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THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
Ev-ry Afternoon Except Sunday .
Ry THE GEORGIAN COMPANY
At 30 East. Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga.
HhterM as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March 3. 1873.
Subscription Price—Delivered bv narriar. 10 cents a week. Bv mail, $5.00 a year.
Payable In advance.
No Man Is as Great as His
Work
X »? M
In His Little Lifetime He Can Do Only a Small Part of Any
Important Task, Then He Must Pass On and Leave Its
Completion to Others.
“You can take it from me. young man, that neither Wall
street nor the Standard Oil Company nor any other power on
earth had anything to do with the building of this railroad. I
built it with my own brains. They got me the money; they got
me the meu. It is a good railroad; one of the best in the world,
and it is going to last, for many years as a monument to me.
But bear in mind that T made the railroad; the railroad didn't
make me.’’
This came from a pompous, iron-jawed railroad president, as
he scowled at an inquisitive reporter.
The reporter duly set this speech down, and somewhere in
some newspaper it may be found, essentially as we have set it
forth here.
It. isn’t true, it isn’t just, it isn’t even common scuse, but
there can be no doubt that wnen the railroad president uttered it
he believed it, every word. He fancied then, as he fancies now,
that he was greater than his work, and that the railroad prac
tically sprang from his brain, as we are told that lesser deities
sprang from the brain of Jove, who was the head of the family
of deities worshipped by the thoughtful but credulous people of
earlj 7 times.
Now this man, able as he was, merely put together that
railroad. Centuries before he was ever heard of men dug iron
ore from the earth, and thus provided the means by which his
track and locomotives and car wheels could be built.
While the buffaloes were still kicking up dust clouds along
his present right-of-way, Stephenson was tinkering at his tea
kettle of a locomotive engine, thus beginning ONE BRANCH of
the railroad business, of ALL OF WHOSE BRANCHES this
man calls himself the master.
Then other men improved the locomotive and devised meth
ods of engineering and harnessed the lightning to the electric
telegraph, and taught steam how to work in a steam shovel, and
educated the public into ways of buying railroad' stocks and
bonds, and experimented with different kinds of rolling stock,
until from the abundance of the work that they had produced
it was possible to choose and arrange the materials for a rail
road.
And meanwhile the tough, sinewy pioneers who had crossed
the plains with ox teams, fighting their way against Indians and
wild animals and famine and blizzards, developed a new country
and planted the wheat fields that made the railroad worth while.
So the great railroad builder, instead of being greater than
his work, was merely a small part of it.
He took up the work of hundreds, even thousands, of other
men, and, following the example of many other railroad builders,
combined it all into a tolerably efficient, railroad.
Relatively he was about as much the originator of the great
system that he brought together as the fourteenth coral insect in
a reef composed of fourteen hundred billion coral insects is the
originator of the reef.
The world requires men like this man—-men with imagina
tion and nerve, who can see its needs, and who have th’e courage
to supply them, no matter whether their motives are purely phil
anthropic—which is often—or wholly selfish. But the world can
not afford to let such men get conceited or to fancy that com
pared to their own important personalities the work that they are
doing is a mere incident.
Several times in history big, able men have become possess
ed with the idea that they were greater than all other earthly
beings. The last of these was Napoleon, and he lived to under
stand. if not to admit, his mistakes.
America has been more fortunate in its great men. Wash
ington knew that compared to the cause he served his own per
sonality counted for but little. There was never a time that he,
would not have stepped aside to let an abler man take charge of
the Colonial army, had an abler man been possible to find.
Lincoln counted his country first and himself last. He had
no vanity that his contemporaries were able to discover; he had
no ambition other than to see the country once more united and
at. peace. Great men were both of these, yet neither of them
for a minute fancied that he was as great as the task that he
had been set to do.
The world that most of us know is a great workshop, in
which each must find the job he is best fitted to do. and do it
as well as he may.
Education is hut studving what other men haw done in the
world in order that we ma\ waste no lime in discovering what
has already been discovered or in following paths that have
been found to lead in no useful direction.
There is no work so unimportant that it is so be despised,
so long as it is wholesome; there is no field of human endeavor
that has been so fully cultivated that it will give no further re
turn for labor.
