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Title: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 11

Author: Elbert Hubbard

Release date: November 22, 2007 [eBook #23595]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE
JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT - VOLUME 11 ***

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Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 11

Little Journeys to the Homes
of Great Businessmen
by

Elbert Hubbard
Memorial Edition

New York

1916.

CONTENTS
ROBERT OWEN
JAMES OLIVER
STEPHEN GIRARD
MAYER A. ROTHSCHILD
PHILIP D. ARMOUR
JOHN J. ASTOR
PETER COOPER
ANDREW CARNEGIE
GEORGE PEABODY
A. T. STEWART
H. H. ROGERS
JAMES J. HILL

ROBERT OWEN
I have always expended to the last shilling my surplus wealth in
promoting this great and good cause of industrial betterment.
The right-reverend prelate is greatly deceived when he says that
I have squandered my wealth in profligacy and luxury. I have
never expended a pound in either; all my habits are habits of
temperance in all things, and I challenge the right-reverend
prelate and all his abettors to prove the contrary, and I will give
him and them the means of following me through every stage
and month of my life.
—Robert Owen, in Speech before the
House of Lords

ROBERT OWEN

In Germany, the land of philosophy, when the savants sail into a sea of
doubt, some one sets up the cry, "Back to Kant!"
In America, when professed democracy grows ambitious and evolves a lust
for power, men say, "Back to Jefferson!"
In business, when employer forgets employee and both forget their better
manhood, we say, "Back to Robert Owen!"
We will not go back to Robert Owen: we will go on to Robert Owen, for his
philosophy is still in the vanguard.
Robert Owen was a businessman. His first intent was to attain a practical
success. He produced the article, and sold it at a profit.
In this operation of taking raw material and manufacturing it into forms of
use and beauty—from the time the seed was planted in the ground on up to
the consumer who purchased the finished fabric and wove it—Owen
believed that all should profit—all should be made happier by every
transaction.
That is to say, Robert Owen believed that a business transaction where both
sides do not make money is immoral.
There is a legal maxim still cited in the courts—"Caveat emptor"—let the
buyer beware.
For this maxim Robert Owen had no respect. He scorned the thought of
selling a man something the man did not want, or of selling an article for
anything except exactly what it was, or of exacting a price for it, by hook or
crook, beyond its value.
Robert Owen believed in himself, and in his product, and he believed in the
people. He was a democratic optimist. He had faith in the demos; and the
reason was that his estimate of the people was formed by seeing into his
own heart. He realized that he was a part of the people, and he knew that he
wanted nothing for himself which the world could not have on the same
terms. He looked into the calm depths of his own heart and saw that he
hated tyranny, pretense, vice, hypocrisy, extravagance and untruth. He knew
in the silence of his own soul that he loved harmony, health, industry,

reciprocity, truth and helpfulness. His desire was to benefit mankind, and to
help himself by helping others.
Therefore he concluded that, the source of all life being the same, he was
but a sample of the average man, and all men would, if not intimidated and
repressed, desire what he desired.
When physically depressed, through lack of diversified exercise, bad air or
wrong conditions, he realized that his mind was apt to be at war, not only
with its best self, but with any person who chanced to be near. From this he
argued that all departures in society were occasioned by wrong physical
conditions, and in order to get a full and free expression of the Divine
Mind, of which we are all reflectors or mediums, our bodies must have a
right environment.
To get this right environment became the chief business and study of his
life.
To think that a man who always considers "the other fellow" should be a
great success in a business way is to us more or less of a paradox. "Keep
your eye on Number One," we advise the youth intent on success. "Take
care of yourself," say the bucolic Solons when we start on a little journey.
And "Self-preservation is the first law of life," voice the wise ones.
And yet we know that the man who thinks only of himself acquires the
distrust of the whole community. He sets in motion forces that work against
him, and has thereby created a handicap that blocks him at every step.
Robert Owen was one of those quiet, wise men who win the confidence of
men, and thereby siphon to themselves all good things. That the psychology
of success should have been known to this man in Seventeen Hundred
Ninety, we might call miraculous, were it not for the fact that the
miraculous is always the natural.
Those were troublous times when Robert Owen entered trade. The French
Revolution was on, and its fires lit up the intellectual sky of the whole
world. The Colonies had been lost to England; it was a time of tumult in
Threadneedle Street; the armies of the world were lying on their arms
awaiting orders. And out of this great unrest emerged Robert Owen,

handsome, intelligent, honest, filled with a holy zeal to help himself by
helping humanity.
Robert Owen was born in the village of Newtown, Wales, in Seventeen
Hundred Seventy-one. After being away from his native village for many
years, he returned, as did Shakespeare and as have so many successful men,
and again made the place of his boyhood the home of his old age. Owen
died in the house in which he was born. His body was buried in the same
grave where sleeps the dust of his father and his mother. During the eighty-
seven years of his life he accomplished many things and taught the world
lessons which it has not yet memorized.
In point of time, Robert Owen seems to have been the world's first
Businessman. Private business was to him a public trust. He was a creator, a
builder, an economist, an educator, a humanitarian. He got his education
from his work, at his work, and strove throughout his long life to make it
possible for others to do the same.
He believed in the Divinity of Business. He anticipated Emerson by saying,
"Commerce consists in making things for people who need them, and
carrying them from where they are plentiful to where they are wanted."
Every economist should be a humanitarian; and every humanitarian should
be an economist. Charles Dickens, writing in Eighteen Hundred Sixty, puts
forth Scrooge, Carker and Bumball as economists. When Dickens wanted to
picture ideal businessmen, he gave us the Cheeryble brothers—men with
soft hearts, giving pennies to all beggars, shillings to poor widows, and coal
and loaves of bread to families living in rickety tenements. The Dickens
idea of betterment was the priestly plan of dole. Dickens did not know that
indiscriminate almsgiving pauperizes humanity, and never did he supply the
world a glimpse of a man like Robert Owen, whose charity was something
more than palliation.
Robert Owen was born in decent poverty, of parents who knew the simple,
beautiful and necessary virtues of industry, sobriety and economy. Where
this son got his hunger for books and his restless desire for achievement we
do not know. He was a business genius, and from genius of any kind no
hovel is immune.

He was sent to London at the age of ten, to learn the saddler's trade; at
twelve he graduated from making wax-ends, blacking leather and greasing
harness and took a position as salesman in the same business.
From this he was induced to become a salesman for a haberdasher. He had
charm of manner—fluidity, sympathy and health. At seventeen he asked to
be paid a commission on sales instead of a salary, and on this basis he saved
a hundred pounds in a year.
At eighteen a customer told him of a wonderful invention—a machine that
was run by steam—for spinning cotton into yarn. Robert was familiar with
the old process of making woolen yarn on a spinning-wheel by hand—his
mother did it and had taught him and his brothers and sisters how.
Cotton was just coming in, since the close of "George Washington's
Rebellion." Watt had watched his mother's teakettle to a good purpose. Here
were two big things destined to revolutionize trade: the use of cotton in
place of flax or wool, and steam-power instead of human muscle. Robert
Owen resigned his clerkship and invested all of his earnings in three mule
spinning-machines. Then he bought cotton on credit.
He learned the business, and the first year made three hundred pounds.
Seeing an advertisement in the paper for an experienced superintendent of a
cotton mill, he followed his intuitions, hunted out the advertiser, a Mr.
Drinkwater, and asked for the place.
Mr. Drinkwater looked at the beardless stripling, smiled and explained that
he wanted a man, not a boy—a man who could take charge of a mill at
Manchester, employing five hundred hands.
Robert Owen stood his ground.
What would he work for?
Three hundred pounds a year.
Bosh! Boys of nineteen could be had for fifty pounds a year.
"But not boys like me," said Robert Owen, earnestly. Then he explained to
Mr. Drinkwater his position—that he had a little mill of his own and had

made three hundred pounds the first year. But he wanted to get into a larger
field with men of capital.
Mr. Drinkwater was interested. Looking up the facts he found them to be
exactly as stated. He hired the youth at his own price and also bought all of
young Mr. Owen's machinery and stock, raw and made up.
Robert Owen, aged nineteen, went at once to Manchester and took charge
of the mill. His business was to buy and install new machinery, hire all help,
fix wages, buy the raw material, and manufacture and sell the product.
For six weeks he did not give a single order, hire a new man, nor discharge
an old one. He silently studied the situation. He worked with the men—
made friends with them, and recorded memoranda of his ideas. He was the
first one at the factory in the morning—the last to leave it at night.
After six weeks he began to act.
The first year's profit was twenty per cent on the investment, against five
for the year before.
Drinkwater paid him four hundred pounds instead of three, and proposed it
should be five hundred for the next year. A contract was drawn up, running
for five years, giving Owen a salary, and also a percentage after sales
mounted above a certain sum.
Robert Owen was now twenty years of age. He was sole superintendent of
the mill. The owner lived at London and had been up just once—this after
Owen had been in his new position for three months. Drinkwater saw
various improvements made in the plant—the place was orderly, tidy,
cleanly, and the workers were not complaining, although Owen was
crowding out the work.
Owen was on friendly terms with his people, visiting them in their homes.
He had organized a day-school for the smaller children and a night-school
for the older ones who worked in the mills. His friendliness, good-cheer and
enthusiasm were contagious. The place was prosperous.

Just here let us make a digression and inspect the peculiar conditions of the
time.
It was a period of transition—the old was dying, the new was being born.
Both experiences were painful.
There was a rapid displacement of hand labor. One machine did the work of
ten or more persons. What were these people who were thrown out, to do?
Adjust themselves to the new conditions, you say. True, but many could
not. They starved, grew sick, ate their hearts out in useless complaining.
Only a few years before, and the spinning of flax and wool was exclusively
a home industry. Every cottage had its spinning-wheel and loom. There was
a garden, a cow, a pig, poultry and fruits and flowers. The whole household
worked, and the wheel and loom were never idle while it was light. The
family worked in relays.
It was a very happy and prosperous time. Life was simple and natural.
There was constant labor, but it was diversified. The large flocks of sheep,
raised chiefly for wool, made mutton cheap. Everything was home-made.
People made things for themselves, and if they acquired a superior skill
they supplied their neighbors, or exchanged products with them. As the
manufacturing was done in the homes, there was no crowding of
population. The factory boarding-house and the tenement were yet to come.
This was the condition up to Seventeen Hundred Seventy. From then until
Seventeen Hundred Ninety was the time of transition. By Seventeen
Hundred Ninety, mills were erected wherever there was water-power, and
the village artisans were moving to the towns to work in the mills.
For the young men and women it was an alluring life. The old way gave
them no time to themselves—there was the cow to milk, the pigs and
poultry to care for, or the garden making insistent demands. Now they
worked at certain hours for certain wages, and rested. Tenements took the
place of cottages, and the "public," with its smiling barkeep, was always
right at the corner.
Hargreaves, Arkwright, Watt and Eli Whitney had worked a revolution
more far-reaching than did Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre and Marat.

Here creeps in an item interesting to our friends who revel in syntax and
prosody. Any machine or apparatus for lifting has been called a "jack" since
the days of Shakespeare. The jack was the bearer of bundles, a lifter, a
puller, a worker. Any coarse bit of mechanism was called a jack, and is yet.
In most factories there are testing-jacks, gearing-jacks, lifting-jacks. Falstaff
tells of a jack-of-all-trades. The jack was anything strong, patient and
serviceable.
When Hargreaves, the Lancashire carpenter, invented his spinning-machine,
a village wit called it a "jenny." The machine was fine, delicate, subtle, and
as spinning was a woman's business anyway, the new machine was parsed
in the feminine gender.
Soon the new invention took on a heavier and stronger form, and its
persistency suggested to some other merry bucolic a new variation and it
was called a "mule." The word stuck, and the mule-spinner is with us
wherever cotton is spun.
The discovery that coal was valuable for fuel followed the invention of the
steam-engine.
When things are needed we dig down and find them, or reach up and secure
them. You could not run a steamship, except along a river with well-wooded
banks, any more than you could run an automobile with coal.
The dealing in coal, or "coals" as our English cousins still use the word,
began in Eighteen Hundred Nineteen. That was the year the first steamship,
the "Savannah," crossed the ocean. She ran from Savannah to London. Her
time was twenty-five days. She burned four hundred fifty tons of coal, or
about two-thirds of her entire carrying capacity. Robert Fulton had been
running his steamer "Clermont" on the Hudson in Eighteen Hundred Seven,
but there were wooding-stations every twenty miles.
It was argued in the House of Commons that no steamship could ever cross
the Atlantic with steam, alone, as a propelling power. And even as it was
being mathematically proved, the whistle of the "Savannah" drowned the
voice of the orator.
But the "Savannah" also carried sail, and so the doubters still held the floor.
An iron boat with no sails that could cross the Atlantic in five days was a

miracle that no optimist had foreseen—much less, dared prophesy.
The new conditions almost threatened to depopulate the rural districts.
Farmers forsook the soil. The uncertainty of a crop was replaced with the
certainty of a given wage. Children could tend the spinning-jennies as well
as men. There was a demand for child labor. Any poor man with a big
family counted himself rich. Many a man who could not find a job at a
man's wage quit work and was supported by his wife and children. To rear a
family became a paying enterprise.
Various mill-owners adopted children or took them under the apprentice
system, agreeing to teach them the trade. Girls and boys from orphan
asylums and workhouses were secured and held as practical slaves. They
were herded in sheep-sheds, where they slept on straw and were fed in
troughs. They were worked in two shifts, night and day, so the straw was
never really cold. They worked twelve hours, slept eight, and one hour was
allowed for meals. Their clothing was not removed except on Saturday. Any
alteration in the business life of a people is fraught with great danger.
Recklessness, greed and brutality at such a time are rife.
Almost all workingmen of forty or over were out of work. Naturally,
employers hired only the young, the active, the athletic. These made more
money than they were used to making, so they spent it lavishly and
foolishly. It was a prosperous time, yet, strangely enough, prosperity
brought starvation to thousands. Family life in many instances was
destroyed, and thus were built those long rows of houses, all alike, with no
mark of individuality—no yard, no flowers, no gardens—that still in places
mar the landscape in factory towns.
Pretty girls went to the towns to work in the mills, and thus lost home ties.
Later they drifted to London. Drunkenness increased.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, there was formed the Manchester Board
of Health. Its intent was to guard the interests of factory-workers. Its desire
was to insure light, ventilation and sanitary conveniences for the workers.
Beyond this it did not seek to go.
The mill superintendents lifted a howl. They talked about interference, and
depriving the poor people of the right to labor. They declared it was all a

private matter between themselves and the workers—a matter of contract.
Robert Owen, it seems, was the first factory superintendent to invite
inspection of his plant. He worked with the Board of Health, not against it.
He refused to employ children under ten years of age, and although there
was a tax on windows, he supplied plenty of light and also fresh air. So
great was the ignorance of the workers that they regarded the Factory Laws
as an infringement on their rights. The greed and foolish fears of the mill-
owners prompted them to put out the good old argument that a man's
children were his own, and that for the State to dictate to him where they
should work, when and how, was a species of tyranny. Work was good for
children! Let them run the streets? Never!
It is a curious thing to note that when Senator Albert J. Beveridge
endeavored to have a Federal Bill passed at Washington, in Nineteen
Hundred Seven, the arguments he had to meet and answer were those which
Robert Owen and Sir Robert Peel were obliged to answer in Seventeen
Hundred Ninety-five.
When a man who worked a hundred orphans fourteen hours a day, boys and
girls of from six to twelve, was accused of cruelty, he defended himself by
saying, "If I doesn't work 'em all the time 'cept when they sleep and eat,
they will learn to play, and then never work." This argument was repeated
by many fond parents as conclusive.
The stress of the times—having many machines in one building, all run by
one motor power, the necessity of buying raw material in quantities, the
expense of finding a market—all these combined to force the invention of a
very curious economic expediency. It was called a Joint Stock Company.
From a man and his wife and his children making things at home, we get
two or three men going into partnership and hiring a few of their neighbors
at day wages.
Then we get the system of "shareholding," with hundreds or thousands of
people as partners in a manufacturing enterprise which they never visit.
The people who owned the shares were the ones who owned the tools. Very
naturally, they wanted and expected dividends for the use of the tools. That
was all they wanted—dividends. The manager of the mill held his position

only through his ability to make the venture bring returns. The people who
owned the shares or the tools, never saw the people who used the tools. A
great gulf lay between them. For the wrongs and injustices visited upon the
workers no one person was to blame. The fault was shifted. Everybody
justified himself. And then came the saying, "Corporations have no souls."
Robert Owen was manager of a mill, yet he saw the misery, the ignorance
and the mental indifference that resulted from the factory system. He, too,
must produce dividends, but the desire of his heart was also to mitigate the
lot of the workers.
Books were written by good men picturing the evils of the factory system.
Comparisons were made between the old and the new, in which the
hideousness of the new was etched in biting phrase. Some tried to turn the
dial backward and revive the cottage industries, as did Ruskin a little later.
"A Dream of John Ball" was anticipated, and many sighed for "the good old
times."
But among the many philosophers and philanthropists who wrestled with
the problem, Robert Owen seems to have stood alone in the belief that
success lay in going on, and not in turning back. He set himself to making
the new condition tolerable and prophesied a day when out of the smoke
and din of strife would emerge a condition that would make for health,
happiness and prosperity such as this tired old world never has seen. Robert
Owen was England's first Socialist.
Very naturally he was called a dreamer. Some called him an infidel and the
enemy of society.
Very many now call him a seer and a prophet.

