The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-06-19
City versus Country Boys.

Have country boys-young business
men, | mean-a conception of the adj
vantages they possess over their city
cousins? l fear not. For the most
part the idea seems to prevail that the
city boy has all the opportunities, while
the country boy has only privations and
disappointments. And yet, when we
come to look the business of the city
over, we find that among the successful
men those of city birth and training
are in the minority, while those who
spent their boyhood in the country,
and commenced the race apparently
handicapped, are in the majority. New
York city is striking instance of this
fact. The merchant princes, so
called, and the railway magnates, as
they are commonly termed, together
with those bankers, brokers, lawyers,
doctors, manufacturers, judges, editors,
inventors and accountants, with hosts
of others too numerous to name, who
have achieved the most distinguished
success in their special fields of labor,
are not, as rule, New Workers by
birth and education. The leading men,
with very few exceptions, in all the
walks of life in the metropolis were
educated outside of the city, and not
small proportion of them were country
boys a few years ago. The reasons
for this are not very hard to discover.
In the first place, the procession of
events before the gaze of the city boy
is so rapid that he has no time to seize
upon any one thing for himself. If it
be only book or paper that comes
in his way, it is not priced, because of
necessity it must make way for its sue
cessor of the morrow. Again, bust
ness is conducted on so large scale
that as observer or apprentice he can
only become acquainted with a subor-
dinate part. He seldom has the OPP
portunity to study a given business in
its entirety. Opportunities for amuse-
ments are so many, and the habit of
indulgence formed in childhood is so
hard to break, that much valuable time
is lost in that direction; and 80 we
might 60 on enumerating many other
things equally unfortunate for the
training of the city boy for the active
responsibilities of successful business.
Last, but not least, the average city
boy has not the physical stamina that
hard work, the only method of attain
ing success in the business world, so
imperatively demands. On the other
hand, the country boy has leisure. He
has few amusements, and he prizes,
and therefore studies, the books and
papers that fall in his way. He fin
ishes one thing before he takes up
another. If he learns any business
while in the country it is one so small
in extent and of so few details that he
comprehends every feature of it, If
he has decided ability for management,
it is not at all strange to find him in
the direction of affairs long before his
city cousin of the same age has left
school. He early learns self-reliance
AS rule, he is of robust health, and
having been thrown upon his own re-
sources, he is not abashed when some
unexpected difficulty is encountered in
his business career. But, beyond all
else, he has been trained to work con-
tinuously the year through. He has
fixed habits of industry. Accordingly,
when he comes to the city to live the
odds are largely in his favor, although
it is very possible that neither he nor
his city cousin appreciates the fact.
The very belief, however, that he is at
a disadvantage in the race causes him
to make greater effort, and ere long he
finds himself away ahead of all COM
petitors. The Office.