The man who realizes that instead of being greater than his
task he is infinitely small in comparison with it has a chance to
do his best, and in doing his best he is reasonably sure to be
successful.
Whether he gathers together a great fortune or not does
not matter a great deal. Some men were not meant for for
tunes, and are spoiled by them
But whether or not he can justify his existence bv being
nf use to those that are here and those who are to come mat
ters a great d<sal.
Les him take hold of any work that comes to hand, if he
'in<£. that he can do it, and after learning all that there is to
know about what has been done upon it go courageous!} to work
t 0 do a little more if he can.
He will soon find that as he progresses the importance of his
task becomes constantly greater in his eyes, and that as the
'oarshave passed by he has come to prefer it to an\thing else
in the world.
Whether it is medicine, law. engineering or selling grocer
ies, if h<- f>o] s if j s a great and useful work ho will find in
it pleasure and satisfaction, and unconsciously he will become
ne of th' ort.j's really valuable workers.
The Atlanta Georgian
HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE
That Is What Nine Men Out of Ten Who Are Failures Say. Look Out That You Don’t Say It Yourself.
By TAD
•’-w ’ '' I I
;. ; 1
’ I I
ZSOax. i PRIVATE I
- ■ OFT 1
- ; -'3 :
I —jfcjL
NO. 10.
One of the regulars in the corner saloon
straightened Yum up and he left to see some
good friends. Yum wanted to start all over
again and be a right guy.
He thought he'd take a small beer ror
luck before he started, but one of the gang
told him that drinking beer wasn't right;
whisky was the stuff. Drinking beer, he said,
always made him think of a fellow trying to
scratch his back without any finger nails.
Yum took a few shots and went down to
see an old friend. He sat in the hall. When
the office boy asked for his name he said,-
“Just tell him that Yum is here; lie’ll know.’’
The Working Man and His Money
save, Save, Save. The Future Will Care For Itself
By THOMAS TAPPER.
(The following article is punted
b.v permission from Mi'. Thomas
Tapper's book just published by the
Platt & Peck Co.. New York, and
copyrighted by them, entitled
"Youth and Opportunity.")
IET us keep before us tiie aver
age workingman and his
money, and let us ask what
his money means, what its power
it, and how it may serve him now
and in the future; for every man.
who earns little or muon, looks
upon money almost hungrily as the
one resource of safety. He wants
the use of it Kow and the com
fort of it in the future. Most peo
ple get the one—the use of it in
the present—but not the other, the
future protection of it. Can a man
have both?
ft is a comforting fact to stats
that he can. But In order that a
workingman of any status, may
have this two-fold use of money ho
must begin the study of two
things:
1. Os the money he earns.
2. Os the time he possesses.
From these he must get the tw:o
foid satisfaction he seeks —present
comfort and future insurance.
How shall he begin?
Assuming that he gives the very
best there is In him for the money
he receives, it becomes clear that
money <s only another form of the
best there Is in him. Ife thinks
and works, is faithful to his task,
. ... at the end of the week the
pa envelope GIVES HIM THESE
QUALITIES BACK AGAIN IN
ANOTHER FORM. This money is
a thing he can exchange readily
for other things. BuJ before he be
gins to exchange it he should pause
a moment and say to himself:
What He Should Think
When He Gets His Pay.
This envelope contains all the
effort of my health, strength and
thought for a week. I may or may
not be able to keep health, strength
and thought up to the present pitch
to the end of my life: hence this
money should protect and guaran
tee me protection later, when I
may possibly be less so.
Pur&ufng this line of reasoning,
his first deduction will be this:
Os all evils against himself that
he commits the wasting of money
is one of the most disastrous, for
it is equivalent to wasting his own
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12. 1912.
The boy returned to tell Yum that his boss
was out. Yum went to other offices, but they
all seemed to be out.
Finally he thought of the boy that drove
the butcher wagon in the small town years
ago. He came out and saw Yum. He thought
perhaps that if his old pal was given a help
ing hand he might get going after all. He
told Yum to see him the next day and that
he'd rig him up with some new scenery and
give him a job. (
The world seemed a bit brighter now.
Yum had a slight chance at hist.