In Robert Owen's day cotton yarn was packaged and sold in five-pound
bundles. These packages were made up in hanks of a given number of
yards. One hundred twenty counts to a package was fixed upon as "par," or
"standard count." If the thread was very fine, of course more hanks were
required to make up the five pounds. The price ranged up or down, below or

above the one-hundred-twenty mark. That is, if a package contained two
hundred forty hanks, its value was just double what it would have been if
merely standard.
Robert Owen knew fabrics before he began to spin.
First, he was a salesman. Second, he made the things he could sell.
The one supremely difficult thing in business is salesmanship. Goods can be
manufactured on formula, but it takes a man to sell. He who can sell is a
success—others may be.
The only men who succeed in dictating the policy of the house are those in
the Sales Department—that is, those who are on the side of income, not of
expense.
The man with a "secret process" of manufacture always imparts his secret,
sooner or later; but the salesman does not impart his secret, because he
can't. It is not transferable. It is a matter of personality. Not only does the
salesman have to know his goods, but he must know the buyer—he must
know humanity.
And humanity was the raw stock in which Robert Owen dealt. Robert Owen
never tried to increase his sales by decreasing his price. His product was
always higher than standard. "Anybody can cut prices," he said, "but it
takes brains to make a better article." He focused on fineness.
And soon buyers were coming to him. A finer article meant a finer trade.
And now, on each package of yarn that Owen sent out, he placed a label
that read thus, "This package was made under the supervision of Robert
Owen." Thus his name gradually became a synonym for quality.
Among other curious ideas held by Owen was that to make finer goods you
must have a finer quality of workman. To produce this finer type of person
now became his dream.
Mr. Drinkwater smiled at the idea and emphasized "dividends."
Now Mr. Drinkwater had a son-in-law who looked in on things once a
month, signed his voucher and went away fox-hunting. He thought he was
helping run the mill. This man grew jealous of the young manager and

suggested that Drinkwater increase the boy's pay and buy off the percentage
clause in the contract, so as to keep the youngster from getting
megalocephalia.
Drinkwater asked Owen what he would take for the contract, and Owen
handed it to him and said, "Nothing." It gave him a chance to get out into a
larger field. Drinkwater never thought of the value of that little Robert
Owen label. No wise employer should ever allow a thing like that.
Owen had won both name and fame among the merchants, and he now
engaged with several mills to superintend their output and sell their goods
with his label on each package. In other words, he was a Manufacturers'
Broker. From a five-hundred-pound-a-year man he had grown to be worth
two thousand pounds a year.
No mill owned him. He was free—he was making money. The dream of
human betterment was still in his heart.
On one of his trips to Glasgow to sell goods, he met a daughter of David
Dale, a mill-owner who was in active competition with him. Dale made a
fine yarn, too.
The girl had heard of Owen: they met as enemies—a very good way to
begin an acquaintance. It was Nature's old, old game of stamen, pistil and
pollen, that fertilizes the world of business, betterment and beauty. They
quarreled.
"You are the man who puts your name on the package?"
"Yes."
"And yet you own no mill!"
"True—but——"
"Never mind. You certainly are proud of your name."
"I am—wouldn't you be?"
"Not of yours."

Then they stared at each other in defiance. To relieve the tension, Mr. Owen
proposed a stroll. They took a walk through the park and discovered that
they both were interested in Social Reform. David Dale owned the mills at
New Lanark—a most picturesque site. He was trying to carry on a big
business, so as to make money and help the workers. He was doing neither,
because his investment in the plant had consumed too much of his working
capital.
They discussed the issue until eleven forty-five by the clock.
The girl knew business and knew Society. The latter she had no use for.
The next day they met again, and quite accidentally found themselves
engaged, neither of 'em knew how.
It was very embarrassing! How could they break the news to Papa Dale?
They devised a way. It was this: Robert Owen was to go and offer to buy
Mr. Dale's mills.
Owen went over to Lanark and called on Mr. Dale, and told him he wanted
to buy his business. Mr. Dale looked at the boy, and smiled. Owen was
twenty-seven, but appeared twenty, being beardless, slight and fair-haired.
The youth said he could get all the money that was needed. They sparred
for a time—neither side naming figures. It being about noontime, Mr. Dale
asked young Mr. Owen to go over to his house to lunch. Mr. Dale was a
widower, but his daughter kept the house. Mr. Dale introduced Mr. Owen to
Miss Dale.
The young folks played their parts with a coolness that would have
delighted John Drew, and would have been suspicious to anybody but a
fussy old mill-owner.
Finally as the crumbs were being brushed from the rich man's table, Mr.
Dale fixed on the sum of sixty thousand pounds for his property.
Owen was satisfied and named as terms three thousand pounds and interest
each year for twenty years, touching the young lady's toe with his own
under the table.

Mr. Dale agreed. Mr. Owen had the money to make the first payment. The
papers were drawn up. The deal was closed—all but the difficult part. This
was done by rushing the enemy in his library, after a good meal. "It keeps
the business in the family, you see," said the girl on her knees, pouting
prettily.
The point was gained, and when Robert Owen, a few weeks later, came to
New Lanark to take possession of the property, he did as much for the girl.
So they were married and lived happily ever afterward.

Robert Owen took up his work at New Lanark with all the enthusiasm that
hope, youth and love could bring to bear.
Mr. Dale had carried the flag as far to the front as he thought it could be
safely carried—that is to say, as far as he was able to carry it.
Owen had his work cut out for him. The workers were mostly Lowland
Scotch and spoke in an almost different language from Owen. They looked
upon him with suspicion. The place had been sold, and they had gone with
it—how were they to be treated? Were wages to be lowered and hours
extended? Probably.
Pilfering had been reduced to a system, and to get the start of the soft-
hearted owner was considered smart.
Mr. Dale had tried to have a school, and to this end had hired an elderly
Irishman, who gave hard lessons and a taste of the birch to children who
had exhausted themselves in the mills and had no zest for learning. Mr.
Dale had taken on more than two hundred pauper children from the
workhouses and these were a sore trial to him.
Owen's first move was to reduce the working-hours from twelve to ten
hours. Indeed, he was the first mill-owner to adopt the ten-hour plan. He
improved the sanitary arrangements, put in shower-baths and took a
personal interest in the diet of his little wards, often dining with them.

A special school-building was erected at a cost of thirty thousand dollars.
This was both a day and a night school. It also took children of one year old
and over, in order to relieve mothers who worked in the mills. The "little
mothers," often only four or five years old, took care of babies a year old
and younger, all day.
Owen instructed his teachers never to scold or to punish by inflicting
physical pain. His was the first school in Christendom to abolish the rod.
His plan anticipated the Kindergarten and the Creche. He called mothers'
meetings, and tried to show the uselessness of scolding and beating,
because to do these things was really to teach the children to do them. He
abolished the sale of strong drink in New Lanark. Model houses were
erected, gardens planted, and prizes given for the raising of flowers.
In order not to pauperize his people, Owen had them pay a slight tuition for
the care of the children, and there was a small tax levied to buy flower-
seeds. In the school-building was a dance-hall and an auditorium.
At one time the supply of raw cotton was cut off for four months. During
this time Owen paid his people full wages, insisted that they should all, old
and young, go to school for two hours a day, and also work two hours a day
at tree-planting, grading and gardening. During this period of idleness he
paid out seven thousand pounds in wages. This was done to keep the
workmen from wandering away.
It need not be imagined that Owen did not have other cares besides those of
social betterment. Much of the machinery in the mills was worn and
becoming obsolete. To replace this he borrowed a hundred thousand dollars.
Then he reorganized his business as a stock company and sold shares to
several London merchants with whom he dealt. He interested Jeremy
Bentham, the great jurist and humanitarian, and Bentham proved his faith
by buying stock in the New Lanark Company.
Joseph Lancaster, the Quaker, a mill-owner and philanthropist, did the
same.
Owen paid a dividend of five per cent on his shares. A surplus was also set
aside to pay dividends in case of a setback, but beyond this the money was
invested in bettering the environment of his people.

New Lanark had been running fourteen years under Owen's management. It
had attracted the attention of the civilized world. The Grand Duke Nicholas,
afterwards the Czar, spent a month with Owen studying his methods. The
Dukes of Kent, Sussex, Bedford and Portland; the Archbishop of
Canterbury; the Bishops of London, Peterborough and Carlisle; the Marquis
of Huntly; Lords Grosvenor, Carnarvon, Granville, Westmoreland,
Shaftesbury and Manners; General Sir Thomas Dyce and General Brown;
Ricardo, De Crespigny, Wilberforce, Joseph Butterworth and Sir Francis
Baring—all visited New Lanark. Writers, preachers, doctors, in fact almost
every man of intellect and worth in the Kingdom, knew of Robert Owen
and his wonderful work at New Lanark. Sir Robert Peel had been to New
Lanark and had gone back home and issued an official bulletin inviting
mill-owners to study and pattern after the system.
The House of Commons asked Owen to appear and explain his plan for
abolishing poverty from the Kingdom. He was invited to lecture in many
cities. He issued a general call to all mill-owners in the Kingdom to co-
operate with him in banishing ignorance and poverty.
But to a great degree Owen worked alone and New Lanark was a curiosity.
Most mill towns had long rows of dingy tenements, all alike, guiltless of
paint, with not a flower bed or tree to mitigate the unloveliness of the scene.
Down there in the dirt and squalor lived the working-folks; while away up
on the hillside, surrounded by a vast park, with stables, kennels and
conservatories, resided the owner.
Owen lived with his people. And the one hundred fifty acres that made up
the village of New Lanark contained a happy, healthy and prosperous
population of about two thousand people.
There was neither pauperism nor disease, neither gamblers nor drunkards.
All worked and all went to school.
It was an object-lesson of thrift and beauty.
Visitors came from all over Europe—often hundreds a day.
Why could not this example be extended indefinitely so that hundreds of
such villages should grow instead of only one? There could, there can and

there will be, but the people must evolve their own ideal environment and
not have to have it supplied for them.
By Owen's strength of purpose he kept the village ideal, but he failed to
evolve an ideal people. All around were unideal surroundings, and the
people came and went. Strong drink was to be had only a few miles away.
To have an ideal village, it must be located in an ideal country.
Owen called on the clergy to unite with him in bringing about an ideal
material environment. He said that good water, sewerage and trees and
flowers worked a better spiritual condition. They replied by calling him a
materialist. He admitted that he worked for a material good. His followers
added to his troubles by comparing his work with that of the clergy round
about, where vice, poverty and strong drink grouped themselves about a
steeple upon which was a cross of gold to which labor was nailed—a simile
to be used later by a great orator, with profit.
Owen was a Unitarian, with a Quaker bias. Any clergyman was welcome to
come to New Lanark—it was a free platform. A few preachers accepted the
invitation, with the intent to convert Robert Owen to their particular cause.
New Lanark was pointed out all over England as a godless town. The
bishops issued a general address to all rectors and curates warning them
against "any system of morals that does away with God and His Son, Jesus
Christ, fixing its salvation on flowerbeds and ragged schools."
New Lanark was making money because it was producing goods the world
wanted. But its workers were tabu in respectable society, and priestly hands
were held aloft in pretended horror whenever the name of Robert Owen, or
the word "Socialism," was used.
Owen refused to employ child labor, and issued a book directing the
attention of society to this deadly traffic in human beings. The parents, the
clergy and the other mill-owners combined against him, and he was
denounced by press and pulpit.
He began to look around for a better environment for an ideal community.
His gaze was turned toward America.

Robert Owen's plan for abolishing vice and poverty was simply to set the
people to work under ideal conditions, and then allow them time enough for
recreation and mental exercise, so that thrift might follow farming. In reply
to the argument that the workman should evolve his own standard of life,
independent of his employer, Owen said that the mill with its vast
aggregation of hands was an artificial condition. The invention, ingenuity
and enterprise that evolved the mill were exceptional. The operators for the
most part lacked this constructive genius, the proof of which lay in the very
fact that they were operators.
To take advantage of their limitations, disrupt their natural and accustomed
mode of life, and then throw the blame back upon them for not evolving a
new and better environment, was neither reasonable nor right.
The same constructive genius that built the mill and operated it should be
actively interested in the welfare of the people who worked in the mill.
To this end there should be an ideal village adjacent to every great mill.
This village should afford at least half an acre of ground for every family. In
the way of economy, one building should house a thousand people. It
should be built in the form of a parallelogram and contain co-operative
kitchens, dining-rooms, libraries, art-galleries and gymnasia. It should be,
in fact, a great University, not unlike the great collection of schools at
Oxford or Cambridge. All would be workers—all would be students.
The villages should be under the general supervision of the government, in
order to secure stability and permanency. If the mill management failed, the
government should continue the business, because even if the government
lost money in the venture, at times, this was better than always to be
building jails, prisons, insane asylums, almshouses and hospitals.
In sections where there were no mills or factories, the government would
construct both mills and villages, to the intent that idleness and ignorance
might be without excuse. To this end Owen would ask all landowners, or
holders of estates of a thousand acres or more, to set apart one-tenth of their
land for ideal villages and co-operative mills to be managed by the
government.

As proof that his plans were feasible, Owen pointed to New Lanark and
invited investigation.
Among others who answered the invitation was Henry Hase, cashier of the
Bank of England. Hase reported that New Lanark had the look of a place
that had taken a century to evolve, and in his mind the nation could not do
better than to follow the example of Owen. He then added, "If the clergy,
nobility and mill-owners will adopt the general scientific method proposed
by Mr. Owen for the abolition of poverty, ignorance and crime, it will be the
greatest step of progress ever seen in the history of the world."
In proposing that the clergy, nobility and mill-owners should unite for the
good of mankind, Mr. Hase was not guilty of subtle humor or ironical
suggestion. He was an honest and sincere man who had been exposed to the
contagious enthusiasm of Mr. Owen.
Owen was fifty-seven years of age, practical man that he was, before he
realized that the clergy, the nobility and the rich mill-owners had already
entered into an unconscious pact to let mankind go to Gehenna—just so
long as the honors, emoluments and dividends were preserved. That is to
say, the solicitation of the Church is not and never has been for the welfare
of the people; it is for the welfare of the Church for which churchmen fight.
All persecution turns on this point.
If the stability of the Church is threatened, the Churchmen awake and cry,
"To Arms!" In this respect the Church, the nobility and vested capital have
everything in common—they want perpetuity and security. They seek
safety. All of the big joint-stock companies had in their directorates
members of the nobility and the clergy. The bishops held vast estates—they
were Lords.
Robert Owen did not represent either the Church or the nobility. He was a
very exceptional and unique product; he was a workingman who had
become a philanthropic capitalist. He was a lover of humanity, filled with a
holy zeal to better the condition of the laborer.

