330 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



that you are very far along the road to learning and knowledge 

 as yet. So far you have learned from books ; you have yet 

 to take deeper lessons in human nature and human character. 

 And it will require incessant work to do it. 



You have much work to do — you know that as well as I can 

 tell you. First of all, you have to earn your own livelihood. 

 Thank God, that our country is one of almost equal opportuni- 

 ties, where good and earnest work is appreciated. It will be no 

 easy task for you to do this, for you must remember that for a 

 long time to come you are only going to a larger school and 

 are continuing your lessons on a grander scale than ever before. 



Then, if you succeed in making for yourself a niche in 

 the busy, eager, rushing world, you will have for the first time 

 some leisure to consider what you can do in the larger lines of 

 human endeavor. 



To-day all around us we have examples of what undue 

 power and enormous aggregations of wealth may do and 

 what may be feared from the threatened overturn of so- 

 ciety and the confiscation of the sources of wealth. A rising 

 tide of discontent against capital and wealth finds its most 

 outspoken advocates in socialism and that form of anarchism 

 which would utterly destroy before it attempts to rebuild. In 

 their cry for economic and social reform, these advocates go 

 so far as to destroy the old landmarks of civilization, religion 

 and clean living. We cannot aflford to yield either to the pres- 

 sure of the one or to the demands of the other. If progress 

 is to be made, it must be made along the lines of reconcilia- 

 tion. Here, gentlemen, is abundant work for you — a work 

 which may well tax all your resources. 



Then, again, you have a third and even nobler work. 

 It is that of clean and helpful living. It is the work 

 of the heart and the soul. If you would accomplish great 

 things, think great thoughts and inspire great deeds, you 

 must begin with yourself. That is a work that you may do 

 simultaneously with the others ; and it will tell more in the 

 end than any other. There are no men in these United States 

 upon whom the task of making straight the paths of human 

 progress and human culture should rest more particularly than 

 upon the college graduates. It is the noblest aim they can have 

 in life. The entry of large-minded college men, who know 

 their faith and love their country, into the task of solving these 