To Be Continued.
power of mind and body. The
money he earns should serve him
faithfully, and he, in turn, must be
faithful to himself in the use of his
money.- Up to the present moment
he haa perhaps saved nothing. The
rule of his life has been a vaiatt
tion of "easy come, easy go." But
it has not put him forward. He
is no better off. has nothing in
hand. He is, in fact, a little older
and a little nearer, the time when
his efficiency may be less than it is
today.
He Must Make Himself a
Student of Money.
If he can succeed in seeing him
self in this light, he will begin to he
a student of money. The first thing
he must do is to study in order the
following subjects:
1 Appropriation.
2. Equipment of himself as a
worker.
3? Tne daily leisure he enjoys.
By appropriation is meant this;
If he is a family man. certain fixed
items of expense must be met reg
ularly. He should sit down and
make out an accurate list of these.
He should study this list until he
Is positive that it is right, that it
represents only those things that
are necessary >o himself and to his
family. One of three results will be
before him. (1) The appropriation
is beyond the amount he earns, (2)
or it is equal to it, leaving no mar
gin. (3) or it is below it and ac
tually does leave him a margin.
If he finds that he is living be
yond his income or even within it,
his duty is to begin again and re
apportion his expenses so as to
leave a margin, for the future is
only secure when a margin exists.
It may be ever so small, but it pos
itively must exist, or he is skating
on Ice so thin that he is in con
stant danger of breaking through
and drowning himself and his loved
ones.
There Is required of hltn noth
ing less than actual courage, brav
ery of the highest kind, to give up
things he has perhaps been accus
tomed to, and to establish the mar
gin he must have; but if he is se
rious and manly he w ill do it. His
position now is this: He earns a.
definite amount. Every time the
contests of the pay envelope is dis
tributed there Is something left for
the savings bank, or for life insur
ance. or for both.
He has now put his financial as-
fairs in order. It has occurred to
him that anything a man can not
afford is really a waste, and waste
is the most expensive of all habits.
Extravagance is exceptionally ex
pensive. Earnest men are unani
mous in their denunciation of it.
Mr. Theodore Roosevelt has said;
“Extravagance rots character;
train youth away from it. On the
other hand, the habit of saving
money. while it stiffens the will,
also brightens the energies. If
you would be sure that you are be
ginning right, begin to save.”
Five cents thrown away for a
thing one docs not need is all the
money a dollar can earn in twelve
months, invested at. five per cent.
But five cents placed in the sav
ings bank daily, amounts in fifty
years, to nearly $3,000. A dollar
bet on a game and lost cannot be
earned as interest in one year on
a sum less than S2O. Small sums
saved daily even for so short a
time as ten years, accumulate im
pressively. Ten cents saved daily
for ten years amounts, at four per
cent, to nearly $450. One dollar a
week placed tn a savings bank
continually for fifty years amounts
to over SB,OvC.
These illustrations should give
one faith in the power of a little
money to reach considerable sums,
IF IT IS CONSTANTLY SET
ASIDE. John TVanamaker, w'ho is
said to have started in life on a
ten'-dollar-a-week salary, says:
Difference Between Spending
All or Saving a Part.
"The .difference between the
clerk who spends all of his salary
and the clerk who saves part of
it, is the difference, in ten years
between the owner of a business
and the man out of a job.”
And Andrew Carnegie, whose
success-in accumulating money is
known to everybody, thus speaks
of the losses that the improvident
man must suffer:
"The failure of the man who does
not save his money is due not only
to the fact that lie has no money
with which to take advantage of
the opportunities that come in the
way of every man, but also, and
particularly, to the fact that such
a man is not able or fit to avail
himself of these opportunities. The
man who can not and does not save
money, can not and will not be
anything else worth while.”
, THE HOME PAPER
Dr. Parkhurst’s Article
on
Civilization in Man Is Fm
Not Lasting
—and—
Our Reversion to Former
Types
Written For The Georgian
By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst
THIS is the time of the year
when a good many people
are leaving home, or, it had
better be said, are leaving the
place where they are accustomed to
stay, for in some cities there is not
very much of the home idea left,
and what is called home is for the
most part simply the part of the
town where one sleeps, where one
takes his meals and where one
keeps hi.-' trunks preparatory to
going into the country or going
abroad.
And even those who are so cir
cumstanced as to be unable to ab
sent themselves for any consider
able time, stay away as long as
they can and do not return till they
have to.
It m<jy be Paris, it may be Coney
Island, we all remain where we be
long as little of the time as we can.
