The University of Hard Knocks Part 11

Gussie had no chance to serve. Everything was handed to him on a silver platter. Gussie went thru that university about like a steer from Texas goes thru Mr. Armour's inst.i.tute of packnology in Chicago. Did you ever go over into Packingtown and see a steer receive his education?

You remember, then, that after he matriculates--after he gets the grand b.u.mp, said steer does not have to do another thing. His education is all arranged for in advance and he merely rides thru and receives it.

There is a row of professors with their sleeves rolled up who give him the degrees. So as Mr. T. Steer of Panhandle goes riding thru on that endless cable from his A-B-C's to his eternal cold storage, each professor hits him a dab. He rides along from department to department until he is canned.

They "canned" Gussie. He had a man hired to study for him. He rode from department to department. They upholstered him, enameled him, manicured him, sugar-cured him, embalmed him. Finally Gussie was done and the paint was dry. He was a thing of beauty.

Gussie and Bill Whackem Gussie came back home with his education in the baggage-car. It was checked. The mill shut down on a week day, the first time in its history. The hands marched down to the depot, and when the young lord alighted, the factory band played, "See, the Conquering Hero Comes."

A few years later the mill shut down again on a week day. There was c.r.a.pe hanging on the office door. Men and women stood weeping in the streets. The little old man had been translated.

When they next opened up the mill, F. Gustavus Adolphus was at its head. He had inherited the entire plant. "F. Gustavus Adolphus, President."

Poor little peanut! He rattled. He had never grown great enough to fill so great a place. In two years and seven months the mill was a wreck.

The monument of a father's lifetime was wrecked in two years and seven months by the boy who had all the "advantages."

So the mill was shut down the third time on a week day. It looked as tho it never could open. But it did open, and when it opened it had a new kind of boss. If I were to give the new boss a descriptive name, I would call him "Bill Whackem." He was an orphan. He had little chance.

He had a new black eye almost every day. But he seemed to fatten on b.u.mps. Every time he was b.u.mped he would swell up. How fast he grew! He became the most useful man in the community. People forgot all about Bill's lowly origin. They got to looking up to him to start and run things.

So when the courts were looking for somebody big enough to take charge of the wrecked mill, they simply had to appoint Hon. William Whackem.

It was Hon. William Whackem who put the wreckage together and made the wheels go round, and finally got the hungry town back to work.

Colleges Give Us Tools

After that a good many people said it was the college that made a fool of Gussie. They said Bill succeeded so well because he never went to one of "them highbrow schools." I am sorry to say I thought that way for a good while.

But now I see that Bill went up in spite of his handicaps. If he had had Gussie's fine equipment he might have accomplished vastly more.

The book and the college suffer at the hands of their friends. They say to the book and the college, "Give us an education." They cannot do that. You cannot get an education from the book and the college any more than you can get to New York by reading a travelers' guide. You cannot get physical education by reading a book on gymnastics.

The book and the college show you the way, give you instruction and furnish you finer working tools. But the real education is the journey you make, the strength you develop, the service you perform with these instruments and tools.

Gussie was in the position of a man with a very fine equipment of tools and no experience in using them. Bill was the man with the poor, homemade, crude tools, but with the energy, vision and strength developed by struggle.

The "Hard Knocks Graduates"

For education is getting wisdom, understanding, strength, greatness, physically, mentally and morally. I believe I know some people liberally educated who cannot write their own names. But they have served and overcome and developed great lives with the poor, crude tools at their command.

In almost every community are what we sometimes call "hard knocks graduates"--people who have never been to college nor have studied many or any books. Yet they are educated to the degree they have acquired these elements of greatness in their lives.

They realized how they have been handicapped by their poor mental tools.

That is why they say, "All my life I have been handicapped by lack of proper preparation. Don't make my mistake, children, go to school."

The young person with electrical genius will make an electrical machine from a few bits of junk. But send him to Westinghouse and see how much more he will achieve with the same genius and with finer equipment.

Get the best tools you can. But remember diplomas, degrees are not an education, they are merely preparations. When you are thru with the books, remember, you are having a commencement, not an end-ment. You will discover with the pa.s.sing years that life is just one series of greater commencements.

Go out with your fine equipment from your commencements into the school of service and write your education in the only book you ever can know--the book of your experience.

That is what you know--what the courts will take as evidence when they put you upon the witness stand.

The Tragedy of Unpreparedness

The story of Gussie and Bill Whackem is being written in every community in tears, failure and heartache. It is peculiarly a tragedy of our American civilization today.

These fathers and mothers who toil and save, who get great farms, fine homes and large bank accounts, so often think they can give greatness to their children--they can make great places for them in life and put them into them.

They do all this and the children rattle. They have had no chance to grow great enough for the places. The child gets the blame for making the wreck, even as Gussie was blamed for wrecking his father's plant, when the child is the victim.

A man heard me telling the story of Gussie and Bill Whackem, and he went out of my audience very indignant. He said he was very glad his boy was not there to hear it. But that good, deluded father now has his head bowed in shame over the career of his spoiled son.

I rarely tell of it on a platform that at the close of the lecture somebody does not take me aside and tell me a story just as sad from that community.

For years poor Harry Thaw was front-paged on the newspapers and gibbeted in the pulpits as the shocking example of youthful depravity.

He seems never to have had a fighting chance to become a man. He seems to have been robbed of his birthright from the cradle. Yet the father of this boy who has cost America millions in court and detention expenses was one of the greatest business generals of the Keystone state. He could plat great coal empires and command armies of men, but he seems to have been pitifully ignorant of the fact that the barrel shakes.

It is the educated, the rich and the worldly wise who blunder most in the training of their children. Poverty is a better trainer for the rest.

The menace of America lies not in the swollen fortunes, but in the shrunken souls who inherit them.

But Nature's eliminating process is kind to the race in the barrel shaking down the rattlers. Somebody said it is only three generations from s.h.i.+rtsleeves to s.h.i.+rtsleeves.

How long this nation will endure depends upon how many Gussie boys this nation produces. Steam heat is a fine thing, but do you notice how few of our strong men get their start with steam heat?

Children, Learn This Early

You boys and girls, G.o.d bless you! You live in good homes. Father and mother love you and give you everything you need. You get to thinking, "I won't have to turn my hand over. Papa and mamma will take care of me, and when they are gone I'll inherit everything they have. I'm fixed for life."

No, you are unfixed. You are a candidate for trouble. You are going to rattle. Father and mother can be great and you can be a peanut.