange
reversion of the ordinary laws of nature,
grow more enterprising and energetic as
they grow older. Their ambition and.
their grasp of mind rise with their success
and their opportunities. But in nearly all
such eases the secret will be found to lie
in the fact that these are men who encour-
age their young men to deyelope their
ideas, and are ready to accept and act
upon their propositions whenever they are
practicable. In SCOTS campaigns in
Mexico he was surrounded constantly by
young officers who have since become re-
Lee, Mcclellan, Grant, Sher-
man, Johnston and host of others served
under him. An army thus filled with
youth and ambition could not help being
successful, for Scott was one of the men
who, in mature years, knew how to profit
by the plans and the advice of others.
But in to many cases the advice of young
men is set aside by their elders in business,
whenever it proposes enterprise of any
kind, and the ever ready sheer smites into
the sensibililies of the young aspirant, and
discourages him from further struggles in
such a sphere. We drive away from us
constantly in this way hundreds of first
rate young business men, who seek more
congenial circles in the west