Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-11-23
BY DIR. ALBERT EDWARD wIGGAM.
GREAT conference Of Americ

" \ sole purpose Of discussing this
one question: How can we
build human character"
Speakers were there from the church.
the Sunday school, the Boy Scouts
Camp Fire Girls and Knighthood OF
Youth; there were welfare workers
prison workers, experts from the labora-
tories on delinquency and crime and
from many other organizations devoted
to character building. Preachers, teach
ers, sociologiSts, psychologists and philos-
| opherS were on the program-able, de-
voted, highly trained men and women
equipped with all the knowledge we
possess Of modern psychology and prob
lens of behavior.
However, with all this array Of splen-
did men and women, the almost univer-
| sal burden of all the addresses was that
although parents, teachers, lawyers, doc
! tors and preachers have been working
| at this problem of character building
ever since Adam and Eve reared Cain
| and Abel and made a moral success OF
one boy and a moral failure Of the other,
! yet nobody knows very much about how
| to build human character. OF course,
many plans and methods of great hope
| and promise were presented, yet with all
| that, not single person was bold or
| dogmatic enough to claim that he had
| any Sure-flre, guaranteed method OF
| building character in our youth or of
turning wrong doors from their ways.
| Personally, I do not believe there Is
| any such system or ever will be until the
science of the mind becomes as exact as
| the sciences of physics and chemistry.
I do not believe anybody has any cock
sure, foolproof system for making bad
| people good. Nevertheless. I do believe
that there is one man who has devel-
/ oped q method Of character education
that has been so remarkably successful
that 1t should be tried at once in every
home and school and prison in the land.
And 1t is the story of this man and his
methods of training children and adults
SO that they prefer to do right rather
Nhan wrong that wish to tell.
What Letters d. C. S. Mean.
This mans very name is suggestive,
| because his name Is Wright. Frank
/ lin Wright, D. c. s., of Detroit, Mich.
You may ask at once, What do the let
tiers D. C. S stand for?" That is his
| doctors degree. 1t means Doctor Of
by any university, although every uni
verSity ought to have such degree, to
be conferred only on extraordinary post
! graduates. The degree of D. c. s. was
| formally conferred by the prisoners in
the penitentiary at Walla Walla, in the
State of Washington, because Of the
great good Wright had done them. as
well as men and women in other prisons
Many of these men and women, be-
cause of Wrights philosophy of life, are
now outside either as successful citizens
| and business men or else as teachers of
! his gospel Of common sense in building
human character. You will find this de-
| gree attached to Wright's name in
Who's Who in America" Not single
| one Of the $4,000 distinguished Ameri-
cans in that volume deserve this degree
| more than Dad" Wright, as he is affec-
| tionately called and known to the thou
| sands upon thousands of children that
| have come under his teachings and to
| numerous men and women-some Of
| them formerly in the very bottom of the
| gutter-whom he has put back on the
road to happy and successful life.
Twenty years ago Frank Wright was
a switch engineer. He had come up
| from engine wiper to yardmaster of the
switch yards. Necessity, not preference,
| selected his first position in the c., NJ
& st. Paul Railway roundhouse at Day.
export, Iowa. Born in Iowa Of Quaker
mother, and reared in a Quaker settle
| ment until he was 10 years old, he was
| forced to leave school in the ninth grade
to help his mother support a family Of
eight. Wright says that railway men In
the West at that time were-in the Ian
guage of the Observation-Disclosures by
their willingness to fight at the drop Of
the hat, their ability to swear by note
and reputation Of having never refused
a drink Of liquor.
Smoked 20 Cigars a Day.
Notwithstanding his Quaker training,
he was soon known as q man who could
reach the highest notes in the scale of
profanity, and he smoked an average of
% cigars each day.
The doctors told him he would die If
he did not quit smoking and would likely
die If he quit suddenly. The preachers
told him he would go to hell If he did
not quit swearing. So he decided to quit
both. He tried for years to quit grad
ually, but he couldn't do it. Nobody can
You never quite reach the jumping-off
place. If you want to start new habit
the only way is to start it. If you want
to resume right living, you simply have
to resume.
Finally, one day, Wright got the idea
that forming habits-living a life in
which he was master of himself-was
very much like the locomotive engines
he had worked with so long and under
stood so well. He said to himself, THE
engine Is my will power, the steam is my
desire and the engineer is my reason. I
can't pull my life along the right track
unless the three are working In har-
mony, just as the engine will not pull its
train Of cars unless the steam and engi-
neer are working in harmony with the
machinery of the engine"
So Wright went to bed that night
thinking hard on the reasons for living
without this hampering habit-reasons
OF health, money, sound nerves. peace
OF mind, decency and all the dignity it
gives a man to feel he is absolute master
OF himself. These thoughts so filled his
mind through the night that the next
morning, to his own establishment, his
desire for tobacco had simply vanished
1t is literal fact that when your mind
Is filled with the right course of action
the thoughts of the wrong course simply
get no chance for even look in.
In other words, Wright suddenly woke
up to the fact-the so,mdest fact in all
pSychology-that habits are masters of
thinking. We do the thing we think
about. Our actions follow our minds as
our bodies follow our noses. He dis
covered that the will, which most people
imagine Is some mysterious power by
which we can reach up and lift our
selves by our psychological bootstrapS, is
nothing but set of habits, and he dis
covered that habits are just the things
we think about and that we can control
ly you can control your life.
So, how to control your life, make 1t
big and rich and kindly, just by con-
trolling your thoughts-this was the
great lesson that came to this big
hearted. big-brained railroad man from
studying his life as he studied his pro-
feSSion-that is, with his reason. In
fact. Wright did not know 1t, and doesn't
know 1t yet, but he had gone clear back
to Aristotle, the old Greek, who taught
precisely the same thing-that the good
life" can be achieved by just filling our
minds with it. living the good life in