580 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



is also an age of specialists. The general purpose man must necessarily 

 fall to the rear. Every man should be educated along some line of busi- 

 ness. While I am a strong believer in adaptability, I can not think that 

 a man who has made a success as a specialist would have been a failure in 

 some other business, if he had applied the same energy and thought to it. 

 Success in any business never comes by chance or luck. Chauncey Depew, 

 being asked by a young man to give the secret of success, replied: "My 

 boy, there is no secret to it. It is just dig, dig, dig." Edison, being asked 

 to give the definition of genius, answered: "Two per cent, is genius, 

 98 per cent, is hard work." On another occasion when this great inventor 

 was aSked if he did not believe that genius was simply inspiration, he re- 

 plied: "No, genius is perspiration." The editor of a western newspaper 

 sent to all the successful men in his city this question: "Why is it that 

 not more of our young men succeed?" And one answer came back in this 

 laconic phrase: "Because too many of them are looking for white shirt 

 jobs." Possibly this was a homely way of saying it, but it is true in many 

 cases, especially with many of our college graduates. Some imagine be- 

 cause they have a college education they must necessarily get an easy, 

 high-salaried position. It is well to have a technical education, but it is 

 also well to have a manual training. Lord Bacon used to say, "Learning 

 should be made subservient to action. We need a knowledge more 

 of how to do things than how to explain things." The world today is look- 

 ing for men and women who can turn out the finished product. The time 

 we hope is past when it will be considered a disgrace for a man or a 

 woman to work with their hands. No man would be so irreverent as to 

 say "that the man Christ was lacking in brain power or manliness," yet 

 we find him a carpenter, toiling Avith his hands. Study the lives of all 

 successful men and the story will be found in each case exactly the same. 

 The methods varying as they must but the actual basis of every successful 

 life is the persistent, hard, hard work of years and many a personal sacri- 

 fice. This is not always apparent, simply because we are all apt to look 

 at a man when he has achieved his success, but there was a struggling 

 period, nevertheless. Thoroughness in everything is the key-note of suc- 

 cess. As Mr. Bok, the distinguished editor of the Ladies Home Journal 

 says, "A thorough workman never says 'there, that will do,' but 'there, 

 that's it,' " and this is what every young man in business should learn- 

 that absolutely nothing is good enough if it can be made better. And bet- 

 ter is never good enough if it can be made best. We frequently hear men 

 complain that there is no use in doing extra work, that their employers 

 do not appreciate it. They work merely like an automatic machine, with 

 no interest or heart in their work. As a rule, the fault is more often 

 with the employed than with the employer. There are exceptions to this, 

 as to any rule, but as a general thing a man gets paid about what he is 

 worth. The man Avho most loudly complains of being underpaid is fre- 

 quently the man who is overj^aid. I find it much more difficult to get men 