The mills at New Lanark were making money, but the shareholders in
London were not satisfied with their dividends. They considered Owen's
plans for educating the workingman chimerical. In one respect they knew
that Owen was sane: he could take the raw stock and produce the quality of
goods that had a market value. He had trained up a valuable and skilled
force of foremen and workers. Things were prosperous and would be much
more so if Owen would only cease dreaming dreams and devote himself to
the commercial end of the game.
If he would not do this, then he must buy their stock or sell them a
controlling interest of his own.
He chose the latter.
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five, when he was fifty-five years old, he
sailed for America. He gave lectures in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and
Washington on his new order of economics. He was listened to with
profound attention. At Washington he was the guest of the President, and on
invitation addressed a joint session of the Senate and the House, setting
forth his arguments for Socialism.
The Moravians at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had founded their colony as
early as Seventeen Hundred Twenty. The Zoarites, the Economites, the
Separatists, the Shakers and the Rappites had been in existence and
maintained successful communities for a score of years.
Robert Owen visited these various colonies and saw that they were all
prosperous. There was neither sickness, vice, poverty, drunkenness nor
disease to be found among them. He became more and more convinced that
the demands of an advancing civilization would certainly be co-operative in
nature. Chance might unhorse the individual, but with a community the
element of chance was eliminated. He laid it down as a maxim, evolved
from his study, observation and experience, that the community that exists
for three years is a success. That no industrial community had ever endured
for three years, save as it was founded on a religious concept, was a fact
that he overlooked. Also, he failed to see that the second generation of
communists did not coalesce, and as a result that thirty-three years was the
age limit for even a successful community; and that, if it still survived, it
was because it was reorganized under a strong and dominant leadership.

Communists or Socialists are of two classes: those who wish to give and
those who wish to get. When fifty-one per cent of the people in a
community are filled with a desire to give, Socialism will be a success.
Perhaps the most successful social experiment in America was the Oneida
Community, but next to this was the Harmonyites, founded by George
Rapp. The Harmonyites founded Harmony, Indiana, in Eighteen Hundred
Fourteen. They moved from Pennsylvania and had been located at their
present site for eleven years. They owned thirty thousand acres of splendid
land at the junction of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers. They had built more
than a hundred houses, and had barns, stores, a church, a hall, a sawmill, a
hotel and a woolen-factory.
Now when Owen went to Pittsburgh, he floated down the Ohio to
Cincinnati and then on to Harmony. He was graciously received and was
delighted with all he saw and heard.
Owen saw the success of the woolen-mill, and declared that to bring cotton
up by steamboat from the South would be easy. He would found cotton-
mills, and here New Lanark should bloom again, only on an increased scale.
Would the Rappites sell?
Yes; they wanted to move back to Pennsylvania, where there were other
groups of similar faith.
Their place, they figured, was worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Owen made an offer of one hundred fifty thousand dollars, which to his
surprise was quietly accepted. It was a quick deal.
The Rappites moved out, and the Owenites moved in.
Just across the Ohio River they founded the town of Owensboro.
Then Owen went back to England and sent over about three hundred of his
people, including his own son, Robert Dale Owen.
Robert Owen had large interests in England, and New Harmony on the
banks of the Wabash was incidental. Robert Dale Owen was then twenty-
five years old. He was a philosopher, not an economist, and since the place
lacked a business head, dissensions arose. Let some one else tell how

quickly a community can evaporate when it lacks the cement of religious
oneness:
For the first few weeks, all entered into the new system with a
will. Service was the order of the day. Men who seldom or never
before labored with their hands devoted themselves to
agriculture and the mechanical arts with a zeal which was at
least commendable, though not always well directed. Ministers
of the gospel guided the plow and called swine to their corn
instead of sinners to repentance, and let patience have her
perfect work over an unruly yoke of oxen. Merchants exchanged
the yardstick for the rake or pitchfork; and all appeared to labor
cheerfully for the common weal. Among the women there was
even more apparent self-sacrifice. Those who had seldom seen
the inside of their own kitchens went into that of the common
eating-house (formerly a hotel) and made themselves useful
among pots and kettles. Refined young ladies who had been
waited upon all their lives took turns in waiting upon others at
the table. And several times a week all parties who chose,
mingled in the social dance in the great dining-hall.
But notwithstanding the apparent heartiness and cordiality of
this auspicious opening, it was in the social atmosphere of the
Community that the first cloud arose. Self-love was a spirit
which could not be exorcised. It whispered to the lowly
maidens, whose former position in society had cultivated the
spirit of meekness, "Thou art as good as the formerly rich and
fortunate; insist upon your equality." It reminded the former
favorites of society of their lost superiority, and despite all rules
tinctured their words and actions with "airs" and conceit. Similar
thoughts and feelings soon arose among the men; and though
not so soon exhibited they were none the less deep and strong.
Suffice it to say, that at the end of three months—three months!
—the leading minds in the Community were compelled to
acknowledge to one another that the social life of the
Community could not be bounded by a single circle. They
therefore acquiesced, though reluctantly, to its division into
many. But they still hoped, and many of them no doubt believed,

that though social equality was a failure, community of property
was not. Whether the law of mine and thine is natural or
incidental in human character, it soon began to develop its sway.
The industrious, the skilful and the strong saw the product of
their labor enjoyed by the indolent, the unskilled and the
improvident; and self-love rose against benevolence. A band of
musicians thought their brassy harmony was as necessary to the
common happiness as bread and meat, and declined to enter the
harvest-field or the workshop. A lecturer upon natural science
insisted upon talking while others worked. Mechanics, whose
single day's labor brought two dollars into the common stock,
insisted that they should in justice work only half as long as the
agriculturist, whose day's work brought but one.
Of course, for a while, these jealousies were concealed, but soon
they began to be expressed. It was useless to remind all parties
that the common labor of all ministered to the prosperity of the
Community. Individual happiness was the law of Nature and it
could not be obliterated. And before a single year had passed,
this law had scattered the members of that society which had
come together so earnestly and under such favorable
circumstances, and driven them back into the selfish world from
which they came.
The writer of this sketch has since heard the history of that
eventful year reviewed with honesty and earnestness by the best
men and most intelligent parties of that unfortunate social
experiment. They admitted the favorable circumstances which
surrounded its commencement; the intelligence, devotion and
earnestness which were brought to the cause by its projectors,
and its final total failure. And they rested ever after in the belief
that man, though disposed to philanthropy, is essentially selfish,
and a community of social equality and common property is an
impossibility.

The loss of two hundred thousand dollars did not dampen the ardor of
Robert Owen. He paid up the debts of New Harmony, had the property
surveyed and subdivided, and then deeded it to his children and immediate
relatives and a few of the "staunch friends who have such a lavish and
unwise faith in my wisdom"—to use his own expression.
To give work to the unemployed of England now became his immediate
solicitation. He was sixty years old when he inaugurated his first co-
operative store, which in fact is the parent of our modern Department-Store.
In this store he proposed to buy any useful article or product which any man
might make or produce, figuring on cost of the raw material and sixpence
an hour for labor. This labor was to be paid for in Labor Script, receivable
in payment for anything the man might want to buy. Here we get the Labor
Exchange. Owen proposed that the Government should set delinquent men
to work, instead of sending them to prison. Any man who would work, no
matter what he had done, should be made free. The Government would then
pay the man in Labor-Exchange Script. Of course, if the Government
guaranteed the script, it was real money; otherwise, it was wildcat money,
subject to fluctuation and depreciation. Very naturally, the Government
refused to guarantee this script, or to invest in the co-operative stores. To
make the script valuable, it had to be issued in the form of a note,
redeemable in gold at a certain time.
The stores were started, and many idle men found work in building mills
and starting various industries. Three years passed, and some of the script
became due. It was found to be largely held by saloonkeepers who had
accepted it at half-price. Efforts had been constantly made to hurt Owen's
standing and depreciate the market value of this currency.
The Labor Exchange that had issued the script was a corporation, and
Robert Owen was not individually liable, but he stepped into the breach and
paid every penny out of his own purse, saying, "No man shall ever say that
he lost money by following my plans."
Next he founded the co-operative village of Harmony or Queenswood. The
same general plan that he had followed at New Lanark was here carried out,
save that he endeavored to have the mill owned by the workers instead of
by outside capital.

Through his very able leadership, this new venture continued for ten years
and was indeed a school and a workshop. The workers had gardens,
flowers, books. There were debates, classes, and much intellectual exercise
that struck sparks from heads that were once punk. John Tyndall was one of
the teachers and also a worker in this mill. Let the fact stand out that Owen
discovered Tyndall—a great, divinely human nautilus—and sent him sailing
down the tides of Time.
At eighty years of age, Owen appeared before the House of Commons and
read a paper which he had spent a year in preparing, "The Abolition of
Poverty and Crime." He held the Government responsible for both, and said
that until the ruling class took up the reform idea and quit their policy of
palliation, society would wander in the wilderness. To gain the Promised
Land we must all move together in a government "of the people, by the
people and for the people." He was listened to with profound respect and a
vote of thanks tendered him; but his speech never reached the public printer.
Robert Dale Owen became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and
for several years was a member of Congress, and at the time of the death of
his father was our minister to Italy, having been appointed by President
Pierce.
He was in England at the time of the passing of Robert Owen, and
announced the fact to the family at New Harmony, Indiana, in the following
letter:
Newtown, Wales, November 17th, 1858.
It is all over. Our dear father passed away this morning, at a
quarter before seven, as quietly and gently as if he had been
falling asleep. There was not the least struggle, not the
contraction of a limb or a muscle, not an expression of pain on
his face. His breathing stopped so gradually that, even as I held
his hand, I could scarcely tell the moment when he no longer
lived. His last words, distinctly pronounced about twenty
minutes before his death, were: "Relief has come."

JAMES OLIVER
The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall
he beg in harvest.
—Proverbs xx: 4
You benefit yourself only as you benefit humanity.
—James Oliver

JAMES OLIVER
James Oliver was born in Roxburyshire, Scotland, August the Twenty-
eighth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-three. He died March the Second,
Nineteen Hundred Eight. He was the youngest of a brood of eight—six
boys and two girls.

He was "the last run of shad," to use the phrase of Theodore Parker, who
had a similar honor. Just why the youngest should eclipse the rest, as
occasionally happens, is explained by Doctor Tilden on the hypothesis that
a mother gives this last little surprise party an amount of love and
tenderness not vouchsafed the rest.
Let the philosophers philosophize—we deal with facts, not theories, and no
one will deny that James Oliver was a very potent, human and stubborn
fact. He was Scotch.
His father was a shepherd on a landed estate, where the noses of the sheep
grew sharp that they might feed between the stones. The family was very
poor, but poverty in the Old World grows into a habit, and so the Olivers
did not suffer. They huddled close for warmth in their little cottage and
were grateful for parritch and shelter.
In Eighteen Hundred Thirty, the oldest boy, John, filled with the spirit of
unrest, tied up all of his earthly goods in a red handkerchief and came to
America.
He found work at a dollar a day, and wrote glowing letters home of a
country where no one picked up fagots for fires, but where forests were
actually in the way. He also said he ate at his employer's table, and they had
meat three times a week. Of course he had meat three times a day, but he
didn't want to run the risk of being placed in the Ananias Club by telling the
truth.
A little later, Andrew and Jane, the next in point of age, came too, and
slipped at once into money-making jobs, piling up wealth at the rate of
three dollars a week.
When three of a brood have gone from the home nest, they pull hard on the
heartstrings of the mother. Women, at the last, have more courage than men
—when they have.
Partnerships are very seldom equal partnerships—one takes the lead. In this
case the gray mare was the better horse, and James Oliver got his initiative
from his mother.
"We are all going to America," the mother would say.

And then the worthy shepherd-man would give a hundred and fifty reasons
why it was impossible.
He had become pot-bound. Fear and inertia had him by the foot. He was too
old to try to do anything but care for sheep, he pleaded.
And persistently, as she knitted furiously, the mother would repeat, "We are
all going to America!"
Little Jamie was eleven years old. He was a swart and sandy little Scot,
with freckles, a full-moon face and a head of tousled hair that defied the
comb.
"We are all going to America," echoed Jamie—"we are going to America to
make our fortunes."
John, Andrew and Jane had sent back real money—they must have earned
it. All the debts were cleaned up, and the things they had borrowed were
returned. The mother took charge and sold all the little surplus belongings,
and the day came when they locked the door of the old stone cottage and
took the key to the landlord in his big house and left it.
They rode away in a kind neighbor's cart, bound for the sea-coast.
Everybody cried but Jamie. It was glorious to go away—such wonderful
things could be seen all along the route.
They took passage in a sailing-ship crowded with emigrants. It was a
stormy trip. Everybody was sick. Several died, and there were burials at
sea, when the plank was tilted and the body slid into the yeasty deep.
Jamie got into trouble once by asking how the dead man could ever be
found when it came Judgment-Day. And also the captain got after him with
a rope's end because he scrambled upon the quarter-deck when the mate
went aft. The disposition to take charge was even then germinating; and he
asked more questions than ten men could answer.
Once when the hatches were battened down, and the angry waves washed
the deck, and the elder Oliver prophesied that all were soon going to Davy
Jones' locker, Jamie reported that the sailors on deck were swearing, and all
took courage.

The storm blew over, as storms usually do, and the friendly shores of
America came in sight.
There were prayer-meetings on deck, and songs of thanksgiving were sung
as the ship tacked slowly up the Narrows.
Some of our ancestors landed at Jamestown, some at Plymouth Rock, and
some at Castle Garden. If the last named had less to boast of in way of
ancestry, they had fewer follies to explain away than either of the others.
They may have fallen on their knees, but they did not fall on the aborigines.
They were for the most part friendly, kind and full of the right spirit—the
spirit of helpfulness.
At Castle Garden, one man gave Jamie an orange and another man gave
him a kick. He never forgot either, and would undoubtedly have paid both
parties back, if he had met them in later life.
There was a trip to Albany on a steamboat, the first our friends had ever
seen. It burned wood, and stopped every few miles for fuel. They ate brown
bread and oatmeal, and at New York bought some smoked bear's meat and
venison. At Albany an Indian sold them sassafras for tea, also some dried
blackberries—it was a regular feast.
At Albany there was a wonderful invention, a railroad. The coaches ran up
the hill without horses or an engine, and the father explained that it wasn't a
miracle either. A long rope ran around a big wheel at the top of the hill, and
there was a car that ran down the hill as another one ran up.
The railroad extended to Schenectady—sixteen miles away—and the trip
was made in less than half a day if the weather was good. There they
transferred to a canal-boat. They had no money to pay for a stateroom, and
so camped on deck—it was lots of fun. Jamie then and there decided that
some day he would be the captain of a fast packet on a raging canal. His
fond hope was never realized.
After the cooped-up quarters on the ocean the smoothness and freedom of
the Erie Canal were heavenly. They saw birds and squirrels, and once
caught a glimpse of a wolf. At Montezuma they changed canal-boats,
because the craft they were on went through to Buffalo, and they wished to
go to Geneva, where John, Andrew and Jane were getting rich.

Two miles out of Geneva the boat slowed up, a plank was run out and all
went ashore. John worked for a farmer a mile away. They found him. And
in the dusty road another prayer-meeting was held when everybody kneeled
and thanked God that the long journey was ended. Paterfamilias had
predicted they would never arrive, but he was wrong.
The next day they saw Andrew and Jane, and tears of joy were rained down
everybody's back. Now for the first time they had plenty to eat—meat every
meal, potatoes, onions and corn on the ear. There is no corn in Scotland, and
Jamie thought that corn on the ear was merely a new way of cooking beans.
He cleaned off the cob and then sent the stick back to have it refilled.
America was a wonderful country, and Brother John had not really told half
the truth about it. Jamie got a job at fifty cents a week with board. Fifty
cents was a great deal more than half a dollar—I guess so! He would have
been paid more only the farmer said he was a greenhorn and couldn't speak
English. Jamie inwardly resented and denied both accusations, but kept
silent for fear he might lose his job. His only sorrow was that he could see
his mother only once a week. His chief care was as to what he should do
with his money.

In the Fall of Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six, there were several Scotch
families going from Geneva to the "Far West"—that is to say, Indiana. The
Oliver family was induced to go, too, because in Indiana the Government
was giving farms to any one who would live on them and hold them down.
They settled first in Lagrange County, and later moved to Mishawaka, Saint
Joseph County, where Andrew Oliver had taken up his abode. Mishawaka
was a thriving little city, made so largely by the fact that iron-ore—bog-iron
—was being found thereabouts. The town was on the Saint Joseph River,
right on the line of transportation, and boats were poled down and up, clear
to Lake Michigan. It was much easier and cheaper to pole a boat than to
drive a wagon through the woods and across the muddy prairies.
Mishawaka was going to be a great city—everybody said so.

