Little Visits with Great Americans, Vol. 1 (of 2)

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Title: Little Visits with Great Americans, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Editor: Orison Swett Marden

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[Illustration: Orison Swett Marden]

LITTLE VISITS WITH GREAT AMERICANS

Success
Ideals and
How to
Attain Them

Edited by

Orison Swett Marden

Author of “Pushing to the Front,” etc., etc., etc.

The Success Company
New York
1905

PREFACE

“Experience,” says the proverb, “is a dear school, and none but fools
learn therein.” The inference is that to be wise one must suffer
himself to be taught by the experience of others. This volume contains
the life stories, told by themselves, of many successful men and women,
with emphasis on those experiences which to them appear to have been
the turning points in their lives.

It is not likely that there is anywhere in existence a similar
collection of heart-to-heart talks with distinguished people of equal
value to this. The idea of requesting the leaders in invention,
manufacture, transportation, commerce, finance, in political and public
life, and in the professions of the ministry, the law, literature and
art, to bequeath in their own words the stories of their lives, their
ideals, and the lessons of their experience, to the American public,
originated with Orison Swett Marden, and contributed in no small degree
to the immediate and remarkable popularity of SUCCESS, in which many
of these interviews first appeared. The early files of the magazine
are long since exhausted, but the interest in, and demand for, these
articles is sufficient assurance that they are of enduring merit, and
deserve to be collected in permanent form.

We regard them as a trust. We do not feel that we have a right
to withhold them from the public. We have accordingly fulfilled
our obligation by presenting them in attractive form, and we are
well assured that young and old alike who are striving to attain
their ideals in life will recognize the fact that the highest form
of self-interest will lead them to read and absorb the practical
helpfulness contained in these pages. Many and varied careers have been
selected, so that each one may find his ideal of success fulfilled
in real life, and be aroused to a lofty aspiration and resolute
determination to achieve like eminence. With Emerson we say, “Hitch
your wagon to a star,” and, with Lowell, “Not failure, but low aim, is
crime.”

While for the most part the experiences portrayed in this book occurred
upon American soil, in several instances persons born or now living
abroad, but prominently identified with American life, have been
included.

We acknowledge our indebtedness to the publishers of the “Literary
Digest,” of “Collier’s Weekly,” of the “American Review of Reviews,”
and others who kindly loaned valuable photographs for reproduction, and
also to members of the SUCCESS editorial staff for valuable assistance
in the preparation of this volume.

THE PUBLISHERS.

CONTENTS

INVENTION.

CHAPTER PAGE
I. Hard Work, the Secret of a Great Inventor’s
Genius—_Thomas Alva Edison_ 17

II. A “Down-East” Yankee Who Dictates Peace to the
Nations—_Hiram Stevens Maxim_ 35

MANUFACTURE.

III. A Poor Boy Who Once Borrowed Books Now Gives Away
Libraries—_Andrew Carnegie_ 51

IV. A Good Shoemaker Becomes Detroit’s Best Mayor and
Michigan’s Greatest Governor—_Hazen S. Pingree_ 71

COMMERCE.

V. Determination Not to Remain Poor Made a Farmer Boy
Merchant Prince—_Marshall Field_ 80

VI. Honesty the Foundation of a Great Merchant’s
Career—_John Wanamaker_ 92

VII. A British Boy Wins Fortune and Title by American
Business Methods—_Sir Thomas Lipton_ 108

FINANCE.

VIII. A Self-made Man Who Strives to Give Others a
Chance—_Darius Ogden Mills_ 117

IX. Thrift, the Secret of a Fortune Built in a
Single Lifetime—_Russell Sage_ 125

X. Cut Out for a Banker, He Rose from Errand Boy to
Secretary of the United States Treasury—_Lyman
Judson Gage_ 131

XI. A Young Millionaire Not Afraid to Work in
Overalls—_Cornelius Vanderbilt_ 138

TRANSPORTATION.

XII. A Messenger Boy’s Zeal Lifts Him to the Head of
the World’s Greatest Telegraph System—_Robert
C. Clowry_ 144

XIII. Enthusiasm for Railroading Makes a Section Hand
Head of the Metropolitan System—_Herbert H.
Vreeland_ 152

LABOR.

XIV. A Factory Boy’s Purpose to Improve Labor Makes
Him a Great Leader—_Samuel Gompers_ 164

PUBLIC LIFE.

XV. A Puny Boy, by Physical Culture, Becomes the Most
Vigorous of American Presidents—_Theodore
Roosevelt_ 173

XVI. A Brave Volunteer Fights His Way to the Head of
the American Army—_Nelson A. Miles_ 188

XVII. Making the Most of His Opportunities Wins a
Coveted Embassy—_Joseph H. Choate_ 196

XVIII. A Village Boy’s Gift of Oratory Earns Him Wealth
and Fame—_Chauncey M. Depew_ 207

XIX. A Chance-Found Book the Turning Point in a United
States Senator’s Career—_Jonathan P. Dolliver_ 219

XX. Varied Business Training the Foundation of a Long
Political Career—_Thomas C. Platt_ 225

XXI. A Magnate, the Courage of His Convictions Makes
Him a Reformer—_Tom L. Johnson_ 234

EDUCATION AND LITERATURE.

XXII. A Backwoods Boy Works His Way Through College and
Becomes University President—_Jacob Gould
Schurman_ 243

XXIII. A “Jack of All Trades” Masters One and Becomes the
Poet of the People—_James Whitcomb Riley_ 252

XXIV. A Farm Boy Who Devoured Books Writes One of the
Greatest Poems of the Century—_Edwin Markham_ 263

XXV. A Famous Authoress Tells Literary Aspirants the
Story of Her Struggle for Recognition—_Ella
Wheeler Wilcox_ 272

XXVI. A Printer’s Boy, Self-Taught, Becomes the Dean
of American Letters—_William Dean Howells_ 283

XXVII. A Famous Novelist Atones for Wasted School Days
by Self-Culture—_General Lew Wallace_ 296

XXVIII. A Social Leader, Having “Eyes That See,” Earns
Literary Laurels—_Mrs. Burton Harrison_ 305

ART.

XXIX. Painstaking the Secret of a Celebrated Painter’s
Success—_Edwin Austin Abbey_ 311

XXX. A School Girl, Not Afraid of Drudgery, Becomes
America’s Foremost Woman Illustrator—_Alice
Barber Stephens_ 321

XXXI. A Schoolboy’s Sketches Reveal the Bent of a
Talented Illustrator—_Frederic Remington_ 327

XXXII. Rebuffs and Disappointments Fail to Repress a
Great Cartoonist’s Genius—_Homer Davenport_ 334

XXXIII. Being Himself in Style and Subjects the Secrets
of an Artist’s Wonderful Popularity—_Charles
Dana Gibson_ 342

XXXIV. A “Printer’s Devil” Whose Perseverance Wins Him
Well-Earned Reputation as a Fun-Maker—_Frederick
Burr Opper_ 353

XXXV. “A Square Man in a Round Hole” Rejects $5,000 a
Year and Becomes a Sculptor—_F. Wellington
Ruckstuhl_ 358

XXXVI. During Leisure Hours he “Found Himself” and
Abandoned Law for Art—_Henry Merwin Shrady_ 366

AMUSEMENT.

XXXVII. Deformed in Body, His Cheerful Spirit Makes Him
the Entertainer of Princes—_Marshall P. Wilder_ 371

XXXVIII. Energy and Earnestness Win an Actor Fame—_Richard
Mansfield_ 379

XXXIX. A Father’s Common-Sense Gives America a Great
Bandmaster—_John Philip Sousa_ 384

PHILANTHROPY.

XL. Blind, Deaf and Dumb, Patient Effort Wins Her
Culture and Rare Womanhood—_Helen Keller_ 391

XLI. Jay Gould’s Chum Chooses “High Thinking, Not
Money-Making,” and Wins Success Without
Riches—_John Burroughs_ 402

XLII. A Millionaire’s Daughter Makes Inherited Wealth
a Blessing to Thousands—_Helen Miller Gould_ 413

XLIII. A Self-Made Merchant Solves the Problem of
Practical Philanthropy—_Nathan Strauss_ 420

DIVINITY.

XLIV. A Varied Career Develops the Resourceful Head of
a Great Institutional Church and College—_Russell
H. Conwell_ 426

XLV. An Inspiring Personality Wins a Noted Preacher
Fame—_Frank W. Gunsaulus_ 432

XLVI. From the Forge to the Pulpit, a Life of Devotion
and Application—_Robert Collyer_ 441

CANADIANS.

XLVII. Canada’s Leading Conservative Extols “the Country of
the Twentieth Century”—_Robert Laird Borden_ 447

XLVIII. An Eminent Scholar Advocates the Union of Canada
and the United States—_Goldwin Smith_ 454

XLIX. After Failure as a Grocer, He Becomes the Ablest
Administrator Quebec Has Ever Had—_S. N. Parent_ 460

L. Canada’s Leading Economist Tells Her Sons to Seek
Fortune in Her Own Domain—_Andrew G. Blair_ 470

LI. A Distinguished Educator Has Found Contentment in the
Simple Life—_James Loudon_ 479

LII. Beginning as Telegraph Operator He Built the Canadian
Pacific—_Sir William C. Van Horne_ 485

LIII. An Immigrant Boy Becomes a National Figure in
Reform—_Samuel Jones_ 498

LIV. A “Forty-niner” who Seized Opportunities Others
Failed to See—_Philip D. Armour_ 511

LV. The Blind Yacht Designer Attributes His Conquests to
His Mother’s Early Care—_John B. Herreshoff_ 528

LVI. A Great Vocalist Shows that Only Years of Labor Can
Win the Heights of Song—_Lillian Nordica_ 541

INTRODUCTION

Apelles, the great artist, traveled all over Greece for years, studying
the fairest points of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a
forehead, and there a nose, here a grace and there a turn of beauty,
for his famous portrait of a perfect woman which enchanted the world.
It was not a portrait, not an imaginary ideal head, but a composite, a
combination from the most perfect features he could find. By combining
the perfect points, the graceful curves, the lines of beauty of many
individuals, he made his wonderful painting.

The great artist knew that all elements of beauty and perfection of
physical form could not be found in one person. He knew, too, that some
of the most perfect features and beautiful curves would be found in
women who were on the whole anything but beautiful—perhaps repulsive.

The editors of this volume have been for many years in quest of the
elements of a grand, healthy, symmetrical, successful man—the ideal
man. They knew at the beginning that it would be impossible to find
any one man who would illustrate all these points of perfection, who
would combine in perfect degree all the success qualities, but they
have found in scores of men who have achieved something worth while
qualities which, put together, would make a composite ideal man, a
man who, in the evolution of civilization, will, perhaps, sometime be
possible. Usually, in men who have risen to eminence, some one quality
or virtue shines conspicuous, often accompanied with defects, perhaps
great weakness, which, to gain the lesson, we must ignore.

The editors have found here a man illustrative of perseverance, here
one marked by undaunted ambition, there a life where grit overcame all
obstacles, and another where the quick grasping of opportunities led to
noble achievement.

They have interviewed successful men and women in the various
vocations, trying to get at the secret of their success, the reasons
for their advancement. These varied life stories will give the reader
the material for constructing the composite character—the ideal man or
woman—one that shall combine all the best virtues and qualities, whose
imitation will help to insure a useful, profitable and honored life.
This composite man will not be a one-sided specialist. He will not be
a man cursed with any great weakness. He will be a man raised to the
highest power, symmetrical, self-centered, equipoised, ever master of
himself.

It does not follow that every man whose name appears in this book is
a model in every respect. Napoleon was not a model character, and yet
he exemplifies some success qualities in his career in an almost ideal
degree.

What question, arising from individual experience, from family life, or
from daily observation within the community, is of more poignant human
interest than the query: “Why do some men succeed, while others fail?”
and the allied question: “What constitutes success in life, and how may
it be attained?”

An analysis of the ideals and achievements of these leaders in
invention, commerce and finance, in public affairs, and in literature,
the arts, and the professions, as set forth by themselves, seems
to reveal certain salient life lessons well worthy of most careful
consideration. First, it would appear that without exception every
successful man or woman at some period of his or her life, whether
early or late, has formed a life purpose, and has registered a solemn
vow to achieve something more than ordinary in the world. An exception
to this rule appears to obtain in the cases of men or women possessed
of a strong natural bent or talent, the exercise of which is an
instinctive craving that will not be denied. This determination to be
or to achieve, or this instinctive bent of thought and action, appears
to be the first indication of greatness, and the turning point in great
careers.

The next most obvious lesson to be drawn from a careful study of these
interviews seems to be, that once a determination to succeed is made,
and the first steps, however humble, have been entered upon in the
new career, the subject commences to take an _interest_ amounting to
positive pleasure in the tasks and duties incident to his chosen life
work.

The far-away goal of success, with its reward of fame, wealth, and
all that money can procure, appears to fade from the worker’s sight as
he advances toward it, and the incitement to labor for material reward
is lost in the joy of congenial labor for its own sake. The player
loses sight of the hope of victory in the mere zest of the game. This
note appears again and again in the life stories of great workers as
revealed by themselves, and accounts for the spectacle, so puzzling
to many, of the master of millions apparently grasping for more
millions in his declining years. There can be no content with present
achievement, however great, because all who have achieved great things
have discovered that the ends sought are lost in the value of the
faculties developed by the search, and they hence seek, not additional
reward of toil, but rather the pleasurable exercise of the chase. The
joy of labor will not permit men to lay down the harness and relinquish
effort this side the grave.

A determination to succeed once formed, and a congenial career
once chosen and entered upon, there commences a process of
character-building by the formation of life habits. These solidify
into personal characteristics, the varying assortment of which in
the individual constitutes what we call his personality, wherein one
man differs from another. Character, it has been wisely said, is the
resultant of choices. It appears again and again in the reminiscences
of those who have succeeded, that from time to time they have
deliberately chosen a course of action which by force of habit has
become a personal characteristic, and has earned them national, if not
world-wide, reputation. The name of “Honest” John Wanamaker stands for
a reputation having a commercial value of hundreds of thousands of
dollars. The acorn from which grew this mighty oak was a young man’s
choice of honesty as the foundation of his career.

Books and essays by the score and hundred have been written by
theorists upon the principles of success in life. Worthy as are many of
the writers, their lives often illustrate the adage of the poet, “It
were easier to tell twenty what were good to be done than to be one of
the twenty to follow mine own teachings.” Boldly contrasted with such
writings are the flesh and blood maxims herein contained, stamped with
the mint marks of great personalities, towering mountainous among their
fellows, each coined from the life habits which have hardened into
enduring character, and have left their impress upon the history of our
times.

In a drawing-room or public assemblage he would indeed be unambitious
and mean-spirited, who would not choose the company and conversation
of the greatest and the best. Carlyle says, “Great men taken up in
any way are profitable company.” What privilege could promise equal
pleasure and profit with a series of visits at the homes of the most
notable personages our land contains, to consult with each on the great
questions of success or failure, of what constitutes ideal success, and
of how it may be attained?

Such is the privilege contemplated by this volume and freely offered
to all who choose to avail themselves of it. Compared with the
inspiration, the examples and the wise counsel contained within its
covers, the cost of such a volume sinks into insignificance. Benjamin
Franklin said that the reading of one good book made him what he was.
Henry Clay testified, “to the fact that in the midst of her early
poverty my mother provided her home with a few choice books, do I owe
my success in life.” Senator Dolliver, in the present volume, regards
a chance-found book as the turning point of his career, and like
testimony is all but universal. Let the young and the guardians of
youth weigh well the thought that there are sins of omission, as well
as of commission, and that it may be hardly a less criminal negligence
to refuse fit books for the growing mind than food for the growing body.

Quite aside from considerations of profit and duty are the
considerations of pleasure offered by a volume of this character.
It is a truism that truth is stranger than fiction. The romance of
reality is the most thrilling of all romances, and there is a peculiar
fascination associated with those glimpses of the inner man which are
revealed by a speaker who sets forth his own life story, and places
his own interpretation upon it. From this view point, “Little Visits”
possesses a wealth of suggestion and of information, alike valuable and
interesting to readers of all ages and of every walk in life.

The dominant note of this book, is inspiration; its keynote,
helpfulness.

We have tried to drive home every precept and lesson with stirring and
inspiring stories of great lives which show that men and women are the
architects of their own fortunes, and which will explode the excuses of
those who think they have no chance in life. It shows that necessity
has ever been the priceless spur that has urged man to struggle with
his destiny and develop his greatest strength.

We think the reader will find in these pages the composite character,
the all-round success. We have tried to show that there is something
better than making a living, and that is making a life—that a man may
make millions and be a failure still.

We have shown that a man to succeed must be greater than his calling,
that he must overtop his vocation. We have tried to teach that the
really successful man must be greater than the book he writes, than the
patient he treats, than the goods he sells, than the cause he pleads in
the courts—that manhood is above all titles, greater than any career.

THE EDITOR.

BOOK ONE

INSPIRATIONAL TALKS

WITH FAMOUS AMERICANS.

Success Maxims

The tissue of the life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of destiny
We reap as we have sown.
—WHITTIER.

No man is born into this world whose work is not born with him.—LOWELL.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a
better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the
woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.—EMERSON.

Character is power—is influence; it makes friends, creates funds, draws
patronage and support, and opens a sure and easy way to wealth, honor
and happiness.—J. HAWES.

To be thrown upon one’s own resources is to be cast into the very lap
of fortune.—FRANKLIN.

There is no road to success but through a clear, strong purpose. A
purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of whatever
sort.—T. T. MUNGER.

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.—SOPHOCLES.

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well,
and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.—LONGFELLOW.

The longer I live, the more deeply am I convinced that that which
makes the difference between one man and another—between the weak
and powerful, the great and insignificant, is energy—invincible
determination—a purpose once formed, and then death or victory.—FOWELL
BUXTON.

In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know
what is in thee. But what is thy duty? The demand of the hour.—GOETHE.

A strong, defiant purpose is many-handed, and lays hold of whatever is
near that can serve it; it has a magnetic power that draws to itself
whatever is kindred.—T. T. MUNGER.

Hard Work: the Secret of a Great Inventor’s Genius.

TO discover the opinion of Thomas A. Edison concerning what makes and
constitutes success in life is an easy matter, if one can only discover
Mr. Edison. I camped three weeks in the vicinity of Orange, N. J.,
awaiting the opportunity to come upon the great inventor and voice my
questions. It seemed a rather hopeless and discouraging affair until
he was really before me; but, truth to say, he is one of the most
accessible of men, and only reluctantly allows himself to be hedged
in by the pressure of endless affairs. “Mr. Edison is always glad to
see any visitor,” said a gentleman who is constantly with him, “except
when he is hot on the trail of something he has been working for, and
then it is as much as a man’s head is worth to come in on him.” He
certainly was not hot on the trail of anything on the morning when,
for seemingly the tenth time, I rang at the gate in the fence which
surrounds the laboratory on Valley Road, Orange. A young man appeared,
who conducted me up the walk to the elegant office and library of the
great laboratory. It is a place, this library, not to be passed through
without thought, for with a further store of volumes in his home, it
contains one of the most costly and well-equipped scientific libraries
in the world; the collection of writings on patent laws and patents,
for instance, is absolutely exhaustive. It gives, at a glance, an idea
of the breadth of the thought and sympathy of this man who grew up with
scarcely a common school education.

On the second floor, in one of the offices of the machine-shop, I was
asked to wait, while a grimy youth disappeared with my card, which he
said he would “slip under the door of Mr. Edison’s office.” “Curious,”
I thought; “what a lord this man must be if they dare not even knock at
his door!”

Thinking of this and gazing out of the window, I waited until a working
man, who had entered softly, came up beside me. He looked with a sort
of “Well, what is it?” in his eyes, and quickly it began to come to me
that the man in the sooty, oil-stained clothes was Edison himself. The
working garb seemed rather incongruous, but there was no mistaking the
broad forehead, with its shock of blackish hair streaked with gray. The
gray eyes, too, were revelations in the way of alert comprehensiveness.

