--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 4 number: 7 published: 1901-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Choice Selections: Business Value of Promptness; The Cry for Practical Men; Social Handicaps; True Culture," *Improvement Era* 4, no. 7 (May 1901): 492–496.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0407unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0407unse start_page: 492 end_page: 496 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1901-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0407unse publication_year: 1901 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1901, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Choice Selections: Business Value of Promptness; The Cry for Practical Men; Social Handicaps; True Culture CHOICE SELECTIONS, Business Value of Promptness. As the child trained grows to years of intelligence and use- fulness, his acquired habit of promptness becomes a valuable busi- ness asset. If a man wishes to employ a lad in his store, office, or factory, he is almost certain to choose one with a school record for punctuality in attendance, and promptness in recitations. When the same man is about to select one of two clerks for pro- motion, he will, if he be a person of sound judgment, invariably choose him who has established a reputation for promptness and punctuality, over the other who, though more brilliant, has shown a carelessness in the matter of minutes. A manufacturer was about to establish an agency in London. He had in his employ two young men whom he regarded highly, and both of whom he would like to advance to the coveted posi- ' tion. As it could go to only one, he watched the men closely for some time, while trying to decide which he should send to repre- sent his interests in the English capital. One of the young men was an industrious plodder, always on time to the minute. The other was a much more brilliant fellow, who did his work well and easily, made friends readily, and was universally popular; but he had the serious defects of making promises carelessly, forgetting them almost as soon as they were made, and of rarely keeping appointments promptly. Finally the employer invited both of these young men to dine with him on a certain evening at exactly seven o'clock. The plodder presented himself to his host as the clock was striking, and they two immediately sat down to dinner. Five minutes later, the other guest appeared with a laughing CHOICE SELECTIONS. 493 apology for being late, which, he said, was entirely the fault of his watch. On the following day, the London appointment, with a large increase of salary, was given to him who had learned the business value of promptness. Kirk Munroe. The Cry for Practical Men. Edward Everett Hale says: "If you should take twelve prize medal men from Harvard and put them in a sinking ship, they would all drown through inability to construct a raft." This is Dr. Hale's manner of expressing the great need of a more practical education. All over the country we see, as it were, sign-boards reading: "We want more practical men; men who know how to do things, not theoretical men, not men who can do things when they are told how, not men who can walk with crutches, but men who can stand on their own feet, and act." Never before was the call for men with sound sense and a practical education so imperative as today. The young man fresh from college, whose head is crammed with theories, and who clings to his diploma as a passport to success, will have a hard struggle to get even a bare living. It is the practical man, with or with- out college education, not the student of theories, or the unpracti- cal dreamer, who is everywhere in demand. Success. Social Handicaps. Herbert H. Vreeland, president of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, New York, recently discussed "The Young Man's Opportunity in the New Business Order," in the Saturday Evening Post. He does not think that a gollege education is necessary to success in business, although he admits, "No man can get too much education. Especially, no man can get too much technical education." Among the handicaps of the college gradu- ate, he names social relaxations, and on this point he names some facts that are very applicable to others than college graduates: "Then, too, the college graduate has other handicaps. He has social ties and connections. He is a member of a college society, and when that college society has an affair on hand, he wants to attend it. He is interested in the college football team, and in 494 IMPROVEMENT ERA. the college eight. He asks a day or two days off to attend a foot- ball match or a rowing contest. He may have become quite an important cog in the big machinery, and his dropping out may mean serious disorganization, but nevertheless he wants to get off at any cost. It was not so long ago that one of the most promis- ing young men I have ever known threw up his position with the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, after a service of three years, rather than miss a rowing contest between his college eight and the eight of another institution. When he went to the chief of his department for leave of absence, it was pointed out to him that it was impossible to grant such a leave. He insisted, and appealed to me. I reasoned with him because I took an unusual interest in him, but it was useless and we had to let him go. "The desire for social relaxation, at the formative period in a young man's business life, has done more to keep bright men back than almost any other cause that I know of. 