--- 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: 12 number: 7 published: 1909-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Mutual Work," *Improvement Era* 12, no. 7 (May 1909): 576–578.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1207unse 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: improvementera1207unse start_page: 576 end_page: 578 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1207unse publication_year: 1909 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 1909, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Mutual Work : MUTUAL WORK. ANNUAL Y. M. AND Y. L. M. I. A. CONFERENCE- The Fourteenth General Annual Conference of the Young Men's and Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints will be held in Salt Lake City, Saturday and Sunday, June 5, and 6, 1909. All officers and members of the associations are requested to be present at all of the meetings of the conference, and a cordial invitation is hereby extended to the Saints generally, to attend the meetings to be held in the Tabernacle on Sunday, June 6, at 10 a. m. and at 2 and 7 p. m. Joseph P. Smith, Martha H. Tingey, Heber J. Grant, Ruth M. Fox, B. H. Roberts, Mae T. Nystrom, General Supt'cy Y. M. M. I. A. Presidency Y. L. M. I. A. CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS. A social entertainment will be held on Friday evening, the time, place and program to be decided by the Committee on Social. Separate meetings of the Young Men and Young Ladies will be held on Sat- urday at 10 a. m. and 2 p. m. A conjoint officers' meeting will be held on Saturday evening at 7:30 o'clock. A conjoint general meeting will be held at 10 a. m. on Sunday, in the Taber- nacle to which all are invited. General meetings will be held at 2 and 7 p. m. in the Tabernacle. The following are the committees called by the General Boards ON PROGRAM. Heber Grant, H. S. Tanner, Junius F. Wells, Evan Stephens, Edward H. J. Anderson, Alpha J. Higgs, Ann M. Cannon, Mary Connelly, Lucy W. Smith, Jane B. Anderson, Alice C. Tuddenham. ON SOCIAL. Benjamin Goddard, Thomas Hull, Lyman R. Martineau, D. M. Todd, Frank Y. Taylor, B. S. Hinckley, Mae T. Nystrom, May B. Talmage, Letitia Teasdale, Martha H. Tingey, Ruth M. Fox. Emma Goddard. ON TRANSPORTATION. Alpha J. Higgs, B. F. Grant, Agnes Campbell, Julia Brixen. ON MUSIC. Evan Stephens, H. S. Ensign, Alice C. Tuddenham, Mattie Reed Evans' ©N ENTERTAINMENT. B. F. Grant, Louis A. Kelsch, R. C. Badger, Lewis T. Cannon, Joseph W. McMurrin, Edith R. Lovesy, Emily C. Adams, Elen Wallace, Ardella W. Eardley. ON PROVIDING HALLS. Alpha J. Higgs, Ann M. Cannon. — MUTUAL WORK. 577 The officers of the associations are requested to be present at all of the meet- ings. Superintendents of stakes and ward presidents are requested to advertise the conference £.nd do active work to make the gathering a success. The usual con- ference rates, selling days, and return limits, on the railroads, will prevail, and will be advertised through the papers. THE BOY— THIS SUMMER. Boys what are you going to do this summer? Do you want a good job? One with good pay attached? Yes? Then listen. One of my younger brothers was in the same position the other day. He came to see me, and we talked things over. ''Well," said I, "you're going to graduate from the eighth grade this spring, aren't you? Well, what are you going to do this summer? Get a job and go to work, hey? — What kind of a job? Oh! no, you're not going to get 'Any old job you can.' — My boy, the whole world is at your feet every opportunity that exists is held out to you — welcomes you with open arms. Then why should you shut your eyes and take 'any old thing' which your hand happened to fall on? That is drift- ing, my boy, not rowing. Take up an oar and row. Have an object in life— then work to that object all the time. Begin now. You are old enough and wise enough now to decide what you want to be. The decision rests entirely with you You can be just what you will. "Now about your job this summer. When you decide definitely just what you intent to be, we'll know what kind of a job to get for you. If you are going to be a book-keeper, or do any kind of office work, you don't want a job in a shoe- shop or a machine-shop. Get a job as office boy. It will put you in touch with book-keepers, office-men, and their methods, and the work, and duties, that are to be yours some day. Then when you get a responsible position in an office, it won't all seem strange. You won't look at a filing cabinet, or a neostyle, or an adding machine, and say, 'What's that?' 'I never had anything like that in my studies.' On the contrary, you'll feel at home. All these appliances and systems will be familiar to you, and you'll be able to ask intelligent questions, and to grasp the whole situation at a glance. "On the other hand, if you have an ambition to be a mechanic or an electrician, what is the use of your spending this summer as office-boy, or on a delivery wagon for some grocery store? ' You are laboring without profit. 'That is not working toward your object. "Yet,many young men are doing such things. If they think at all in regard to their future, they conclude that when they get through high school or college, it will be time enough then to consider these things. So they go on, aimlessly pursuing their studies until they graduate, then they look around and wonder what they are going to do. They find they are not especially fitted to do anything be- — cause they have not worked to any special end have had no object in their labor. They have found what they sought, accomplished what they've worked for, viz., — no special poinc of vantage. . 578 1MPR0 VEMENT ERA "That is why so many of our college graduates are working in such unfitting positions. That is why so many young men take a normal or even a commercial course. Come in from the country at considerable expense and spend four or five years at hard study to complete such a course, then go up into Idaho or Canada, or somewhere else, take up land and go to farming or fruit growing. Why didn't they go to the Agricultural College? They didn't have any object in their labor. Some people are too quick to lay the responsibility on the colleges. "But:— 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.' "The founders of great industries are all men who had an object early in life, and who have worked hard and perseveringly toward that object ever since, kept their eyes open for opportunities in that line and they have succeeded. "Now, boys, when you get the kind of job you want, don't sleep at your work, but look around you. There are thousands of golden opportunities to im- prove on present methods everywhere. ' 'It was only a few years ago that a certain boy stood on the docks at Chi- cago, watching the men wheel the ore up out of the ship. He asked how much the human labor on such work cost a ton, and on being told that it cost forty- five to fifty cents, he said that that was too much, but he didn't let it stop there. He wasn't in the ore business or in the shipping business, and he might well have said, 'Well, it's none of my business, let them tend to that.' Instead of that he said, 'Now if I can get something which will do that cheaper, it will be worth a great deal to those people.' "What is the result:— Today Brown Hoisting and Conveying Machinery, for handling ore and coal, is in use all over the world. And it is estimated that it saves to the world over fifty million dollars a year. ' 'It was only a few years ago that cotton-seed was considered worthless and a nuisance. Then someone discovered that it contained valuable oil, and that after the oil was pressed out the cakes which remained in the press were good food for cattle. Since then the saving has been over thirty million dollars a year. For years all this wealth had been thrown away. "Business and success lie within a man, if he'll only develop them. Andrew Carnegie came to the United States at ten years of age, and went to work as bobbin boy for twenty-five cents a day. Fifty-four years later, in 1901, he sold out to the United States Steel Corporation at a valuation of $500,000,000. He says, 'Organization is not only necessary in business — the organization is the busi- ness. ' Again he said, 'Take away all my material assets and leave me my organ- ization, and in four years, I will have all the rest back again.' "Some people have an idea that money, or goods, or credit, or buildings, or trade-marks, or years of business history, are the business. We smile; — these things are not causes, they are simply effects. "Go now, my boy. Be a live wire. Have an object. Produce effect." Guy A. Wilson, Instructor 3rd Ward Y. M. M. I. A., Junior Class.