Go west

Which way is west?

Horace Greeley

Josiah Grinnell was looking for direction in life. He got it, more literally than he expected.

Grinnell was a young man who moved in reformist circles in New York in the mid-19th century. One day he was speaking on temperance before an outdoor crowd. His voice gave way. “I quite broke down with hoarseness,” Grinnell recalled. He looked for help and spied Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, at the rear of the crowd. Grinnell made eye contact with an imploring look. “But he did not come forward to my relief, as was his custom at various meetings, when called upon for the closing words.” Grinnell croaked to an end.

“I made my way to the Tribune office the next morning to chide Mr. Greeley for not coming to my aid in an emergency,” Grinnell continued. Greeley hesitated, then answered, “Well, the crowd was large, and I did not like to push through it,” he said. He looked Grinnell over, measuring his physical condition. As an editor Greeley offered advice to the world. Now he offered advice to Grinnell. “You are laid by, no doubt. Only don’t get ready for a fashionable European health trip, or to lounge in the city, which is no place to stay except with occupation and good health. Go west, young man, go west. There is health in the country and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles.”

Grinnell took Greeley’s advice and headed to Iowa, where he was elected to Congress and founded Grinnell College and the town around it. By the time he wrote his memoir, Greeley’s advice about going west had become famous. The formulation most commonly quoted had the editor shooing another young man out of Washington. “Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go west, young man, go west and grow up with the country.”

Greeley’s advice outlived him. He ran for president in 1872 on a fusion ticket of Democrats and Liberal Republicans. He won 2.8 million votes, to incumbent Ulysses Grant’s 3.5 million. He would have won 66 electoral votes, to Grant’s 286, but he suddenly died before the electors cast their ballots.

Finicky historians later disputed whether Greeley had said precisely what was attributed to him. He had long been an advocate of western expansion, so the words fit his philosophy. But finding a contemporary version proved impossible.

I often think about Greeley when my students seek advice about careers. I wish I could give them direction as explicit and valuable as Greeley’s. Generations of Americans followed his counsel. They did so in search of opportunities more accessible in the new and rapidly growing communities of the West than in the mature cities and states of the East. Land was cheaper for farmers. The best locations for businesses weren’t already taken. Blacksmiths, doctors, dentists, teachers, lawyers, undertakers and politicians all encountered less competition in the West.

There’s no such obvious direction in which to point my students today. America as a whole is a mature society. Its population is growing only slowly. Its economy is growing slowly too. During the next half century, roughly the time today’s students will be in the workforce, the population and the economy might well begin shrinking.

There will be opportunities, but they won't lie in one geographic direction. The populations and economies of Texas and Florida are now growing faster than those of California. Sunbelt states are growing while Rust Belt states are shrinking.

Some industries are growing while others are declining. Starting in the late 19th century, employment in agriculture diminished dramatically. Output continued to grow, but machines allowed the owners of farms to produce much more with many fewer workers.

Men and women who would have worked in agriculture took jobs in industry. But just as technological progress reduced opportunities in agriculture, so it subsequently did for employment in industry. Robots and other machines now do much of the factory work that was done by humans fifty years ago.

International competition likewise shapes opportunities. American carmakers had the American market to themselves in the 1950s. But imports from Germany, Japan and later South Korea eroded Detroit's dominance. This has been good for auto buyers, but it's reduced jobs for auto workers.

In the late 20th century, Silicon Valley in California became the latest incarnation of Horace Greeley's West. It remains a hotbed of innovation and opportunity. Even so, the tech industry has diversified. Seattle, Austin, Northern Virginia and New York are attracting tech talent. And artificial intelligence is beginning to do in tech what mechanical reapers and robots did on farms and in factories.

What to tell my students by way of career advice? Something even more basic than Greeley's go-west dictum. Go where the opportunities are. In Greeley's day they were most conspicuous in the West. Today they can be found at various points of the compass and in different fields of work. Don’t expect opportunity to come to you. You’ve got to seek it out and chase it down.

If you don’t find success at first, keep looking. Iowa wasn’t the first stop on Josiah Grinnell’s westward migration. He stopped and failed several times. But each time he did, he heard Greeley’s voice again: Go west. So he did, until he found his place and his calling.