“Oh!” was all I could get out at the time.

“Want to see me?” he said, smiling in the most youthful and genial way.

“Why,—yes, certainly, to be sure,” I stammered.

He looked at me blankly.

“You’ll have to talk louder,” said an assistant who worked in another
portion of the room; “he don’t hear well.”

HIS GRANDFATHER WAS A BANKER.

This fact was new to me, but I raised my voice with celerity and piped
thereafter in an exceedingly shrill key. After the usual humdrum
opening remarks, in which he acknowledged with extreme good nature his
age as fifty-five years, and that he was born in Erie county, O., of
Dutch parentage, the family having emigrated to America in 1730, the
particulars began to grow more interesting. His great-grandfather, I
learned, was a banker of high standing in New York; and, when Thomas
was but a child of seven years, the family fortune suffered reverses
so serious as to make it necessary that he should become a wage-earner
at an unusually early age, and that the family should move from his
birth-place to Michigan.

“Did you enjoy mathematics as a boy?” I asked.

“Not much,” he replied. “I tried to read Newton’s ‘Principia’ at the
age of eleven. That disgusted me with pure mathematics, and I don’t
wonder now. I should not have been allowed to take up such serious
work.”

“You were anxious to learn?”

“Yes, indeed. I attempted to read through the entire Free Library at
Detroit, but other things interfered before I had done.”

“Were you a book-worm and dreamer?” I questioned.

“Not at all,” he answered, using a short, jerky method, as though he
were unconsciously checking himself up. “I became a newsboy, and liked
the work. Made my first _coup_ as a newsboy.”

“What was it?” I ventured.

“I bought up on ‘futures’ a thousand copies of the ‘Detroit Free Press’
containing important war news,—gained a little time on my rivals, and
sold the entire batch like hot cakes. The price reached twenty-five
cents a copy before the end of the route,” and he laughed. “I ran the
‘Grand Trunk Herald,’ too, at that time—a little paper I issued from
the train.”

HIS FIRST EXPERIMENTS.

“When did you begin to be interested in inventions?” I questioned.

“Well,” he said, “I began to dabble in chemistry at that time. I fitted
up a small laboratory on the train.”

In reference to this, Mr. Edison subsequently admitted that, during
the progress of some occult experiments in this workshop, certain
complications ensued in which a jolted and broken bottle of sulphuric
acid attracted the attention of the conductor. He, who had been long
suffering in the matter of unearthly odors, promptly ejected the young
devotee and all his works. This incident would have been only amusing
but for its relation to and explanation of his deafness. A box on the
ear, administered by the irate conductor, caused the lasting deafness.

“What was your first work in a practical line?” I went on.

“A telegraph line between my home and another boy’s, I made with the
help of an old river cable, some stove-pipe wire, and glass-bottle
insulators. I had my laboratory in the cellar and studied telegraphy
outside.”

“What was the first really important thing you did?”

“I saved a boy’s life.”

“How?”

“The boy was playing on the track near the depot. I saw he was in
danger and caught him, getting out of the way just in time. His father
was station-master, and taught me telegraphy in return.”

Dramatic situations appear at every turn of this man’s life, though,
temperamentally, it is evident that he would be the last to seek them.
He seems to have been continually arriving on the scene at critical
moments, and always with the good sense to take things in his own
hands. The chance of learning telegraphy only gave him a chance to show
how apt a pupil he was, and the railroad company soon gave him regular
employment. He himself admits that, at seventeen, he had become one of
the most expert operators on the road.

“Did you make much use of your inventive talent at this time?” I
questioned.

“Yes,” he answered. “I invented an automatic attachment for my
telegraph instrument which would send in the signal to show I was
awake at my post, when I was comfortably snoring in a corner. I didn’t
do much of that, though,” he went on; “for some such boyish trick sent
me in disgrace over the line into Canada.”

A NOVEL METHOD OF TELEGRAPHING.

“Were you there long?”

“Only a winter. If it’s incident you want, I can tell you one of that
time. The place where I was and Sarnia, the American town, were cut off
from telegraph and other means of communication by the storms until I
got at a locomotive whistle and tooted a telegraphic message. I had to
do it again and again, but eventually they understood it over the water
and answered in the same way.”

According to his own and various recorded accounts, Edison was
successively in charge of important wires in Memphis, Cincinnati,
New Orleans and Louisville. He lived in the free-and-easy atmosphere
of the tramp operators—a boon companion with them, yet absolutely
refusing to join in the dissipations to which they were addicted. So
highly esteemed was he for his honesty that it was the custom of his
colleagues, when a spree was on hand, to make him the custodian of
those funds which they felt obliged to save. On a more than usually
hilarious occasion, one of them returned rather the worse for wear, and
knocked the treasurer down on his refusal to deliver the trust money;
the other depositors, we are glad to note, gave the ungentlemanly
tippler a sound thrashing.

“Were you good at saving your own money?” I asked.

“No,” he said, smiling. “I never was much for saving money, as money. I
devoted every cent, regardless of future needs, to scientific books and
materials for experiments.”

“You believe that an excellent way to succeed?”

“Well, it helped me greatly to future success.”

“What was your next invention?” I inquired.

“An automatic telegraph recorder—a machine which enabled me to record
dispatches at leisure, and send them off as fast as needed.”

“How did you come to hit upon that?”

“Well, at the time, I was in such straits that I had to walk from
Memphis to Louisville. At the Louisville station they offered me a
place. I had perfected a style of handwriting which would allow me to
take legibly from the wire, long hand, forty-seven and even fifty-four
words a minute, but I was only a moderately rapid sender. I had to do
something to help me on that side, and so I thought out that little
device.”

Later, he pointed out an article by one of his biographers, in which a
paragraph, referring to this Louisville period, says:—

“True to his dominant instincts, he was not long in gathering around
him a laboratory, printing office and machine shop. He took press
reports during his whole stay, including, on one occasion, the
Presidential message, by Andrew Johnson, and this at one sitting, from
3:30 P. M. to 4:30 A. M.

“He then paragraphed the matter he had received over the wires, so that
printers had exactly three lines each, thus enabling them to set up a
column in two or three minutes’ time. For this, he was allowed all the
exchanges he desired, and the Louisville press gave him a state dinner.”

“How did you manage to attract public attention to your ability?” I
questioned.

“I didn’t manage,” said the Wizard. “Some things I did created comment.
A device that I invented which utilized one submarine cable for two
circuits, caused considerable talk, and the Franklin telegraph office
of Boston gave me a position.”

It is related of this, Mr. Edison’s first trip east, that he came with
no ready money and in a rather dilapidated condition. His colleagues
were tempted by his “hayseed” appearance to “salt” him, as professional
slang terms the process of giving a receiver matter faster than he
can record it. For this purpose, the new man was assigned to a wire
manipulated by a New York operator famous for his speed. But there
was no fun at all. Notwithstanding the fact that the New Yorker was
in the game and was doing his most speedy clip, Edison wrote out the
long message accurately, and, when he realized the situation, was soon
firing taunts over the wire at the sender’s slowness.

HIS FIRST PATENT.

“Had you patented many things up to the time of your coming east?” I
queried.

“Nothing,” said the inventor, ruminatively. “I received my first patent
in 1869.”

“For what?”

“A machine for recording votes and designed to be used in the State
Legislature.”

“I didn’t know such machines were in use,” I ventured.

“They ar’n’t,” he answered, with a merry twinkle. “The better it
worked, the more impossible it was; the sacred right of the minority,
you know,—couldn’t filibuster if they used it,—didn’t use it.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, it was an ingenious thing. Votes were clearly pointed and shown
on a roll of paper, by a small machine attached to the desk of each
member. I was made to learn that such an innovation was out of the
question, but it taught me something.”

“And that was?”

“To be sure of the practical need of, and demand for, a machine, before
expending time and energy on it.”

“Is that one of your maxims of success?”

“It is.”

In this same year, Edison came from Boston to New York, friendless
and in debt on account of the expenses of his experiment. For
several weeks he wandered about the town with actual hunger staring
him in the face. It was a time of great financial excitement, and
with that strange quality of Fortunism, which seems to be his chief
characteristic, he entered the establishment of the Law Gold Reporting
Company just as their entire plant had shut down on account of an
accident in the machinery that could not be located. The heads of the
firm were anxious and excited to the last degree, and a crowd of the
Wall street fraternity waited about for the news which came not. The
shabby stranger put his finger on the difficulty at once, and was
given lucrative employment. In the rush of the metropolis, a man finds
his true level without delay, especially when his talents are of so
practical and brilliant a nature as were this young telegrapher’s. It
would be an absurdity to imagine an Edison hidden in New York. Within
a short time, he was presented with a check for $40,000, as his share
of a single invention—an improved stock printer. From this time, a
national reputation was assured him. He was, too, now engaged upon the
duplex and quadruplex systems—systems for sending two and four messages
at the same time over a single wire,—which were to inaugurate almost a
new era in telegraphy.

POVERTY AS AN INCENTIVE TO EFFORT.

Recalling the incident of the Law Gold Reporting Company, I inquired:
“Do you believe want urges a man to greater efforts and so to greater
success?”

“It certainly makes him keep a sharp lookout. I think it does push a
man along.”

“Do you believe that invention is a gift, or an acquired ability?”

“I think it’s born in a man.”

“And don’t you believe that familiarity with certain mechanical
conditions and defects naturally suggest improvements to any one?”

“No. Some people may be perfectly familiar with a machine all their
days, knowing it inefficient, and never see a way to improve it.”

“What do you think is the first requisite for success in your field, or
any other?”

“The ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem
incessantly without growing weary.”

“Do you have regular hours, Mr. Edison?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said, “I do not work hard now. I come to the laboratory about
eight o’clock every day and go home to tea at six, and then I study or
work on some problem until eleven, which is my hour for bed.”

“Fourteen or fifteen hours a day can scarcely be called loafing,” I
suggested.

“Well,” he replied, “for fifteen years I have worked on an average of
twenty hours a day.”

That astonishing brain has been known to puzzle itself for sixty
consecutive hours over a refractory problem, its owner dropping quietly
off into a long sleep when the job was done, to awake perfectly
refreshed and ready for another siege. Mr. Dickson, a neighbor and
familiar, gives an anecdote told by Edison which well illustrates his
untiring energy and phenomenal endurance. In describing his Boston
experience, Edison said he bought Faraday’s works on electricity,
commenced to read them at three o’clock in the morning and continued
until his room-mate arose, when they started on their long walk to get
breakfast. That object was entirely subordinated in Edison’s mind to
Faraday, and he suddenly remarked to his friend: “Adams, I have got so
much to do, and life is so short, that I have got to hustle,” and with
that he started off on a dead run for his breakfast.

NEVER DID ANYTHING WORTH WHILE BY CHANCE.

“Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions? Do they come to you
while you are lying awake nights?” I asked him.

“I never did anything worth doing by accident,” he replied, “nor did
any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the
phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth
getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.

“I have always kept,” continued Mr. Edison, “strictly within the lines
of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put on
electrical wonders, valuable only as novelties to catch the popular
fancy.”

“What makes you work?” I asked with real curiosity. “What impels you
to this constant, tireless struggle? You have shown that you care
comparatively nothing for the money it makes you, and you have no
particular enthusiasm for the attending fame. What is it?”

“I like it,” he answered, after a moment of puzzled expression. “I
don’t know any other reason. Anything I have begun is always on my
mind, and I am not easy while away from it, until it is finished; and
then I hate it.”

“Hate it?” I said.

“Yes,” he affirmed, “when it is all done and is a success, I can’t bear
the sight of it. I haven’t used a telephone in ten years, and I would
go out of my way any day to miss an incandescent light.”

“You lay down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed in
life,” I ventured, “working eighteen hours a day.”

“Not at all,” he said. “You do something all day long, don’t you? Every
one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you
have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men that
they have been doing something all the time. They have been either
walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that
they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they
took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one
object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application.
The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object—one
thing to which they stick, letting all else go.”

OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUTURE INVENTORS.

“You believe, of course,” I suggested, “that much remains to be
discovered in the realm of electricity?”

“It is the field of fields,” he answered. “We can’t talk of that, but
it holds the secret which will reorganize the life of the world.”

“You have discovered much about it,” I said, smiling.

“Yes,” he said, “and yet very little in comparison with the
possibilities that appear.”

“How many inventions have you patented?”

“Only six hundred,” he answered, “but I have made application for some
three hundred more.”

“And do you expect to retire soon, after all this?”

“I hope not,” he said, almost pathetically. “I hope I will be able to
work right on to the close. I shouldn’t care to loaf.”

Shouldn’t care to loaf! What a thought after fifty-two years of such
magnificent achievement.

THE WIZARD AT HOME.

While the inventions of Thomas A. Edison keep him constantly in the
public eye, as a man in private life he is comparatively unknown. If
you should see him in his laboratory, buried deep in work, surrounded
by battalions of machines and hosts of experimental appliances, dressed
in his “shop clothes” spotted with chemicals, you would never suspect
that, just seven hundred feet away, a palatial home awaits him.

Ten years ago he was an undomesticated man. His workshop and his
chemical laboratory held such powerful sway over his mind that he was
only supremely happy when “up to his eyes” in work. Gradually, almost
insidiously, the “wizard” has been weaned away from the weaving of his
spells, and now a new and more potent power than ever before controlled
him has gained its mastery over him. This is the power of love.
Though the great inventor even now works as few men of his age and
accomplishments are in the habit of doing, the last few years have seen
a steady relaxation of his toil. The time has passed when he was wont
to lock himself in a room and work sixty hours at a stretch without
taking more than an hour’s sleep at various intervals in that time.

MRS. EDISON IS ALSO AN INVENTOR OF GOOD ABILITY.

When Mr. Edison toils now, there is one who shares his labors with him.
It is Mrs. Edison, his second wife. She is the daughter of John Miller,
who invented the famous Miller mowing machine, and inherits a great
deal of inventive ability. It is through this additional bond of genius
that they are united. She is a helpmeet in the true sense of the word.
It is said that they are now working on an invention which they will
patent jointly.

Whether Mrs. Edison intends to participate in one of her husband’s
inventions or not, she takes more than passing interest in all of his
affairs, and has acquired, through her association with him, a vast
amount of electrical and mechanical knowledge. When Mr. Edison met Miss
Miller, twelve years ago, he was at the beginning of his fame. It was
one of the most intensely busy periods of his career, his work engaging
nearly every moment of his time.

The days of complete absorption in work have passed for him. His
home-life has become necessary to him. Though he has had one or two
relapses of “working fever,”—when he steadfastly refused to be moved
from the laboratory by Mrs. Edison’s persuasions,—he has reached the
period when he is glad to go to his home. Much honor is due to the
woman who has wrought so marvelous a change in her husband. Those who
knew Mr. Edison best predicted that his present wife would soon become
a secondary consideration in his life. They are, from all accounts,
mistaken.

The Edison home is one of the finest residences in New Jersey, and is
furnished with all the conveniences and luxuries of a modern palace.
It bears evidence of Mrs. Edison’s true taste and skillful management.
The lower floor of the house is laid out in parlors, conservatories,
and a magnificent dining room. Ponderous chandeliers bristling with
electric-light bulbs hang from ceilings finished in open-work beams,
exhibiting the best art of the builder. Mr. Edison has a fine library
in his residence, though it does not contain so many scientific works
as the library at his laboratory.

The upper floors are given up to sleeping rooms, and a special “den”
for Mr. Edison. There he works out his plans, and has at hand the
reference books he desires in chemistry, physics, heat, light, and
electricity.

RISES EARLY AND WORKS LONG.

He is an early riser, and is ready for work at half-past six o’clock.
His first daily occupation is to read the newspapers. He is anxious to
know if the reporters who interviewed him wrote just what he said, for
he dislikes, above all else, newspaper interviews that are not correct.
He does not like to be misquoted, and is willing to go to any amount of
trouble in order that his statements shall be reported without error.
No matter how busily he may be engaged at the laboratory he will stop
to look over an interview, and no one is more willing than he is to set
a reporter right.

At half-past seven in the morning Mr. Edison starts for the laboratory.
He usually walks, as the distance is short, and his physicians have
ordered that he must take a certain amount of physical exercise every
day. When he reaches the laboratory, he begins with a great rush, and
starts men on certain phases of work which he planned the previous day.
He usually has from fifty to seventy-five subjects on which he puts men
to work. These subjects he prepares at home, between the time when he
leaves the laboratory, half-past six, and midnight.

Every afternoon Mrs. Edison calls for her husband at the laboratory,
and takes him away in her carriage, and they drive about the beautiful
district of the Oranges.

Mrs. Edison has undertaken the task of keeping the inventor healthy.
She will not permit him to neglect his meals, or to work more than she
thinks is good for him. She insists that he shall leave the laboratory
at a certain hour each night, and she undertakes to personally see
that he does so. At times, Mr. Edison objects, but in a very mild way,
to this _régime_. Not long ago, he was deeply engaged in a certain
experiment, when Mrs. Edison called for him and insisted upon taking
him home. After some resistance, he at last consented, saying, however,
by way of a final protest, as he stepped into the carriage:—

“Billy” (his pet name for Mrs. Edison), “you’re a nuisance.”

Were it not, however, for the saving influence which Mrs. Edison
exercises over her husband, it is doubtful if he would accomplish so
much.

A “Down-east” Yankee who Dictates Peace to the Nations.

HIRAM STEVENS MAXIM is a gunmaker and peacemaker, and to-day the terms
are synonymous.

Two armed men, although hostile, will hesitate to attack one another;
each will be careful to make no false move, lest the other’s hand
fly to his pistol pocket. Neither knows the other’s equipment for
aggression or defense. So both will smile and smile, and continue to
hate.

It is often thus with nations.

When I asked Mr. Maxim how one feels to be in the business of making
machines of war,—machines for killing men by the brigade, so to speak,
he replied:—

“Men of my profession do more to keep peace on earth than all the
churches of Christendom. They beg for peace,—we compel it.”

Almost all famous men have two sides; the one is seen by the world,
which never really sees the man at all, and is cold and glazed and more
or less characterless,—being wholly intellectual. The other is the warm
human side, full of points of strength and lovable weaknesses.

THE MAN WHOSE GUNS WILL CLEAR A JUNGLE.

Hiram S. Maxim is of this type. Mention his name to your neighbor, and
he will say: “Oh, yes! Maxim,—he’s the inventor of the rapid-fire gun,
the flying machine, and smokeless powder, and a lot of other things.”
That’s all he knows about him, and, very likely, it’s all he cares. But
the name Maxim is of tremendous import to every nation in the world;
it is liable to have a potential influence in changing some of their
boundaries, too. China had a good supply of rapid-fire guns when the
war broke out between her and Japan, but the brass parts had all been
stolen by traitorous Celestials, and the instruments left unfit for
use. Otherwise, the results might have been different,—who can tell?

Ask the British Government how many British lives and how much British
money was saved by the rapid-fire guns in South Africa. Also ask
the “blacks” what they think of one of them. They call it “Johnny
pop,—pop,—pop.” But these guns were small affairs. Remember what their
big brothers did for us at Santiago and Manila. I am told that they
lashed the surface of the ocean into foam.

But let us look at the man as the public sees him.

Weigh the significance of his list of titles: Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor, member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, honorary
member of the Bridgeport Scientific Society, member of the Royal
Society of Arts, of the English Society of Mechanical Engineers, of
the English Society of Electrical Engineers, of the English Society of
Junior Engineers, of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, of the British Empire League, of the Decimal Society, of the
British Æronautical Society, of the London Chamber of Commerce, and
also recipient of decorations from the Emperor of China and several
European sovereigns.

HIS BRAIN IS BUILT UP OF INVENTIVE CELLS.

Mr. Maxim was the first man in the world to make an automatic gun; that
is, a gun that loads and fires itself by its own reactionary force.
He was also the first to combine gun-cotton and nitro-glycerine in a
smokeless powder. The practicability of his flying machine is yet to be
proved.

