OCR Text |
Show What Should a Young Man Do? Suppose a young man is just out of school, a college, a high school or a common school, It does not matter, and, looking out over his country, wants to choose an avocation, what would he see? He would see a few very rich men, thousands rich, the great mass fairly well off, and work for all who desired to work at fair wages. Ho would see that ninety out of every hundred of the very rich and the rich had made their fortunes for-tunes from nothing or next to nothing. He would see among the ranks of the workers and the idlers thousands who had a little fortune when they began, but who are poor now. He would see, beside, a great crowd who never had any money and who have never done any honest work, but who somehow seem to live. Many of them, wear fine raiment every day and oat luxurious food. Ho would pick up a yellow journal and read that the world's wealth was at present most unequally un-equally and unjustly divided, and that society imust be revolutionized that justice might be done. Heading a little further, he would read that the rich and the very rich are all criminals, and that justice never will be done until they are despoiled. And dropping Into some meeting at night, he m would hear one of those who have nevor done any honest work declaiming in the same strain against the rich. If the next day ho determined to investigate ho would find that the money which skilled laborers labor-ers receive for tholr labor almost all comes from the bad men who are rich or very rich; that thoso bad men have had the genius and the tenacity ten-acity of purpose to Inaugurate mighty enterprises which stretch great transportation lines across the country or build great Industrial plants that seize and convert raw material Into the finished Products which the world wants. Ho would discover, too, that the farmers, who aro the mainstay of a country, who supply food a"d textiles to the world, are in truth dependent upon tho rich or the very rich for either purchasers purchas-ers for tholr surplus produots, or who enable them to transfer tholr products across the land and tho 8eft to thoso in foreign lands who need them. That night ho would again read the yellow journal and then go down to hear one of those who never worked declaim again against the rich and the very rich who rob the people. Then, if a shrewd youth, he would make inquiries in-quiries about the wages paid by these robbers, and the hours they compelled men and women to work. Then on the way home he would buy a foreign for-eign trade journal and spend half the night in studying the labor problem abroad, and comparing compar-ing the wage rates of the outside world with those of our own country. Then he would begin to ask himself what would come if the advice of the yellow journal and the demagogue talker were to be accepted and acted upon. Of course, the rich men's property prop-erty could be confiscated and the men themselves them-selves could be killed or beggared, but what then? Who 'would have the capacity to take up and carry on the works? "Where would the needed funds come from to buy raw material and to promptly meet the pay-rolls? And what would become of the millions of men now employed, they and their wives and children? Would it not be perfectly natural for such a youth to conclude that the masses of his countrymen country-men had been recipients of so many blessings that they had ceased to appreciate them? And would he not decide to go to Canada or Mexico or South America or Australasia or some other country where men are respected for what they do and where their property is protected? Would he not try to seek some country where whatever wrongs- exist, the thought Is to correct them, not to bring on chaos as a cure, |