By constitution, we dwellers In
great cities are all tramps. Even
people who have elegant homes to
live in and comfortable beds to
sleep on will lock their doors, for
sake their beds and go rushing out
into the woods for the fun of camp
ing out.
Difficulty of Living Down
Inherited Impulses.
It is a reversion to the original
mode of living when our ancestors
roamed through the forests and
dwelt in tents, huts and caves. It
is difficult to live down the im
pulses that have descended to us
from the habits of centuries ago.
The original savage keeps creep
ing out in us. We are constantly
on the verge of becoming wild men
of the woods again.
A few centuries of civilization
have hard work battling against
the hundreds of thousands of years
that our race lived through before
it struck civilization.
It takes old momentum a long
time to wentr out. It requires con
stant struggle to keep from drop
ping back into the hole that man
kind has crawled out of and that it
is homesick to fall back into again.
it is the same with man as with
i brute beasts. I met on the cars the
other day a man who had along
with him a Siberian dog. The ani
mal was gentle and could be safely
played with by a little child, "but,"
said the gentleman, "there are spots
of wolf in him. and were I to let
him run wild in the woods for six
•months all the savageness belong
ing to his ancestry would break out
in him, and he would have to be
shot or caged.”
In man or beast civilization is
not a permanent quality. It is
against nature and becomes extinct
unless constantly renewed. We are
kept respectable by restraints.
t>?« Shirtwaist Days t&
By CHESTER FIRKINS.
T T THETHER pink or white or blue,
y y Whether prim or peek-a-boo,
Here's a welcome unto you,
Pretty waist!
Os all summer comers blest.
You’re the brightest and the best,
Every wintry clothing pest
You've effaced.
Oh, but aren't we glad to be
From those "ladies suits” set free,
And the ugly, crochety
Pony coat!
As the May-time flowers save
Country glade from Winter's grave.
So you give the city pave .
Summer's note.
It is for that reason that going
off in the summer and breaking
loose from our accustomed sur
roundings involves an amount of
risk.
We are likely not to come back
in as good moral trim as we were
in when we went away. There is a
sense of wild liberty experienced
by any man when he feels that he.
is looked upon by people that do
not know him.
Human Beings Held in Place
Like Bricks in a Wall.
Like bricks In a wall, we are
held in position In part by the hu
man bricks that we are wedged in
between. It is unpleasant to fall
below the expectations that others
have concerning us, and those to
whom we are total strangers have
no expectations regarding us one
way or the other.
They will not be surprised, there
fore, if we behave well, nor any
more will they be surprised if w»
behave badly. People who are good
Christians when living among
Christians easily turn reprobates
when let loose among people of ths
other kind.
It Is true to creed, that “once #
saint, always a saint,” but it does
not always seem quite true to fact.
Clamp a steel spring and It will
retain its enforced shape so long as
the clamp is on, but remove the
ciamp and it will fly back to the
form that it was in originally; even
after a thousand years it will fly
back.
There Is a great deal of efficacy,
therefore, in-clamps. Going away
from home and from usual sur
roundings and people is, therefore,
dangerous, for it means removing
some of the clamps.
Much of what we commonly sup
pose to be our virtue is simply the
unnatural and enforced shape in
which we are held by external
pressure. There has recently been
published the story of a person
who had been dead for five min
utes, but who was resuscitated by
mechanical pulsation.'
Goodness Not Altogether J fi
A Matter of Artifice.
That shows what forces operat
ing from without will do for the
bpdy. They will do somewhat the
same thing for the inward man and
create In him a condition of arti
ficial goodness.
That does not mean that good
ness is altogether a matter of ar
tifice, but only that goodness at its
best is more or less infirm, and is
much more dependable when ex
isting tn circumstances that are of
a kind to encourage it and to keep
it in good spirits.
Trim and dainty, tried and true, I
You are democratic, too;
For the Many, like the Few,
Hail your fame.
At her factory machine
Sadie wears you: Fashion s queen
In her gleaming limousine
Does the same. s
Welcome, little Summer Waist!
1 hough they say you're not straight
laced,
Let such pedantry be placed
Out of view
Chic and charming, new and |
What has Earth that’s half so sweet- 1
Save the girls, who bless the street. I
WEARING you? I
