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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (May 27, 1925)
,4 2 1925 3 M at a The ChemaWaAmerican Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education Vol. XXVI Wednesday, May 27, 1925 WHY NOT “STICK” Boys and girls of Chemawa, you who have remain ed here throughout the year and who will finish the whole year with honor to yourselves and your school, it seems to us that we cannot emphasize too strongly the great necessity of having pluck enough to continue on with your good work. That which surprises us the most at Chemawa, and which is also true of other schools, both in the service and out of it, is the large number of young people who every year start to school and drop out, go home, give up their chance, upon the least provocation. It is just this lack of sticking that fills up our lower grades. Everywhere will be found boys and girls in low grades who are of sufficient age to be in high schools. Many claim they have no chance. This is all pure “bosh.” They have in 99 cases out of 100, a chance, and have been urged to avail themselves of it. There exists first and last a lamentable lack of tenacity to stick through each term and finish a grade each school year. It is just this dropping out process that spells failure; it is just this propensity to dodge the responsibilities connected with an education that keeps the lower grades so full and the higher grades with so few, comparatively, although we at Chemawa are gaining in the numbers who are in the higher grades. It is said, “When genius has failed in what is at tempted and talent says ‘impossible;’ when every other faculty gives up; when tact retires and diplomacy has fled; when logic and argument and influence have all done their best and have retired from the field; gritty persistency, bulldog tenacity, step in and by sheer force of holding on, wins—does the impossible.” Ah, what miracles tenacity of purpose has performed! The last to leave the field, the last to turn back, it persists when all other forces have fled. It has won many a battle, even after all hope was gone. The man or woman, boy or girl, who sticks at a job, who stands his ground with suavity of manner, with politeness, with dogged persistency, also is certain to be successful. A person who combines a gracious manner, suavity, cordiality, cheerfulness, tenacity of purpose, who never gives up, is very fortunate indeed. It takes grit to persist when others drop out; to keep working to an aim when others give up in despair; No. 32 but it is just this ability to stick and hang, and yet not suffer your good sense or sound judgment to fail you, that enables you to succeed w’here others fail, that gives you a reputation for being capable. Polite persistency plays a large part in the success of many a business man or woman. It is the person who can stick to a disagreeable job, do it with energy and vim, the one who can force himself to do good work when he does not feel like doing it—in other words, the boy or girl who is master of him- or herself, who has a great purpose, and holds himself to his aim, whether or not it is agree able, or whether he feels like it or he does not feel like it—that wins and secures an education. It is easy to do what is agreeable, to keep at the things we like and are enthusiastic about; but it takes real grit, real manhood or womanhood, to try to put our whole soul into that which is distasteful and against which our nature protests. Clear grit is always more than a match for obstacles and has achieved all the great things in the world’s history. We have talked w ith many a boy and girl who com plained that they had no chance, had no one to help them, no influential friends to push them along. These young people should study the story of E. H. Harri man’s remarkable career. Suppose young Harriman had said, as thousands of American boys are saying today, “What chance have I, a poor country boy, with no relatives able to push me along, with no way to get a higher education, to do anything worth while? My father is a poor man—what opportunity is there for me to rise?” But young Harriman was made of better stuff than this. At the age of fourteen, with practically no edu cation, he went to work with nothing to back him but a vigorous resolve to improve himself, a desperate determination to educate himself and work at the same time. This grand resolution was his only capital. He began as an office boy and through sheer grit and tenacity climbed, step by step, until he became a power to be reckoned with in the railroad and financial worlds. It is said that his reorganization of the Union Pacific railroad was one of the most colosal feats ever attemp ted by a business man. The road had long been in (Continued on page 4)
