To the Crookston Daily Times:

When a life as been a striking success or failure, whether it be man's or woman's, the question always comes to me, how was he started out in life? Almost invariably I get the same answer.

Many parents have had a hard struggle in life, and their whole energy later is devoted to smoothing the pathway of the child; or the child is born into a home where his services are not essential to the financial success fo the family. In either case the child grows up with the thought that he was born into the world not to minister but to be ministered unto, that the world owes him a living and that there must be something wrong with the world if he does not get what he wishes for. Governor Johnson's life ought to make every parent pause and consider.

Of course there is in every child an individuality for which not he, but his ancestors, are responsible. We are not all born to be governors or leaders, and yet many who were born with the qualities are spoiled in the molding.

Don't give the child work as you would give him medicine, with the thought that it is bitter but that he has to take it because it is good for him. Give him something to accomplish and he will rejoice in his ability to use muscle and brain to bring about results. Goverrnor Johnson, whose remains will today be given a resting place beside those of his mother, has, I will venture to assert, many times in life thanked God that the responsibility of caring for that mother was thrust upon him when he was merely a child.

            Robert Robertson.

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Source: Crookston Times, Saturday, September 25, 1909
Submitted by Brenda G., June 2001
Updated 21 APR 2015, K. Kittleson