Such is Maxim, the ghost of whose presence appears to bellicose rulers
and bids them halt,—and they do halt. It is said that the British
Government and Hiram S. Maxim are two of the world’s most powerful
influences for peace.

Next consider the human being,—the big, brown-eyed, white-bearded man,
over sixty years young,—for he was born in Maine, in 1840.

He seems to me to be a man with two ambitions: primarily, to keep
on inventing, and, secondarily, to be the most famous inventor of
all ages. His intellect and energy demand progress, his vanity
demands fame. He doesn’t appear to care for money, save as a means
to a desired end. His personality might be considered unbalanced.
His sense of self-suppression does not correspond with his fairly
colossal intellect. The character of his intellectuality is uniform.
The philosophical rather than the scholarly instinct dominates it.
Another evidence of his quality of humanity is his sensitiveness to
unfair censure. “I don’t fear truthful criticism,” he once said;
“misrepresentation is what hurts.”

It is difficult for one who knows him to imagine anything which he
could not master. I once asked him the question, and he said he
believed he would have succeeded at anything, except as a clergyman or
a physician; that his religious views would preclude the former, and
that he had a distaste for the latter.

BITING OFF THE DOG’S TAIL.

At the age of fourteen young Maxim left school, and became apprenticed
to a carriage-builder, although he had previously learned the use of
tools in his father’s mill. He was a stockily built lad, and was noted
for his physical strength and daring. His father was not an ardent
advocate of “turn the other cheek” policy. On the contrary, he used
to say: “If any one assails you, sail into him.” Once Hiram’s father
promised to bring him a present if he would be good. The little fellow,
then six years old, looked forward to the fulfilment with impatience.
At length, the elder Maxim, returning from the village, brought a puppy
as a playmate for his little son. Hiram regarded the animal with
amazement for a few moments; then, bursting into tears, he rushed to
hide his face in his mother’s lap, exclaiming: “I am afraid of it, it
looks so much like a dog.” The two finally became great friends. One
day the dog bit Hiram, and the lad asked his father what he ought to do
under the circumstances. “Bite him back,” was the verdict. In pursuit
of this suggestion, the lad examined the dog and concluded that the end
of his tail was about the most vulnerable point. Accordingly, he took
that member between his teeth and began to put on pressure, raising the
dog from the ground, in order to swing him once or twice. All the while
the lad had tears in his eyes, for he loved his little play-fellow;
but, with true Puritanical instinct, he deemed the chastisement just
and necessary. The dog, however, did not join him in this view of the
matter, and, in an attempt to escape, carried away one of his young
master’s upper front teeth. It is also said that one of Hiram’s young
brothers, in pursuit of this policy of retaliation, almost decapitated
the family goose, which they were saving up for Christmas, which had
savagely attacked the calf of the youngster’s leg.

It is easier to give Mr. Maxim’s manner of speech than his manner of
speaking. He has wonderful brown eyes,—very honest eyes,—that stare
at you inquiringly as he talks, and an extremely gentle voice of an
almost hypnotic quality,—very attractive and soothing. Marvelously
quick-witted himself, he has little patience with dullness in others.
His power of explanation, too, is very great. He always uses language
and methods according to the understanding of the listener. With a
scientific man, he employs forms of speech that convey much in little,
while to the ordinary layman he expresses himself in popular English.

“To what do you attribute your early success?” Mr. Maxim was asked.

“In the first place, I was a very large and strong boy, and, no matter
where I worked, I always succeeded in doing more than any other man or
boy in the shop. I was never absent from work or school.”

PAT’S ANXIETY TO TRY “THE BOSS,” AND ITS RESULT.

The development of his physical strength kept pace with that of
his intellect. When he was thirty-five, he was manager of a large
manufactory in Brooklyn. One day a herculean Irishman, who had long
been ambitious to have a trial of strength with “the boss,” asked
the latter how it was that the Irish were so much stronger than the
Americans.

“How much can you lift?” asked Mr. Maxim, quietly.

“Six hundred pounds,” replied Pat.

“And how much do you weigh?”

“Two hundred pounds.”

“Well,” said Maxim, “I will lift you and your load together,” and he
did it.

HOW THE MAINE “BACKWOODSMAN” CAPTURED A ROBBER.

On another occasion, while taking lunch at a railroad station in
France, Mr. Maxim recognized a notorious confidence man who had, years
before, robbed him in Paris. The fellow, seeing that he was detected,
tried to escape by leaping upon a moving train. Maxim followed and a
fierce struggle ensued on the footboard of the coach, while the train
was running at a high speed. Maxim had to fight both the fellow and
his comrades, but he subjugated his man. The train was brought to a
standstill, and the victor marched his prisoner back over the ties
to the station, delivering him to the authorities, and subsequently
had the satisfaction of seeing him sentenced to several years at hard
labor. This was one result of the backwoods training in Maine.

“Whatever job I was at,” Mr. Maxim told me, “I used to work at and
think of day and night. I talked shop in season and out. If I was given
work that was not good enough for me, I would do it so well and so
quickly that they thought I was worthy of something better. No matter
where I was, I managed, somehow, to get to the top. I noticed, the
first thing, that the majority of the men around me were poor and the
few rich; and I knew, of course, that the methods of the former were
wrong, and that, consequently, the way to succeed was to follow the
latter.”

“When did you first begin to invent?”

“Almost before I learned to walk. When I went to work, I began to study
out ways of improving tools and appliances.”

FROM GAS MACHINES TO INCANDESCENT LAMPS.

“What were your first practical inventions?”

“In 1862-63 I was at work at Fitchburg, Massachusetts, making gas
machines. I made various improvements at that time, which afterward
came into general use. From Fitchburg I went to Boston, where I
entered the service of Oliver P. Drake, who was not only a gas-machine
maker, but also a philosophical-instrument maker. I first worked as a
draughtsman, and then became his foreman. I learned from Mr. Drake many
things that were useful to me in after life. From Boston I came to New
York, where I obtained a situation as draughtsman at the Novelty Iron
Works, East Twelfth street. At that time they were building the Pacific
Mail steamers. Shortly after this, I thought of a new system of making
gas from gasoline. All the machines that had existed would maintain
only one hundred lights or less, and the density and illuminating power
of the gas varied so much as to make the lights very unsatisfactory.
I decided to make a machine that would make the gas, from first to
last, of an equal density. I made this machine and patented it. It
was intended for large consumers, and several were purchased by A. T.
Stewart & Company. One of them was in the Park Avenue Hotel, and, for
a time, another was used in the Post Office in New York City. I also
made a very large machine, the biggest ever made, for the Grand Union
and several other hotels at Saratoga which belonged to A. T. Stewart.
From gas machines I turned my attention to small steam motors, and had
a place in Centre street, which is still in existence, my successors
being Messrs. Welch and Lawson, 205 Centre street. I soon began to
experiment with electricity, and was the first man to file at the
Patent Office an invention for building up and preserving the carbons
of incandescent lamps, by the action of hydro-carbon vapors. I lost
this patent, however, by a system of fraud, which I will not describe
to-day. I was the first man to make an electrical regulator, and
exhibited it at the Paris Exposition in 1881, and was made a Chevalier
of the French Legion of Honor. I secured many patents on electrical
inventions from 1880 to 1885. I next experimented with automatic
firearms.”

THE GENESIS OF THE AUTOMATIC GUN.

“How did you come to invent the automatic gun?”

“Many years ago, while firing at a target with a military musket, I
was much surprised at the force of the recoil. It appeared to me that
this waste of energy might be profitably employed in loading and firing
the weapon, but it was not until I went to Europe and found myself in
Paris with insufficient work to keep me fully employed, that I tried to
make an automatic gun. I first made a drawing, which I afterward took
to London; and, having obtained and equipped a small factory there, I
commenced experiments with the view of evolving a gun which would load
and fire itself. There were no data to refer to. No one had ever before
spent a single cent in experimenting with automatic guns. I first
thought of employing the recoil to working existing forms of mechanism,
but found that impracticable. I then designed and constructed a totally
new machine and a totally new system of feeding.

“In the spring of 1884, I constructed the first apparatus ever made in
which the recoil of one cartridge would load another cartridge into
the barrel and fire it. This is now in the South Kensington Museum, in
London, labeled: ‘This apparatus loads and fires itself, by force of
its own recoil, and is the first machine ever made in which energy from
the burning powder is employed for loading and firing the arm.’

“When I made my first gun and found that it would really load and
fire itself, I knew it would have a great future. A few friends
came in to see it. They told others, and very soon a great number
of people came to see the new wonder. In fact, everybody, from the
Prince of Wales down, came to see the gun and fire it. No less than
two hundred thousand rounds of ammunition were used in explaining
the gun and showing it to visitors. At first, no one would believe
that an automatic gun had really been made. No one was prepared to
believe, without seeing it. In fact, I may say that they were unable
to understand that the gun actually loaded and fired itself. It was
considered a nine days’ wonder. The English Government was the first
to give an order. It asked for a gun which would not weigh over one
hundred pounds, and would fire four hundred rounds per minute. I made
one that weighed forty pounds and fired two thousand rounds in three
minutes, with one pull of the trigger. This is a result that no one
else has ever attained. I showed my gun to Lord Wolseley at Hythe,
where I fired at a target. That leader and Colonel Tongue were standing
by the gun while I was firing it. I heard the latter say that it was
the best firing that had ever been seen; that the accuracy was much
better than had ever been known before; and that the rapidity of fire
was without parallel. Everyone seemed astonished, and it was then that
Lord Wolseley approached me and said: ‘Mr. Maxim, I have seen your gun.
It is simply wonderful. It is the most remarkable invention I ever saw
in my life, and I congratulate you heartily upon your success; but,’
he continued, ‘it is of no good, as you will observe that the cloud of
smoke is very large indeed. Unless you can get smokeless powder, I am
afraid your gun will be of little use.’ It was then that I began to
think in earnest about smokeless powder, one of the directors having
said that I was just the man to invent it. When I told him that I was
not a chemist at all, as compared with Professors Fred. Adel and Dewar,
his reply was: ‘You know all the chemistry that is necessary in the
matter, and, moreover, you have an imagination, and the others have
not. If you take the matter up, I am sure you will go ahead of them.’”

AUTOMATIC GUNS MADE SMOKELESS POWDER INDISPENSABLE.

“Such was really the case, because I find that my application for a
patent for a smokeless powder, consisting of nitro-glycerine and gun
cotton, was filed at the patent office about fourteen days ahead of any
other, and Sir Richard Webster, in speaking for the government in the
celebrated case of Nobel against the Government on smokeless powder,
said: ‘H. S. Maxim is the first man to make a smokeless powder with
nitro-glycerine and gun cotton. This powder was taken out to the States
as much as eight or nine years ago, shown at Springfield, and put into
competition with all other forms; and, according to the printed reports
of the time, it was said to be superior to all others at all points,
and I may say that the powder has not been improved on to any extent,
as all the leading powders of to-day are practically the same as that
invented by him at that time.’

“I was the first man to show a thoroughly good smokeless powder in the
United States. Having succeeded in England, I took my guns abroad.
Switzerland was the first country where I had a competitive trial with
other makers. I was asked to fire at a dummy battery of artillery, at
thirteen hundred yards, for one minute; but, as a matter of fact, I was
only engaged half a minute in actual firing, when it was telephoned
that I had technically killed three-fourths of the men and horses. I
thought, perhaps, that I ought to have killed the whole of them, but
the general said with great enthusiasm: ‘No gun ever made has ever done
anything like that. It is the most marvelous thing that has ever been
done. It is simply amazing. A little gun weighing only fifty pounds
puts a battery of artillery out of action in half a minute, at thirteen
hundred yards.’

“I next took the gun to Italy, where I won another victory, and then
returned to England. I received very large orders from all these
countries, and the gun is now in use, I may say, nearly all over the
world. These guns are being made not only by our own company, which has
many factories in England, but by the British Government, by Ludwig
Loewe, of Berlin; by Krupp, by Armstrong and by the United States
Government at Washington. The company with which I am connected is a
very large one, and we make about sixty varieties of rapid-firing and
automatic guns. We are also makers of very large guns, builders of
battleships, etc. I have also made guns for flying aerial torpedoes,
by the use of compressed air and gas. About ten years ago I conducted
a series of experiments at Baldwin Park, Bexley, England, with a view
of ascertaining how much power is required to perform artificial
flight. These experiments were on a much larger scale than had ever
been attempted before, and excited a great deal of interest in the
scientific world. Lord Kelvin, at the Oxford meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, Lord Salisbury in the
chair, spoke in the highest terms of these experiments. He was very
enthusiastic at what he had seen at Baldwin’s Park. He said that the
work was all exceedingly well done, that the experiments were conducted
with great care, and that they were very creditable to me.”

HOW LI HUNG CHANG BECAME INTERESTED IN MAXIM.

“I have been decorated by the President of France, by the Sultan of
Turkey, by the Queen of Spain, and by the King of Portugal, etc.”

“How did you come to be decorated by the Emperor of China, Mr. Maxim?”

“On one occasion, when there was great excitement in London about
a terrible massacre of missionaries in China, I attended a meeting
which, at the beginning, was very much in favor of the missionaries
and against the Chinese, but I made a speech from the Chinese
standpoint and succeeded in getting a resolution passed about as
follows: ‘This meeting regrets exceedingly that the American and
English Missionary Societies will persist in sending missionaries to
China to attack the ancient faith of the Chinese, and we are very
sorry that the missionaries will not remain in their own countries,
and allow the Chinese to enjoy their own religion in their own way in
their own country.’ My speech was taken down in shorthand and sent
to the Chinese Ambassador. He had it nicely written out in Chinese,
beautifully bound, and sent it to Li Hung Chang. The latter sent it to
the Emperor, and the Emperor gave me a decoration.”

HOW A FIRST-CLASS FRAUD WAS EXPOSED.

“Tell about the exposure of the Dowe scheme.”

“Some years ago a Hoboken barkeeper and a German tailor went to England
to exploit the soundness of the alleged bullet-proof cloth. A whole
town was placarded, to advertise Dowe’s wonderful bullet-proof cloth,
etc. The invention was shown at the El Cambria Theatre, and a great
many of the old military men of England went to see this wonderful
invention, for the secret of which the supposed inventors demanded two
hundred thousand pounds. The thing actually shown, however, was not
bullet-proof cloth, neither was it a bullet-proof coat, but a little
shield about the size and thickness of a railway cushion, which was
apparently of fibrous material, and would stop a bullet. A target was
marked on a piece of paper, and a piece of paper folded over the gun.
One of these pieces of paper fell into my hands. I saw where the bullet
had entered, and where the flash came out. This was a complete ‘give
away,’ as it showed exactly what was in the plan, viz., that it was a
piece of sharp deception. I then put a notice in the paper that I had
discovered a shield, steel, better than that of Herr Dowe; that his
weighed twelve and one-half pounds to the square foot, and mine only
ten; that he asked two hundred thousand pounds for his secret, whereas
I would sell mine for seven shillings, sixpence. A great crowd of
people came to see my supposed invention, and I showed the exact thing
that Herr Dowe had, except that mine was thinner and lighter. I had
used nickel steel where he had used chrome steel. Many people were very
much disappointed, and many of them blackguarded me in the papers, but
there was truth in all I said. I did exactly what I said I would, and
beat Herr Dowe in the point of weight. This exposed the whole thing,
and, at the end of three days, everybody in London knew that Herr Dowe
and the Hoboken barkeeper had been deceiving the public. In fact, one
of their own men revealed the secret, confessing that it was nothing
more nor less than a piece of steel with a cushion around it. Then the
newspaper men who had been abusing me roundly, because they did not
understand, in the first place, invited me to London to a dinner, and
Herr Dowe and the Hoboken barkeeper disappeared.”

“To what do you attribute your success?”

“I never tried to exploit an invention till I had one to exploit. That
is, I never asked anyone to invest in a theory; and I never allowed my
name to be used to promote worthless properties or projects.”

III

A Poor Boy Once Borrowed Books Now Gives Away Libraries.

SELFISH wealth stands surprised, amazed, almost indignant, at the
announcement that Andrew Carnegie, instead of resting in Olympian
luxury on the millions he has earned, and going to the grave with his
gold tightly clutched in his stiffening fingers, proposes to expend
the bulk of his riches, during his lifetime, for the benefit of his
fellowmen. Great financiers, who, if they lived to be as old as
Methuselah, could not use a tithe of their vast fortunes on their own
ordinary maintenance, protest against Mr. Carnegie’s plan of action,
and declare that he ought to go on accumulating to the last. Others
mildly suggest that his charity will be wasted on unworthy objects, and
others frankly avow that they doubt the sincerity of his intentions.
Altogether it may be said that Mr. Carnegie has stirred the very heart
of Mammon as it has not been stirred since the Savior told the rich man
to sell what he had and give to the poor.

IT IS HARDER NOW TO GET A START.

“There is no doubt,” said Mr. Carnegie, in reply to a question from me,
“that it is becoming harder and harder, as business gravitates more
and more to immense concerns, for a young man without capital to get
a start for himself, and in large cities it is especially so, where
large capital is essential. Still it can be honestly said that there
is no other country in the world, where able and energetic young men
and women can so readily rise as in this. A president of a business
college informed me, recently, that he has never been able to supply
the demand for capable, first-class [Mark the adjective] bookkeepers,
and his college has over nine hundred students. In America, young men
of ability rise with most astonishing rapidity.”

“As quickly as when you were a boy?”

“Much more so. When I was a boy, there were but very few important
positions that a boy could aspire to. Everything had to be made. Now a
boy doesn’t need to make the place,—all he has to do is to fit himself
to take it.”

“Did you make your high places as you went along?”

“I shouldn’t call them high, and I did not make the earliest ones. In
starting new enterprises, of course, I made my place at the head of
them. The earliest ones were the poorest kinds of positions, however.”

“Where did you begin life?”

“In Dunfermline, Scotland. That was only my home during my earliest
years. The service of my life has all been in this country.”

“In Pittsburg?”

“Largely so. My father settled in Allegheny City, when I was only ten
years old, and I began to earn my way in Pittsburg.”

“Do you mind telling me what your first service was?”

“Not at all. I was a bobbin boy in a cotton factory, then an engine-man
or boy in the same place, and later still I was a messenger boy for a
telegraph company.”

MR. CARNEGIE’S FIRST WAGES.

“At small wages, I suppose.”

“One dollar and twenty cents a week was what I received as a bobbin
boy, and I can tell you that I considered it pretty good, at that. When
I was thirteen, I had learned to run a steam engine, and for that I
received a dollar and eighty cents a week.”

“You had no early schooling, then?”

“None, except such as I gave myself. There were no fine libraries then,
but in Allegheny City, where I lived, there was a certain Colonel
Anderson, who was well to do and of a philanthropic turn. He announced
about the time I first began to work, that he would be in his library
at his home, every Saturday, ready to lend books to working boys and
men. He only had about four hundred volumes, but I doubt if ever so few
books were put to better use. Only he who has longed, as I did, for
Saturday to come, that the spring of knowledge might be opened anew to
him, can understand what Colonel Anderson did for me and others of the
boys of Allegheny. Quite a number of them have risen to eminence, and
I think their rise can be easily traced to this splendid opportunity.”

“How long did you remain an engine boy?”

“Not very long,” Mr. Carnegie replied, “perhaps a year.”

“And then?”

“I entered a telegraph office as a messenger boy.”

Although Mr. Carnegie would not dwell much on this period, he once
described it at a dinner given in honor of the American Consul at
Dunfermline, Scotland, when he said—

“I awake from a dream that has carried me away back in the days of my
boyhood, the day when the little white-haired Scottish laddie, dressed
in a blue jacket, walked with his father into the telegraph office in
Pittsburg to undergo examination as an applicant for a position as
messenger boy.

HIS FIRST GLIMPSE OF PARADISE.

