Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-12-20
OUR HELPERS
By H. Addington Bruce


WE hear a gre + deal about self-made
| wv men. Progressing despite the lack
of certain advantages Nther men
have had we may, in fact, be inclined boast
| fully to account ourselves among the self
made.
Yet by so doing we should take to our
selves undue credit. AS all take who plume
themselves on being their own makers.
| Invariably forces themselves have a part
in the making of men, Ancestors of whom
they may never have heard bear share in
| their shaping. A still greater contribution
! is made by tie surroundings in which they
are reared particularly by people in these
surroundings.
Aye, and by people dead and gone, of no
blood relationship, but transmitters of form
alive ideas through the books they have
written, the pictures they have painted, the
music they have composed, the scientific dis
| coveries and inventions they have achieved
Search the early histories of the so-called
self-made, and always it will be found that
they had helpers in the present, helpers from
the past, to advance their interest. No sue
cessful man, no matter how unfortunate his
immediate antecedents, matter how dis
advantageous his early upbringing, has been
quite devoid of helpers.
If he had been thus devoid he could not
possibly have been successful. For, being
without sources of information and inspira-
ton, he would have grown to manhood an
ignoramus, spinelesly unambitious.
His father may have been a drunkard,
but the son had helpful friends who did not
drink. He may have been forced to leave
school at an unduly early age, but already
his teacher or some other helper had reused
in him craving for knowledge.
The example of his father might have
made him shiftless, worthless. Fortunately
there were around him better men, whose
example gripped his imagination more.
These other men-were they not helpers in
his making, even though they made no con-
scious effort to help?
And long-dead writer's of stimulating
books that he CHANGED to read while young
would one deny that they, too, may have
had decisive part in his making, that at all
events they had some part? A single phrase
from Homer, a line from Shakespeare, the
hurriedly scrawled creed of some unnamed
modern captain of industry, may have pro-
vided the spark that set his ambition fam
ing gloriously.
Always one encounters helpers when a
search for helpers begins. The self-made man
is myth, is an impossibility.
Which suggests, of course, that the So
called self-made man in his turn be nota-
BILE, if unconscious, helper in the making of
other men. He is almost certain to be such.
Assuredly he will be, if acquaintance with
him or knowledge of his career inspires in
others the wish to rise.
And this, after all, will be much more to
his credit than ability to point proudly to
himself with an 81 made me-" To those who
help most belongs of right most glory. For
to help is the great purpose and mission of
man, the earthly destiny for which he was
created
When all men sense this, then will the
world be the garden of happiness and high
endeavor God intended it to be.
Copyright, 1921, by the Associated News
papers.)