Smyrna times., 1872-01-03
.MISceIIU 10 e o as.
What Mr.. Greeley Said to the Young
Man.

A young Englishman of our acquaintance,
who recently came to this country under the |
impression that he could make money easily |
here, though he had no very distinct idea how,
wrote to Mr.. Greeley, after exhausting every
other resource asking his advice. He described |
himself as literally educated, graduate from
Oxford, but without experience or skill in any
particular business, and, Of course, out OF
money. Mr.. Greeley's reply, which we have
been allowed to decipher, begins by saying to
the young man, II utterly detest and abhor
the kind OF education you have received,
which he says embraces everything except that
which it should embrace-the mastery of some
business that will yield support. Mr.. Greeley
thanks God that he himself graduated from "a
New England (very) common school" not that
he undervalues the knowledge to be secured in
universities, we take it, but because colleges
fail to provide adequately for the future Of
the man by making him a skilled workman
in some recognized business which will GER
tainly yield him support, and the suggestion
is one well worthy of attention. Mr.. Greeley
thinks every man, no matter what his station
in lite may be, ought to know a business at
which he can earn livelihood t0th has hands
that every man should know a trade, in
fact; and in general way he is doubtless
right.
But what do our colleges train man for :?
They give US, incidentally, doctors and lawyers
in such abundance that the half of them never
secure footing in their professions, while the
non-professiOnal graduates are turned out
''liberally educated as the phrase goes, but
utterly destitute Of any kind of fitness for life.
They can read Greek and Latin, they know
the calculus, end have a limited acquaintance
with the mixed mathematics and the sciences.
But how many of them know how to make
even ten dollars week at any kind of BUSINESS
How many Of them can utilize their liberia
educations? How many Of them could com
mand a salary on their merits without inhu
ence and patronage? Men who are in jour
nalism see more of the misery wrought by Ou
defective educational system than others do
> because men of education, out of money
. invariably try literature, under the delusio
d that any man with an education can write 70
the papers, They come by scores, confident o
e their qualification, while they admit that the
i have no experience, and some of them eve
= confess themselves void of an idea as to wha
f they shall write about, imagining that the me
h who are to pay for their matter can after
also to supply them with its framework an
e. spirit.
Of People talk great deal about the miserit
"a Of the poor and the struggles of the workin
" classes, but there is probably far more re
= suffering in the struggles of those who wal
n. to work but do not know how. We can col
of ceive of no more unhappy person than Il
nd man whose ideas have been refined into almc
e- morbid sensitiveness by liberal educatio
without money and with no skill at anythir
r. profitable. A complete education is a mob
q possession, but the education which does n
,n embrace the mastery of some business is
mentally incomplete, and the parent W
re makes a blacksmith out OF his son does hi
to a much greater kindness than the one W
No. makes mere graduate of the boy and lea'
ice zee him to battle with life wholly unequipped
~ the struggle.
id The fault probably lies less with the C
Of leges, which educate man for the sa
on, of the man, than with parents who fail to a
laf to what the college has done, the practi
teachings necessary to fit the man for a life
ESS' usefulness There is something also to be
ald' down to the mistaken feeling that profess
bv is more honorable than a trade, and to
ave snobbishness which pushes into colleges {
ing into the professions many men whom nat
tent has intended to build houses or to make
chinery or to till the soil, To most me
w" collegiate training is very valuable when jOl
to business education of some sort, but Sc
!, are better without it, and no man is fitted
~ life who has nothing more than diploma
,.,,. which to rely.-Heorth and Home.