“Well I remember when my uncle spoke to my parents about it, and my
father objected, because I was then getting one dollar and eighty cents
per week for running a small engine in a cellar in Allegheny City,
but my uncle said a messenger’s wages would be two dollars and fifty
cents.... If you want an idea as to heaven on earth, imagine what
it is to be taken from a dark cellar, where I fired the boiler from
morning until night, and dropped into an office, where light shone from
all sides, and around me books, papers, and pencils in profusion,
and oh! the tick of those mysterious brass instruments on the desk,
annihilating space and standing with throbbing spirits ready to convey
any intelligence to the world! This was my first glimpse of paradise,
and I walked on air.”

“How did you manage to rise from this position?”

“Well, I learned how to operate a telegraph instrument, and then waited
my opportunity to show that I was fit to be an operator. Eventually my
chance came, as everyone’s does.”

The truth is that the boy had the appearance of one anxious to learn
and quick to understand. James D. Reid, the superintendent of the
office, and himself a Scotchman, favored the ambitious lad, and helped
him. In his “History of the Telegraph,” he says of him:—

“I liked the boy’s looks, and it was easy to see that, though he was
little, he was full of spirit. He had not been with me a month when
he began to ask whether I would teach him to telegraph. I began to
instruct him and found him an apt pupil. He spent all his spare time
in practice, sending and receiving by sound and not by tape, as was
largely the custom in those days. Pretty soon he could do as well as I
could at the key, and then his ambition carried him away beyond doing
the drudgery of messenger work.”

“As you look back upon it,” I said to Mr. Carnegie, “do you consider
that so lowly a beginning is better than one a little less trying?”

IT IS BEST TO BEGIN AT THE BOTTOM.

“For young men starting upon their lifework, it is much the best to
begin as I did, at the beginning, and occupy the most subordinate
positions. Many of the present-day leading men of Pittsburg, who rose
with me, had a serious responsibility thrust upon them at the very
threshold of their careers. They were introduced to the broom, and
spent the first hours of their business life sweeping out the office. I
notice we have janitors and janitresses now in offices, and our young
men, unfortunately, miss that salutary branch of early education. Still
I would say to the boy who has the genius of the future partner in him,
that if by chance the professional sweeper is absent any morning, do
not hesitate to try your hand at the broom. It does not hurt the newest
comer to sweep out the office if necessary.”

“Did you?”

“Many’s the time. And who do you suppose were my fellow sweepers? David
McBargo, afterward superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railroad;
Robert Pitcairn, afterward superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad,
and Mr. Moreland, subsequently City Attorney of Pittsburg. We all took
turns, two each morning doing the sweeping; and now I remember Davie
was so proud of his clean shirt bosom that he used to spread over it
an old silk bandana handkerchief which he kept for the purpose, and we
other boys thought he was putting on airs. So he was. None of us had a
silk handkerchief.”

“After you had learned to telegraph, did you consider that you had
reached high enough?”

“Not in the least. My father died just at that time, and the burden
of the support of the family fell upon me. I became an operator at
twenty-five dollars a month, a sum which seemed to me almost a fortune.
I earned a little additional money by copying telegraphic messages for
the newspapers, and managed to keep the family independent.”

HE WAS AN EXPERT TELEGRAPH OPERATOR.

More light on this period of Mr. Carnegie’s career is given by the
“Electric Age,” which says: “He was a telegraph operator abreast of
older and experienced men; and, although receiving messages by sound
was, at that time, forbidden by authority as being unsafe, young
Carnegie quickly acquired the art, and he can still stand behind the
ticker and understand its language. As an operator, he delighted in
full employment and the prompt discharge of business, and a big day’s
work was his chief pleasure.”

“How long did you remain with the telegraph company?”

“Until I was given a place by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.”

“As an operator?”

“At first, until I showed how the telegraph could minister to railroad
safety and success. Then I was made secretary to Thomas A. Scott, then
superintendent, and not long afterward, when Colonel Scott became
vice-president, I was made superintendent of the western division of
the Pennsylvania Railroad.”

Thinking of this period of his life, I asked Mr. Carnegie if his
promotion was not a matter of chance, and whether he did not, at the
time, feel it to be so. His answer was emphatic.

“Never. Young men give all kinds of reasons why, in their cases,
failure is attributable to exceptional circumstances, which rendered
success impossible. Some never had a chance, according to their own
story. This is simply nonsense. No young man ever lived who had not a
chance, and a splendid chance, too, if he was ever employed at all.
He is assayed in the mind of his immediate superior, from the day
he begins work, and, after a time, if he has merit, he is assayed
in the council chambers of the firm. His ability, honesty, habits,
associations, temper, disposition—all these are weighed and analyzed.
The young man who never had a chance is the same young man who has been
canvassed over and over again by his superiors, and found destitute of
necessary qualifications, or is deemed unworthy of closer relations
with the firm, owing to some objectionable act, habit or association,
of which he thought his employers ignorant.”

“It sounds true.”

THE RIGHT MEN IN DEMAND.

“It is. Another class of young men attribute failure to rise to
employers having near relatives or favorites whom they advance
unfairly. They also insist that their employers dislike brighter
intelligence than their own, and are disposed to discourage aspiring
genius, and delighted in keeping young men down. There is nothing in
this. On the contrary, there is no one suffering more for lack of the
right man in the right place than the average employer, nor anyone more
anxious to find him.”

“Was this your theory on the subject when you began working for the
railroad company?”

“I had no theory then, although I have formulated one since. It lies
mainly in this: Instead of the question, ‘What must I do for my
employer?’ substitute, ‘What can I do?’ Faithful and conscientious
discharge of duties assigned you is all very well, but the verdict in
such cases generally is that you perform your present duties so well,
that you would better continue performing them. Now, this will not do.
It will not do for the coming partners. There must be something beyond
this. We make clerks, bookkeepers, treasurers, bank tellers of this
class, and there they remain to the end of the chapter. The rising man
must do something exceptional, and beyond the range of his special
department. He must attract attention.”

HOW TO ATTRACT ATTENTION.

“How can he do that?”

“Well, if he is a shipping clerk, he may do so by discovering in an
invoice an error with which he has nothing to do and which has escaped
the attention of the proper party. If a weighing clerk, he may save
the firm by doubting the adjustment of the scales, and having them
corrected, even if this be the province of the master mechanic. If a
messenger boy, he can lay the seed of promotion by going beyond the
letter of his instructions in order to secure the desired reply. There
is no service so low and simple, neither any so high, in which the
young man of ability and willing disposition cannot readily and almost
daily prove himself capable of greater trust and usefulness, and, what
is equally important, show his invincible determination to rise.”

“In what manner did you reach out to establish your present great
fortune?” I asked.

“By saving my money. I put a little money aside, and it served me later
as a matter of credit. Also, I invested in a sleeping-car industry,
which paid me well.”

CARNEGIE AND THE SLEEPING-CAR.

Although I tried earnestly to get the great iron-king to talk of this,
he said little, because the matter has been fully dealt with by him in
his “Triumphant Democracy.” From his own story there, it appears that,
one day at this time, when Mr. Carnegie still had his fortune to make,
he was on a train examining the line from a rear window of a car, when
a tall, spare man, accosted him and asked him to look at an invention
he had made. He drew from a green bag a small model of a sleeping-berth
for railway cars, and proceeded to point out its advantages. It was Mr.
T. T. Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping-car. Mr. Carnegie tells
the story himself in “Triumphant Democracy:”—

“He had not spoken a moment, before, like a flash, the whole range of
the discovery burst upon me. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that is something which
this continent must have.’

“Upon my return, I laid it before Mr. Scott, declaring that it was one
of the inventions of the age. He remarked: ‘You are enthusiastic, young
man, but you may ask the inventor to come and let me see it.’ I did so,
and arrangements were made to build two trial cars, and run them on the
Pennsylvania Railroad. I was offered an interest in the venture, which,
of course, I gladly accepted.

“The notice came that my share of the first payment was $217.50. How
well I remember the exact sum! But two hundred and seventeen dollars
and a half were as far beyond my means as if it had been millions. I
was earning fifty dollars per month, however, and had prospects, or at
least I always felt that I had. I decided to call on the local banker
and boldly ask him to advance the sum upon my interest in the affair.
He put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Why, of course, Andie; you
are all right. Go ahead! Here is the money.’

“It is a proud day for a man when he pays his last note, but not to
be named in comparison with the day in which he makes his first one,
and gets a banker to take it. I have tried both, and I know. The cars
paid the subsequent payments from their earnings. I paid my first note
from my savings, so much per month, and thus did I get my foot upon
fortune’s ladder. It was easy to climb after that.”

“I would like some expression from you,” I said to Mr. Carnegie, “in
reference to the importance of laying aside money from one’s earnings,
as a young man.”

THE MARK OF A MILLIONAIRE.

“You can have it. There is one sure mark of the coming partner, the
future millionaire; his revenues always exceed his expenditures. He
begins to save early, almost as soon as he begins to earn. I should
say to young men, no matter how little it may be possible to save,
save that little. Invest it securely, not necessarily in bonds, but in
anything which you have good reason to believe will be profitable; but
no gambling with it, remember. A rare chance will soon present itself
for investment. The little you have saved will prove the basis for
an amount of credit utterly surprising to you. Capitalists trust the
saving young man: For, every hundred dollars you can produce as the
result of hard-won savings, Midas, in search of a partner, will lend
or credit a thousand; for every thousand, fifty thousand. It is not
capital that your seniors require, it is the man who has proved that
he has the business habits which create capital. So it is the first
hundred dollars saved that tells.”

“What,” I asked Mr. Carnegie, “was the next enterprise with which you
identified yourself?”

A FORTUNATE LAND PURCHASE.

“In company with several others, I purchased the now famous Storey
farm, on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had been bored and
natural oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable
investment.”

“Were you satisfied to rest with these enterprises in your hands?” I
asked.

“No; railway bridges were then built almost exclusively of wood, but
the Pennsylvania Railroad had begun to experiment with cast iron for
bridge building. It struck me that the railway bridge of the future
must be of iron, and I organized, in Pittsburg, a company for the
construction of iron bridges. That was the Keystone Bridge Works. We
built the first iron bridge across the Ohio.”

His entrance to the realm of steel was much too long for Mr. Carnegie
to discuss, although he was not unwilling to give information relating
to the great subject. It appears that he realized the immensity of
the steel manufacturing business at once. The Union Iron Mills soon
followed as one of his enterprises, and, later the famous Edgar
Thompson Steel Rail Mill. The last was the outcome of a visit to
England, in 1868, when Carnegie noticed that English railways were
discarding iron for steel rails. The Bessemer process had been then
perfected, and was making its way in all the iron-producing countries.
Carnegie, recognizing that it was destined to revolutionize the iron
business, introduced it into his mills and made steel rails with which
he was enabled to compete with English manufacturers.

THE HOMESTEAD STEEL WORKS.

His next enterprise was the purchase of the Homestead Steel Works,—his
great rival of Pittsburg. By 1888, he had built or acquired seven
distinct iron and steel works. All the plants of this great firm are
within a radius of five miles of Pittsburg. In no other part of the
world can be found such an aggregation of splendidly equipped steel
works as those controlled by Carnegie and his associates. It now
comprises the Homestead Steel Works, the Edgar Thompson Steel Works and
Furnaces, the Duquesne Steel Works and Furnaces, all within two miles
of one another; the Lucy Furnaces, the Keystone Bridge Works, the Upper
Union Rolling Mills, and the Lower Union Rolling Mills.

[Illustration: INFANCY]

In all branches, including the great coke works, mines, etc., there are
employed twenty-five thousand men. The monthly pay roll exceeds one
million, one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, or nearly
fifty thousand dollars for each working day.

“You believe in taking active measures,” I said, “to make men
successful.”

“Yes, I believe in anything which will help men to help themselves.
To induce them to save, every workman, in our company, is allowed to
deposit part of his earnings, not exceeding two thousand dollars, with
the firm, on which the high interest rate of six per cent. is allowed.
The firm also lends to any of its workmen to buy a lot, or to build a
house, taking its pay by installments.”

“Has this contributed any to the success of your company?”

A STRENGTHENING POLICY.

“I think so. The policy of giving a personal interest to the men who
render exceptional service is strengthening. With us there are many
such, and every year several more are added as partners. It is the
policy of the concern to interest every superintendent in the works,
every head of a department, every exceptional young man. Promotion
follows exceptional service, and there is no favoritism.”

“All you have said so far merely gives the idea of getting money,
without any suggestion as to the proper use of great wealth. Will you
say something on that score?”

“My views are rather well known, I think. What a man owns is
already subordinate, in America, to what he knows; but, in the
final aristocracy, the question will not be either of these, but
what has he done for his fellows? Where has he shown generosity and
self-abnegation? Where has he been a father to the fatherless? And
the cause of the poor; where has he searched that out? How he has
worshipped God will not be asked in that day, but how he has served
man.”

MR. CARNEGIE’S PHILANTHROPY.

That Mr. Carnegie has lived up, in the past, and is still living up
to this radical declaration of independence from the practice of men
who have amassed fortunes around him, will be best shown by a brief
enumeration of some of his almost unexampled philanthropies. His
largest gift has been to the city of Pittsburg, the scene of his early
trials and later triumphs. There he has built, at a cost of more than
a million dollars, a magnificent library, museum, concert hall and
picture gallery, all under one roof, and endowed it with a fund of
another million, the interest of which (fifty thousand dollars per
annum), is being devoted to the purchase of the best works of American
art. Other libraries, to be connected with this largest as a center,
are now being constructed, which will make the city of Pittsburg and
its environs a beneficiary of his generosity to the extent of five
million dollars.

In his native land, Scotland, thrift is a virtue that is taught with
the alphabet; and, when the twelve-year-old “Andy” Carnegie came to
America with his father and mother, he was full of the notion of thrift
and its twin brother, hard work.

CARNEGIE’S VIEWS ON THRIFT.

Once he wrote on the subject of thrift for a Scottish journal. He said:—

“The accumulation of millions is usually the result of enterprise and
judgment, and some exceptional ability or organization. It does not
come from savings, in the ordinary sense of the word. Men who, in
old age, strive only to increase their already too great hoards, are
usually slaves of the habit of hoarding, formed in their youth. At
first they own the money they have made and saved. Later in life the
money owns them, and they cannot help themselves, so overpowering is
the force of habit, either for good or evil. It is the abuse of the
civilized saving instinct, and not its use, that produces this class
of men. No one needs to be afraid of falling a victim to this abuse
of the habit, if he always bears in mind that whatever surplus wealth
may come to him is to be regarded as a sacred trust, which he is bound
to administer for the good of his fellows. The man should always be
master. He should keep money in the position of a useful servant;
he must never let it be his master and make a miser of him. A man’s
first duty is to acquire a competence and be independent, then to do
something for his needy neighbors who are less favored than himself.”

Mr. Carnegie has always lived up to this doctrine. He has made
philanthropy a factor of existence. Already he has endowed over ninety
libraries in different cities of the United States, having spent about
$4,500,000 in this manner alone. He believes that a man can learn the
science of true life and success in good books. In Scotland, where
many of the residents of a poor hamlet have been benefited by his
generosity, he is called “the good angel.” Whenever he visits any of
these places, he is a greater man than the King of Great Britain.

While thus endowing the city where his fortune was made, he has not
forgotten other places endeared to him by association or by interest.
To the Allegheny Free Library he has given $375,000; to the Braddock
Free Library, $250,000; to the Johnstown Free Library, $50,000, and
to the Fairfield (Iowa) Library, $40,000. To his native land he has
been scarcely less generous. To the Edinburgh Free Library he has
given $250,000, and to his native town of Dunfermline, $90,000. Other
Scottish towns to the number of ten have received helpful donations of
amounts not quite so large.

“I should like you to say some other important things for the young man
to learn and benefit by.”

“Our young partners in the Carnegie company have all won their spurs by
showing that we did not know half as well what was wanted as they did.
Some of them have acted upon occasions with me as if they owned the
firm and I was but some airy New Yorker, presuming to advise upon what
I knew very little about. Well, they are not now interfered with. They
were the true bosses,—the very men we were looking for.”

“THE MISFORTUNE OF BEING RICH MEN’S SONS.”

“Is this all for the poor boy?”

“Every word. I trust that few, if any, of your readers have the
misfortune to be rich men’s sons. They are heavily weighted in the
race. A basketful of bonds is the heaviest basket a young man ever had
to carry. He generally gets to staggering under it. The vast majority
of rich men’s sons are unable to resist the temptations to which wealth
subjects them, and they sink to unworthy lives. It is not from this
class that the poor beginner has rivalry to fear. The partner’s sons
will never trouble you much, but look out that some boys poorer, much
poorer, than yourselves, whose parents cannot afford to give them
any schooling, do not challenge you at the post and pass you at the
grand stand. Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct
from the common school, and begins by sweeping out the office. He is
the probable dark horse that will take all the money and win all the
applause.

“The first thing that a man should learn to do is to save his money.
By saving his money he promotes thrift,—the most valued of all habits.
Thrift is the great fortune-maker. It draws the line between the
savage and the civilized man. Thrift not only develops the fortune, but
it develops, also, the man’s character.”

A Good Shoemaker Becomes Detroit’s Best Mayor and Michigan’s Greatest
Governor.

AN interview with Hon. Hazen S. Pingree, Governor of Michigan, was not
an easy thing to obtain. “Approachable?” Very. He was a great favorite
with newspaper men, but the most-sought-after man in Michigan. When
he arrived at the simply furnished room that served as his official
headquarters in Detroit, it was to find it bordered with a human
wainscoting, each anxious member of which was waiting patiently, or
otherwise, to ask some favor of the chief executive. As he entered
the room suddenly became quiet; for there was something about the
Governor’s powerful personality that compelled attention. But soon
each want, no matter how small, was attended to in his kindly but
straight-forward way.

An interesting medley of petitioners was present on the day of my
interview. The first was a widowed mother requesting a favor for her
son—a wreck of the Spanish-American war.

“I’ll do the best I can for you,” said the governor heartily as she
left the room—and everyone knew what that meant.

Next came a gayly-dressed young woman, with a bill from the mint of her
own imagination, which she asked the Governor to please push through
the legislature. She was patiently referred to the representative from
her district. Then a soldier stood before him with a transportation
snarl to untangle; a book agent; a broadcloth-coated dandy, and a
street laborer, each seeking help; and then a gaunt, ill-clad old
woman, who in broken English, with harrowing tears and gestures of
despair, laid her humble burdens in supplication before him. It was a
touching picture.

Hers was not a case to lay before the Governor of the State, but
she will never know it, poor woman, for the generous hand of the
great-hearted man slid quickly down to the nest of the golden eagle
that sent her gratefully away.

“You are not a native of the State you govern,” said I, as the Governor
leisurely seated himself for the interview.

“No; I was born in Denmark, Maine. My father owned a forty-acre farm,
and I was brought up there until I was about seventeen years old.”

“And you did——”

“Just what any one would do on a small farm; worked in summer and went
to school in the winter. Then I started out to make my own way in the
world, and the first work I found was in a cotton mill at Saco, Maine.
In 1860, I went to Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and learned the trade of a
cutter in a shoe factory. Soon after that the war broke out.”

“And you enlisted?”

“Yes, I have two honorable discharges as a private. I value them more
than my position as governor.”

“How long were you in the war?”

“From 1862 until its close. I first enlisted in Company F, First
Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, and, with that regiment, took part in
the battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg Road, Harris Farm, Cold Harbor,
Spottsylvania Court House, North Anna and South Anna.”

“Then you know something of the horrors of war from your own
experience?”

“Yes; that is the reason I am an advocate of the universal peace
project.”

“You believe in that?”

“Decidedly; and, moreover, I believe that ten years from now every man
who calls himself a Christian will be ready to stand by the side of the
Emperor of Russia in his plea for peace.”

“Let us return to your experience in the war. Were you ever a prisoner?”

