one utterance on this subject, so vital to every
young man starting on the journey of life, I would say: "Don't think
too much of the amount of salary your employer gives you at the start.
Think, rather, of the possible salary you can give yourself, in
increasing your skill, in expanding your experience, in enlarging and
ennobling yourself." A man's or a boy's work is material with which to
build character and manhood. It is life's school for practical
training of the faculties, stretching the mind, and strengthening and
developing the intellect, not a mere mill for grinding out a salary of
dollars and cents.

Bismarck was said to have really founded the German Empire when working
for a small salary as secretary to the German legation in Russia; for
in that position he absorbed the secrets of strategy and diplomacy
which later were used so effectively for his country. He worked so
assiduously, so efficiently, that Germany prized his services more than
those of the ambassador himself. If Bismarck had earned only his
salary, he might have remained a perpetual clerk, and Germany a tangle
of petty states.

I have never known an employee to rise rapidly, or even to get beyond
mediocrity, whose pay envelope was his goal, who could not see
infinitely more in his work than what he found in the envelope on
Saturday night. That is necessity; but the larger part of the real pay
of a real man's work is outside of the pay envelope.

One part of this outside salary is the opportunity of the employee to
absorb the secrets of his employer's success, and to learn from his
mistakes, while he is being paid for learning his trade or profession.
The other part, and the best of all, is the opportunity for growth, for
development, for mental expansion; the opportunity to become a larger,
broader, more efficient man.

The opportunity for growth in a disciplinary institution, where the
practical faculties, the executive faculties, are brought into
systematic, vigorous exercise at a definite time and for a definite
number of hours, is an advantage beyond computation. There is no
estimating the value of such training. It is the opportunity, my
employee friend, that will help you to make a large man of yourself,
which, perhaps, you could not possibly do without being employed in
some kind of an institution which has the motive, the machinery, the
patronage to give you the disciplining and training you need to bring
out your strongest