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy/ is one of the numerous old saws that have brought untold mischief, and that are founded entirely on fiction. Work, even unremitting, continuous work, never yet harmed any young man, or if it did, the exceptions are so few that they don't count. "Why is it that ninety-five per cent of the men who achieve the great successes in our city are country boys — young chaps fresh from the farm or the little country town? It is because they have no opportunity for social relaxation when they get to the big city. They have no social ties. Nobody knows them, and they know nobody. Nobody cares for them. They strike the big town, get a job somewhere at any figure; and settle down to soli- tary life in a boarding house. Their income will warrant only the renting of a small, cheerless room, generally a hall-room without any fire and precious little light. Existence in this sort of a room is not very rosy, and the young fellow is only too glad to spend his evenings in the well- warmed, well-lighted office, if he is employed in an office, or in the library, lecture or reading room, if he is employed in a shop that closes down at six. So he puts every spare moment that he has into work. After a while there grows out of this necessity a habit, and when better times come, and he can afford a brighter and cheerier room, the habit of work is so CHOICE SELECTIONS. 495 thoroughly formed in him that he perseveres in it, after the im- mediate necessity is past. He has formed no taste for parties that keep him out until two or three or four o'clock in the morn- ing, and which unfit him for business next day. If he goes to the theatre now and then, his life has been formed on such regular lines that he goes to bed immediately after, and gets a good night's rest. He has formed no connections that take him out to late suppers afterward, and keep him out until all hours. "The city boy, on the other hand, going into business, con- tinues his close relations with the people with whom he has grown up. He knows all the boys and girls in his neighborhood, and joins in their entertainments after his working hours. His spare time, instead of being given up to work or study, is given up to social distractions. "That is why such an unusually large percentage of country boys succeed, in competition with the city boy, in getting to the top. The outdoor life they have led has given them a good frame to work on, and the lack of opportunity for keeping late hours preserves the full strength of this frame. With such conditions the city boy can rarely compete." True Culture. "Isn't it a grind, Phil?" asked one member of a college glee- club of another. "I don't see how you can give up your Sunday afternoons to that mission." "It is exacting," replied Phil, "and at first I thought it a bur- den, but to tell the truth I've come to like it." "Oh, I don't doubt it does good, but the thing that would trouble me most would be the character of their music — that cheap, commonplace sort of stuff, you know." "Well," said Phil, "it isn't classic, I know, but it seems to be the kind that reaches those men and does them good, so I go ahead." "I wonder at it, Phil, for your taste isn't of that sort." Phil was silent a moment, and then, with heightened color and a lower tone, he said: "I'll tell you what helped me to get over that. You know Professor Mason? Well, he plays for them. That man who has 496 IMPROVEMENT ERA. won honors at the conservatories abroad, and whose appreciation of good music is as much firfer than mine as mine is than some of the men in the mission —he goes down there Sunday after- noon, after playing that magnificent organ at Grace Church in the morning, and sits down at that old pan of a piano, and plays those tinkling, cheap revival hymns, and puts his whole heart into it. "I had some fine ideas about the sacredness of art and all that, and was tempted not to go there and sing; but when I saw that man and heard him there, I gave it up. If he can stand it for the sake of the good he is doing, I guess I can." And so Phil sang on. No one who knew him ever suspected that he had lost his love of good music. On the other hand, there crept into his work in the glee-club a certain richness that had not been there before. "I've learned something about putting my heart into the song,'' he explained, modestly, when a friend asked him about it. There is a cheap and thin culture which educates one above the needs of other people; a deeper, truer culture brings a heart sympathy which puts one in touch with them without condescen- sion. The girl who has been away to study music, and comes home with just enough education to despise the home choir in which she formerly sang, or the rickety little church organ which formerly she played, and the hymns which her parents love and which she formerly sang, has not had too much culture, but too and that of too shallow a sort. The noted organist and little, popular teacher taught his pupils many lessons, but the best of all his teaching was that which he imparted to Phil.— Youths' Com- panion.