Business

Mr. Carnegie occupies a unique position in American business history. He is the one American business man par excellence who has shown us how to retire from business gracefully and enjoy life in retirement. In this he has set an example worthy of emulation. For there is nothing more absurd in the business creed than the belief quite commonly accepted that a business man should “die in the harness” and that no man can be happy in retirement after an active business life. The trouble is that few men know how to retire gracefully and happily, because they have not prepared themselves by cultivation of the mind for congenial occupation of their leisure by avocations —call them hobbies, if you will —that serve as a substitute for the cares and responsibilities of business.

In his retirement Mr. Carnegie is well employed, and the world has been enriched by his career both before and since he retired from active participation in the great steel industry. He divides his time nowadays between his native land and the country of his adoption, in which he gained his wealth and lasting fame. He came to this country a poor boy, having borrowed the money for his passage from Scotland. He toiled hard for his start in business and made his money largely by his wonderful judgment of men and skill in the selection of his lieutenants. Many of these young men too-became millionaires under his leadership, and some of them remain today at the top of the ladder of American industry But Mr. Carnegie worked and worked hard. His life has long been an open book to the American public, and few there are who do not wish the “Laird of Skibo” well in the happy enjoyment of his remaining years on the Scottish estate near the humble home of his youth, where his success is an inspiration to every young man and the most notable example of the opportunities afforded by business life in America.

Every word of Mr. Carnegie's lecture is worth study. He speaks out of a ripe experience to young men, with a heart brim-full of kindness and human sympathy. He shows the steps that must be mounted in a regular advance to business success, and insists that there is no lack of opportunities today for those who learn how to find them or to make them. He advocates the business career for young men rather than artistic or professional careers, for reasons that. to an open mind are good and convincing, and commends it as the one vocation in which “there is abundant room for the exercise of man's highest power and of every good quality in human nature”.

I have never had any patience with those who spend their time envying the successful rich, especially when the envied rich man was once a poor young man and made his way in the world by his own efforts in legitimate business. To the envious I would say: The road is open to you, as it was to them; go thou and do likewise! And I commend the example of Andrew Carnegie in his business life to all young men entering business, as I commend his example in retirement to business men who lack the ability to retire. Both classes will find food for thought in this lecture.