There was a good log schoolhouse at Mishawaka, kept by a worthy man by
the name of Merrifield, who knew how to use the birch. Here James went to
school for just one Winter—that was his entire schooling, although he was a
student and a learner to the day of his death.
The elder Oliver fell sick of chills and fever. He sort of languished for the
hills of bonny Scotland. He could not adapt himself to pioneer life, and in
the Fall of Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven, he died. This was the end of a
school education for James—he had to go to work earning money. He
became the little father of the family, which James J. Hill says is the
luckiest thing that can happen to a boy. He hired out for six dollars a month,
and at the end of every month took five dollars home to his mother.
Jamie was fourteen, and could do a man's work at almost anything. "He has
a man's appetite at least," said the farmer's wife, for he took dinner with the
man he worked for. He soon proved he could do a man's work, too. This
man had a pole-boat on the river, and James was given a chance to try his
seamanship. He might have settled down for life as a poleman, but he saw
little chance for promotion, and he wanted to work at something that would
fit him for a better job. Then the worst about life on the river was that each
poleman was paid a portion of his wages in whisky, and the rivermen
seemed intent on drinking the stills dry. James had not only a strong desire
to be decent, but liked also to be with decent people.
Now, in Mishawaka there were some very fine folks—the family of Joseph
Doty, for instance. The Dotys lived in a two-story house and had a picket
fence. James had dug a ditch for Mr. Doty, and split out shingles for a roof
for the Doty barn. At such times he got his dinner at Doty's, for it was the
rule then that you always had to feed your help, no matter who they were,
just as you feed the threshers and harvesters and silo-men now.
About this time, James began to put bear's grease on his unruly shock of
yellow hair, and tried to part it and bring it down in a nice smooth pat on the
side. That's a sure sign!
The few who noticed the change said it was all on account of Susan Doty.
Once when Susan passed the johnnycake to James, he emptied the whole
plate in his lap, to his eternal shame and the joy of the whole town, which

soon heard of it through a talkative hired man who was present and laughed
uproariously—as hired men are apt to do.
James once heard Susan say that she didn't like rivermen, and that is
probably the reason James quit the river, but he didn't tell her so—not then
at least.
He got a job in the iron-mill and learned to smelt iron, and he became a
pretty good molder, too. Then the hard times came on, and the iron-mill
shut down. But there was a cooper's shop in town, and James was already
very handy with a drawshave in getting out staves. Most of the men worked
by the day, but he asked to work by the piece. They humored him, and he
made over two dollars a day.
Joseph Doty was a subscriber to "Gleason's Pictorial" and "Godey's Lady's
Book." They also had bound copies of "Poor Richard's Almanac" and "The
Spectator," with nearly forty other books. James Oliver read them all—with
Susan's help.
Then something terrible happened! The young folks suddenly discovered
that they were very much in love with each other. The Doty family saw it
too, and disapproved.
The Dotys were English, but as the family had been in America for a
century, that made a big difference.
Susan was the handsomest and smartest girl in town—everybody said so.
She seemed much older than James Oliver, but the fact was they were of the
same age. The Doty family objected to the match, but Doty the Elder one
day dropped a hint that if that young Oliver owned a house to take his wife
to, he might consider the matter.
The news reached Oliver. He knew of a man who wanted to sell his house,
as he was going to move to a town called Fort Dearborn—now known as
Chicago—which had recently been incorporated and had nearly a thousand
inhabitants. The house was a well-built cottage—not very large, but big
enough for two. It was a slab house, with a mud chimney and a nice floor of
pounded blue clay. It had two rooms, a cupboard across the corner, a loft to
store things in, and forty wooden pegs to hang things on.

Oliver offered the man eighteen dollars for the mansion, cash down. The
offer was accepted, the money paid and the receipt was duly shown to
Joseph Doty, Esquire.
And so James and Susan were married, on May Thirtieth, Eighteen
Hundred Forty-four, and all Mishawaka gave them a "shower." To say that
they lived happily ever afterward would be trite, but also it would be true.

James Oliver was thirty-two years old before he really struck his pace. He
had worked at the cooper's trade, at molding and at farming.
His eighteen-dollar house at Mishawaka had transformed itself into one
worth a thousand, fully paid for. The God's half-acre had become a quarter-
section.
His wife had beauty and competence—two things which do not always go
together. She was industrious, economical, intelligent and ambitious. She
was a helpmeet in all that the word implies. The man whose heart is at rest
is the only one who can win. Jealousy gnaws. Doubt disrupts. But love and
faith mean sanity, strength, usefulness and length of days. The man who
succeeds is the one who is helped by a good woman.
Two children had come to them. These were Joseph D. and Josephine.
Napoleon was always a hero to James Oliver—his courage, initiative and
welling sense of power, more than his actual deeds, were the attraction. The
Empress Josephine was a better woman than Napoleon was a man,
contended Susan. Susan was right and James acknowledged it, so the girl
baby was named Josephine. The boy was named Joseph, in honor of his
grandfather Doty, who had passed away, but who, before his passing, had
come to see that Nature was nearer right than he had been.
Children should exercise great care in the selection of their parents. Very,
very few children are ever dowered with a love that makes for strength of
head, hand and heart, as were these.
In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five, James Oliver was over at South Bend, a
town that had started up a few miles down the river from Mishawaka, and

accidentally met a man who wanted to sell his one-fourth interest in a
foundry. He would sell at absolutely inventory value. They made an
inventory and the one-fourth came to just eighty-eight dollars and ninety-
six cents. Oliver had a hundred dollars in his pocket, and paid the man at
once.
Cast-iron plows formed one item of this little foundry's work. Oliver, being
a farmer, knew plows—and he knew that there was not a good plow in the
world. Where others saw and accepted, he rebelled. He insisted that an
approximately perfect plow could be made. He realized that a good plow
should stay in the ground without wearing out the man at the handles.
The man who hasn't been jerked up astride of the plow-handles or been
flung into the furrow by a balky plow has never had his vocabulary tested.
Oliver had a theory that the plow should be as light in weight as was
consistent with endurance and good work, and that a moldboard should
scour, so as to turn the soil with a singing sound; then the share, or cutting
edge, must be made separate from the moldboard, so as to be easily and
cheaply replaced. A plow could be made that needn't be fought to keep it
furrow-wise.
Without tiring the reader with mechanical details, let the fact be stated that
after twelve years of experimenting—planning, dreaming, thinking,
working, striving, often perplexed, disappointed and ridiculed—James
Oliver perfected his Chilled Plow. He had a moldboard nearly as bright as a
diamond and about as hard, one that "sang" at its work. Instead of a dead
pull, "it sort of sails through the soil," a surprised farmer said. To be exact,
it reduced the draft on the team from twenty per cent to one-half, depending
upon the nature of the soil. It was the difference between pulling a low-
wheeled lumber-wagon and riding in a buggy.
From this on, the business grew slowly, steadily, surely. James Oliver
anticipated that other plow-wise Scot, Andrew Carnegie, who said, "Young
man, put all of your eggs in one basket and then watch the basket." On this
policy has the Oliver Chilled-Plow Works been built up and maintained,
until the plant now covers seventy-five acres, with a floor space of over
thirty acres and a capacity of more than half a million plows a year. The

enterprise supplies bread and butter to more than twenty thousand mouths,
and is without a serious rival in its chosen field.
If the horse tribe could speak, it would arise and whinny pæans to the name
of Oliver, joining in the chorus of farmers. For a moldboard that always
scours gives a peace to a farmer like unto that given to a prima donna by a
dress that fits in the back.

While James Oliver was not a distinctively religious man, yet many
passages of Scripture that he had learned at his mother's knee clung to him
through his long life and leaped easily to his tongue. One of his favorite and
oft-quoted verses was this from Isaiah, "And they shall beat their swords
into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
The Big Idea of chilled metal for the moldboard of a plow, probably had its
germ in the mind of James Oliver from this very passage of Scripture.
"When Cincinnatus left his plow in the field to go in defense of his country,
his excuse was the only one that could pardon such a breach," he once said.
Oliver hated war. His bent was for the peaceful arts; for that which would
give fruits and flowers and better homes for the people; for love, joy and all
that makes for the good of women and children and those who have lived
long. James Oliver loved old people and he loved children. He realized that
the awful burdens and woes of war fall on the innocent and the helpless.
And so the business of converting sword metal into plow metal made an
appeal to him. Being a metal-worker and knowing much of the history of
the metals, he knew of the "Toledo blade"—that secret and marvelous
invention with its tremendous strength, keen cutting edge and lightness. To
make a moldboard as finely tempered in its way as a "Toledo blade" was his
ambition.
He used to declare that the secret of the sword-makers of old Toledo in
Spain was his secret, too. Whether this was absolutely true is not for us to

question; perhaps a little egotism in a man of this character should be
allowable.
Cast-iron plows, as well as the steel plows of that date, were very heavy,
wore out rapidly—the metal being soft—and didn't "scour," except in the
purer sands and gravels. The share and moldboard quickly accumulated
soil, increased the "draft," forced the plow out of the ground, destroyed the
regularity of the furrows, killed the horses, and ruined the temper of the
farmer. Every few minutes the plowman had to scrape off the soil from the
moldboard with his boot-heel or stick or paddle.
When a local rival fitted out a plow with a leather pocket tacked on to his
plow-beam, and offered to give a paddle with every plow, James Oliver
laughed aloud. "I give no paddles, because I do not believe in them, either
for punishment or plow use—my plows and my children do not need
paddles," was his remark.
The one particular thing—the Big Idea—in the Oliver Plow was the chilled
moldboard. Chilling the iron, by having a compartment of water adjoining
the casting-clay, gives a temper to the metal that can be attained in no other
way. To produce a chilled moldboard was the one particular achievement of
James Oliver. Others had tried it, but the sudden cooling of the metal had
caused the moldboard to warp and lose its shape, and all good plowmen
know that a moldboard has to have a form as exact in its way as the back of
a violin, otherwise it simply pushes its way through the ground, gathering
soil and rubbish in front of it, until horses, lines, lash and cuss words drop
in despair, and give it up. The desirable and necessary thing was to preserve
the exact and delicate shape of the moldboard so that it would scour as
bright as a new silver dollar in any soil, rolling and tossing the dirt from it.
An Oliver moldboard has little checkerboard lines across it. These come
from marks in the mold, made to allow the gas to escape when the metal is
chilled, and thus all warping and twisting is prevented.
Morse, in inventing the telegraph-key, worked out his miracle of dot and
dash in a single night. The thought came to him that electricity flowed in a
continuous current, and that by breaking or intercepting this current, a flash
of light could be made or a lever moved. Then these breaks in the current

could stand for letters or words. It was a very simple proposition, so simple
that men marveled that no one had ever thought of it before.
Watt's discovery of the expansive power of steam was made in watching the
cover of his mother's teakettle vibrate.
Gutenberg's invention of printing from movable type, Arkwright with his
spinning-jenny, and Eli Whitney with his cotton-gin, worked on mechanical
principles that were very simple—after they were explained. Exactly so!
Oliver's invention was a simple one, but tremendously effective. When we
consider that one-half of our population is farmers, and that sixty per cent
of the annual wealth of the world is the production of men who follow the
fresh furrow, we see how mighty and far-reaching is an invention that
lightens labor, as this most efficient tool certainly does.
Accidentally, I found an interesting item on page two hundred seventy-six
of the Senate Report of the Forty-fifth Congress. Mr. Coffin, statistician,
was testifying as an expert on the value of patents to the people. Mr. Coffin
says, "My estimate is that for a single year, if all of the farmers in the
United States had used the Oliver Chilled Plows, instead of the regular steel
or iron plow, the saving in labor would have totaled the sum of forty-five
million dollars."
When the papers announced the passing of James Oliver some of them
stated that he was "probably the richest man in Indiana." This fact, of itself,
would not make him worthy of the world's special attention. There are two
things we want to know about a very rich man: First, how did he get his
wealth? Second, what is he doing with it? But the fact that wealth was not
the end or aim of this man, that riches came to him merely as an incident of
human service, and that his wealth was used in giving employment to a vast
army of workmen, makes the name of Oliver one that merits our
remembrance.
James Oliver worked for one thing and got another. We lose that for which
we clutch. The hot attempt to secure a thing sets in motion an opposition
which defeats us. All the beautiful rewards of life come by indirection, and
are the incidental results of simply doing our work up to our highest and
best. The striker, with a lust for more money and shorter hours, the party

who wears the face off the clock, and the man with a continual eye on the
pay-envelope, all have their reward—and it is mighty small. Nemesis with
her barrel-stave lies in wait for them around the corner. They get what is
coming to them.

The Oliver fortune is founded on reciprocity. James Oliver was a farmer—
in fact, it was the joke of his friends to say that he took as much pride in his
farming as in his manufacturing. Mr. Oliver considered himself a farmer,
and regarded every farmer as a brother or partner to himself. "I am a partner
of the farmer, and the farmer is a partner of Nature," he used to say. He
always looked forward to the time when he would go back to the farm and
earn his living by tilling the soil.
He studied the wants of the farmer, knew the value of good roads, of
fertilizers and drainage, and would argue long and vigorously as to the
saving in plowing with three horses instead of two, or on the use of mules
versus horses. He had positive views as to the value of Clydesdales
compared with Percherons.
So did he love the Clydes that for many years he drove a half-breed,
shaggy-legged and flat-tailed plow-horse to a buggy, and used to declare
that all a good Clyde really needed was patience in training to make him a
racehorse. He used to declare the horse he drove could trot very fast—"if I
would let him out." Unhappily he never let him out, but the suspicion was
that the speed-limit of the honest nag was about six miles an hour, with the
driver working his passage.
Ayrshire cattle always caught his eye, and he would stop farmers in the field
and interrogate them as to their success in cattle-breeding. When told that
his love for Ayrshire cattle was only a prejudice on account of his love for
Robert Burns, who was born at Ayr, he would say, "A mon's a mon for a'
that."
He declared that great men and great animals always came from the same
soil, and where you could produce good horses and cattle you could grow
great men.

Mr. Oliver loved trees, and liked to plant them himself and encouraged boys
to plant them.
For music he cared little, yet during the Seventies and the Eighties he had a
way of buying "Mason and Hamlin" organs, and sending them as Christmas
presents to some of his farmer friends where there were growing girls. "A
sewing-machine, a Mason and Hamlin organ, and an Oliver Plow form a
trinity of necessities for a farmer," he once said.
When Orange Judd first began to issue his "Rural American," the enterprise
received the hearty interest and support of Mr. Oliver and he subscribed for
hundreds of copies.
He thought that farmers should be the most intelligent, the most healthy and
the happiest people on earth—nothing was too good for a farmer. "Your
businessmen are only middlemen—the farmer digs his wealth out of the
ground," he used to say.
He quoted Brigham Young's advice to the Mormons: "Raise food-products
and feed the miners and you will all get rich. But if you mine for gold and
silver, a very few will get rich, and the most of you will die poor."