“Several others and myself were captured on May 25, 1864, by a squad
of Mosby’s men. We were confined five months at Andersonville; and
from there were taken to Salisbury prison in North Carolina, then to
Millen, Georgia, where we were exchanged in November, 1864. I rejoined
my regiment in front of Petersburg, and was in the expedition to Weldon
Railroad, the battles of Boynton Road, Petersburg, Sailors’ Creek,
Farmsville, and Appomattox.”

“And after the war?”

“I came to Detroit and obtained employment in a shoe factory. Soon
after that my partner and myself started one of our own. He had a
little less than a thousand dollars, and I had $460—left from my army
pay.”

“That seemed a large sum, I suppose?”

“Yes, and I thought if I could ever get to making fifty pairs of shoes
a day I would be perfectly happy.”

The number is amusingly small, when it is remembered that this factory,
the embryo of which he spoke, grew up under the Governor’s personal
supervision, until it is now one of the largest in the United States.

“But tell me, Governor, when you were starting out in life, did you
ever look forward to the career you have carved out for yourself?”

“No,” said he, with the promptness that characterizes all of his
speech; “I never had anything mapped out in my life. I did whatever
there happened to be for me to do, and let the result take care of
itself.”

“Is it the same with your political success, or is that the outgrowth
of youthful ambition?”

HOW HE BECAME MAYOR OF DETROIT.

“No, I was pushed into that by accident. I had never been in the common
council chamber before I was elected Mayor of Detroit. The thing
that caught me was that my friends began to say I was afraid of the
position, so, of course, I had to accept the nomination to prove that I
wasn’t.”

This was clever of his friends. The fact is that, at that time, the
city needed the Governor’s brains to manage its affairs. He was elected
Mayor of Detroit four consecutive terms and was in his eighth year as
mayor when he resigned. Even his most earnest political opponents admit
that he was the best mayor the city ever had.

“But, during the formative years of your career, did you ever worry
over the possibility of failure?”

“No,” said the Governor serenely, “I never did, and don’t now. I was
never given to worrying.”

In this as in other ways, Mr. Pingree was remarkable. During the
stormiest of his political times he was never in the least disturbed
when he reached home, and he would sleep as peacefully as a child.

“What would you suggest, Governor, as the best route by which the young
man of to-day may obtain success?”

“He can do one of two things: go to work for somebody else; or, if he
cannot stand that, he can buy a small farm.”

“Then you think there is not the chance in the United States now that
there was thirty years ago?”

“There isn’t a doubt about it. The young men of to-day are to be
pitied—there isn’t anything for them to do. The subject is a serious
one,” said the Governor, speaking rapidly. “Why, if I had nothing, I
wouldn’t know how to advise my own son to start. I don’t claim to know
much, but I do understand a little about the shoe business, and I can
tell you honestly that, with the knowledge I have gained in many years
of experience, and with the influence of my friends, I could not start
in the shoe business to-day with the chance of success that I had then.”

“And the causes of this?”

“Are trusts and monopolies.”

“And the result?”

A GREAT CHANGE PROPHESIED.

“There will be a great change in this country before many years. Free
schools have so educated the people that they will not submit to this
injustice forever, even though it is organized against them.”

“But how will this change be effected?”

“Through the splitting up of political parties—but it is sure to come.”

“Recognizing the conditions that the young man of to-day has to contend
with, what guide-posts would you point out to him?”

“In the first place, I would advise every young man to be honest and
outspoken at all times. What people want is open, frank talk. There is
too much catering and palavering and round-about talking nowadays. It
is a great mistake. Then, of course, in order to accomplish anything,
the young man must have plenty of energy and perseverance.”

By inheritance, Governor Pingree was a patriot and fighter. In his
possession were three historic muskets, one of which was used by his
great-grandfather in the Revolutionary War; another by his grandfather
in the War of 1812, and one by himself in the Civil War. His first
American forefather was Moses Pingree, who emigrated to this country in
1640. Many of his descendants have figured with distinction in American
history, among them being Samuel Everett Pingree, Governor of Vermont
from 1884 to 1886.

Governor Pingree was a strikingly interesting example of self-earned
success. His indomitable will, tireless energy and unyielding
perseverance were the machinery with which he manufactured the fabric
of his career. But the pattern was stamped by his own individuality,
and was like no other ever seen—it was _sui generis_.

On the battlefield of public life, Governor Pingree was a general
who said, “Come on!” not “Go on!” He acted with the bold, unfettered
authority that springs from an honest belief in the justice of his
opinions, and never put his plans out of focus by shifting his
ground. When once resolved, he was as immovable as a fixed star. He
was absolutely fearless because he was absolutely honest, and was not
afraid to fight, single-handed, the greatest financial power the world
has ever known.

The political spider was never able to bind his arms with the thread of
party combination—scheme or intrigue. He was at all times a free lance,
fearless and ceaseless in his efforts to chip the veneer from gilded
fraud, to pierce the heart of injustice and to befriend those not able
to shield themselves. He was a champion of the people and a believer in
them.

HE WAS NOT A DEMAGOGUE.

“But they call you a demagogue. How does that accusation affect you?”

The Governor smiled, as if he considered it a good joke.

“Well, that amuses me,” said he. “They don’t do that around here
any more. They’ve worn it out, I guess. No, it doesn’t disturb me a
particle. I always go on the principle that lies never hurt anybody.”

Governor Pingree was a man of powerful physique and dignity of bearing.
But he was delightfully oblivious to his own importance, and was
entirely devoid of ostentation in everything that he did or said. His
disposition was buoyant, his manner that of frank simplicity, and he
was prodigal in his generosity and sympathy for those in need. In his
private business, the welfare of his employees was always balanced in
the scale with his own.

In the camps of war he was known as “Father Pingree,” and when the boys
returned to Detroit he was the first to greet them. But no one ever saw
him in an open carriage behind the band; he was always away off in a
corner of the station, where the ambulances were waiting, giving a word
of encouragement to this poor fellow and patting that one on the back.
He worked for forty hours at a time, without a thought of sleep, to
keep up a cheerful welcome, though many a time he was seen to turn away
just long enough to brush the tears from his eyes.

GOVERNOR PINGREE’S LUXURIOUS HOME.

The home life of Governor Pingree was as beautiful as his life in
public was successful. His residence, a three-story gray stone house,
was a model of quiet elegance and refinement, and there his greatest
happiness was found.

The accusation was often made that the people of Michigan did not
appreciate the Governor. However, during his last election, he was not
a prophet without honor in his own country, for the long-continued
climbing up of his majority caused one of the local newspapers to
suggest that the State set aside special holidays to satisfy the
appetite for voting for Pingree.

Determined not to Remain Poor, a Farmer Boy Becomes a Merchant Prince

MARSHALL FIELD, one of the greatest merchants of the United States, and
that means of the world, is not readily accessible to interviewers. He
probably feels, like most men of real prominence, that his place in the
history of his time is established, and he is not seeking for the fame
that is certain to attend his name and his business achievements. No
more significant story, none more full of stimulus, of encouragement,
of brain-inspiring and pulse-thrilling potency has been told in any
romance. It is grand in its very simplicity, in its very lack of
assumption of special gifts or extraordinary foresight. The Phœnix-like
revival from the ashes of ruined Chicago is spoken of by Mr. Field as
an incident in the natural and to be expected in the order of events.
In Marshall Field it was no doubt natural and to be expected, and it
touches the very keynote of the character of the celebrated western
merchant, sprung from rugged eastern soil, whose career is an example
to be studied with profit by every farmer boy, by every office boy,
by every clerk and artisan,—yes, and by every middle-aged business
man, whether going along smoothly or confronted by apparently ruinous
circumstances, throughout our broad land.

I was introduced to Mr. Field in the private office of Mr. Harry G.
Selfridge, his most trusted lieutenant, and this first of interviews
with the head of Chicago’s greatest mercantile house followed.

“My object,” I said to Mr. Field, “is to obtain your opinion as to what
makes for and constitutes success in life.”

“That can be quickly given,” said Mr. Field; “what would you like to
know?”

“I wish to know something of your early life, and under what conditions
you began it.”

“I was born in Conway, Massachusetts, in 1835. My father’s farm was
among the rocks and hills of that section, and not very fertile.”

“And the conditions were?”

“Hard.”

“You mean that you were poor?”

“Yes, as all people were in those days, more or less. My father was a
farmer. I was brought up under farming conditions, such as they were at
that time.”

HIS PARENTS HELPED HIM.

“Did the character and condition of your parents tend in any way to
form your ambition for commercial distinction?”

“Yes, somewhat. My father was a man who, I consider, had good judgment.
He made a success out of the farming business. My mother was more
intellectually bent, if anything, and, naturally, both my parents were
anxious that their boys should amount to something in life. Their
interest and care helped me.”

“Had you early access to books?”

“No; I had but few books, scarcely any to speak of. There was not much
time for literature. Such books as we had, though, I made use of.”

“Were you so placed that your commercial instincts could be nourished
by contact with that side of life?” I asked.

“Yes, in a measure. Not any more so than any other boy raised in that
neighborhood. I had a leaning toward business, and took up with it as
early as possible.”

“Were you naturally of a saving disposition?”

“Oh, yes. I had to be. Those were saving times. A dollar looked very
big to us boys in those days, and as we had difficult labor earning it,
it was not quickly spent. I may say I was naturally saving, however,
and was determined not to remain poor.”

“Did you attend both school and college?”

“Only the common and high schools at home, but not for long. I had no
college training. Indeed, I cannot say that I had much of any public
school education. I left home when I was seventeen years of age, and,
of course, had not time to study closely.”

“What was the nature of your first venture in trade, Mr. Field?”

“My first venture was made as a clerk in a country store at Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, where all things were sold, including dry goods, and
there I remained for four years. There I picked up my first knowledge
of that business.”

“Do you consider those years well spent?”

“I think my employer did, anyway.” He laughed.

“I saved my earnings and attended strictly to business, and so made
them valuable years to me.”

“Was there no inducement to remain there as you were?”

“Yes; before I went west, my employer offered me a quarter interest in
his business if I would remain with him. Even after I had been here
several years, he wrote and offered me a third interest if I would go
back. But I was already too well placed.”

“Did you fancy that you were destined for some other field than that in
which you have since distinguished yourself?”

ALWAYS INTERESTED IN COMMERCE.

“No, I think not. I was always interested in the commercial side of
life, and always thought I would be a merchant. To this end, I bent my
energies, and soon realized that, successful or not, my labor would
always be of a commercial nature.”

“When did you come to Chicago?” I inquired.

“I caught what was then the prevalent fever to come west, and grow
up with the country, and west I came. I entered as a clerk in the dry
goods house of Cooley, Woodsworth & Co., in South Water street.”

“Did you foresee Chicago’s growth in any way?”

“No, there was no guarantee at that time that the place would ever
become the western metropolis. The town had plenty of ambition and
pluck; but the possibilities of greatness were hardly visible.”

It is interesting to note in this connection that the story of Mr.
Field’s progress is a wonderfully close index of Chicago’s marvelous
growth. An almost exact parallel may be drawn between the career of
the individual and the growth of the town. Chicago was organized in
1837, two years after Mr. Field was born on the far-off farm in New
England, and the place then had a population of a little more than four
thousand. In 1856, when Mr. Field, fully equipped for a successful
mercantile career, became a resident of the future metropolis of
the west, the population had grown to little more than eighty-four
thousand. Mr. Field’s prosperity advanced in strides parallel to those
of the city; with Chicago he was stricken but not crushed by the great
fire of 1871, and with Chicago he advanced again to higher achievement
and far greater prosperity than before the calamity.

“What were your equipments for success when you started as a clerk here
in Chicago, in 1856?”

“Health, sound principles, I hope, and ambition,” answered Mr. Field.

“And brains,” I suggested; but he only smiled.

“What were the conditions here?”

“Well, merit did not have to wait for dead men’s shoes in a growing
town, of course. Good qualities were usually promptly discovered, and
men were pushed forward rapidly.”

“How long did you remain a clerk?”

“Only four years. In 1860, I was made a partner, and in 1865, there
was a partial reorganization, and the firm consisted after that of Mr.
Leiter, Mr. Palmer and myself (Field, Palmer & Leiter). Two years later
Mr. Palmer withdrew, and until 1881 the style of the firm was Field,
Leiter & Co. Mr. Leiter retired in that year, and since then it has
been as at present: (Marshall Field & Co.)

“What contributed most to the great growth of your business?” I asked.

“To answer that question,” said Mr. Field, “would be to review the
condition of the west from the time Chicago began until the fire in
1871. Everything was coming this way: immigration, railways and water
traffic, and Chicago was enjoying what was called ‘flush times.’ There
were things to learn about the country, and the man who learned the
quickest fared the best. For instance, the comparative newness of
rural communities and settlements made a knowledge of local solvency
impossible. The old state banking system prevailed, and speculation
of every kind was rampant. The panic of 1857 swept almost everything
away except the house I worked for, and I learned that the reason they
survived was because they understood the nature of the new country,
and did a cash business. That is, they bought for cash, and sold on
thirty and sixty days, instead of giving the customers, whose financial
condition you could hardly tell anything about, all the time they
wanted. When the panic came, they had no debts, and little owing to
them, and so they weathered it all right. I learned what I consider my
best lesson, and that was to do a cash business.”

HIS PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS.

“What were some of the principles you applied to your business?” I
questioned.

“Well, I made it a point that all goods should be exactly what they
were represented to be. It was a rule of the house that an exact
scrutiny of the quality of all goods purchased should be maintained,
and that nothing was to induce the house to place upon the market any
line of goods at a shade of variation from their real value. Every
article sold must be regarded as warranted, and every purchaser must be
enabled to feel secure.”

“Did you suffer any losses or reverses during your career?”

“No loss except by the fire of 1871. It swept away everything,—about
three and a half millions. We were, of course, protected by insurance,
which would have been sufficient against any ordinary calamity of
the kind. But the disaster was so sweeping that some of the companies
which had insured our property were blotted out, and a long time passed
before our claims against others were settled. We managed, however, to
start again. There were no buildings of brick or stone left standing,
but there were some great shells of horse-car barns at State and
Twentieth streets which were not burned, and I hired those. We put up
signs announcing that we would continue business uninterruptedly, and
then rushed the work of fitting things up and getting in the stock.”

“Did the panic of 1873 effect your business?”

“Not at all. We didn’t have any debts.”

“May I ask what you consider to have been the turning-point in your
career,—the point after which there was no more danger of poverty?”

“Saving the first five thousand dollars I ever had, when I might just
as well have spent the moderate salary I made. Possession of that
sum, once I had it, gave me the ability to meet opportunities. That I
consider the turning-point.”

PERSEVERANCE, MR. FIELD’S ESSENTIAL TRAIT.

“What one trait of your character do you look upon as having been the
most essential to your successful career?”

“Perseverance,” said Mr. Field; but another at hand insisted upon the
addition of “good judgment” to this, which Mr. Field indifferently
acknowledged. “If I am compelled to lay claim to these traits,” he
went on, “it is simply because I have tried to practice them, and
because the trying has availed me much, I suppose. I have always
tried to make all my acts and commercial moves the result of definite
consideration and sound judgment. There were never any great ventures
or risks,—nothing exciting whatever. I simply practiced honest,
slow-growing business methods, and tried to back them with energy and
good system.”

“Have you always been a hard-worker?”

“No,” Mr. Field said, with the shadow of a smile. “I have never
believed in overworking, either as applied to myself or others. It is
always paid for with a short life, and I do not believe in it.”

“Has there ever been a time in your life when you gave as much as
eighteen hours a day to your work?”

“Never. That is, never as a steady practice. During the time of the
fire in 1871, there was a short period in which I worked very hard.
For several weeks then I worked the greater part of night and day, as
almost anyone would have done in my place. My fortune, however, has not
been made in that manner, and, as I have said, I believe in reasonable
hours for everyone, but close attention during those hours.”

“Do you work as much as you once did?”

“I never worked very many hours a day. Besides, people do not work as
many hours a day now as they once did. The day’s labor has shortened in
the last twenty years for everyone. Still, granting that, I cannot say
that I work as much as I once did, and I frankly admit that I do not
feel the need of it.”

“Do you believe,” I went on, “that a man should cease laboring before
his period of usefulness is over, so that he may enjoy some of the
results of his labor before death, or do you believe in retaining
constant interest in affairs while strength lasts?”

“As to that, I hold the French idea, that a man ought to retire when
he has gained a competence wherewith to do so. I think that is a very
good idea. But I do not believe that when a man retires, or no longer
attends to his private business in person every day, he has given
up interest in the affairs of the world. He may be, in fact should
be, doing wider and greater work when he has abandoned his private
business, so far as personal attention is concerned.”

QUALITIES THAT MAKE FOR SUCCESS.

“What, Mr. Field,” I said, “do you consider to be the first requisite
for success in life, so far as the young beginner is concerned?”

“The qualities of honesty, energy, frugality, integrity, are more
necessary than ever to-day, and there is no success without them. They
are so often urged that they have become commonplace, but they are
really more prized than ever.”

“I should like to know what you believe should be the aim of the young
man of to-day?”

“He should aim,” said Mr. Field, “to possess the qualities I have
mentioned.”

“By some, however,” I suggested, “these are looked upon as a means to
an aim only. Would you say to the young man, ‘get wealth?’”

“Not,” Mr. Field answered, “without practicing unflinchingly these
virtues.”

“Would you say to him, ‘acquire distinction?’”

“Not at any expense to his moral character. I can only say, ‘practice
these virtues and do the best you can.’ Any good fortune that comes by
such methods is deserved and admirable.”

“Do you believe a college education for the young man to be a necessity
in the future?”

“Not for business purposes. Better training will become more and more
a necessity. The truth is, with most young men, a college education
means that just at the time when they should be having business
principles instilled into them, and be getting themselves energetically
pulled together for their life’s work, they are sent to college. Then
intervenes what many a young man looks back on as the jolliest time of
his life,—four years of college. Often when he comes out of college the
young man is unfitted by this good time to buckle down to hard work,
and the result is a failure to grasp opportunities that would have
opened the way for a successful career.”

“Would you say that happiness consists in labor, or in contemplation of
labor well done, or in increased possibility of doing more labor?”

“I should say,” said Mr. Field, “that a man finds happiness in all
three. There certainly is no pleasure in idleness. I believe, as I have
said, that a man, upon giving up business, does not necessarily cease
laboring, but really does, or should do, more in a larger sense. He
should interest himself in public affairs. There is no happiness in
mere dollars. After they are had one cannot use but a moderate amount
of them. It is given a man to eat so much, to wear so much, and to have
so much shelter, and more he cannot use. When money has supplied these,
its mission, so far as the individual is concerned, is fulfilled,
and man must look further and higher. It is only in the wider public
affairs, where money is a moving force toward the general welfare, that
the possessor of it can possibly find pleasure, and that only in doing
constantly more.”

“What,” I said, “in your estimation, is the greatest good a man can do?”

“The greatest good he can do is to cultivate himself in order that he
may be of greater use to humanity.”

“What one suggestion,” I said, in conclusion, “can you give to the
young men of to-day, that will be most useful to them, if observed?”

“Regardless,” said Mr. Field, “of any opinion of mine, or any wish on
the part of the young men for wealth, distinction or praise, we know
that to be honest is best. There is nothing better, and we also know
that nothing can be more helpful than this when combined with other
essential qualities.”

Honesty, the Foundation of a Great Merchant’s Career

THE men who manipulate the levers that move the world, with few
exceptions, were once poor boys. One of the largest retail stores
in the world, in Philadelphia, and one of the handsomest stores in
America, in New York, are monuments of the genius, industry and
integrity of a “boy with no chance” who has become the peer of any of
the merchant kings of our century. He is also one of the very foremost
in many other enterprises.

To accomplish all these various things, it would be supposed that Mr.
Wanamaker must have been a pet of fortune from the first. But that is
not so. He began with nothing, as money goes, and has pushed his way to
the top by sheer force of character, and by unwearying work.

