Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1903-12-24

MZIllW
[Speech by Hon. Leslie NJ Shaw, Secre-
tary Of the Treasury, in the Academy of
Music, Phila., last Friday evening, to the
Peirce School graduates]
/ am safe assuming that each of you desires
to succeed Theoretically nothing is easier.
Practically nothing is more difficult. Ask
the first man you mees on the street, and
he will tell you how. Any schoolboy can
write the formula Of success. 1t is no
longer secret. If any of your lives end
in failure it will not be for want of instruc-
tion on the subject, nor for the want of luck; !;
but for the want Of capacity, ,or for want of in
dustry, or energy, or perseverance to put in
operation, and keep in operation, course
of conduct which you are now fully aware
is essential to success. Believing, there
fore, that you know the formula, con-
fine my exorts to an attempt to reinfore
those essentials which you already know.
If | were to say that no uneducated man
ever succeeds it would be necessary to de-
fine what I meant by education. Men
succeed who can neither read nor write,
but they do not succeed without education.
Men go through college, take post-grad
courses, and then sometimes fail for want of
education. Education does not consist in
simply knowing certain facts. If it did,
some one would tell you how many facts
you must know in order to be educated.
Facts are cold Education is mental
warmth. If I were to criticise modem
educational processes as pursued in the
schools would say that the average sehooly
the average academy and the average coll
lege are building too many granaries and
not enough grist mills. You can buy for
25 cents vest-pocket volume containing
more facts than any one man, living or
dead, ever knew. But you might commit
the entire volume to memory, and justify
your friends in calling youa walking en-
cyclopedia, and you would still remain un-
educated. You would be quite we'll in
formed, but you would not be educated.
Education is a drawing-out process as dis
tinguished from cramming process. An
educated man is able to take facts, like
grain, and grind them; bolt them; leaven
them; knead them, and bake them. Then
hs has something possessing a market
value. Capaoity for success, therefore, is
capacity to think, to reason, to weigh, to
adjust, to deduce, to conclude, to decide,
and then to act upon the decision
There is little in life but drudgery, and
yet think successful men are seldom con
scious Of doing drudgery. Possibly you
will not grasp that thought. Let me put
it in another way. Very likely most of
you graduating to-day will be seeking em-
ployment tomorrow. If you take my adj
vice You will never work for hire. If you
work for hire you will never rise higher.
If you work for hire, life will have little
else for you but dsudgery, and eight hours
per day-ten hours per day at the most, is
eshi ~ Se.a oepshA anu hCcP youi HSatbH
But il you work for the accomplishment OF
the thing which you are employed to do
you can work sixteen or eighteen hours a
day and grow fat. and life will be full Of
sunshine and Of song God implanted in
the human mind desire to do things.
Capaeity to do things is adivine attribute.
AaA among the abiding pleasures of life is
she inspiration Of results wrought by what
the observer calls drudgery, but which
never proves distasteful to the performer,
for his mind is fixed on the result and not
on the steps leading thereto.
The chances are that inside Of ten years
some Of you will think be had missed his
calling. This will be false conclusion
Doubtless there are exceptions to the rule,
bat as rule he who succeeds at one thing
would succeed at another, and he who fails
at one would fail at another Conditions
seldom adapt themselves to the individual,
and the individual who fails to adapt him
self TO one set Of conditions won d not be
II BILE 70 adapt himself TO any. The truly
educated, the self-poised, self-contained,
self-impelled, and self-consrolIed man is
ntc tssarily self adjusting
II asked to offer advice on the subject, /
shoaid recommend that you accept posi-