--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Connelly, Daniel collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 32 number: 12 published: 1929-10 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Daniel Connelly, “Out of Work,” *Improvement Era* 32, no. 12 (October 1929): 997–998." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera32012unse 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: improvementera32012unse start_page: 997 end_page: 998 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1929-10) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera32012unse publication_year: 1929 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 1929, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Out of Work Out of Work By Daniel Connelly [The following ideas are commended to all young men. The main thought that we get out of them is that in youth there is need of learning to save; that in early life they should devote their efforts to prepare for their future financial, as well as moral and spiritual welfare; that they should have an economic vision of the future, and that there is little good they can do for themselves and theirs, their neighbors, or the nation in general, if they arc not well founded financially. It is difficult, however, for the ordinary workman to lay up enough means during his working years to make himself useful and contented in the years when age creeps on and his jobs fail him. Hence, provisions for help for the faithful workers are being considered by great corporations and organizations, through reasonable recompense, through encouragement in saving, through insurance, and through other means of having them accumulate a modest competence during the years of their ability to earn. Investment in first-class non-speculative organizations, in savings banks, and well established building associations, are reasonably safe, and a sound means to this end. The people who are at the head of these organizations, however, should be carefully considered. Save persistently and regularly, while you are earning. It will help you. if you are a job worker or a salary slave, to get out of that position and become reasonably independent. — Editors.] I HAD almost called this, Work, where art thou? That would not have been true, however, as there is work to be done, much of it. Would it only materialize for us out-of-work people, for we are assured that for everyone seeking there is a job! It will be well, as a reminder, to tell briefly a little of my experience. To those who understand, it will be a two-sided picture. I am 64. Young man, you will be that some day: Sixty-four cannot compete under all circumstances with 22. Modern business says it cannot. Fifty-three years of my 64. I have worked at jobs, not positions. Young friends, for a great many years to come the development of Utah, or your State, will be mainly accomplished by men who are manly men, capable and willing to tackle jobs, handling them competently and successfully. You will have to be men whose brains and bodies function manfully. Men who think honest thoughts to a successful finish. My jobs have been varied, and their variety has been as spice mixed with their dull monotony. I stayed with them long enough, normally, to know their worth and their relationship to the whole. In that acquired knowledge I found the main spring of my pleasur- able satisfaction. Boys, this is a mechanical age; are you being taught that you will probably be a wheel in the wonderful machine that goes to make up the gigantic thing known as modern industry? As you will see the wheel go round and round, day in and day out. is your training of such a nature that your reactions to that training are going to bring you the joys of achievement, or the dull apathy and sombre outlook of the misfit? Or will you be content to be just a cog in the wheel? Not if you keep thinking right thoughts thoughtfully. This attitude of mind will make you wise, and the truly wise see and 998 IMPROVEMENT ERA Oct., 1929 find pleasant aspects in all the realities. The measure of the com- prehension of the realism of things is what makes up the sum of your capacity to enjoy and to use the wisdom you may acquire. I trusted that, knowing and sensing the above facts and measur- ably acting them out in my 53 years of toiling, that 64 would find me recompensed, at least in the necessities of existence, so that grim want would not show its ugly, repulsive, hungry visage near me or mine. I had never sought wealth nor luxury, had learned, in fact, to know that the handler of jobs, under the present system of life's practicability, hardly ever gets beyond a sufficiency for the day and for week to week. I wondered if this was an immutable law of life, unchangeable and omnipotent in its workings and results! If so, how about my young brethren? Would any philosophy reconcile them? Would any recital of my experiences, or by anyone or many, soften the harshness or smooth the path of the ever-growing multitudes of the 22 or over? Would their religion explain it, or offer an antidote? Would it point out the way or furnish a panacea? Would it solve the problem? go to the root of the evils of the present? give a just, quiet freedom from harrassment to old 62, with the wisdom that comes then and the peace, happiness and joy that 53 years of labor deserves? May it so do to you; then what a glorious task is in front of you, right in front! It hasn't brought this to me. Not because true religion cannot meet and solve all the varied conditions of living, but partly because I am one in a million, and I and my religion are but units of two with their proportionate influence. The power to alter or change is of just that much importance or weight, even with God on my side, as he does respect the agency of his children. And so, young men of the Mutual, if you want to be on the safe side of the ragged edge of poverty, think over these "thumb- nail" sketches of things as they are in this work-a-day world. If you will think back to and of the purpose and objective of the inauguration of your organization, and let all the units mutually cooperate in doing their share in improving the environments of life, here and now, when you reach the 52nd or 64th milestone of your life's journey, you will not find yourselves like me, out of a job — wanting a job, and Oh, so badly needing a job, and yet, cannot get one. And I further wonder if our young men will realize that their work and mission is to inject and fasten on the inter-relations of life the vital living forces that will always, and without fail, har- monize our business with and to each other, put a soul where it is needed, so that righteousness, right doing, may prevail.