100 years ago people had similar problems as today. They searched for professional success and personal recognition. The world changed quickly and the competition was great.What could be done to achieve success? Read what advice Lillian Lauferty has to offer in the "Washington Times" newspaper, 100 years ago. What she said is still worth reading:
Do you remember what the Red Queen said to Alice when that young person found her frantically running along a sort of treadmill and asked why she was silly enough to run so fast when she wasn't getting anywhere? The answer was fraught with deep philosophy. It was something like this: "I know It, my dear. But you have to run awfully fast to stay where you are."
Really, you do have to run awfully fast to stay where you are in this modern world of ours. New Ideas come rushing along: inventions happen all the time; Improved methods for doing things are discovered; colleges and businees schools turn out streams of trained workers, and the whole world whirls ahead so fast that unless you run very rapidly yon find yourself left behind.
The man or woman who wants to make a success of his or her life must grow all the time. Nothing else in the world stands still, and If you do you are useless. Because you measure up to your work on the first of June does not mean that you will properly fit it on the first of July, it is going to grow, and you have to grow with it. Growing with your work means little more than doing It faithfully and studying It very carefully. I know a young actress, whom, we will call Eleanor, chiefly because that is not her name.
She is a good-looking girl and is rather clever at interpreting ingenue parts. But she Is a little too tall and a little too mature looking to have any feeling of security about her line Of work. Eleanor recognized that and decided that since she was not brilliant enough or beautiful enough nor yet possessed of intense dramatic ability, influence, or unusualness, she had very little hope of ever being the beautiful heroine. "I think I'd be a pretty good character woman. I'm going to get hold of all the plays I can and atudy types. I'll decide how I would interpret them and get a lot of experience. Then, as soon as I'm too fat or too homely or too mature looking for lisps and baby stares, I'll be ready for another line of work." was Eleanor'a decision.
She was several moves ahead of the game, you see, and was fairly well insured against having her world move so fast that it would leave her behind.
A rather remarkable thing happened to Eleanor but I fancy that almost anyone who began to study not only her own field, but all the neighboring plots of land, might have a similar experience. In studying character parts Eleanor found herself very much interested in types. She began thinking about the unusual people with whom her work brought her in contact. She began fitting them into some of the sketches she was studying. And suddenly she found herself interested in the idea of writing a little sketch of her own. That sketch is going to be produced shortly and Eleanor is to be her own leading woman as well as her own author and to find her her name on the door in electric letters.
The age of miracles is not past at all but everybody has to be his own miracle worker and her own fairy godmother. Influence can put you on your feet but It cannot make you walk. No amount of backing can assure you of success. Wire pullling may put you into a good position but it cannot insure you against falling there. The business world is, full of jealousy and gossip which indicates how Johnny was favored by the boss and Jenny got her job through friends of the chiefs wife and James is only where he is because he's related to the head bookkeeper.
Watch John and Jenny and James. If It is in any of them to succeed they will, and the more quickly because a good opportunity was given them. If laziness or incompetency means that they are almost predistined failures, great will be the fall thereof when the fall comes. If Influence gets a young woman the position of secretary to the president and permits her to skip the premilinarles of promotion from eight dollars a Week upwards to twenty-five, just watch her.
How long do you suppose she can stay secretary to the President If she is slow and stupid about taking letters and transcribes them with neither neatnesas nor correctness? If the girl who is put into a big position doesn't fit It, she will be toppled out of It very shortly. If you grow into a position and arrive at the point where yon are capable of filling Its needs, you are bound to keep it as long as you keep on growing with it.
Shutting up your books when you get out of school and shouting aloud that you are through with school forever is something toward which youth gayly looks forward. But oh, how youth blunders. We don't get through with school for ever unless we mean to fail. Life is a school and we have to go on learning or go with the foot of the class. There is no such thing as standing still. There are only such things as getting hopelessly left behind, just managing to keep up with the procession, or forging ahead to real success.
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