Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear: Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored ChalksGriswold, B. J. (Bert Joseph)
Religion
Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear: Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks
Griswold, B. J. (Bert Joseph)
Chalk-talks; Moral education; Religious education
"Let us take the example of the young man who occupies a high position
in the commercial world. We will draw a picture of him seated at his
desk. [Draw Fig. 88, complete.] This young man is at the head of an
important department of a great manufacturing concern, and there are
rumors that he is about to be advanced to a place of greater
responsibility. He receives a large salary. It is a part of his duties
to direct the work of many men in his department. These men come to
him for instructions. We will draw one of these men. [Draw man to
complete Fig. 89.] What is passing in the mind of the man who stands
here receiving his instructions? This is what he is saying to himself:
'I cannot understand why this other man, who is no older than I am,
should have such a good position, while I must stay in a place of less
importance. He must have a pull.' And he goes away with bitterness in
his heart.
[Illustration: Fig. 88]
[Illustration: Fig. 89]
"The fact is that the man with the lesser position spends his time,
his energy and his talent in pursuing the trivial, temporary things,
the so-called pleasures of life. He is a time-waster. The successful
one has won his way by concentrating his efforts on learning how best
to do his work.
"Do you ever harbor such thoughts about people who have made good in
the commercial life? Have you ever, for example, thought that the high
place in the world of commerce held by Andrew Carnegie was attained
through some strange chance or luck? If you have, perhaps it might be
well to take a glance at the main points of his early life. In
Scotland, his father was a weaver, whose business was destroyed by the
introduction of power looms. One day, when the father came home, he
said to his boy, 'Andy, I have no more work!' The lad knew what it
meant, and immediately he decided to meet his father's problem to keep
the wolf of hunger from the door. He was then but ten years old. It
was decided to come to America, and here Andrew Carnegie, at the age
of eleven, obtained a place in a mill as a bobbin boy, at $1.20 a
week. He writes as follows concerning the great lesson he learned at
that time: 'I was no longer dependent upon my parents but at last was
admitted to the family partnership as a contributing member and able
to help them. I think that makes a man out of a boy sooner than
anything else.' At the age of fourteen, he was a stoker in the boiler
room of a small factory, and then took employment as a telegraph boy
at $300 a year. When he advanced to a place of greater responsibility
as a telegrapher, he made his first investment in the purchase of an
interest in an express company. While still engaged in this capacity
he met Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping car, and seeing the
value of the invention he later engaged in its manufacture. From then
forward, as superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the
Pennsylvania railroad, in the oil fields and in the steel industry of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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