So there is the point: James Oliver was more interested in industrialism than
in finance. His interest in humanity arose out of his desire to benefit
humanity, and not for a wish to exploit it.
If that is not a great lesson for the young, as well as for the old, then write
me down as a soused gurnet.
The gentle art of four-flushing was absolutely beyond his ken. He was like
those South-Sea Islanders told of by Robert Louis Stevenson, who didn't
know enough to lie until after the missionaries came, when they partially
overcame the disability.
James Oliver didn't know enough to lie. He knew only one way to do
business, and that was the simple, frank, honest and direct way. The
shibboleth of that great New York politician, "Find your sucker, play your

sucker, land your sucker, and then beat it," would have been to him
hopeless Choctaw.
His ambition was to make a better plow than any other living man could
make, and then sell it at a price the farmer could afford to pay. His own
personal profit was a secondary matter. In fact, at board-meetings, when
ways and means were under discussion, he would break in and display a
moldboard, a colter or a new clevis, with a letter from Farmer John Johnson
of Jones' Crossroads, as to its efficiency. Then when the board did not wax
enthusiastic over his new toy, he would slide out and forget to come back.
His heart was set on making a better tool at less expense to the consumer,
than the world had ever seen. Thus would he lessen labor and increase
production. So besides great talent he had a unique simplicity, which often
supplied smiles for his friends.
James Oliver had a sort of warm feeling for every man who had ever held
the handles of an Oliver Plow—he regarded such a one as belonging to the
great family of Olivers. He believed that success depended upon supplying
a commodity that made the buyer a friend; and heaven, to him, was a vast
County Fair, largely attended by farmers, where exhibitions of plowing
were important items on the program. Streets paved with gold were no lure
for him.
In various ways he resembled William Morris, who, when asked what was
his greatest ambition, answered, "I hope to make a perfect blue," and the
dye on his hands attested his endeavors in this line.
Both were workingmen and delighted in the society of toilers. They lived
like poor men, and wore the garb of mechanics. Neither had any use for the
cards, curds and custards of what is called polite society. They hated
hypocrisy, sham, pretense, and scorned the soft, the warm, the pleasant, the
luxurious. They liked stormy weather, the sweep of the wind, the splash of
the rain and the creak of cordage. They gloried in difficulties, reveled in the
opposition of things, and smiled at the tug of inertia. In their natures was a
granitic outcrop that defied failure. It was the Anglo-Saxon, with a goodly
cross of the Norse, that gave them this disdain of danger, and made
levitation in their natures the supreme thing—not gravitation.

The stubbornness of the Scot is an inheritance from his Norse forebears,
who discovered America five hundred years before Columbus turned the
trick. These men were well called the "Wolves of the Sea." About the year
One Thousand, a troop of them sailed up the Seine in their rude but staunch
ships. The people on the shore, seeing these strange giants, their yellow hair
flying in the wind, called to them, "Where are you from, and who are your
masters?"
And the defiant answer rang back over the waters, "We are from the round
world, and we call no man master."
James Oliver called no man master. Yet with him, the violent had given way
to the psychic and mental. His battleground was the world of ideas. The
love of freedom he imbibed with his mother's milk. It was the thing that
prompted their leaving Scotland.
James Oliver had the defect of his qualities. He was essentially
Cromwellian. He too would have said, "Take away that bauble!" He did not
look outside of himself for help. Emerson's essay on "Self-Reliance" made
small impression upon him, because he had the thing of which Emerson
wrote. His strength came from within, not from without. And it was this
dominant note of self-reliance which made him seem indifferent to the
strong men of his own town and vicinity. It was not a contempt for strong
men: it was only the natural indifference of one who called no man master.
He was a big body himself, big in brain, big in initiative, big in self-
sufficiency.
He could do without men; and there lies the paradox—if you would have
friends you must be able to do without them.
James Oliver had a host of personal friends, and he also had a goodly list of
enemies, for a man of his temperament does not trim ship. He was a good
hater. He hugged his enemies to his heart with hoops of steel, and at times
they inspired him as soft and mawkish concession never could. And well
could he say, "A little more grape, Captain Bragg."
Also, "We love him for the enemies he made." He had a beautiful disdain
for society—society in its Smart-Set sense. He used to say, "In order to get

into heaven you have to be good and you have to be dead, but in order to
get into society you do not have to be either."
Exclusion and caste were abhorrent to him.
Oliver gave all, and doing so he won all in the way of fame and fortune that
the world has to offer. His was a full, free, happy and useful life.
Across the sky in letters of light I would write these words of James Oliver:
TO BENEFIT YOURSELF, YOU MUST BENEFIT HUMANITY.

Zangwill has written it down in fadeless ink that Scotland has produced
three bad things: Scotch humor, Scotch religion and Scotch whisky. James
Oliver had use for only one of the commodities just named—and that was
humor.
Through his cosmos ran a silver thread of quiet chuckle that added light to
his life and endeared him to thousands. Laughter is the solvent for most of
our ills! All of his own personal religion—and he had a deal of it—was
never saved up for Sunday; he used it in his business. But James Oliver was
a Scotchman, and this being so, the fires of his theological nature were
merely banked. When Death was at the door an hour before his passing, this
hardy son of heath and heather, of bog and fen and bleak North Wind,
roused himself from stupor, and in his deep, impressive voice, soon to be
stilled forever, startled the attendants with the stern order, "Let us pray!"
Then he repeated slowly the Lord's Prayer, and with the word "Amen" sank
back upon his pillow to arise no more.
For the occasional drunken workman, he had terms of pity and sentences of
scorn in alternation. At such times the Scotch bur would come to his lips,
and the blood of his ancestors would tangle his tongue. One of his clerks
once said to me, "As long as Mr. James talks United States, I am not
alarmed, but when he begins to roll it out with a bur on his tongue, as if his
mouth were full of hot mush, I am scared to death."

In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three, James Oliver spent several months at the
Chicago Exposition. He was one of the World's-Fair Commissioners.
Hundreds of people shook hands with him daily. He was a commanding
figure, with personality plus. No one ever asked him, any more than they
did old Doctor Johnson, "Sir, are you anybody in particular?" He was
somebody in particular, all over and all of the time.
That story about how the stevedores on the docks in Liverpool turned and
looked at Daniel Webster and said, "There goes the King of America," has
been related of James Oliver. He was a commanding figure, with the face
and front of a man in whom there was no parley. He was a good man to
agree with. In any emergency, even up to his eightieth year, he would have
at once taken charge of affairs by divine right. His voice was the voice of
command.
So there at Chicago he was always the center of an admiring group. He was
Exhibit A of the Oliver Plow Works Exhibition and yet he never realized it.
One day, when he was in a particularly happy mood, and the Scotch bur
was delightfully apparent, as it was when he was either very angry or very
happy, an elderly woman pushed her way through the throng and seizing the
hand that ruled the Oliver Plow Works in both of her own, said in ecstatic
tones: "Oh! it is such a joy to see you again. Twenty years ago I used to
hear you preach every Sunday!"
For once James Oliver was undone. He hesitated, stammered and then
exclaimed in flat contradiction, "Madam, you never heard me preach!"
"Why, aren't you Robert Collyer—the Reverend Robert Collyer?"
"Not I, madam. My name is Oliver, and I make plows," was the proud reply.
That night Oliver asked his trusted helper, Captain Nicar, this question: "I
say, Nicar, who is this man Collyer—that woman was the third person
within a week who mistook me for that preacher. I don't look like a
dominie, do I, Captain?"
And then Captain Nicar explained what Mr. Oliver had known, but which
had temporarily slipped his mind—that Robert Collyer was a very great

preacher, a Unitarian who had graduated out of orthodoxy, and who in his
youth had been a blacksmith.
"Why didn't he stay a blacksmith, if he was a good one, and let it go at
that?"
But this Nicar couldn't answer. However, the very next day Robert Collyer
came along, piloted by Marshall Field, and Oliver had an opportunity to put
the question to the man himself.
Robert Collyer was much impressed by Mr. Oliver, and Mr. Oliver declared
that Mr. Collyer was not to blame for his looks. And so they shook hands.
Collyer was at Chicago to attend the Parliament of Religions. This
department of the great Exposition had not before especially appealed to
Oliver—machinery was his bent. But now he forgot plows long enough to
go and hear Robert Collyer speak on "Why I Am a Unitarian."
After the address Mr. Oliver said to Mr. Collyer, "Almost thou persuadest
me to be a Unitarian."
"Had you taken to the pulpit, you would have made a great preacher, Mr.
Oliver," said Mr. Collyer. "And if you had stuck to your bellows and forge,
you might have been a great plow-maker," replied Mr. Oliver—"and it's
lucky for me you didn't."
"Which is no pleasantry," replied Mr. Collyer, "for if I had made plows I
should, like you, have made only the best."
The Oliver Exhibit at the great Fair was a kind of meeting-place for a group
of such choice spirits as Philip D. Armour, Sam Allerton, Clark E. Carr and
Joseph Medill; and then David Swing, Robert Collyer, Doctor Frank
Gunsaulus and 'Gene Field were added to the coterie. 'Gene Field's column
of "Sharps and Flats" used to get the benefit of the persiflage.
Collyer and Oliver were born the same year—Eighteen Hundred Twenty-
three. Both had the same magnificent health, the same high hope and
courage that never falters, and either would have succeeded in anything into
which he might have turned his energies.

Chance made Oliver a mechanic and an inventor. He evolved the industrial
side of his nature. Chance also lifted Collyer out of a blacksmith-shop and
tossed him into the pulpit.
Collyer was born in Yorkshire, but his ancestors were Scotch. Oliver's
mother's name was Irving, and the Irvings appear in the Collyer pedigree,
tracing to Edward Irving, that strong and earnest preacher who played such
a part in influencing Tammas the Titan, of Ecclefechan. Whether Oliver and
Collyer ever followed up their spiritual relationship to see whether it was a
blood-tie, I do not know: probably not, since both, like all superbly strong
men, have a beautiful indifference to climbing genealogical trees.
I once heard Robert Collyer speak in a sermon of James Oliver as "a
transplanted thistle evolved into a beautiful flower," and "the man of many
manly virtues."
Seemingly Mr. Collyer was unconscious of the fact that, in describing Mr.
Oliver, he was picturing himself. Industry, economy, the love of fresh air,
the enjoyment of the early morning, the hatred of laziness, shiftlessness,
sharp practise and all that savors of graft, grab and get-by-any-means—
these characteristics were strong in both. And surely Robert Collyer was
right: if the world ever produces a race of noble men, that race will be
founded on the simple virtues, upon which there is neither caveat nor
copyright—the virtues possessed by James Oliver in such a rare degree.

George H. Daniels, of the New York Central Railroad, and James Oliver
were close personal friends. Both were graduates of the University of Hard
Knocks; both loved their Alma Mater.
When Daniels printed that literary trifle, "A Message to Garcia," he sent
five thousand copies to Oliver, who gave one to every man in his factory.
Daniels was one of the Illini, and had held the handles of an Oliver Plow.
He had seen the great business of the Olivers at South Bend evolve. Oliver
admired Daniels, as he did any man who could do big things in a big way.
Daniels had an exhibition of locomotives and passenger-cars at the Chicago

Exposition, and personally spent much time there. Among the very
interesting items in the New York Central's exhibit was the locomotive that
once ran from Albany to Schenectady, when that streak of scrap-iron rust,
sixteen miles long, constituted the whole of the New York Central Railroad;
and this locomotive, the "De Witt Clinton," had been the entire motor
equipment, save two good mules used for switching purposes.
It was during the Exposition that Oliver incidentally told Daniels about how
he had been mistaken for the Reverend Robert Collyer.
"I can sympathize with you," said Daniels; "for the plague of my life is a
preacher who looks like me. Only last week I was stopped on the street by a
man who wanted me to go to his house and perform a marriage-ceremony."
"And you punched his ticket?" asked Oliver.
"No, I accepted, and sent for the sky-pilot to do the job, and the happy
couple never knew of the break."
The man who so closely resembled Daniels was the Reverend Doctor
Thomas R. Slicer of Buffalo, an eminent clergyman now in New York City.
Besides other points of resemblance, the one thing that marked them as
twins was a beautiful red chin-whisker, about the color of an Irish setter.
Once Daniels challenged the reverend gentleman to toss up to see who
should sacrifice the lilacs. Doctor Slicer got tails, but lost his nerve before
he reached the barber's, and so still clings to his beauty-mark.
Doctor Slicer was once going through the Grand Central Station when he
was approached by a man who struck him for a pass to Niagara Falls.
"I regret," said the preacher, "that I can not issue you a pass to Niagara
Falls; all I can do is to give you a pass to Paradise."
"Which," said Mr. Oliver, when Mr. Daniels told him the story, "which was
only a preacher's way of telling the man to go to hades. You and I, George,
express ourselves much more simply."

It will not do to make James Oliver out a religious man in a sectarian sense.
He did, however, have a great abiding faith in the Supreme Intelligence in
which we are bathed and of which we are a part. He saw the wisdom and
goodness of the Creator on every hand. He loved Nature—the birds in the
hedgerows and the flowers in the field. He gloried in the sunrise, and
probably saw the sun rise more times than any other man in Indiana.
"The morning is full of perfume," he used to say. And so it is, but most of us
need to be so informed.
He believed most of all in his own mission and in his own divinity.
Therefore he prized good health, and looked upon sickness and sick people
with a touch of scorn. He reverenced the laws of health as God's laws, and
so he would not put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains. He
used no tobacco, was wedded to the daily cold bath, and was a regular
amphibian for splashing. He had a system of calisthenics which he followed
as religiously as the Mohammedan prays to the East. The pasteboard
proclivity was not one of his accomplishments.
But a few months before his death he was missed one day at the works. His
son thought he would drive out to his farm and see if he were there. He was
there all right, and had just one hundred twenty-seven men, by actual count,
digging a ditch and laying out a road.
James Oliver wasn't a man given to explanations, apologies or excuses. His
working motto usually was that of the Reverend Doctor Jowett of Baliol,
"Never explain, never apologize—get the thing done, and let them howl!"
But on this occasion, anticipating a gentle reproach from his son for his
extravagance, he said: "All right, Joe, all right. You see I've been
postponing this tarnashun job for twenty years, and I thought I'd just take
hold and clean it up, because I knew you never would!"
He was let off with a warning, but Joseph had to go behind the barn and
laugh.
One thing that was as much gratification to Mr. Oliver as making the road
was the sense of motion, action, bustle and doing things. He delighted in
looking after a rush job, and often took charge of "the boys" personally.

For the men who made the plows, his regard was as great as for those who
used them. He moved among the men as one of them, and while his
discipline never relaxed, he was always approachable and ready to advise
even with the most lowly. His sense of justice and his consideration are
shown in the fact that in all the long years that the Oliver Plow Works
existed, it has never once been defendant in a lawsuit in its home county,
damage or otherwise.
Thousands of men have been employed and accidents have occasionally
happened, but the unfortunate man and his family have always been cared
for. Indeed, the Olivers carry a pension-roll for the benefit of widows,
orphans and old people, the extent of which is known only to the
confidential cashier. They do not proclaim their charities with a brass band.
James Oliver thought that a man should live so as to be useful all of his
days. Getting old was to him a bad habit. He did not believe in retiring from
business, either to have a good time or because you were old and bughouse.
"Use your faculties and you will keep them," he used to repeat again and
again. He agreed with Herbert Spencer that men have softening of the brain
because they have failed to use that organ.
And certainly he proved his theories, for he, himself, was sane and sensible
to the day of his death. Yet when certain of his helpers, bowed beneath the
weight of years and life's vicissitudes, would become weak and needful of
care, he would say, "Well, old John has done us good work, and we must
look after him." And he did.
He would have denied that he was either charitable or philanthropic; but the
fact was that the Golden Rule was a part of his business policy, and beneath
his brusk outside, there beat a very warm and generous heart.
When the financial panic of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three struck the
country, and dealers were canceling their orders and everybody was
shortening sail, the Olivers kept right along manufacturing, and stored their
product.
Never have they laid off labor on account of hard times. Never have they
even shortened hours or pay. This is a record, I believe, equaled by no big
manufacturing concern in America.

In October, Nineteen Hundred Seven, when workmen were being laid off
on every hand, the Olivers simply started in and increased their area for the
storage of surplus product. They had faith that the tide would turn, and this
faith was founded on the experience of forty years and more in business.
Said James Oliver, "Man's first business was to till the soil; his last business
will be to till the soil; I help the farmer to do his work, and for my product
there will always be a demand."

James Oliver had no fear of death. He had an abiding faith that the Power
that cared for him here would never desert him there. He looked upon death
as being as natural as life and probably just as good. For the quibbles of
theology he had small patience. "Live right here—wait, and we shall know,"
he used to say.
When his wife died, in Nineteen Hundred Two, he bore the blow like a
Spartan. Fifty-eight years had they journeyed together. She was a woman of
great good sense, and a very handsome woman, even in her old age. Her
husband had always depended on her, telling her his plans and thus
clarifying them in his own mind. They were companions, friends, chums,
lovers—man and wife. After her death he redoubled his activities, and
fought valiantly to keep from depressing the household with the grief that
was gnawing at his heart.
A year passed, and one day he said to his son, "Joe, I do miss your mother
awfully—but then, I'll not have to endure this loneliness forever!"
And this was as near a sign of weakness as he ever showed.
James Oliver was a successful man, but it was not always smooth sailing. In
the early days, the Plow Plant caught fire at night and was absolutely
consumed. Returning home at three o'clock in the morning, exhausted, and
with clothing wet and frozen in a sheet of ice, this man, sorely kicked by an
unkind Fate, turned a chair over on the floor before the fireplace, and
reclining on it there with eyes closed, endeavored to forget the trying scenes
of the night.

