• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 10 17 1917
• Tags:
• advice
• luck

MERIT, NOT LUCK THAT WON

The story is told by Billy Guerin that when he was appointed deputy chief of the fire department of New York City, some of his department associates made a kick, advancing their own claims for the job. One of the principal objectors was heard to say, “What’s he ever done? I’ve been in this game longer than he; why didn’t they give me the boost? The promotion belonged to me by priority in the service anyway.’’ Later on, when the wisdom of his appointrhent was proven by repeated incidents of his efficiency, and he was made chairman of the Fire Prevention Federation of America, at a substantial salary, there was more kicking. ‘‘Say,’’ said one objector, ‘‘that fellow Guerin is a lucky one. Nothing like that falls my way. I’ll bet if he tell overboard he’d come up with his pockets full of fish.”

The man who doesn’t get on in the world attributes the success of others to luck. He wants and waits for the lightning of luck to strike him, too; but it never does, for itis not luck at all that advances men in the world.

One may readily sense the qualities that prompted Guerin’s fortunes from an incident that happened recently.

Near Monroe, La., a great gas well caught fire. It spouted thirty million cubic feet of natural gas a day and a plume-like pillar of flame shot upward with a roar that washeard a mile away.

Every means known to the gas men of the West was tried to put out that fire, but, said the news reports: “The clear flame as of a billion gas jets burned steadily and noisily." In despair the company telegraphed to New York, and every one said: “Send Billy Guerin out there.”

That wasn’t luck. Guerin was sent because every one knew that he was in the habit of doing things he tackled. So Guerin went. He had never seen a burning gas well. Here he was up against a new proposition.

The three days and nights he spent on the train were not wasted in story telling or idle gossip, but all the time he was studying and figuring, and when he arrived at the burning well he said he could put it out with two streams of water. They laughed at him and said it couldn’t be done.

But Guerin played two streams of water on the column of gas so they converged from an angle of ninety degrees. Then he raised the streams slowly up through the column of gas until they reached the base of the glare. Then the men at the two nozzles squeezed their thumbs against the streams there so the water spread out like a fan. Striking the flame where it emerged from the column of gas, the water became steam, it cut off the flame from the gas and the fire went out like a snuffed candle.

There you have the secret of why this man Guerin climbed out above-his fellows. Not a bit of favoritism. Just plain merit. He used his head. He thought things out for himself. He deserved to succeed.

In the way Guerin put out that gas well fire down in Louisiana is a lesson for every young man who must make his way in the world.