Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/5

Rh who make such laws is responsible for having made those quitters, and society ought to be ashamed of the job.

A good deal of brag and congratulation is let loose once in a while about "the self-made man." It always reminds me of the barker in front of the museum. He bawls out, "Walk right up, ladies and gentlemen. We have on exhibition here Jo-Jo, the dog-faced boy, He was born forty miles from land and forty miles from sea." There is no such thing as a "self-made man." He is as impossible as a perpetual motion machine. He is forty miles from land and forty miles from sea! A man can get an education without going to college, but the man who gets an education without going to college owes a debt of gratitude to the men who cheered him, women who inspired him, enemies who goaded him; he owes a debt to a thousand forces and circumstances that he did not create, but which were a help to him. His education was social.

Fat, prosperous millionaires riding in red automobiles tell us they got rich by "individual initiative," whatever that means. I don't object to men being fat and prosperous, but I do object to their trying to stuff us with the flimsy fallacy that a man can create by his own efforts a million dollars' worth of wealth. S'help me, I can't see it.

The very speech in which we talk to each other is a thing that grew through centuries. If you had been born on certain South Sea islands, Bill, you wouldn't have had more than about two hundred words to talk with. Instead of