Mrs. Oliver had made coffee and prepared a simple breakfast for the tired
man. But rest was never for her or her family when there was pressing work
demanding attention. "James, why are you wasting time? Drink this coffee,
put on these dry clothes and go at once before daylight and order lumber
and brick so the men can begin at seven o'clock to rebuild. We have orders
to fill!" And the man arousing himself obeyed the command. At seven
o'clock the lumber was on the ground and the men were at work preparing
to rebuild.
James Oliver was a man of courage, but his patience, persistency and
unfaltering faith were largely the reflection of his wife's soul and brain.
When seventy years of age, a neighbor once dropped in for a little visit, and
in conversation referred to Mr. Oliver's being a rich man.
"Yes," said this kindly old Spartan, "yes, they say I am rich, but if I didn't
have a dollar, I would still be rich—with a wife like that!" and he pointed to
his partner of nearly half a century.
Mrs. Oliver smiled and said chidingly, "Now, James!"
But he continued, "I say, mother, if we did not have a dollar, we could still
earn our living with our hands at just plain hard work, couldn't we?"
And the old lady (who really was never old) replied, "Yes, James, we could
still earn our living with our hands, and we would not be miserable over it,
either." Near the close of his wonderful career, Pericles said, "I have caused
no one to wear crape." The Honorable Marvin Campbell, in a speech at
South Bend, once quoted this remark of the man who built the City of
Athens and added, "Not only can we pay James Oliver the compliment of
saying that he never caused any one to wear crape, but no one ever lost
money by investing in either his goods or his enterprises, and moreover no
one ever associated with him who did not prosper and grow wiser and better
through the association."
A few weeks before his passing, some one told him this little story of
Tolstoy's: A priest, seeing a peasant plowing, approached him and said, "If
you knew you were to die tonight, how would you spend the rest of the
day?"
And the peasant promptly answered, "I would plow."

It seems the priest thought the man would answer, "In confession," or "In
prayer," or "At church." The priest heard the answer in surprise. He thought
a moment, and then replied, "My friend, you have given the wisest answer a
man can possibly make, for to plow is to pray, since the prayer of honest
labor is always answered."
The story impressed Mr. Oliver. He told it to several people, and then made
a personal application of it, thus, "If I knew I were to die tonight, I would
make plows today."

STEPHEN GIRARD
I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my sheet-anchor. I
work that I may forget, and forgetting, I am happy.
—Stephen
Girard

STEPHEN GIRARD
When we make a census of the sensible, and count the competent, we can
not leave out the name of William Penn. He was the founder of the City of
Philadelphia, and of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and gave
name and fame to both.
In this respect of being founded by an individual, Philadelphia, the City of
Brotherly Love, and the State of Pennsylvania, are unique and peculiar in

all the annals of American history.
Yet Philadelphia has no monument to Penn, save the hazy figure of a
dumpy nobody surmounted by an enormous hat, all lost in the incense of
commerce upon the topmost pinnacle of the City Hall.
If Philadelphia has been sky-piloted by her orthodox Witherspoons and
Albertsons, by her Converses and Conwells, and if they have taught her to
love her enemies and then hold balances true by hating her friends, let Clio
so record, for history is no longer a lie agreed upon. In her magnificent park
and in her public squares Philadelphia has done honor in bronze and marble
to Columbus, Humboldt, Schubert, Goethe, Schiller, Garibaldi and Joan of
Arc. But "Mad Anthony Wayne," and that fearless fighting youth, Decatur,
are absolutely forgotten. Doctor Benjamin Rush, patriot, the near and dear
friend of Franklin, and the man who welcomed Thomas Paine to
Pennsylvania and gave him a desk where he might ply his pen and write the
pamphlet, "Common Sense," sleeps in an unknown grave. You will look in
vain for effigies of Edgar Allan Poe, who was once a Philadelphia editor; of
Edwin Forrest, who, lionlike, trod her boards; of Rittenhouse, mapping the
stars; of Doctor Kane, facing Arctic ice and Northern night; of Doctor
Evans, who filed and filled the teeth of royalty and made dentists popular;
of Bartram, Gross, or Leidy. Fulton lived here, yet only the searcher in
dusty, musty tomes knows it.
Benjamin West, who founded England's Academy of Painting, is honored in
Westminster Abbey; but Harrisburg, too busy in her great game of grab and
graft, knows not his name. Robert Morris, who was rewarded for his life of
patriotic service by two years in a debtors' jail, is still in a cell, the key of
which is lost—and Sully, Peale, Taylor, Walter and Fitch mingle their dust
with his.
Yet all this might be forgiven on the plea that where so many names of the
strong and powerful bid for recognition, a good way to avoid jealousies, is
to ignore them all. So speaks proud and pious Philadelphia—snug, smug,
prosperous, priggish and pedantic Philadelphia. But how about these five
supremely great names—William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine,
Stephen Girard and Walt Whitman!

Oh! ye Friends, innocent of friendship, will ye forever try to smother these
by your silence, simply because they failed to do theological goose-step on
your order, as your bum-beadles marked time with their staves?
Oh! ye cities and nations, cherish, I pray you, the names of your heroes in
business, art, finance and poetry, for only by them and through them shall
the future know you. Have a care, ye cities! for the treatment that ye accord
to these, living, and to their memories, dead, is but the telltale record of
your own heart and brain!

Benjamin Franklin founded the Philadelphia Public Library, the
Philadelphia Hospital, the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum and the University
of Pennsylvania.
Franklin was also much interested in good roads, the building of canals—
steam-railroads were then, of course, a dream unguessed.
Girard got his philanthropic impetus from Franklin. Girard had watched the
progress of the University of Pennsylvania, and he had become convinced
that it fell short of doing the good it might do. It shot too high.
Franklin had a beautiful contempt for Harvard. He called it a social
promotion plan, and thereby got the lasting enmity of John Adams and his
son, John Quincy Adams, and also of John Hancock.
Franklin had hoped to make the University of Pennsylvania a different
school. But after his death it followed in exactly the Harvard lines. It fitted
prosperous youth for the professions, but it left the orphan and the outcast
to struggle with the demons of darkness, discarded and forgotten. Girard
founded his college with the idea of helping the helpless. Thomas Jefferson,
also, had impressed Girard greatly. Girard once made a trip to Monticello;
and he spent two days at the University of Virginia. This was really
remarkable, for time with Girard was a very precious commodity.
Thomas Jefferson was the man who introduced classic architecture into
America. All of those great white pillars that front the mansions of Virginia,
and in fact of the whole South, had their germ in the brain of Jefferson, who

reveled in all that was Greek. Jefferson was a composite of Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle, and if Socrates was not the first Jeffersonian Democrat, then
who was?
Socrates dwelt on the rights and virtues of the "demos"—the Common
People. Jefferson uses the expression again and again, and was the one man
to popularize the word "Democrat." When Jefferson, wearing his suit of
butternut homespun, rode horseback up to the Washington Capitol and tied
his horse and walked over to the office of the Chief Justice and took the
oath of office as President of the United States his action was essentially
Socratic.
Girard got his ideals both of architecture and of education from Jefferson.
Girard was too busy to do much original investigating, for he was a very
rich man—so he did the next best thing, and the thing that all wise, busy
men do: he picked a few authors and banked on them.
Girard loved Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. And
one reason why he was drawn to them was because they all spoke French,
and he had a high regard for the French people. Franklin and Jefferson were
each sent on various important diplomatic missions to France. Paine was a
member of the French Assembly, and Girard never ceased to regret that
Paine was saved from the guillotine by that happy accident of the death-
messenger chalking the inside of his cell-door instead of the outside. "If
they had only cut off his head, he then would have been recorded in
American schoolbooks as the Honorable Thomas Paine, assistant savior of
his country, instead of being execrated as Tom Paine, the infidel," said
Girard.
In the time of Girard, the names of Franklin, Jefferson and Paine were
reviled, renounced and denounced by good society; and it was in defending
these men that Girard brought down upon himself the contumely that
endures—in attenuation, at least—even unto this day.
Let these facts stand: Franklin taught Girard the philosophy of business and
fixed in his mind the philanthropic bias.
Jefferson taught Girard the excellence of the "demos," and at the same time
gave him an unforgetable glimpse of Greek architecture.

Paine taught Girard the iniquity and folly of a dogmatic religion: the
religion that was so sure it was right, and so certain that all others were
wrong, that it would, if it could, force humanity at point of the sword to
accept its standards.
Franklin and Paine were citizens of Philadelphia, and Jefferson spent many
months there. The pavements that had echoed to their tread were daily
pressed by the feet of Girard. Their thoughts were his. And when pestilence
settled on the city like a shadow, and death had marked the doorposts of
more than half the homes in the city with the sign of silence, Girard did not
absolve himself by drawing a check and sending it to a committee by mail.
Not he! He asked himself, "What would Franklin have done under these
conditions?" And he answered the question by going to the pesthouse, doing
for the stricken, the dying and the dead what the pitying Christ would have
done had He been on earth.
Girard believed in humanity; he believed in men as did Franklin, Jefferson
and Paine, and as did that other great citizen of Philadelphia who, too, was
willing to give his life in the hospitals that men might live—Walt Whitman.
No one ever called Walt Whitman a financier. Some have said that Stephen
Girard was nothing else. In any event, Girard and Whitman, between them,
hold averages true. And they both believed in and loved humanity. And here
is a fact: when we make up the composite man—the perfect man—taking
our human material from American history, we can not omit from our
formula Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Stephen
Girard and Walt Whitman.

Stephen Girard was born at Bordeaux, France, in Seventeen Hundred Fifty.
He died at Philadelphia in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-one.
Immediately after his death there was printed a book which purported to be
his biography. It was the work of a bank-clerk who had been discharged by
Girard. This man had been close enough to his employer to lend plausibility
to much that he had to say, and as the author called himself Girard's private
secretary, people with prejudices plus pointed to the printed page as

authority. The volume served to fill the popular demand for pishmince. It
was written with exactly the same intent that Cheetham, who wrote his
"Life of Thomas Paine," brought to bear. The desire was to damn the
subject for all time. Besides that, it was a great business stroke—calumny
was made to pay dividends. To libel the dead is not, in the eyes of the law, a
crime.
No such book as this "Life of Girard" could ever have been circulated about
a living man. "Once upon a time an ass kicked a lion, but the lion was
dead."
Yet this libelous production was reprinted as late as Eighteen Hundred
Ninety. Cheetham's book was quoted as an authority on Thomas Paine until
the year Nineteen Hundred, when Moncure D. Conway's exhaustive "Life"
made the pious prevaricators absurd.
From being a bitter "infidel," a hater of humanity, grossly ignorant and
wholly indifferent to the decencies, we now view Girard as a lonely and
pathetic figure, living out his long life in untiring industry, always honest,
direct, frank, handicapped by physical defects, wistful in his longing for
love, helpless to express what he felt, with a heart that went out to children
in a great welling desire to give them what Fate had withheld from him.
Stephen Girard's parents were lowly and obscure people. They were
Catholics. His father was a sailor and fisherman. Fear, hate, superstition,
ignorance, ruled the household. When the father had money it went for
strong drink, or to the priest. Probably it would have been as well if the
priest had gotten it all. The mother went out as servant and worked by the
day for her more fortunate neighbors. The children cared for one another, if
the word "care" can be used to express a condition of neglect and
indifference.
It might be pleasant to show, if possible, that the mother of Stephen Girard
had certain tender, womanly qualities, but the fact is that no such qualities
were ever manifested. If there was ever any soft sentiment in her character,
the fond father of his flock had kicked it out of her. That she was usually
able to hold her own in fair fight was the one redeeming memory that the
son held concerning her.

Stephen was the eldest of the brood. He attended the parochial school and
learned to read. His playmates called him by a French term meaning
"Twisted." He was eight years of age before he realized that the names his
mother called him by, were of contempt and not of endearment—"Wall-
Eye" and "Mud-Sucker"—literally the vocabulary of a fishwife. Then he
knew for the first time that his eyes were not like those of other children—
that one eye had a bluish cast in it and turned inward. That night he cried
himself to sleep thinking over his dire misfortune.
At school when he read he closed one eye, and this made the children
laugh. So much did their taunts prey upon him that he ran away from school
to escape their gibes.
One of the Friars Gray caught him; whipped him before the whole school;
put a dunce-cap on his head, and stood him on a high chair. Then his
humiliation seemed complete. He prayed for death. At home when he tried
to tell his mother about his trouble she laughed, and boxed his ears for
being a "cry-baby brat."
Back in this boy's ancestry, somewhere, there must have been a stream of
gentle blood. He was a song-bird in a cuckoo's nest. When the military band
played, his spirit was so moved that he shed tears. But when his mother
died, and her body was placed in a new board coffin made by a neighbor
who worked in the shipyard, he admired the coffin, but could not cry even
when the priest pinched him and called him hard-hearted. He could not cry,
even with his twisted eye. His mother, as a lovable being, had gone out of
his life, even before she died. He could only think what a beautiful coffin
she had and what a great man it was who made it. And this man who made
the coffin gave him a penny—perhaps because the boy so appreciated his
handiwork.
Stephen, unconsciously, won him on the side of art.
It's a terrible thing to kill love in the heart of a child. That popular belief
that we are "born in sin and conceived in iniquity," Girard once said was
true in his case, at least.
Yet so wondrous are the works of God, the hate and brutality visited upon
their child went into the making of his strong and self-reliant character. He

never said, "My mother's religion is good enough for me." He despised her
religion, and that of the Friars Gray who punished boys to make them good.
His mind turned inward—he became silent, secretive, self-centered, and his
repulsive exterior served him well as a tough husk to hide his finer
emotions.
In a few months—or was it a few weeks—after his mother's death, the
father married again. The stepmother was no improvement on the mother.
She had lofty ideas of discipline and being "minded." No doubt that little
Stephen, crooked in eyes, crooked in body, short and swart, with brown,
bare legs, was stubborn and wilful. He looked the part all right. His brown,
bare legs were a temptation for the stepmother's willow switch. He decided
to relieve everybody of the temptation to switch his legs by running away to
sea and taking his brown, bare legs with him. There was a ship at the docks
about to sail for the West Indies. He could secrete himself among the bales
and barrels, and once the ship was out of port he would come out and take
chances on being accepted as cabin-boy. They could do no more than throw
him overboard, anyway!
He told his little sisters of his intention. They cried, but he didn't. He hadn't
cried since he was eight years old, and his cheerful biographer says he
never shed a tear afterward, and I guess that is so.
At two o'clock in the morning, he whispered good-by to his little sleeping
sisters. He did not kiss them—he never kissed anybody in his whole life, his
biographer says, and I guess that may be so, too. He stole downstairs and
out into the moonlight. The dock was only a quarter of a mile away. The
ship was to sail at daylight, on the turn of the tide. There was much
commotion going on around the boat, battening down hatches and doing the
last few necessary things before braving the reeling deep.
Little Stephen was watching his chance to get aboard. He was going as a
stowaway. A man came up to him. It was the captain, and before the lad
could escape the man said, "Here, I want a cabin-boy—will you go?"
The boy thanked God that it was night, so the captain could not see his
crooked eye, and gasped, "Yes—yes!"

The cook was making coffee in the galley for the stevedores, who had just
finished loading the ship. The captain took the boy by the hand and leading
him up the plank to the galley told the cook to give him a cup of coffee and
a biscuit.
The ship pushed off and hoisted sail just at daylight, on the turn of the tide.
The tide, too, had turned for Stephen Girard.

