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1925
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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
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