of a college education will stand in any respect whatever in the way of his success in the business world. No college on earth ever made a business man. The knowledge acquired in college has fitted thousands of men for professional success, but it has also unfitted other thousands for a practical business career. A college training is never wasted, although I have seen again and again five-thousand-dollar educations spent on five-hundred-dollar men. Where a young man can bring a college education to the requirements of a practical business knowledge it is an advantage. But before our American colleges become an absolute factor in the business capacities of men, their methods of study and learning will have to be radically changed. I have had associated with me both kinds of young men, collegiate and non-collegiate, and I must confess that the ones who had a better knowledge of the practical part of life have been those who never saw the inside of a college and whose feet never stood upon a campus. College-bred men and men who never had college advantages have succeeded in about equal ratios. The men occupying the most important commercial positions in New York to-day are self-made, whose only education has come to them from contact with that greatest college of all, the business world. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of a college education. I believe in its advantages too firmly. But no young man need feel hampered because of the lack of it. If business qualities are in him they will come to the surface. It is not the college education; it is the young man. Without its possession as great and honorable successes have been made as with it. Men are not accepted in the business world upon their collegiate diplomas, nor on the knowledge these imply. They are taken for what they are, for what they know.

The young man engaged in business to-day in this country has advantages exceeding those of any generation before him. And I do not say this simply as an echo of what others before me have said, or to use a platitudinous phrase. There never was a time in the world's history when a young man had the opportunity to make something of himself that he has at the present day. He lives in a country where every success is possible; where a man can make of himself what he may choose; where energy and enterprise are appreciated, and a market is always ready for good wares. Young men have forged to the front wonderfully during the past ten years. Employers are more than ever willing to lay great responsibilities on their shoulders. Salaries are higher than ever; young men never before earned the incomes which are received by some to-day. All success is possible.

But a young man must be alert to every opportunity. He cannot forget himself for a moment in business. A man's best working years are not many, and when they are upon him he must make hay, and all the hay he can. No young man can afford to reach the age of thirty without feeling that he is settled in a business way. Before that time he flounders; but at thirty the floundering time should be over. He should have found that special trade or profession for which he thinks he is most capable. This age is generally accepted, I believe, for the reason that a man is most likely to do his best work between thirty and forty; after forty a man's work is not apt to have that energy and snap that is born of youth, and the tendency is first shown in his willingness to deputize details to others. I do not mean to say that a man begins to decline at forty; on the contrary, he is at his prime, and he remains so for ten or fifteen years. But he is better for judgment than he is for working out details. A man's real work, his energetic work, his laborious work, is generally done before he reaches thirty-five.

And not only must he practically make himself between thirty and forty, but he must not spend all that he earns. He must lay aside a goodly portion of his earnings. It is a cruel but a hard fact that the business world has very little use for what are termed old men nowadays; and in these times of keen competitive strife a man is judged to be old very early from the cold commercial point of view. He may not consider himself as being old, but he is no longer considered to be "in the race" with the younger men, who naturally have quicker perceptions and whose sense of alertness is necessarily keener. The most successful man at forty is very often the man who is quietly pushed aside at sixty. If young men earning good incomes between thirty and forty would look a little ahead, and consider the inevitable fact that as they grow older their value is very apt to lessen in a commercial sense, they would save themselves much after-humiliation and sorrowful retrospection. It is hard for a young man at, say, thirty-five, in the full flush and vigor of manhood, to realize that a time will come when others as clever as himself and a bit cleverer will pass him by. But the cold fact exists, nevertheless, and he is wise who, at his prime, thinks of a time which is almost sure to come to every man who lives.

And yet, while a young man may be ambitious for success in business, he cannot afford to get impatient or restless. Not long ago I received a letter from a young fellow which particularly reflected the feeling that I mean. He wrote me that he was twenty, and was impatient because he did not make the progress in his business which he felt that he should. He confessed that he was not so very much dissatisfied with his salary, which was twenty-two dollars per week, although he thought it ought to be forty dollars. Unfortunately for him, however, his employers did not seem to think so, and he was quite sure he was "being kept back." He conceded that he was "becoming impatient," but insisted that he had reason to feel so.

Well, I felt precisely the same way when I was twenty; only my salary was eighteen dollars and thirty-three cents per week, and I felt quite sure that the figures ought to be reversed. And there were several positions just beyond me, too, which I felt I should justly be asked to occupy. But I was not, and, of course, I felt aggrieved. I considered myself imposed upon. Now when I look back upon that time I can see that the reason my salary was not thirty-three dollars and eighteen cents was simply because I was incapable of earning that amount. I was not worth it to my employer. And the reason I did not get those several positions just ahead of me was because I could not have filled them if I had gotten them—not one of them. But I am a little more than twenty now, and my correspondent, when he is about ten years older, will understand a great many things that are not very clear to him just now. Of course he probably will not choose to believe this; youths of twenty are not apt to believe much that is told them, since they have so little to learn!

But, if I were back to twenty again, and, with my later knowledge, were earning twenty-two dollars per week, I should not only be satisfied, but I should be intensely thankful. I think, too, that the knowledge that there were thousands of men of forty and fifty years who were not earning as much would help me to endure the ordeal. I think that instead of rebelling at the fact that I was earning twenty-two dollars, I should rather devote my time to trying to find the best way of doubling it. I might not be able to make twenty-five dollars for a year or two, but I should endeavor to do so. In fact, if we look over the field, there are more young men of twenty-one who are worth less than twenty-five dollars per week than there are who are worth that or more. And one proof of this is found in the fact that in New York City alone there are tens of thousands of young men at that age who are not earning eighteen dollars per week. In addition to all this I might be tempted to believe that too rapid advance might not be the best thing in the world for me. Too large an income, even