HE CAN WHO THINKS HE CAN, AN IRON WILL & PUSHING TO THE FRONT. Orison Swett Marden
of people are engaged in producing, manufacturing and forwarding your clothing, your furniture, your food, the tropical fruits on your table, the foreign textiles, the bric-à-brac, and all the things which come from foreign lands to minister to your comfort and convenience.
You buy an orange on the street for two or three cents, but did you ever think of what it has cost to bring it to you? Did you ever think of the number of people who have aided in its production and its transportation so that you might buy it for a few pennies?
You get a yard of cotton cloth for ten cents; but did you ever think of the toil and the hardships of the poor people in the South, of the operatives in the mill, the packers, shippers, and clerks who have handled and rehandled, and shipped it by steamship and railroad that you might buy it for a song?
Suppose these people who say that they owe the world nothing were obliged to make all the comforts and luxuries they enjoy! How long would it take them to produce even a lead pencil, a sheet of writing paper, a jackknife, a pair of spectacles, a pair of shoes, or a suit of clothes, representing an untold amount of drudgery and sacrifice? There is toil, struggle, and sacrifice in everything you purchase, everything you enjoy. How many thousands of people have worked like slaves to make it even possible for you to ride on a railroad or on a steamship, and how many lives have been sacrificed in order to reach the perfection and safety attained by modem trains and steamers, and to enable you to enjoy the comforts and luxuries which they provide!
Wherever you go, tens of thousands of people have been preparing the way and getting things ready, guarding against danger, saving you trouble and drudgery; and yet you say that you do not consider yourself in debt to the world.
If all the workers and all the wealth of the world to-day had been employed for thousands of years for your special benefit, to prepare for your reception upon the earth, they could not have provided the comforts, the conveniences, the facilities, the immunities, the luxuries which you found waiting for you when you were born, and for which you gave not even a penny or a thought, and yet you say that the world owes you this and the other, and that you owe it nothing!
Did you ever think, my idle friend, that there are some things which are not purchasable with money? Do not deceive yourself by thinking that you will get something for nothing. All the laws of the universe are fighting such a theory. You must open an account with the world personally. No one else can pay the debt you owe. Whatever money or advantages your father or any one else gets by his own efforts nature has stamped “untransferable.” The law of the universe recognizes only one legal tender, and that is, personal service.
Whatever you get of real value you must pay for. The things that are done for you are delusions. You are a personal debtor to the world. When you were bom, civilization opened an account with you. On one side of the ledger you find: “John Smith, debtor to all the past ages for the sum total of the results of the toil of the men and the women who have lived and toiled before him. Debtor to the privations, the sufferings, and the sacrifices of those who have bought freedom from bondage, immunity from slavery, emancipation from drudgery.” You are debtor to all the inventions that have ameliorated the hard conditions of mankind and which have emancipated you from the same hard drudgery and stern conditions, the same narrow, limited life of your prehistoric ancestors.
Who are you, Mr. Idler, that you claim a living from the world, when you have not earned the clothing you have on your back or the shelter which covers your head? Why should tens of thousands of people drudge and endure hardships and privations to produce all of the useful things, the beautiful things, the luxuries for you to enjoy without effort?
You say the world owes you a living. What if the sheep should refuse to furnish its wool to cover your lazy back, the earth refuse to produce the crops to fill your lazy stomach, the army of laborers refuse to let you take all the good things out of the world’s great granary without putting anything back? What would become of you who have never lifted your finger to learn a trade or to prepare yourself for a career, or to do work of any kind, if an edict were to come from the skies that would force you henceforth to do your share of the world’s work or starve?
Is he not a thief, an enemy of civilization who thrusts his arm into the great world’s storehouse, pulling out all the good things he wishes and refusing to put anything back in exchange?
We hear a great deal about indiscriminate giving making paupers; but what shall we say about the giving of fortunes to youth who have never been taught that they should give anything in return for all they receive?
What are the chances of growth in character, in sturdy manhood, for the boy who knows that a fortune is waiting for him when he is twenty-one, and who is told every day that his father is rich and that he is a fool to work; that he should just make a business of having a good time? What are the chances of his developing a rugged, sturdy independence, resourcefulness, originality, inventiveness, and all the other qualities that make for vigorous manhood? It is cruel, little less than criminal, to leave vast fortunes to youth without stamina of character, a superb, practical training, or the experience or wisdom to use them wisely.
Things are so arranged in this world that happiness as a profession must ever be a failure. It cannot be found by seeking. It is reflex action. It is incidental; a product which comes from doing noble things. It is impossible for a person to be really happy by making pleasure a profession.
No idle life can produce a real man. A life of luxury calls out only the effeminate, destructive qualities. The creative forces are developed only by stem endeavor to better one’s condition in the world. No wealth or efforts of the parents can bring the latent energies out in the son which make for sturdy manhood. He must work out his problem himself. It can never be done for him.
How little Harry Thaw’s parents realized the cruelty of bringing their son up in idleness, without a trade or a profession, helpless to earn his own living in case of necessity I One would think they would have learned wisdom from the tens of thousands of lessons which ruined lives have taught; that there is no getting around God’s fiat, no evading the law, that work, exercise of faculty, self-effort are the only things that will develop a real man.
The Creator has put an enormous penalty upon idleness—the penalty of weakness, of deterioration, of destruction, of annihilation. “Use or lose” is Nature’s edict.
The idle man is like an idle machine. It destroys itself very quickly. A score of enemies are in readiness to attack anything as soon as it is at rest. Rust, decay, and all sorts of disintegrating processes start in a man just as soon as he becomes idle. Self-destruction begins in the mind the moment it ceases to work. There is no power in heaven or on earth that can save an idle brain from deterioration, no power that can make a man strong and vigorous unless he obeys the natural laws of his life, written in his very constitution. Work, steady, persistent, with a purpose, with zeal, with enthusiasm, with a love for it, is the only thing that can save a man from the disgrace of being a nobody. Work is the inexorable law of growth. There is no getting away from it
The time will come when an able-bodied man who has the audacity, the presumption, to try to get all the good things out of the world and give nothing in return will be looked upon as a monstrosity, an enemy to civilization, and will be ostracized by all decent people.
The youth who thinks he is going to go through this world on what somebody else has produced or done, and still develop into the highest type of a man, is attempting to fight against his Maker. The very laws of the universe have made it forever impossible. Leave this vast, living, complicated machine idle, if you will, try to divert it to some other use, try to make a pleasure machine out of it when it was intended for a work machine, but all nature protests.
One of the most demoralizing features of our American civilization to-day is found in the influence of the idle rich—great human drones, who refuse to work, but who demand the best products of other men’s labor and brains.
I have heard rich fathers boast that necessity was the spur which made men of them, which gave them the foresight, the stamina, the shrewdness, the creative power, the ability necessary to make and protect their fortune; and yet they turn right around and leave a fortune to a son, which is likely to take away his energy, to take the spring out of his ambition,