I know of no career in this country that offers more encouragement
to young people. It shows what persistency can do; it shows what
intelligent, well-directed, tireless effort can do; and it proves that
a man may devote himself to helping others, to the Sunday school, to
the church, to broad philanthropy, and still be wonderfully successful
in a business way.

A STANCH INHERITANCE.

John Wanamaker, the boy, had no single thing in all his surroundings
to give him an advantage over any one of hundreds of other boys in the
city of Philadelphia. Indeed, there were hundreds of other boys of his
own age for whom anyone would have felt safe in prophesying a more
notable career. But young Wanamaker had an inheritance beyond that of
almost any of the others. It was not money; very few boys in all that
great city had less money than John Wanamaker, and comparatively few
families of average position but were better off in the way of worldly
goods. John Wanamaker’s inheritance, that stood him in such good stead
in after life, was good health, good habits, a clean mind, thrift in
money matters, and tireless devotion to whatever he thought to be duty.

He went to school some, not very much; he assisted his mother in the
house a great deal, and around his father’s brickyard he was very
helpful so far as a boy could be helpful in such hard work. But he had
ambition beyond such things, and in 1852, when in his fifteenth year,
he found work with a publishing house at $1.50 a week.

I know a number of people who were well acquainted with John Wanamaker
when he was a book publisher’s boy. Most of them say that he was an
exceptionally promising boy; that he was studious as well as attentive
to business. Some of them declare that he used to buy a book or some
such gift for his mother regularly with part of his savings. This may
be partly romance,—the exaggerated remembrance that most people have of
a boy who, as a man, cuts a notable figure in the world. Very likely he
did buy some books, but the best that I can get is that, after all, he
was very much like other boys, except that he did not take kindly to
rough play, or do much playing of any kind, and that he was saving of
his money. He was earnest in his work, unusually earnest for a boy, and
so when, a little later, he went to a Market street clothing house and
asked for a place, he had no difficulty in getting it, nor had he any
trouble in holding it.

HE WAS ALWAYS PROMPT.

His effort was to be first at the store in the morning, and he was
very likely to be one of the last, if not the last at the store in the
evening. But he did not expect credit for this. Men who worked with
him in the Tower Hall clothing store say that he was always bright,
willing, accommodating, and very seldom out of temper. If there was an
errand, “John” was always prompt and glad to do it. And so the store
people liked him, and the proprietor liked him, and, when he began to
sell clothing, the customers liked him. He was considerate of their
interests. He did not try to force undesirable goods upon them. He
treated them so that when they came again they would be apt to ask,
“Where is John?” There was nothing in all this that any boy could not
have done; it is simply the spirit that any boy or young man should
show now,—must show if he expects to succeed wonderfully. Of course
this could only lead to something higher. An ambitious young man, such
as John Wanamaker, was not to be contented to sell goods all his days
for other people. It was not long before he became secretary of the
Young Men’s Christian Association at $1,000 a year. In the course of
a few years he had saved $2,000, when, joining with a friend who had
$2,000, they decided to open a clothing store of their own.

Now here was successful growth without one single outside influence to
help the young man along. He got his first situation without influence.
He got into Tower Hall without influence. His earnestness, activity
and ability got him the secretaryship. He saved $2,000 while other
young men, who perhaps had earned many times more than he, had saved
nothing. He had made friends among the customers of the old store, and
he had not only made friends of many of the employees there, but he had
impressed them all with the feeling that here was a young man whom it
was safe to tie to. He had also made friends among church people and
helpful folk generally. All of this was great capital.

STEP BY STEP UPWARD.

At the very outset of his storekeeping, John Wanamaker did what almost
any other business man would have stood aghast at. He chose the best
man he knew as a salesman in the clothing business in Philadelphia,
and agreed to pay him $1,350 a year,—one-third of the entire capital
of the new concern. It seemed reckless extravagance. And there were
other employees, too. What could Mr. Wanamaker be thinking of to make
the promise of this great sum just for one assistant! This move that
seemed so audacious was really a very wise one; for, when the new
employee went with Mr. Wanamaker to New York to buy goods, the fact of
his association added credit to the young house and so a little money
was eked out with a good deal more of credit, and a very fair stock
of goods was laid in. This was just as the war began. Oak Hall was a
success from the start. Possibly, under the circumstances, any sort of
a clothing venture that had fair backing would have been a success. But
no ordinary concern could have grown so rapidly and so healthfully as
Oak Hall grew.

And right here another characteristic of Mr. Wanamaker’s makeup
strikingly manifested itself; _he was not bound by precedent_. No
matter how time-honored a business method might be if it did not strike
him as the wisest, he put it aside at once. And from the first he
fully appreciated the importance of attracting public attention. As a
boy he had published “Everybody’s Journal,”—a hodge-podge of odd bits
with dabs of original matter; notable then and now mainly because it
indicated the bent of the young mind. At Oak Hall the same spirit
of innovation was continually shown. It has often been told how Mr.
Wanamaker delivered his first order in a wheelbarrow, and put the money
($38) into an advertisement in “The Inquirer.” But this was only one
instance significant of the man.

“WAKING UP” A TOWN.

Philadelphia awoke one morning to find “W. & B.” in the form of
six-inch square posters stuck up all over the town. There was not
another letter, no hint, just “W. & B.” Such things are common enough
now, but then the whole city was soon talking and wondering what this
sign meant. After a few days, a second poster modestly stated that
Wanamaker & Brown had begun to sell clothing at Oak Hall.

Of course the young firm got business rapidly. When any man gets out
of a rut and in the direction of more enterprise, it helps him. Before
long there were great signs, each 100 feet in length, painted on
special fences built in a dozen places about the city, particularly
near the railroad stations. These told of the new firm and were the
first of a class that are now seen all over the country. New ideas
in advertising were cropping out. In time balloons more than twenty
feet high were sent up, and a suit of clothes was given to each person
who brought one of them back. Whole counties were stirred up by the
balloons. It was grand advertising, imitated since by all sorts of
people. When the balloon idea struck the Oak Hall management it was
quickly found that the only way to get these air-ships was to make
them, and so, on the roof of the store, the cotton cloth was cut and
oiled and put together. Being well built, and tied very tightly at the
neck, they made long flights and some of them were used over and over
again. In one instance, a balloon remained for more than six months
in a cranberry swamp, and when the great bag was discovered, slowly
swaying in the breeze, among the bushes, the frightened Jerseymen
thought they had come upon an elephant, or, maybe, a survivor of the
mastodons. This made more advertising of the very best kind for the
clothing store,—the kind that excites interested, complimentary talk.

SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES.

Genius consists in taking advantage of opportunities quite as much as
in making them. Here was a young man doing things in an advertising
way regardless of the custom of the business world, and with a
wonderful knowledge of human nature. He took common-sense advantage of
opportunities that were open to everybody.

Soon after the balloon experience, tally-ho coaching began to be a
Philadelphia fad of the very exclusives. Immediately afterward a crack
coach was secured, and six large and spirited horses were used instead
of four, and Oak Hall employees, dressed in the style of the most ultra
coaching set, traversed the country in every direction, scattering
advertising matter to the music of the horn. Sometimes they would be a
week on a trip. No wonder Oak Hall flourished. It was kept in the very
front of the procession all the time.

A little later, in the yachting season, the whole town was attracted
and amused by processions and scatterings of men, each wearing a wire
body frame that supported a thin staff from which waved a wooden
burgee, or pointed flag, reminding them of Oak Hall. Nearly two hundred
of these prototypes of the “Sandwich man” were often out at one time.

But it was not only in the quick catching of a novel advertising
thought that the new house was making history; in newspaper
advertising, it was even further in advance. The statements of store
news were crisp and unhackneyed, and the first artistic illustrations
ever put into advertisements were used there. So high was the grade of
this picture-work that art schools regularly clipped the illustrations
as models; and the world-famous Shakespearean scholar, Dr. Horace
Howard Furness, treasured the original sketches of “The Seven Ages” as
among the most interesting in his unique collection.

As a storekeeper he was just as original. It was the universal rule
in those days, in the clothing trade, not to mark the prices plainly
on the goods that were for sale. Within rather liberal bounds, the
salesman got what he could from the customer. Mr. Wanamaker, after
a time, instituted at Oak Hall the plan of “but one price and that
plainly marked,”—the beginning of still another revolution in business
methods. He saw to it that customers had prompt and careful attention.
If a sale was missed, he required a written reason for it from the
salesman. There was no haphazard business in that store,—nothing of the
happy-go-lucky style. Each man must be alert, wide-awake, attentive, or
there was no place for him at Oak Hall.

ECONOMICAL WAYS.

And Mr. Wanamaker’s habits of economy were never relaxed. It is told
of him that, in the earlier days of Oak Hall, he used to gather up the
short pieces of string that came in on parcels, make them into a bunch,
and see that they were used when bundles were to be tied. He also had a
habit of smoothing out old newspapers, and seeing that they were used
as wrappers for such things as did not require a better grade of paper.

A considerable portion of the trade of the new store came from people
in the country districts. Mr. Wanamaker had a way of getting close to
them and gaining their good will. An old employee of the firm says:
“John used to put a lot of chestnuts in his pocket along in the fall
and winter, and, when he had one of these countrymen in tow, he’d slip
a few of the nuts into the visitor’s hand and both would go munching
about the store.” Another salesman of the old house says: “If we saw
a man come in chewing gum, we knew it was of no use trying to sell
him anything. You see, he was sure to be as green as grass and fully
convinced that we were all watching for a chance to cheat him. John
said it was all nonsense; that such people came on purpose to buy, and
were the easiest people in the world to sell to. And he would prove
it. He would chew gum with them, and talk farm or crops or cattle with
them. They’d buy of him every time. But none of us could ever get his
knack of dealing with countrymen.”

There it is. This young merchant understood human nature. He put his
customer at ease. He showed interest in the things that interested the
farmer. He was frank and open with him, and just familiar enough not to
lose a bit of the respect and deference that superiority commands.

CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPIST.

Meantime Mr. Wanamaker was interesting himself in Sunday school work,
as well as in Christian Association matters. He established a Sunday
school in one of the most unpromising of the down-town sections, and
there built up the largest school of the kind in the world,—with a
membership of something like three thousand. This school proved a
powerful factor for good.

He was also active in general philanthropic work. He was making his
mark on almost every phase of the city’s life. Such activity and
forceful good sense are always sure to make their mark.

When the great store was started in 1877 at Thirteenth and Market
streets, Mr. Wanamaker announced certain fundamental principles that
should mark the course of the enterprise. The one-price thought was
continued, of course. But he went far beyond that. He announced that
_those who bought goods of him were to be satisfied with what they
bought, or have their money back_.

To the old mercantile houses of the city this seemed like committing
business suicide. It was also unheard of that special effort should be
made to add to the comfort of visitors, to make them welcome whether
they cared to buy or not, to induce them to look upon the store as a
meeting-place, a rendezvous, a resting-place,—a sort of city home,
almost. Yet these things that were thought to forebode so much of
disaster to the old generation of merchants, have completely overturned
the methods of retailing throughout the United States. That “Wanamaker
way” is now almost the universal way.

When asked what he attributed his great success to, Mr. Wanamaker said:
“To thinking, toiling, trying and trusting in God.” Surely, his life
has been crowded with work. Even now, when wealth and honor have been
heaped upon him, he is likely to be the earliest man at the store, and
the last to leave at night,—just as when a boy at Tower Hall.

HIS ADVICE TO YOUNG MERCHANTS.

He cares little for money, and even less for fame. When I asked him
to name the essentials of success, he replied, curtly: “I might write
a volume trying to tell you how to succeed. One way is to not be above
taking a hint from a master. I don’t care to tell why I succeeded,
because I object to talking about myself. It isn’t modest.”

Mr. Wanamaker is epigrammatical at times. I asked him if a man with
means but no experience would be safe in embarking in a mercantile
business, and he replied, quickly:—

“A man can’t drive a horse who has never seen one. No; a man must have
training, must know how to buy and sell; only experience teaches that.”

When I asked him whether the small tradesmen has any “show” to-day
against the great department stores, he said:—

“All of the great stores were small at one time. Small stores will keep
on developing into big ones. You wouldn’t expect a man to put an iron
band around his business in order to prevent expansion, would you?
There are, according to statistics, a greater number of prosperous
small stores in the city than ever before. What better proof do you
want?

“The department store is a natural product, evolved from conditions
that exist as a result of fixed trade laws. Executive capacity,
combined with command of capital, finds opportunity in these
conditions, which are harmonious with the irresistible determination
of the producer to meet the consumer directly, and of merchandise to
find distribution along the lines of least resistance. Reduced prices
stimulate consumption and increased employment, and it is sound opinion
that the increased employment created by the department stores goes
to women without curtailing that of men. In general it may be stated
that large retail stores have shortened the hours of labor, and by
systematic discipline have made it lighter. The small store is harder
upon the sales-person and clerk. The effects upon the character and
capacity of the employees are good. A well-ordered, modern retail store
is a means of education in spelling, writing, English language, system
and method. Thus it becomes to the ambitious and serious employees,
in a small way, a university, in which character is broadened by
intelligent instruction practically applied.”

A feature of his make-up that has contributed largely to the
many-sidedness of his success is his ability to concentrate his
thoughts. No matter how trivial the subject that is brought before him,
he takes it up with the seeming of one who has nothing else on his
mind. While under the cares of his stores,—retail and wholesale,—of
the Sunday school, of the postmaster-generalship, of vast railroad
interests, of extensive real estate transactions, and while he was
weighing the demands of leading citizens that he accept a nomination
for mayor of Philadelphia, I have seen him take up the case of a
struggling church society, or the troubles of an individual, with
the interest and patience that would be expected of a pastor or a
professional adviser. He is phenomenal in this respect. Probably not
one young man in a thousand _could_ develop this trait so remarkably,
but any young man can try for it, and he will be all the better and
stronger for so trying.

In one physical particular Mr. Wanamaker is now very remarkable; he can
work continually for a long time without sleep and without evidence
of strain, and make up for it by good rest afterward. This, perhaps,
is because of his lack of nervousness. He is always calm. Under the
greatest stress he never loses his head. I fancy that this comes
from training, as well as from inheritance. It adds amazingly to the
power that any man can assert. It is certainly a tendency that can be
cultivated.

CONDITIONS THEN AND NOW.

I have heard it said a hundred times that Mr. Wanamaker started when
success was easy. Here is what he says himself about it:—

“I think I could succeed as well now as in the past. It seems to me
that the conditions of to-day are even more favorable to success than
when I was a boy. There are better facilities for doing business,
and more business to be done. Information in the shape of books and
newspapers is now in the reach of all, and the young man has two
opportunities where he formerly had one.

“We are much more afraid of combinations of capital than we have any
reason for being. Competition regulates everything of that kind. No
organization can make immense profits for any length of time without
its field soon swarming with competitors. It requires brain and muscle
to manage any kind of business, and the same elements which have
produced business success in the past will produce it now, and will
always produce it.”

I have heard others marvel at the unbroken upward course of Mr.
Wanamaker’s career, and lament that they so often make mistakes. But
hear him:—

“Who does not make mistakes? Why, if I were to think only of the
mistakes I have made, I should be miserable indeed.”

THE VALUE OF “PUSH.”

He has exceptional skill in getting the best that is possible out of
his helpers. On one occasion he said:—

“We are very foolish people if we shut our ears and eyes to what other
people are doing. I often pick up things from strangers. As you go
along, pick up suggestions here and there, jot them down and send them
along. Even writing them down helps to concentrate your mind on that
part of the work. You need not be afraid of overstepping the mark and
stepping on somebody’s heels. The more we push each other, the better.”

This is another Wanamaker characteristic: he wants everyone associated
with him to “push.” Stagnation and death are very nearly synonymous
words in his vocabulary.

Out of it all stands a man who has been monumentally successful as a
merchant and in general business; a man who has helped his fellow-man
while helping himself.

The lesson of such a life should be precious to every young man. It
teaches the value of untiring effort, of economy, of common sense
applied to common business. It gives one more proof that no height of
success is, in this country, beyond the reasonable ambition of any
youth who desires to succeed.

I have no doubt that thousands on thousands of young men in the United
States are to-day better equipped in almost every way than was John
Wanamaker when he began business for himself in 1861. Very likely, not
one in a hundred of them will make a mark of any significance. The
fault will be their own,—they will not have the compelling force that
comes from “thinking, toiling, trying,” and the serene confidence that
_then_ comes from “trusting” a guiding power through every change of
circumstances.

VII

A British Boy Wins Fortune and Title by American Business Methods.

THE lower bay was charged with subdued excitement everywhere as the
“Water Witch” hove to alongside Sir Thomas J. Lipton’s “Erin,” and I
stepped aboard. The hum of preparation for the great race was heard
above the lapping waves. Fresh and keen came the breezes from the snowy
ridges of the ocean’s breast. A thousand spreads of sail studded the
bay, the great ships standing up in fixed majesty, the smaller vessels
darting here and there in the wind, while right in the path of the
sun’s glare lay the green hull of the “Shamrock.” Along the whitened
shores beyond were hundreds of fishing craft dancing at their work, and
in the offing were the smoke-stacks of the Atlantic liners.

“Good morning!” came a cheery sailor’s voice from the promenade deck.
“Step right up here and you will get a better view of our little
beauty.”

The voice belonged to Sir Thomas Lipton, and the “little beauty” was
the dainty craft to which he had pinned his faith. The Scotch-Irish
knight was as enthusiastic as a boy. With a cordial handshake, he led
the way to the rail and pointed to the emerald swan below.

“There she is,” he tenderly exclaimed; “the pride of a nation; isn’t
she a picture!” His tone fairly caressed the graceful thing. I fully
expected to see him clamber down the rope-way and go out to pet her, as
the Arab is said to pet his steed, but he satisfied himself by gazing
at her and talking about her.

Confessedly, I was more interested in her owner than in the “Shamrock,”
but I was too diplomatic to show it, so I quite won my way into his
heart by praising her.

SIR THOMAS WAS WON.

“Sir Thomas,” I said, “I can’t say I hope she will win, but I hope she
will come so close to it that she will turn us all green with envy!”

“Ah, my boy, that’s the spirit,” he said; “that’s why it’s a pleasure
to race against you Americans. You meet a fellow more than half way.”

The “Erin” is no less beautiful than the racer. With the “Shamrock’s”
pennant at the foremast and the Stars and Stripes flying from the
after-pole, she is a model. Commodore Morgan says she is one of the
three finest ocean-going yachts in the world. The Prince and Princess
of Wales visited her often, and gave signed photographs of themselves
to hang in the elegant cabin. Admiral Dewey’s likeness hangs near
the “Columbia’s.” The appointments of the yacht are worthy of the
Waldorf-Astoria. Sir Thomas never leaves her, he told me, except to
go aboard the “Shamrock.” I could not blame him. Finding a pair of
upholstered steamer chairs forward, we dropped into them.

The conversation drifted into the early struggles of the baronet, to
the days when he did not own a floating palace or an international cup
challenger.

WHEN HE BORROWED FIVE CENTS.

“I remember, as if it were yesterday,” said Sir Thomas, “how utterly
hopeless my financial condition seemed to be when I was a boy of
fifteen in New York. I had run away from home to see the world. My
experiences were anything but pleasant, without work as I was, a
stranger in a great city. I got used to living on a few cents a day,
but when it came to such a pinch that I couldn’t buy a five-cent
stamp to carry a letter to the old folks in Glasgow, I very nearly
gave up. I really think that decided me to go back. It accentuated my
homesickness. I thought of the prodigal son. I borrowed five cents for
that letter, and resolved to get back as soon as a chance offered. I
can tell you I was glad when I once more set foot on the other side.
I had refrained from telling my people how hard up I had been. This
was largely a matter of pride with me, but another consideration was
their feelings. I would do anything rather than distress them. So I
stepped up, on my arrival, as jauntily as you ever saw a lad, and when
a proposition was made to me by my father, soon after my home-coming,
to set me up in a small grocery, I jumped at the chance.”

“Was that the beginning of your fortune?”