A very little observation will show that physical defects, when backed up by
mental worth, transform themselves into "beauty-spots." To be sure, no one
was ever so bold as to speak of Girard's blemishes as beauty-spots, but the
fact is that his homely face and ungraceful body were strong factors in
making him a favorite of fortune. Handsome is that handsome does.
Disadvantages are often advantages—they serve as stimulus and bring out
the best.
Young Girard had long arms and short legs, and could climb fast and high.
And he could see more with his one eye than most men could with two. He
expected no favor on account of his family or his good looks, and so made
himself necessary to the captain of the craft as a matter of self-preservation.
Not all sea-captains are brutal, nor do all sailors talk in a hoarse guttural,
shift their quids, hitch their trousers, and preface their remarks with, "Shiver
my timbers."
That first captain with whom Stephen Girard sailed was young—twenty-
six, a mere youth, with a first mate twice his years. He was mild-mannered,
gentle-voiced and owned a copy of Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary."
His name is lost to us; even the name of his ship has foundered in the fog;
but that he was young, gentle, and read Voltaire, are facts recorded in the
crooked and twisted handwriting of Stephen Girard, facts which even his
blackguard biographer admitted.
The new cabin-boy was astonished that one so young could be captain of a
ship; he was also astonished that a person who gave orders in a gentle voice
could have them executed. Later, he learned that the men whose orders are

always obeyed do not talk loudly nor in guttural. This first boyish captain
taught Girard a splendid lesson—to moderate both manner and voice and be
effective.
Of that first voyage, about all we know is that the boy slept on a pile of
gunny-sacks; that the captain let him read from the "Philosophical
Dictionary"; that he polished the bright work until it served as a mirror; that
the captain smiled his approval, and that the boy, short and swart, with
bullet head, followed him with one eye and worshiped him as deity.
Men do not succeed by chance. Chance may toss you into a position of
power, but if you do not possess capacity, you can never hold the place.
Young Girard gravitated from the position of cabin-boy to clerk.
From this to mate came by easy stages, and so much as a matter of course
that it isn't worth while to mention how.
By the law of France no man under twenty-five could be captain of a ship,
but when Girard was twenty-two we find a shipowner falsifying the record
and putting the boy down as twenty-five, on the obliging oath of the boy's
father, who we hope was duly paid for his pains.
At twenty-four, Captain Stephen Girard sailed his sloop, "L'Amiable
Louise," around Sandy Hook and up New York Bay. Ship-captains then
were merchants, with power to sell, trade and buy.
The venture was a success, and young Girard took the liberty of picking up
a cargo and sailing for New Orleans—his knowledge of French being a
valuable asset for that particular destination.
Matters were prosperous, and Girard was twenty-six, just the age of that
heroic captain under whose care he first set sail, and the age of the Corsican
when he conquered Italy.
Girard had ceased to wonder about boys braving waves and going upon the
stormy sea in ships.
It was in July, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six,—call it July Fourth—that
Captain Stephen Girard was skirting the coast of the Atlantic, feeling his

way through a fog toward New York. He was not sure of his course and was
sailing by dead-reckoning.
Suddenly the fog lifted. The sun stood out, a great golden ball in the sky.
The young captain swung his glass along the horizon and with his one good
eye saw a sail—it was bearing down upon him.
It was coming closer.
In an hour it was a mile away. He realized that he was the objective point.
It was a British cruiser, and he realized that he was to be forced upon the
beach or captured.
Girard was not a praying man, but he prayed now for a friendly cove or bay,
or the mouth of a river. The fog rolled away to the west, the shore-line
showed sharp and clear—and there a half-mile away was the inviting mouth
of Chesapeake Bay. At least Girard thought it was, but it proved to be the
mouth of the Delaware. Girard crowded on all sail—the cruiser did the
same.
Night settled down.
Before morning Girard's little craft was safe under the frowning forts of the
Delaware, and the cruiser had turned back seeking fresh prey.

On one of his trips to the West Indies, the ship of which Stephen Girard was
mate stopped at the Isle of Martinique.
The captain and mate went ashore, and were invited to dine at the house of
a merchant and planter up on the hillside overlooking the sea. The sugar
with which the ship was loaded belonged to this planter, hence the
courtesies to the seafaring men. Of that seemingly uneventful day one
incident stood out in the mind of Girard to the day of his death. It seems the
merchant and planter had a niece who lived in his household. This girl sat at
the table next to Girard. She was only a child, about twelve years of age.
But women mature young in that climate, and her presence caused the little

first mate to lose all appetite. However, nothing worse happened than the
spilling of a dish of soup in his lap when the girl tried to pass the plate to
him, which was surely more polite than to spill it in hers.
After dinner the young lady accompanied the party to the wharf. Going
down the hill she talked a good deal, but Girard could only say it was a fine
day and looked as if there was going to be a storm.
The girl was tall, angular and strong. She climbed the rigging to the
lookout, and then was scolded by her uncle, who was really proud of her
and chuckled at her performance. Her features were rather coarse, but her
lustrous eyes and bubbling vitality caused the one sound peeper of Girard to
follow her in awe and reverence.
She came into the cabin and looked at his books; this pleased Girard. He
asked her if she could read, and she loftily wrote her name for him, thus:
Marie Josephine Rose Tascher de la Pagerie. She handed him the slip of
paper and remarked, "You could never remember my name, so I write it out
for you like this."
In a few minutes the order was given, "All ashore who are going ashore!"
Girard kept that slip of paper, and a few years afterward, in a generous
mood, sent the girl a present of a blue shawl. She wrote in
acknowledgment, and incidentally said she was soon to sail for France "to
get an education."
Girard was surprised that any woman would want an education, and still
more amazed at the probability that she could acquire one. In fact, when the
girl had written her name for him, he kept the slip of paper more as a
curiosity than anything else—it was the handwriting of a woman! Girard
never received but that one letter from the young lady, but from his
shipping agent in Martinique word came that Marie Josephine Rose had
married, when sixteen, the Vicomte Beauharnais. Some years after, Girard
heard from the same source that she was a widow.
Later, he learned she had married a Corsican by the name of Napoleon
Bonaparte.

Girard used to say that he did not come to Philadelphia of his own accord,
but having been sent there by Providence, he made the best of it.
War was on, and all American ports were blockaded. How long this war
would last, no one knew. Girard's sympathies were with the Colonies, and
the cause of liberty was strong in his heart. He was glad that France—his La
Belle France—had loaned us money wherewith to fight England. Yet all his
instincts were opposed to violence, and the pomps of army life for him had
no lure.
He unloaded his ship, put the craft at safe anchorage and settled down,
trying to be patient. He could have sold his cargo outright, but he had a
head for business—prices were rising, and he had time—he had all the time
there was. He rented a store on Water Street and opened up at retail. It was
the best way to kill time until the war closed.
The rogue biographer has told us that Girard's ship was loaded with
"niggers," and that these were sold by the mercenary captain and the money
pocketed by himself, "all being fair in love and war."
This tale of business buccaneering has long been exploded, but it is a fact
that the cargo was used by Girard as his first capital. He used the money
wisely and well, and repaid the other owners—one-third being his own
property—with interest.
When the war was over, it was expected that Captain Girard would again
take to the deck and manage his craft. But this was not to be. That there was
a goodly dash of sentiment in his nature is shown in that, after ten years, he
bought the boat and would have kept her for life, had she not been wrecked
on the Florida Reefs and her bones given to the barracuda.
In front of Girard's little store on Water Street there was a pump, patronized
by the neighbors.
Girard had been there about three months. He was lonely, cooped up there
on land, sighing for the open sea. Every day he would row across to his ship
and look her over, sweeping the deck, tarring the ropes, greasing the chains,
calculating how soon she could be made ready for sea, should news of
peace come.

The weeks dragged slowly away.
Girard sat on a box and watched the neighbors who came to the pump for
water. Occasionally there would toddle a child with jug or pail, and then the
crooked little storekeeper would come forward and work the pump-handle.
Among others came Pollie Lumm—plump, pretty, pink and sixteen.
Girard pumped for her, too.
He got into the habit of pumping for her. If he was busy, she would wait.
Pollie Lumm was a sort of cousin to Sallie Lunn. Neither had intellect to
speak of. Pollie had the cosmic urge, that is all, and the marooned sea-
captain had in him a little—just a little—of the salt of the sea.
Fate is a trickster. Her game is based upon false pretenses—she should be
forbidden the mails.
She sacrifices individuals by the thousand, for the good of the race. All she
cares for is to perpetuate the kind.
Poor sailorman, innocent of petticoats, caught in the esoteric web, pumping
water for Pollie Lumm—Pollie Lumm—plump, pert, pink and pretty.
And so they were married.
Their wedding-journey was in a scow, across to the bridegroom's ship,
riding at anchor, her cordage creaking in the rising breeze.
Pollie Lumm, the bride of a day, was frightened there alone with a one-eyed
man, when the rats went scurrying through the hold. She wasn't pink now;
her color had turned to ashy yellow and her heart to ashes of roses. Girard
could face the wind of the North, but a crying woman on a ship at anchor,
whose rusty chains groaned to the dismal screech of tugging cordage, undid
him. A lesser man—a devil-may-care fellow—could have met the issue.
Girard, practical, sensible, silent, was no mate for prettiness, plump and
pink. He should have wedded a widow, who could have passed him a
prehensile hawser and taken his soul in tow.
The bride and groom rowed back, bedraggled, to the room over the store.

Pollie could not cook—she could not figure—she could not keep store—she
could not read the "Philosophical Dictionary"—nor could she even listen
while her husband read, without nodding her sleepy head. No baby came to
rescue her from the shoals, and by responsibility and care win her safely
back to sanity.
Poor Pollie Lumm Girard!
Poor Silly Sailorman!
Venus played a trick on you—didn't she, and on herself, too, the jade!
Pollie became stout—enormously stout—the pearl-like pink of her cheek
now looked like burnt sienna, mixed with chrome yellow. She used to sit all
day in front of the store, looking at the pump.
She ceased to hear the pump; she did not even hear its creak, which she
once thought musical.
Her husband sent for a doctor. "Chronic dementia," the doctor diagnosed it.
She was sent to an asylum, and there she lived for thirty-eight years.
Religiously, once a month, her husband went to visit her, but her brain was
melted and her dull, dead eyes gave no sign. She was only a derelict,
waiting for death.

The first six years that Girard was in Philadelphia he made little headway.
But he did not lose courage. He knew that the war must end sometime, and
that when it did, there would be a great revival of business.
When others were beaten out and ready to give up, and prices were down,
he bought. Merchant ships were practically useless, and so were for sale. He
bought one brand-new boat and named it "The Water-Witch," for this was
the name he had for Pollie Lumm when she used to come with her jug to his
pump.

As soon as the war closed and peace was declared, Girard loaded his two
ships with grain and cotton and dispatched them to Bordeaux.
They were back in five months, having sold their cargoes, bringing silks,
wines and tea. These were at once sold at a profit of nearly a hundred
thousand dollars.
The ships were quickly loaded again. The captains were ordered to go to
Bordeaux, sell their cargoes and load with fruit and wine for Saint
Petersburg. There they were to sell their cargoes and buy hemp and iron,
and sail for Amsterdam. At Amsterdam they were to buy drygoods and sail
for Calcutta.
There they were to sell out and with the proceeds buy silks, teas and coffees
and make for America. These trips took a year to make, but proved
immensely profitable.
Girard now bought more ships, and very properly named the first one
"Voltaire" and the next "Rousseau."
By Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five, he owned twenty-two ships and was
worth more than a million dollars. In fact, he was the first man in America
to have a million dollars in paying property at his disposal.
After he was thirty he was called "Old Girard." He centered on business,
and his life was as regular as a town clock. He lived over his warehouse on
Water Street and opened the doors in the morning himself. He was regarded
as cold and selfish.
He talked little, but he had a way of listening and making calculations while
others were arguing. Suddenly, he would reach a conclusion and make his
decision. When this was done, that was all there was about it. The folks
with whom he traded grew to respect his judgment and knew better than to
rob him of his time by haggling. His business judgment was remarkably
good, but not unerring. Yet he never cried over lacteal fluid on the ground.
When one of his captains came in and reported a loss of ten thousand
dollars through having been robbed by pirates, Girard made him a present
of a hundred to enable him to get his nerve back, and told him he should be
thankful that he got off with his life.

He loaded the ship up again, and in a year the man came back with a cargo
that netted twenty-five thousand dollars. Girard gave him a silver watch
worth twenty dollars and chided him for having been gone so long.
Then Girard made a pot of tea for both, on the little stove in the office back
of his bank, for the millionaire always prided himself on being a cook.
His brother Jean had now come to join him. Jean was also a ship-captain.
Stephen bought a third ship and called it "The Two Brothers," in loving
token of the ownership.
When his brother Jean proved to be a bad businessman, although a good
sailor, Stephen presented him his own half-interest in the ship, and told him
to go off and make his fortune alone. Jean sailed away, mortgaged his boat
to get capital to trade upon, lost money and eventually lost the boat. When
he wanted to come back and work for his brother, Stephen sent him a check,
but declined to take him back. "The way to help your poor relatives is to
remit them. When you go partners with them everybody loses."
Girard was a man of courage—moral, financial and physical. When his
ship, the "Montesquieu," arrived at the mouth of the Delaware on March
Twenty-sixth, Eighteen Hundred Thirteen, she was headed off and captured
by an English gunboat. Word was sent to Girard that he could have his boat
by bringing an inventory of the craft and cargo and paying over British gold
to the amount. He went down the bay in a small boat, met the enemy on a
frank business basis, paid over one hundred eighty thousand dollars in
English guineas, and came sailing back to his own calm satisfaction, even if
to the embarrassment of the crew. The boat was loaded with tea, and Girard
was essentially a tea-merchant. He knew his market and sold the
"Montesquieu's" cargo for just five hundred thousand dollars.
When yellow fever came like a blight to the city, and the grass grew in the
streets, Girard gave bountifully to relieve the distress of the people. But a
panic of fear was upon them. They forgot how to live and began to pray.
Preachers proclaimed that the Day of Judgment was at hand. Whole
families died and left no one to look after their affairs.
Every night, wagons went through the streets and the hoarse cry was heard:
"Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!"

Then the old millionaire showed the heroic side of his nature. He organized
a hospital at Bush Hill, and took personal charge of it. Every office that
could be done for the sick and dying, he did. With his own carriage he
would go to houses, and lifting the stricken ones in his arms, carry them out
and transport them to a place where they could have attention.
As the spirits of others sank, his soared. To the men who walked in the
middle of the street with a sponge to their noses, he would call in banter. He
laughed, danced and sang at the pesthouse—things he was never known to
do before. "Fear is the only devil," he wrote on a big board and put it up on
Chestnut Street. He would often call at fifty houses a day, carrying food and
medicine, but best of all, good-cheer. "If death catches me, he'll find me
busy," he used to say.
He showed the same courage when the financial panic was on in Eighteen
Hundred Ten. At this time every one was hoarding and business was
paralyzed. Girard had one million dollars to his credit with Baring Brothers
in London. He drew out the whole sum and invested it in shares of the
United States Bank. This bold move inspired confidence and broke the back
of the panic.
In Eighteen Hundred Eleven, when the charter of the United States Bank
had expired, and Congress foolishly declined to renew it, Girard bought the
whole outfit—or all there was left of it—and established "The Bank of
Stephen Girard," with a capital of one million two hundred thousand
dollars.
When near the close of the war the Government was trying to float a loan of
five million dollars, only twenty thousand was taken. "The Colonies are
going back to the Mother Country," the croakers said. If so, all public debts
would be repudiated.
Girard stepped forward and took the entire loan, although it was really more
than his entire fortune.
The effect was magical. If Old Girard was not afraid, the people were not,
and the money began to come out of the stockings and ginger-jars.
Girard believed in America and in her future. "I want to live so as to see the
United States supreme in liberty, justice and education," he used to say.

He loved pets and children, and if he was cold it was only to grown-ups.
On each of his ships he placed a big Newfoundland dog—"to keep the
sailors company," he said. The wise ones said it was because a dog was
cheaper than a watchman. Anyway, he loved dogs, and in his yellow gig, or
under it, was always a big, shaggy dog. He drove a slow-going, big, fat
horse, and used to say that if times got hard he at least had a horse that
could plow. During the last twenty years of his life he used to make daily
trips to his farm, where Girard College now stands, and work there like a
laborer with his trees and flowers. If he did not love Venus, he certainly did
Ceres and Pomona. "If I knew I should die tomorrow, I would plant a tree
today," he once wrote.