“Yes. I made money from the start. I put in practice what I had seen
abroad,—such as displaying goods attractively in windows, keeping the
place as neat as a pin, and waiting personally on my customers. Every
dollar that I earned I saved,—not that I really loved money myself.
That was not my inspiration,—it was my father and mother.”

AMERICAN BUSINESS METHODS GAVE HIM HIS START.

“I am willing to admit that it was my admiration for American methods
that gave me my start,” said Sir Thomas, as he leaned against the
taffrail. “It was the application of proper methods to conditions that
needed them. These applications and conditions are always with us. The
world is full of them. A man only needs to know both when he sees them.

“We have all marveled at the prosperity of America, but, years ago, I
felt that it would come. But your country is still young, and has many
more victories to win. I may say the same thing of all the world. Every
country has a future still. Honest competition will still give all the
nations a chance for supremacy. It only remains for the people to catch
those chances, and not let them pass by. If I were a poor man to-day, I
would be just as happy; I know that I could start anew and win.

“Honest application is the stimulus of all effort. That, to me, is
the science of achievement. Whenever you find an opportunity to do
something that will benefit you, do not fail to take advantage of it.
Often, the most trying periods will produce the best results. For
instance, fifteen years ago, while sailing down the African coast
in a steamer which carried, as the bulk of its cargo, my teas, we
encountered a terrific storm. The steamer had to be lightened. At one
time it even looked as if we were going to be wrecked; but, really, I
thought more of the loss of that tea than of anything else. I had it
brought on deck, with the idea of using it for advertising purposes, if
for nothing else. On each case I had painted, in large black letters,
‘Lipton’s Tea,’ and then cast it overboard, dreaming that it would
float to the African coast, and be picked up by someone who had not
heard of the product before. Sure enough, it was.”

HE OWNS NEARLY FIVE HUNDRED STORES.

“Your business must be an enormous one now, Sir Thomas, from the
stories in the English papers about the organization of your
enterprises into a limited company.”

“Yes, I have a good deal to attend to,” he said, smiling. “I have sixty
stores in London alone, and four hundred and twenty the world over,
most of them being in the British Isles. I sell all food products
except beef, which I have never handled. I own thousands of acres on
the island of Ceylon, where I am the largest individual land-owner. On
this land I grow tea, coffee and cocoa, and employ several thousand
natives to cultivate and ship it. I have warehouses all over Asia, and
branch stores in Hamburg and Berlin. In Chicago I have a packing-house
where I sometimes kill three thousand hogs in a day. So, you see, my
enterprises are pretty well scattered over the earth.

“How many employees have I? Well, all in all, I have somewhat over ten
thousand, and a nicer lot of employees you never saw. I have never
had a strike, and never expect to have one, for I make it my personal
duty to see that my men are all comfortably fixed. We live together in
perfect harmony.”

“And what advice would you give young men who are about to start out
for themselves, Sir Thomas?”

“That’s a broad question,” laughed the great man. “It would take me
some time to answer it properly. But, to begin with, I say that hard
work is the cardinal requisite for success. I always feel that I cannot
impress that fact too strongly upon young men. And then a person’s
heart and soul must be in his work. He must be earnest, above all, and
willing to give his whole time to his work, if necessary. Honesty,
it goes without saying, is necessary, and if you want to be wholly
successful, you must do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If you don’t, they will be sure to retaliate, when you least expect it.
If young men would follow these rules, they would get along very well;
but few of them will. If your article can inspire any of them to harder
work, its mission will be blessed.”

CHANCES FOR YOUNG MEN TO-DAY.

I inquired whether the chances for young men in Great Britain are equal
to those in America.

“That is a difficult question to answer,” said Sir Thomas. “Being a
merchant, I can speak of trade opportunities, but in the professions
I really do not know which side of the Atlantic is the better.
Literature, of course, knows no country; neither does art. In the legal
profession, the chances are two to one in favor of the United States.
You make more of your lawyers there; you utilize them in legislation,
in places of trust, while abroad their duties are limited. A good
physician in England will probably make as much money as your leading
ones here. Taking it altogether, there seems to be as good a chance for
professional men on one side as on the other. The British isles are
small compared with the states, but young men are going out every day
into new British fields, just as your young men are pushing out into
every part of your magnificent stretch of country.

“THRIFT IS THE TRUE SECRET OF SUCCESS.”

“When men tell you,” continued the baronet, “that there are no more
chances in this world, tell them that they are mistaken. Your country
abounds in so many that I marvel why any American cares to leave
its shores. There are thousands of manufactures that are still in an
imperfect state; there are millions of acres that are still to be made
productive; there are, seemingly, countless achievements yet to be
undertaken. What I say is best proven by the international yacht races.
Every year we race we believe that we have produced the best possible
boat, but we find, after the race is over, that we can improve it in
some respect. If all men would use their minds in the same way that the
builders of these big yachts use theirs, what a world of improvement
would be made! After every race, we produce something better, something
finer,—the result of brains and workmanship,—and we are not satisfied
yet.

“I have often been asked to define the true secret of success. It
is thrift in all its phases, and, principally, thrift as applied to
saving. A young man may have many friends, but he will find none so
steadfast, so constant, so ready to respond to his wants, so capable of
pushing him ahead, as a little leather-covered book, with the name of a
bank on its cover. Saving is the first great principle of all success.
It creates independence, it gives a young man standing, it fills him
with vigor, it stimulates him with the proper energy; in fact, it
brings to him the best part of any success,—happiness and contentment.
If it were possible to inject the quality of saving into every boy, we
would have a great many more real men.

“Success depends also on character to carry it through life.

“Knowledge should be a compound of what we derive from books, and what
we extract, by our observation, from the living world around us. Both
of these are necessary to the well-informed man; and, of the two, the
last is, by far, the most useful for the practical purposes of life.
The man who can combine the teachings of books with strong and close
observation of life, deserves the name of a well-informed man, and
presents a model worthy of imitation.”

The great passion of Sir Thomas’s life, yachting, has been a costly
indulgence for him, yet he has inadvertently secured more popularity
through his efforts to win the “America’s” Cup than would have been
possible in any other way. The three “Shamrocks” have cost him, all
told, reckoning the expenses of sailing the races as part of the grand
total, more than one million dollars.

VIII

A Self-made Man who Strives to Give others a Chance

“IF a bootblack does all the good he possibly can for his fellowmen,
his life has been just as successful as that of the millionaire who
helps thousands.”

That was what Darius Ogden Mills said when I asked him to give me his
idea of a successful life. His next reply was quite as epigrammatic.

“What, Mr. Mills, do you consider the keynote of success?”

“Work,” he replied, quickly and emphatically. “Work develops all
the good there is in a man; idleness all the evil. Work sharpens
all his faculties and makes him thrifty; idleness makes him lazy
and a spendthrift. Work surrounds a man with those whose habits are
industrious and honest; in such society a weak man develops strength,
and a strong man is made stronger. Idleness, on the other hand, is
apt to throw a man into the company of men whose only object in life
usually is the pursuit of unwholesome and demoralizing diversions.”

Mr. Mills is quite averse to being interviewed, but when I told
him that his words would be carried to many thousands of young men,
and probably do considerable good in the way of encouragement and
inspiration, he consented to a brief talk.

AN AGE OF OPPORTUNITIES.

I asked Mr. Mills when he would be ready for me, and he replied:—

“I am just as ready now as I ever will be. There is no time like the
present.”

Like an oasis in the desert is the experience of a man, the
accumulation of whose wealth has been on lines parallel with the
conducive rather than counter to the welfare of mankind. This is what
Mr. Mills says on the subject:—

“A man can, in the accumulation of a fortune, be just as great a
benefactor of mankind as in the distribution of it. In organizing a
great industry, one opens up fields of employment for a multitude of
people who might otherwise be practically helpless, giving them not
only a chance to earn a living for themselves and their families, but
also to lay by a competency for old age. All honest, sober men, if
they have half a chance, can do that; but only a small percentage can
ever become rich. Now the rich man, having acquired his wealth, knows
better how to manage it than those under him would, and having actual
possession, he has the power to hold the community of his employees
and their interests together, and prevent disintegration, which means
disaster so much oftener to the employee than to the employer.”

Volumes of fascinating matter could be written of the career of Mr.
Mills, but the purpose of this article is a talk with, rather than a
talk about him.

“To what formative influence do you attribute your material success,
Mr. Mills?” I asked.

“I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon
myself; that my future lay in my own hands. I had that for a start, and
it was a good one. I didn’t waste any time bothering about succession
to wealth, which so often acts as a drag upon young men. Many persons
waste the best years of their lives waiting for dead men’s shoes; and,
when they get them, find them entirely too big to wear gracefully,
simply because they have not developed themselves to wear them. I have
never accepted an inheritance or anything but goodwill from my family
or relatives.”

THE FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS.

“As a rule, the small inheritance, which, to a boy, would seem large,
has a tendency to lessen his efforts, and is a great damage to him in
the way of acquiring habits necessary to success. Above all, no one can
acquire a fortune unless he makes a start; and the habit of thrift,
which he learns in saving his first hundred dollars, is of inestimable
value later on. It is not the money, but the habit which counts. There
is no one so helpless as a man who is ‘broke,’ no matter how capable
he may be, and there is no habit so detrimental to his reputation among
business men as that of borrowing small sums of money. This cannot
be too emphatically impressed upon young men. Another thing is that
none but the wealthy, and very few of them, can afford the indulgence
of expensive habits; how much less then can a man with only a few
dollars in his pockets? More young men are ruined by the expense of
smoking than in any other way. The money thus laid out would make them
independent, in many cases, or at least would give them a good start. A
young man should be warned by the melancholy example of those who have
been ruined by smoking, and avoid it.”

TRAITS OF INFLUENTIAL MEN.

“What marked traits have the influential men, with whom you have been
associated, possessed, which most impressed you?”

“A habit of thinking and acting for themselves. No end of people are
ruined by taking the advice of others. This may answer temporarily,
but in the long run it is sure to be disastrous. Any man who hasn’t
ability to judge for himself would better get a comfortable clerkship
somewhere, letting some one of more ambition and ability do the
thinking necessary to run the business.”

“Are the opportunities for making money as numerous to-day as they were
when you started in business?”

“Yes, the progress of science and invention has increased the
opportunities a thousandfold, and a man can find them wherever he seeks
them, in the United States in particular. It has caused the field of
employment of labor of all kinds to expand enormously, thus creating
opportunities which never existed before. It is no longer necessary for
a man to go to foreign countries or distant parts of his own country
to make money. Opportunities come to him in every quarter. There is
hardly a point in the country so obscure that it has not felt the
revolutionizing influence of commercial enterprise. Probably railroads
and electricity are the chief instruments in this respect. Other
industries follow closely in their wake.”

SOME SECRETS OF SUCCESS.

“In what part of the country do you think the best chances for young
men may be found?”

“The best place for a young man to make money is the town in which
he was born and educated. There he learns all about everybody, and
everybody learns about him. This is to his advantage if he bears a good
character, and to the advantage of his townspeople if he bears a bad
one. While a young man is growing up, he unconsciously absorbs a vast
deal of knowledge of people and affairs, which would be equal to money
if he only has the judgment to avail himself of it. A knowledge of men
is the prime secret of business success. Upon reflection, how absurd it
is for a man to leave a town where he knows everything and everybody,
and go to some distant point where he doesn’t know anything about
anybody, or anything, and expect to begin on an equal footing with the
people there who are thoroughly acquainted.”

“What lesson do you consider best for young men to learn?”

“The lesson of humility;—not in the sense of being servile or
undignified, but in that of paying due respect to men who are their
superiors in the way of experience, knowledge and position. Such a
lesson is akin to that of discipline. Members of the royal families
of Europe are put in subordinate positions in the navies or armies of
their respective countries, in order that they may receive the training
necessary to qualify them to take command. They must first know how to
obey, if they would control others.”

THE BOTTOM OF THE LADDER.

“In this country, it is customary for the sons of the presidents
of great railroads, or other companies, to begin at the bottom of
the ladder and work their way up step by step, just the same as any
other boy in the employ of the corporation. This course has become
imperatively necessary in the United States, where each great business
has become a profession in itself. Most of the big machine shops
number among their employees, scions of old families who carry dinner
pails, and work with files or lathes, the same as anyone else. Such
shoulder-to-shoulder experience is invaluable to a man who is destined
to command, because he not only masters the trade technically, but
learns all about the men he works with and qualifies himself to grapple
with labor questions which may arise.

“There is no end of conspicuous examples of the wisdom of this system
in America. There are also many instances of disaster to great
industrial concerns due to the inexperience or the lack of tact of men
placed suddenly in control.”

“What is the responsibility of wealth, Mr. Mills?”

“A man must learn not to think too much of money. It should be
considered as a means and not an end, and the love for it should
never be permitted to so warp a man’s mind as to destroy his interest
in progressive ideas. Making money is an education, and the wide
experience thus acquired teaches a man discrimination in both men
and projects, where money is under consideration. Very few men who
make their own money use it carelessly. Most good projects that fail
owe their failure to bad business management, rather than to lack of
intrinsic merit. An inventor may have a very good thing, and plenty of
capital may be enlisted, but if a man not acquainted with the peculiar
line, or one who is not a good salesman or financier be employed as
manager, the result is disastrous. A man should spend his money in a
way that tends to advance the best interests of society in the country
he lives in, or in his own neighborhood at least. There is only one
thing that is a greater harm to the community than a rich spendthrift,
and that is a miser.”

A WORD ABOUT CHEAP HOTELS.

“How did you happen to establish the system of hotels which bear your
name, Mr. Mills?”

“I had been looking around for several years to find something to do
that would be for the good of the community. My mind was largely on
other matters, but it occurred to me that the hotel project was the
best, and I immediately went to work at it. My purpose was to do the
work on so large a scale that it would be appreciated and spread all
over the country, for as the sources of education extend, we find more
and more need of assisting men who have a disposition for decency
and good citizenship. The mechanic is well paid, and the man who has
learned to labor is much more independent than he who is prepared for
a profession, science or other objects in life that call for higher
education. Clerks commencing at small salaries need good surroundings
and economy to give themselves a start. Such are the men for whom the
hotels were established.”

Thrift, the Secret of a Fortune Built in a Single Lifetime.

VERY few great fortunes have been acquired by one man, or within the
limits of a single lifetime. The vast wealth of the Vanderbilts, the
Astors, and many others, has accumulated through several generations.
It is seldom, indeed, that a fortune like that of Russell Sage is
amassed by one man. For years, the newspapers of the country have been
filled with stories of his eccentricities.

When I called at the great banker’s office, I found it very hard to
obtain an audience with Mr. Sage, even though I had an introduction to
him. He has so often been the victim of cranks, and has so many callers
at his office, that he has been obliged to deny himself to all alike.
He finally decided to see me. I found him seated at an old flat-topped
desk, looking over the stock reports of the day, and I was surprised at
the extreme simplicity of all his surroundings. The furnishings of the
room looked as if they might have seen service before the Civil War,
and, upon later inquiry, I learned that most of the chairs and the desk
itself have been in use by Mr. Sage for more than twenty-five years.
He has become so attached to them that he cannot think of discarding
them for more modern inventions. Mr. Sage is smooth-faced, and his hair
is thin and gray. His clothes are fashioned in the style of thirty
years ago, but of good material, and well kept. His shoulders are bent
with care and age, but his face has a good color, and a happy smile
that betokens health and a peaceful mind.

“I have come to ask you to tell me the story of your life,” I said,
“for I am sure it must be of great interest.”

HE BEGAN AS A GROCERY CLERK.

Mr. Sage smiled. “I don’t know about its being of interest. It is very
simple and commonplace to me. You know I began as a grocery clerk, in a
country town. That is a very humble beginning, I’m sure.”

“Yes, but it’s the beginning that counts,” I said; “not the end.”

“You are right,” replied the financier. “Well, when I was even younger
than you are, I received a dollar a week for working from early morning
until late at night, but I was well satisfied with my lot, because I
knew that it was bound to lead to better things. So I worked my very
best, and saved my wages, which were slowly increased as I went along,
and finally I had enough money to start a little store for myself.
When I was twenty-one years old, I had a store of my own, and I made a
success of it, too.” He smiled, as he remembered those early days.

“But how did you happen to come to New York?” I asked.

“Oh, I was ambitious,” laughed Mr. Sage. “Like most boys, I thought
there was no other place like a city for success, and I finally sold
my country store when I was still very young, and came to New York. I
started in as an office-boy, at very low wages, and, from that day on,
I worked myself up and up, until I finally became a financier on my own
account. It took a long time, though. It wasn’t all accomplished in a
day; though, when I came to New York, I expected to be rich in two or
three years. I was very much like other boys, you see. They all expect
to get rich in a day.”

“But some of them never get rich,” I said.

“Well, it’s their own fault if they don’t succeed,” said the financier.
“Surely, everyone has as good a chance as I had. I don’t think there
could be a poorer opportunity for a boy to rise. The trouble is that
most of them are not very anxious to rise. If they find themselves
wealthy some morning they are glad, of course; but they are not willing
to work and make themselves rich.”

NO LUCK IN HIS ACHIEVEMENT.

“Some say that it is all luck,” I ventured to suggest.

“Oh, pshaw!” said Mr. Sage, with great disgust. “There’s no such thing
as luck. I’m sure there was none of it about my career. I know just how
I earned every penny, and the reason for it, and I never got anything
I didn’t work for. I never knew anyone to obtain lasting wealth without
lots of hard work.”

[Illustration: CHILDHOOD]

“Do you think there are as good opportunities for getting rich to-day
as there were thirty years ago, or when you made your start, Mr. Sage?”

“Undoubtedly. I think there are even greater opportunities, for new
industries are being established all the time, and there are broader
fields to work in. But then, the old fields of business are not
overworked, by any means. I always say that there is room for good men
anywhere and at any time. I don’t think there can be ever too many of
them. It is true that there are many applicants for every place in New
York, but if I were unable to get a place in an eastern city, I should
go west, for there are great opportunities there for everyone.”

“People say, though, that the west is not what it is supposed to be,” I
remarked.

“Yes, there are always pessimists,” said Mr. Sage. “The people who say
the west has no opportunities are the same persons who used to call it
foolish for any young man to come to New York. When I decided to come
here, I was told on every side that I would regret my action; but I
never have. Some people never see opportunities in anything, and they
never get along. I didn’t see any very great opportunity ahead of me
when I came to New York, but I knew that, if I had a chance, I could
make one. I knew that there are always openings for energetic,
hard-working fellows, and I was right.”

STRICT HONESTY IS NECESSARY.

“Of course, you believe that strict honesty is essential to success, Mr
Sage? I’ve heard many people say that honesty doesn’t pay, especially
in Wall street.”

“That is a foolish question,” said the financier. “It is absurd to
imagine that it pays to be dishonest, whatever your business or
profession. Do you suppose, if I had been dishonest in any dealings
when I started out, that I would be worth anything to-day?”

“What do you think of the chances for country boys in a great city like
New York to-day, Mr. Sage?”

“I think they are as great as ever. Employers are on the lookout for
bright young men, and I believe that they would prefer that they
come from the country, provided there is no danger of their becoming
dissipated. I think that is the only thing men have against country
fellows, and there are many things in their favor. I think an earnest,
ambitious, hard-working boy from the country has a splendid chance
of becoming somebody. There are much greater opportunities for him
to exercise his good qualities, and the reward of his enterprise is
much larger. The same energetic labor that would make a man worth
twenty-five thousand dollars in a small town would be very likely to
make him worth a hundred thousand or so in a great city, and all on
account of the wider field.”

“To what do you owe your wonderful vitality?” I asked. Mr. Sage smiled
before answering me.

“I never smoke, I never drink any liquors, I retire early, and get up
early, and take care of myself in every possible way,” he said. “Don’t
you think I ought to be healthy? I have always taken care of myself,
and I think I’ve proved that hard work is not bad for one’s health.
In fact, I think that work is the best thing I know of for improving
a man’s constitution, for it makes a good appetite, and encourages
digestion. It isn’t work that ruins so many men. It’s the wine they
drink, and the late hours they keep, and their general dissipation. I
expect to be at my desk for many years to come, and just because I’ve
taken good care of myself.”

Cut Out for a Banker, He Rose from Errand Boy to Secretary of the U. S.
Treasury.

“IN my own career, I have learned that varied experience in early youth
is often of great value in after life. My schooldays ended when I was
fourteen years old, and I began work as a mail agent on the Rome,
Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad. I do not mean to say that, when I
stopped school, my education ceased, for it was after 1850 that my
character received its greatest development. I was but poorly satisfied
with my work as mail agent, although it taught me much that I didn’t
know before, and I kept my eyes open for something better. In a short
time, the death of the president of the United States resulted in the
loss of my first position. The village postmaster was removed from
office, and, of course, my dismissal followed. This was discouraging,
but I re-entered the village academy to pursue, for a time, my studies.
There was in our town a small bank, and this institution had always
possessed a fascination for my youthful mind. I used to watch the
merchants going in with bags of gold and bundles of greenbacks,
and coming out again with only account books in their hands. I knew
that the bank had some connection with the government, and, being
greatly impressed with its dignified appearance and the actions of its
officers, I was seized with a desire to work within its walls. When I
applied for a position, I learned that there was no likelihood of a
vacancy occurring in the near future; so, when I was offered a place
in a local stationery shop at a salary of a hundred dollars a year,
I accepted with alacrity. The wages were small, indeed, but in this
shop I was privileged to become acquainted with general literature,
and spent many hours with the great authors. So the months with the
stationer were not without profit.

“After a time there was a rival bank established in the town, and I was
offered the position of ‘messenger and general assistant,’ at the same
old salary of a hundred dollars a year. I didn’t hesitate, but left
the store to enter the bank, and so began my career in the financial
world. My duties as ‘general assistant’ were many and varied. I was
janitor, first of all, and attended to the heating of the building. I
made many trips every day to the cellar for coal, and I used to think
the officials most extravagant when they insisted on a fire when the
days were comparatively warm. I was obliged to keep the front sidewalk
clear of dirt in the summer and of snow in the winter, and had to sweep
the floor of the banking room daily, and dust the desks and furniture
frequently.

WHEN YOU START IN LIFE IN A STRANGE CITY, DO NOT EXPECT “SOFT SNAPS.”

“As the ‘messenger’ of the bank, I was sent around town with notices of
notes which had fallen due, and with drafts which had been sent to the
bank for collection from other cities. All these duties kept me fairly
busy, but I still had time to learn something of banking as a business,
and of the transactions which took place behind the counters. As the
business of the bank increased, the teller and the bookkeeper welcomed
my assistance in their departments; and, when summer came, and there
were no fires to make and no snow to shovel, I had opportunity to learn
most of the details of the business. After a while I was intrusted
with the work of the teller or of the bookkeeper when either was kept
at home by illness, and at the end of my first year I felt that I was
indeed ‘cut out for a banker.’

“I had so good an opinion of my accomplishments that I demanded of my
employers an increase of salary for my second year. They replied that I
was receiving all they could afford to pay, and I immediately resigned.
At this time, nearly every boy in Central New York had the ‘Western
Fever,’ and, after I left the bank, I developed a very bad case. I
determined to start for Chicago to make my fortune, and arrived there
one day in 1855, with few dollars and no friends. I had my mind made up
to be a banker, and supposed that it would be easier to find an opening
in the western city than it had been in my native village. But when I
made the rounds, I found that no embryo banker was needed. I could not
afford to be idle, so I determined to accept the first position which
should offer, whether or not it was to my liking. It does not pay for a
young man starting in life in a strange city to be too particular about
what he does for a living. I soon found a place as bookkeeper for a
lumber company. The panic of 1857 effected even bookkeepers, however;
and, when the firm found it necessary to reduce expenses, I gladly
accepted appointment as night watchman.

“I had been in Chicago three years before good fortune seemed to come
my way. I had visited every banking house several times in search of a
position, for I was convinced that banking ought to be my career, and I
was a familiar applicant to all the officials. On the third of August,
1858, a date I shall always remember, I was summoned to the office of
the Merchants’ Loan and Trust Company, where my name was on file as
a candidate for any position, however humble. ‘Can you keep a set of
books?’ asked Mr. Holt, the cashier. ‘I can try,’ was my answer. ‘That
isn’t what we want,’ said Mr. Holt; ‘can you do it?’ ‘I can, if it can
be done in twenty-three hours out of twenty-four,’ I replied, and I was
thereupon engaged at an annual salary of five hundred dollars. After
working for so long at uncongenial employment with low wages, this
opening made me very happy. I felt that my future was assured, for I
had obtained, at length, the long-desired standing-room in a Chicago
bank.

THE PUBLIC WOULD RATHER INVEST ITS MONEY IN MEN THAN IN FINE BUILDINGS.

“The story of my further progress can be of little interest to those
who are beginning life in the financial world. My early preparation in
the New York village was most useful, and, since I had also benefited
from my experience with the world, my position was secure. If a young
man has some preparation for his work, if he secures a proper opening,
and if he behaves himself, there can be no question of his future. In
two years after I entered the service of the Merchants’ Loan and Trust
Company, I was given the position of cashier, at an annual salary of
two thousand dollars, and naturally I was encouraged to find that my
efforts were appreciated. I enjoyed my work, and was more convinced
than ever before that banking was the career for which I was best
fitted by nature.

“Every successful man started in a different way from that adopted by
any other, and there is no rule which can be laid down as certain to
win in the end. Some have received the benefit of a college training,
and others have been self-educated. Some began life in other business
and drifted into banking, and some were employed in financial houses
from the very beginning. It often happens that those who make the most
earnest efforts to succeed accomplish less than others who have had
less preparation for the work. The prizes of life do not always come to
the most deserving. Many things must co-operate to bring great results.
Innate ability, which schools cannot furnish, must find conjunction
with conditions, circumstances, and opportunities which lie outside of
individual control. If you find a man great, distinguished, a business
Saul among his brethren, do not worship him overmuch. Perhaps among the
humble and unrecognized are a score or a hundred as worthy as he, to
whom circumstances were unfavorable or opportunity did not come.

“The public appreciates more and more the importance of investing
money in men, not in buildings. When I hear of large gifts to erect
magnificent halls at our colleges, I think what greater good would be
accomplished if that money were used to help a number of deserving
young men and women through their college courses. When these young
people have finished their work in the world, they may each and all
be able to erect fifty-thousand-dollar buildings for their _alma
maters_. A certain generous-minded man once said to me, ‘I have given
money quite freely to help the distressed, to soften the bitterness of
helpless age, and to alleviate the condition of the unfortunate; but
there was little or no inspiration in it. When, on the other hand, I
have helped a bright boy to secure for himself a good education, my
imagination has become effected. I have seen my dollars—won by hard
application, in sordid ways,—transmitted into intellectual agencies
powerful to effect the thoughts and feelings of generations which will
live when I am dead.’ This sentiment is becoming prevalent among the
thoughtful men of America.”

A Young Millionaire not Afraid to Work in Overalls.

A TALL, slender young man walked into the office of the master of
motive power and construction, in the Grand Central Station, New York.
He was dressed in clothes that showed marks of travel, and his face
had a tired look. This was young Cornelius Vanderbilt, son of the head
of the house of Vanderbilt, and great-grandson of his namesake, the
founder of the Vanderbilt fortune. Cornelius had come to the office
to report to the man under whom he is working, for the heir to the
Vanderbilt millions was then serving his apprenticeship in the railroad
business, and had to report the work he had accomplished, just like
any other young mechanic on the road. Every clerk in the office stared
at him, but the stare was affectionate, for every employee of the road
has learned to like him. They have seen him with jacket and overalls,
working in the yards and in the round-houses and machine-shops all
along the system.

“It was not a sudden determination which led me to go out on the road
and study the practical side of the railroad business,” said young
Cornelius Vanderbilt, in answer to my question as to his motive; “I
had long intended to do it, because I know that the best way to learn
a business is to begin at the bottom and work up. So when Mr. Depew
arranged for me to begin in this department, I gladly accepted the
place. I have been out on the road, off and on, for several months, and
feel that I have learned a great deal that I could never have learned
in any other way.”

FROM THE FOUNDATION UP.

“I have enjoyed the experience, too. I think I have had a natural
inclination for mechanics all my life, and I enjoyed having to do with
engines and the construction of the road-bed. I am learning, gradually,
of course, to build an engine, and to run one successfully. It won’t be
long before I can do that.”

“And what will you undertake when you have finished with the
construction and motive-power departments?” I asked.

“Well, I haven’t planned that far ahead yet, but I hope, eventually,
to know as much about the finances of the road as I do about the
mechanics, and I also want to know something of the way in which the
road is managed. All this will take time, but I am determined to give
it all the time it needs. I think the advantages to be derived from
such a training are worth a great deal of time and work.”

“Does it seem like very hard work to you?”

“No; you know, I’m very much interested in such things, and so I
don’t mind the work. I would much prefer working in the yards and
round-houses to working in the offices. It is much more to my taste.”

I asked Mr. Vanderbilt whether he ever expected to run an engine
attached to a train, and he said he had no idea of doing so, but he
could, if necessary. “I’m glad to know how,” he said.

And then Mr. Vanderbilt went to attend to some work awaiting him
outside, and I entered Mr. Depew’s office. When I asked Mr. Depew to
tell me something more of the young man whom he has so nobly befriended
in all his trials, he spoke with great animation.

WISE DEVELOPMENT OF INHERITED TENDENCIES.

“Cornelius,” said he, “is a remarkable youth. From his early boyhood,
I have seen in him signs of a peculiar ability. He has always been
passionately fond of mechanics, and once, when a boy, was found trying
to construct a steam engine out of an old saucepan. I have always hoped
that he would enter actively into the work of the road, and I believe
he has now begun a career that will prove both remarkable and glorious.
I believe that, by pursuing this course, he will be the greatest
railroad man of the age.”

“Where did he get this natural taste for the work, Mr. Depew?” I asked.

“From his father, who did much the same work, when he was young, that
Cornelius Jr., is doing now. But I believe Cornelius, Jr., takes an
even greater interest in the work. It is not a new duty with him, but
a natural ambition, and I believe that he would have become a railroad
man even if he were the son of the poorest parents in the land. He is
fitted by nature for such a career.

“His progress has so far been very satisfactory in every way. He has a
genius for mastering details, and has already learned the construction
of a locomotive. He has an inventive faculty, too, and has prepared
plans for a locomotive that will achieve greater speed with smaller
expenditure of coal. He expects to devote the next few years to
mastering every department of railroad business, and he will eventually
be competent to fill almost any position on the road. He will shovel
coal and dig in the trenches, and polish engines. He will lay rails and
take them up, and learn how to mend a cracked one. He will learn to
detect uncertain ground, too, and how to make it solid again. He agrees
with me that the way to make a workman respect you is to work with him.”

HE WILL MASTER EVERY DETAIL.

“When he has finished his work on the road, he will take his place
in the offices here, and learn how the system is administered. He
will study the financial department especially, which deals with
expenditures and receipts. This is, perhaps, the most important
department of all for him, but he will also study the freight and
passenger departments, and learn why the business increases and
decreases, and the remedy for a falling off. There are a hundred and
one things to learn, and he couldn’t learn them in any other way. It
will, of course, take a long time, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years,
but he has a great deal of grit and perseverance, and I believe he will
stick to it until he has thoroughly mastered the business.

“He will, in all likelihood, be the next member of the family to enter
into the active management of the road. His brothers and cousins
may eventually go through the same training, but Cornelius, Jr., is
destined to be the most active in the management. I may not live to see
it, but if his health holds out, and he is allowed to pursue his own
course, he will perpetuate the name and fame of the Vanderbilts for
another century.”

“He is a chip of the old block, indeed,” said another friend of the
Vanderbilt family, “and his industry brings to mind the push and
energy of the first Cornelius Vanderbilt in the early part of his
career. The Commodore was never ashamed of any kind of honest work, and
Cornelius is not. He will always be a worker, and his success in life
is therefore assured, whether his father disinherits him or not. It
is not believed, however, that Cornelius Vanderbilt will deprive his
son of his fair share in the estate. On the contrary, however strong
the feeling of displeasure the father may have entertained toward
Cornelius, it is thought by friends of the family that he will treat
his son and namesake fairly and even liberally.”

WORKING AS A MACHINIST.

Young Cornelius, in his work as a machinist and office clerk, presents
an example which other sons of millionaires could follow with profit.
He is not alone, however, among young men of his class in training
for a useful life. One of New York’s richest young men is said to be
not only a worker, but an authority on mechanics, and is able both
to roll up his shirt-sleeves and go to the bench, and to describe in
the minutest detail the work on which he is engaged. His ability in
the mechanical line would probably have won wealth and success for
him, even had he not been born to a vast fortune. At the same time,
the course of the next in succession to the control of the Vanderbilt
millions, in entering upon an education in skilled labor as a common
workingman, is an excellent assurance that the family stock is not
degenerating, and that its interests are in trustworthy hands.

The ambition of Commodore Vanderbilt to establish and perpetuate a
great railway empire seems likely to be fulfilled, so far as the
present and the rising generation of the Vanderbilts are concerned. It
is the most remarkable experiment of the kind since the beginning of
the American republic.

XII

A Messenger Boy’s Zeal Lifts Him to the Head of the World’s Greatest
Telegraph System.

WHEN romance can be added to hard facts in telling the life-story of
a man, such a narrative becomes more pointed and interesting than the
rarest dreams of a fictionist; therefore, the true story of a man who
has made himself cannot fail to be instructive as well as interesting.
No other man in the United States, to-day, can look back on a more
remarkable career than that of Colonel Robert C. Clowry, president of
the Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. Clowry was delivering messages
for that company in 1852, with but one object in view,—to hold his
position. He is the busiest man, perhaps, in America to-day, and has
little time to spend with an interviewer. He dislikes the notoriety
that the world gives to men who fight and win, but the story of such
a man is of more than passing interest. It is an important, valuable,
uplifting factor in the great compound that makes America. It belongs
to the people. It is for their use to profit by, and, with this one
condition impressed on Mr. Clowry, he agreed to tell what he knows
about himself.

“I began my telegraph career on April 4, 1852,” he said. “I shall never
forget the day. I walked into the office of Judge Caton’s old Illinois
and Mississippi Telegraph Company, at Joliet, Illinois, and told the
operator that I had come to learn the business. I can see the rickety
building now, and the surprised expression on the operator’s face when
he looked at me.

HE WAS SO POOR HE HAD TO DO HIS OWN COOKING.

“I had been living with my mother on a farm in Will county, not far
from Joliet, and, having reached the age of fifteen, I thought it time
to start out in the world for myself. Ever since I first heard of the
telegraph, I was fascinated with its workings, and at that time my
chief ambition was to be able to send a message over the wires.

“‘What kind of work do you want to do?’ the operator asked me. I
replied that I didn’t suppose I was capable of doing anything but carry
messages. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we don’t pay boys anything the first six
months; but, if you want to work, you will have a chance to learn the
business. When you’re in the office you can easily pick up the knack of
operating the keys, and, eventually, you’ll get an office of your own.’

“I hadn’t expected to earn any money at first, so I told him I was
ready to begin at once. That was the beginning of my experience in the
telegraph business.”

“But, if you received no money for six months, how did you live in
Joliet during that time?” I asked Colonel Clowry.

“I was able to earn money by doing various odd jobs around town, and
of course my expenses were very low. For a while I used to get my
own meals. I had learned to do plain cooking at home, and it was no
hardship for me to fry an egg or broil a piece of steak. Joliet was a
very small town in 1853, and I had never been accustomed to luxuries
living at home. I had to work long hours at the office. I was the only
messenger, and had all the work to do, so I hardly had time to be
homesick. After my life on the farm, Joliet was a regular metropolis in
my eyes and I found much to interest me. Of course, I was discouraged
at times. I was very young to be away from home and dependent on my own
resources, and it was only natural that I should occasionally get the
blues. But for the most part I was wrapped up in my work and occupied
with ambitious plans for the future.”

“Were you able to learn telegraphy in a short time?”

“Yes, it seemed to come natural to me. I always liked mechanics and
didn’t rest until I knew the function of every key and lever connected
with the instruments in the office. Within two months, I was able to
send and receive a message, and in four months I was quite as expert as
the regular operator. He was surprised at the readiness with which I
learned, and remarked one day that I wouldn’t remain a messenger long.
This encouraged me, of course, but I had no idea how soon I should be
given an office of my own.

“I had various unpleasant experiences as a messenger. I learned that,
no matter how zealous I was in my work, it was impossible to please
everybody, and I was frequently accused of loitering when in reality I
had hurried as much as possible. The telegraph was a new institution in
those days, and people were always doubtful of its success. They seemed
actually surprised when a message was delivered without delay.”

IT IS WELL TO KNOW WHAT MEN HAVE ACCOMPLISHED.

“In the beginning I was discouraged every time a man scolded me and
found fault, but after a time I realized that it was foolish to be
worried over trifles. I was doing my very best and knew that my
services were appreciated by the officials over me. When I had been
working six months as a messenger, I was delighted, one day, by the
information that the office at Lockport, Illinois, was vacant, and that
I was to be placed in charge. I was not yet sixteen years old, but
most people took me to be nineteen or twenty, and the superintendent
said that age shouldn’t count against ability. Lockport is in the same
county as Joliet, so I was stationed near home, and my mother was
delighted at the progress I had made.”

“At such an age you must have felt the responsibility of having the
entire office in your charge.”

“Yes,” said Colonel Clowry, “I think I did. It was my constant
endeavor to appear older than sixteen, because I felt that business
men might not have confidence in my ability if they knew I was so very
young. I was fortunate in my work. Everything progressed favorably
under my management, and, as the business rapidly increased, the
superintendent was pleased with my work.”

“Do you think the company would nowadays employ a boy of sixteen as
manager?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” said Colonel Clowry. “I think,
if the boy were capable and earnest, he would be given such a position.
Merit is as quickly rewarded to-day as ever.”

“I suppose you did not stay long at Lockport?”

“I wouldn’t have been satisfied to stay there long. It was my ambition
to be manager of a more important office, and I tried to prove myself
worthy of a better position. I took advantage of every opportunity
to improve my education. I read every book which could give me any
knowledge of telegraphy and electricity, and was especially interested
in biography, travel, history, and geography. I was obliged to remain
at the office until late in the evening, but often I sat up until
after midnight, reading and studying. I think it is helpful for every
boy to know what great and successful men have really accomplished.
Among my favorite books were the journals of Lewis and Clark on their
expedition across the continent in 1804, and, when I was discouraged
or disheartened, it cheered me to remember the vicissitudes encountered
by them.”

HE TRIED TO DO MORE THAN HE WAS PAID TO DO.

“I always endeavored, while at Lockport, and in every other position I
have filled, to perform more service than that which was allotted to
me and to watch my employer’s interests at all times, regardless of
stipulated hours. It is a great mistake for a young man to think that
his efforts to be efficient and to perform more work than is set apart
for him will not be noticed by his employers or superior officers. The
appreciation of such services may seem tardy, but it is almost sure
to come, and, in my case, it came very soon. After I had served at
Lockport for a few months, I was transferred to Springfield, Illinois,
which is a more important station. I was not seventeen when I began my
work there, but I felt myself to be quite an experienced person in the
business, and capable of caring for almost any office. On account of my
night study I had a thorough knowledge of the principles of telegraphy,
and my practice as an operator had given me the necessary technical
qualifications.

“Operators didn’t receive as much then as they do now, but living
expenses were low. When I went to Lockport, I believe that I was
paid about a dollar a day, and at Springfield my wages were somewhat
higher. In 1854, two years after I first began to carry messages, I
was sent to St. Louis, as the company’s chief operator, and of course
that was a considerable promotion. I remained in that position until
1858, when I be

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