By his will Girard left many benefactions for the betterment of humanity.
His bequests to the City of Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania were
these: To the Philadelphia Hospital, thirty thousand dollars; to the
Pennsylvania Institute for the Deaf, twenty thousand dollars; to the
Philadelphia Orphan Asylum, ten thousand dollars; to the Philadelphia
Public Schools, ten thousand dollars; to the City of Philadelphia for the
distribution of fuel among the poor, ten thousand dollars; to the Masonic
Loan Association, twenty thousand dollars; to the City of Philadelphia for
the improvement of its streets and public squares, five hundred thousand
dollars; to the Philadelphia Public Library, forty thousand dollars; for the
improvement of canals in the State of Pennsylvania, three hundred thousand
dollars; and greatest of all, two million dollars for the founding of Girard
College. Besides this was a residue of the estate which went also to Girard
College, the total value of which endowment has increased until it is now
more than sixteen million dollars.
At the time of the death of Girard his bequests to public institutions had
never been equaled by individual philanthropies in the history of the world.
And since then, I believe, only two men have given as much for the cause
of education.

However, it so happened that no public statue nor material acknowledgment
of Girard's great gifts to Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania was
made—except at his own expense—until the year Eighteen Hundred
Ninety-seven, when a bronze statue of this great businessman and
philanthropist was erected on the north plaza of the City Hall. This statue
has no special setting and is merely one of a dozen decorative objects that
surround the square.
That particular clause in Girard's will which provided that no clergyman,
preacher or priest should ever be allowed to act as trustee for the school, or
ever be allowed to enter the school, is still respected, outwardly at least.
The gatekeeper challenges you thus: "Are you a clergyman?" And those
who fail to say flatly, "No," are not allowed to enter.
Horace Greeley once approached the gate at Girard College wearing his
usual little white necktie, his spectacles and his beatific, innocent smile.
"You can't enter," said the grim Saint Peter.
"Why not?" was the astonished reply.
"You are a clergyman!"
"The hell I am!" said Horace.
"Excuse me—walk right in," said Saint Peter.
The heirs tried to break the will, basing their argument on that item
concerning clergymen.
The Supreme Court upheld the will, finding nothing derogatory in it to the
Christian religion or public policy.
Girard did not say, "Christian clergymen"—he was opposed to all formal
religions.
Girard had very positive ideas on the subject of education, and he was the
first man in America to put manual training to a practical test as a part of
the school curriculum.

At Girard College there are now constantly more than two thousand boys,
who have a home and school advantages. There are certain grave dangers
about institutional homes for children, in that there is a strong tendency to
kill individuality. But certain it is that Girard College has ever labored, and
in a great degree succeeded, in minimizing this tendency. It is the proud
boast that any boy who is graduated at Girard is able to take care of himself
—he can do things that the world wants done and is willing to pay for.
The boys are graduated at eighteen, which is the age that most students who
go to universities enter. But Girard boys, almost without exception, go right
into practical business, and Philadelphia merchants are not slow to hire
them. Girard College has a long honor-roll of noble men who have
succeeded beyond the average, helping themselves by adding to the wealth
and happiness of the world.
Great was the mariner and merchant who made these things possible!

MAYER A. ROTHSCHILD

It takes a great deal of boldness, mixed with a vast deal of
caution, to acquire a great fortune; but then it takes ten times as
much wit to keep it after you have got it as it took to make it.
—Mayer A.
Rothschild

MAYER A. ROTHSCHILD
That the Jews are a joyous people and find much sweet solace in their
sorrowful religion is proven by one fact too obvious to be overlooked—they
reproduce.
Children are born of love and joy. The sorrows of Jewry are more apparent
than real. After every Black Fast, when the congregations used to sit
shoeless on the stone floors of the synagogues, weeping and wailing on
account of the destruction of Jerusalem, the youngsters, and the grown-ups
as well, were counting the hours before the Feast of Pentecost would begin.

The sorrow over the loss of things destroyed a thousand years or so ago is
reduced by the lapse of years to rather a pleasant emotional exercise.
Fasts were followed by feasts, also pro and con, as Mrs. Malaprop would
say; so that in the home of an orthodox Jewish family there was always
something doing. Fasts, feasts, flowers, sweetmeats, lights, candles, little
journeys, visits, calls, dances, prayers, responses, wails, cries of exultation,
shouts of triumph—"Rejoicing of the Law"—these prevented monotony,
stagnation and introspection.
And these are the things which have pressed their influences upon the Jew
until the fume and reek of the Ghetto, the bubble and squeak of the rabble,
and the babble of bazaars are more acceptable to him than the breeze
blowing across silent mesa and prairie, or the low, moaning lullaby of
lonely pine-forests.
The Jew is no hermit—if anything is going on, he is literally and poetically
in it.
The sense of separation is hell. If continued it becomes insanity. The sense
of separation is a thing that seldom presses upon the Jew, and this is why
insanity passes him by and seeks a Christian as a victim. The Jew has an
animating purpose that is a saving salt, even if this purpose is not always an
ideal one. His family, friends, clan, tribe, are close about him.
Zangwill, himself a child of the Ghetto, comes to the rescue of the despised
and misunderstood Christian, and expresses a doubt as to whether the
Ghetto was not devised by Jews in order to keep Christians at a safe and
discreet distance.
For certain it is that the wall which shut the Jews in, shut the Christians out.
The contempt of the Christian for the Jew is fully reciprocated. One-sided
hate does not endure any more than does a one-sided love.
The first Ghetto was at Venice. It came into being during the Italian
Renaissance, say about Fourteen Hundred Fifty. The Jews had settled in one
corner of the city, as they always have done, and are still prone to do. They
had their own shops, stores, bazaars, booths, schools and synagogues. There
they were packed, busied with their own affairs, jostling, quibbling,
arguing, praying, taking no interest in the social life outside. Jehovah led

them out of captivity in order that He might make them slaves to Himself.
He surely was a jealous God!
Of course, they traded with Christians, bought, sold, ran, walked with them,
but did not dine with Christians nor pray with them. There were Jewish
architects, painters, printers, lawyers, doctors, bankers, and many of the
richest and most practical men in Venice were Jews.
They made money out of the Christians, and no doubt helped the Christians
to make money, for, as I have said, things not founded on reciprocity do not
last long.
One fact that looks like corroborating proof of Zangwill's pleasantry is that
upon one of the Ghetto gates was a marble slab, warning all Jews that if any
of them turned Christian he would never be allowed again to live in the
Ghetto, nor would he be saluted or spoken to if he returned, nor so much as
be given a cup of water, but that the cord, scourge, gallows, prison and
pillory should be his portion.
It was a curse almost like that cheerful one visited upon Spinoza, the lens-
maker, when he forsook the synagogue and took up his home with the
Mennonites.
Children born and brought up in the Ghetto always felt a certain pity for
those who were obliged to live beyond the gates, in the great, selfish,
grasping, wicked world. Those inside the Ghetto were the Chosen People of
God; those outside were the Children of the Devil.
No matter who built the wall, it is a fact that the Government of Venice,
which was Christian and under the immediate jurisdiction of the Church,
kept guards at the gates and allowed no Jew to leave after a certain early
hour of the evening, nor on Sundays or holidays, or when the Emperor
visited the city. The only exception to this was on Holy Cross Day, which
occurred once a year. On this day all adult Jews were ordered out and
marched by the soldiers to some Christian Church, where they were
compelled to listen to the service and repeat the Apostles' Creed. Robert
Browning says that they were rounded up all right, but when it came to
saying the Creed they twiddled their thumbs and said Ben Ezra's Prayer. It

is also quite probable that they crossed their fingers, for the Jews are a
stubborn sort, given to contumacy and contravention.
On all other days, any Jew who went out into the city had to wear a big
yellow O on his breast, and a yellow hat on his head. The Jewish women
wore the O and also a veil across which were yellow stripes.
These chromatic signs were changed a few times in the course of the three
hundred years that the Ghetto existed, and so were the hours in which the
Jews were allowed to come and go, but five o'clock in the evening and
seven in the morning were the regular closing and opening times. The
watchmen at the gates and the guards who rowed round and round in their
barcas were paid out of a special tax collected from the Jews. It was argued
that it was all a sort of beneficent police protection, devised by kindly
persons who loved their enemies, and did good to those who despitefully
used them.
The man who can not make a good argument for the Ghetto lacks
imagination.
Gibbon, who was a deist or monotheist and really liked the Jews, intimates
that it was lucky for the Christians that Constantine didn't embrace Judaism
instead of Christianity, for, if he had, the Jews would have treated the
Christians exactly as the Christians have since treated the Jews. Of course,
nobody claims that Christianity is the religion of Christ—it is the religious
rule of pagan Rome, with the Jewish Christ as a convenient label. Just why
Christians should worship a Jew, and pray to a Jewess, and yet despise
Jews, is a matter so subtle that it has never been explained. Gibbon in this
connection says at least one irrefutable thing, and that is, that the Jewish
people are men and women. Christians are men and women, also. All are
human beings, and it is quite likely that the race is not to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong, but time and chance happeneth to them all.
I am not sure that Gibbon is right when he says that the Christians were
lucky in that Constantine did not turn Jew. To be persecuted is not wholly a
calamity, but to persecute is to do that for which Nature affords no
compensation. The persecutor dies, but the persecuted lives on forever.

The struggle for existence which the Jew has had to make is the thing that
has differentiated him and made him strong. Those first Christians—
Primitive Christians—who lived from the time of Paul to that of
Constantine, were a simple, direct, sincere and honest people—opinionated
no doubt, and obstinately dogmatic, but with virtues that can never be
omitted nor waived. They were economical, industrious and filled with the
spirit of brotherhood, and they possessed a fine pride concerning their
humility, as most ascetics do. Humility is a form of energy. It is simply
going after the thing by another route, and deceiving yourself as to the
motive.
The Primitive Christians had every characteristic that distinguished the Jew
of the Middle Ages—those characteristics which invite persecution and wax
strong under it.
Poverty and persecution seem necessary factors in fixing upon a people a
distinctive and peculiar religion. Persecution and poverty have no power to
stamp out a religion—all they do is to stain it deeper into the hearts of its
votaries. Centuries of starvation and repression deepened the religious
impulses of the Irish, and it has ever been the same with the Jews.
If the Jew is criticized in America, it is on account of that buttinski
bumptiousness upon which he has no monopoly, but which goes with the
newly-made rich of any nationality who have little to recommend them
beyond the walletoski.
There are no poor Jews natives of America, and it is worth while noting that
our richest citizens are not Jews, either. American-born Jews have enough.
The poverty-stricken Jews in this country come from Russia, Bulgaria and
Roumania; and their children will have money to loan, if not to incinerate,
because they possess the virtues that beckon all good things in their
direction.
America is the true Judaic Zion. Here there are nearly two million Jews, and
their religion is fast taking the form of a healthful Roycroftism.
The downfall of primitive Christianity dates from the day Constantine
embraced it, and thereby made it popular. Prosperity is a form of
disintegration—a ripening of the fruit. Things succeed only that they may

wither. The business of every great religion is to die, and thus fertilize
others. The Jew has survived every foe save success. Civilization is now
adopting him, and Liberal Judaism is fast becoming a Universal Religion,
taught in fact, if not in name, by priests, preachers and muftis of all
denominations. The end of the Jew is near—he has ceased to be peculiar.

Wolfgang Goethe was born in the city of Frankfort in Seventeen Hundred
Forty-nine. Goethe gives us a very vivid description of Frankfort as he
remembered it in his childhood days. He describes it as a town within a
town, a fortress within a fortress. Then he tells us of a walled enclosure in
this walled city, which was to him a very terrible place—it was the Ghetto,
or Jews' Quarter. Through it ran the Judengasse, or street of the Jews. It was
a place packed with human beings—houses, hallways, alleys, sidewalks and
porches swarming with children. Goethe tells how he at times would peep
through the iron gates of the Ghetto, but as a child he never ventured in.
The children told one another how human sacrifices were offered in the
synagogues, and as proof, pictures of Abraham and Isaac were brought forth
—that proved the point. There were plenty of men in the Ghetto who looked
exactly like Abraham—goodness gracious! In this Ghetto at Frankfort was
born, in Seventeen Hundred Forty-three, Mayer Anselm, afterward Mayer
Anselm Rothschild. When Goethe took his peep into the Ghetto, this lad
was about twelve years old—Goethe was six. Forty years later these men
were to meet, and meet as equals. The father of Mayer Anselm was Anselm
Moses. He could not boast a surname, for Jews, not being legal citizens,
simply aliens, had no use for family-names. If they occasionally took them
on, the reigning duke might deprive them of the luxury at any time, without
anesthetics.
If a man had two names, say, "Anselm Moses," it meant that his name was
Anselm and that he was the son of Moses. Mayer Anselm was the son of
Anselm. Rothschild means "Red Shield," and this was the distinguishing
sign on the house. All the people in that house were "Red Shields." The
house was seven stories high, and at one time a hundred people lived in it.

Later, when the name became popular, all of the people in that house called
themselves "Rothschilds." In Goethe's time, there were just one hundred
sixty houses in the Frankfort Ghetto, and these were occupied by two
thousand three hundred Jews.
Goethe says that the practise of walling the Jews in was to facilitate taxation
—the Jews being honored by an assessment quite double that which
Christians paid. At one time any Jew who paid two hundred fifty florins
was exempt from wearing a yellow hat and the yellow O on his breast.
Many private houses, everywhere, have walls around them, and the plan of
dividing different nationalities from each other, by setting apart a certain
section of the town for each, was a matter of natural selection, everywhere
practised. Mayer Anselm grew up with never a thought that he belonged to
a "peculiar people," nor did the idea of persecution ever trouble him. The
only peculiar people are those who do not act and think as we do. Who are
peculiar? Oh, the others, the others, the others.
There was a big family for Anselm Moses to look after. All were hearty and
healthy. The Mosaic Law says nothing about ventilation, but outside of this
little lapse it is based on a very commonsense plan of hygiene.
One thing which adds greatly to the physical endowment of Jewish
children, and almost makes up to the child of the Ghetto for the lack of
woods and fields, is that he is not launched on the sea of life with a limited
supply of love. Jewish children do not refer to their father as "the Gov'ner,"
and elderly women as "Salem Witches," because the Jews as a people
recognize the rights of the child.
And the first right of a child is the right to be loved.
In the average Christian household, until a very few years ago, the child
grew up with the feeling constantly pressed upon him that he was a usurper
and an interloper. Such questions as, "Where would you get anything to eat
if I did not provide it?" were everywhere flying at the heads of lisping
babyhood. The words "must" and "shall" were often heard, and that
obedience was a privilege and not a duty was nowhere taught. All parents
quoted Solomon as to the beauties of the rod; and that all children were

perverse, obstinate and stiff-necked was assumed to be a fact. To break the
will of a child was a very essential thing to do.
The lack of the spirit of brotherhood that the Jew has encountered from the
outside world has found a balance in an increased expression of love within
his family. That most atrocious English plan of taking the child from his
parents at a tender age and placing him in a boarding-school managed by
holluschickies has never been adopted by the Jews.
Fear, repression and shock to vibrating nerves through threats, injunctions
and beatings have fixed in the Christian races a whole round of "children's
diseases," which in our ignorance we attribute to "the will of God."
Let this fact be stated, that old folks who are sent over the hill to the
poorhouse have invited their fate. And conversely, elderly people who are
treated with courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect are those who, in
manhood's morning, have sown the seeds of love and kindness. Water rises
to the height of its source; results follow causes; chickens come home to
roost; action and reaction are equal; forces set in motion continue
indefinitely in one direction. The laws of love are as exact as the laws of the
tides that moan and cry and beat upon the shores, the round world over. A
family of ten children born and reared in a noisome Ghetto, and all strong
and healthy? Impossible, you say, yet such is the fact, and not a rare
exception either. Happiness is the great prophylactic, and nothing is so
sanitary as love, even though it be flavored with garlic.

The father of Mayer Anselm was a traveling merchant—call him a pedler, a
Jewish pedler, and have done with it. He made trips outside of the Ghetto,
and used to come back with interesting tales of adventure that he would
relate to the household and neighbors who would drop in.
Not many Jews ventured outside of the Ghetto—to do so was to invite
insult, robbery and violence. However, to get out is to grow. This man
traded safety for experience and so got out and grew. He evidently knew
how to take care of himself. He was courageous, courteous, intelligent,

diplomatic. He made money. And always he wore the yellow hat and the
yellow patch upon his breast.
In the "Red Shield" there was usually at least one Rabbi. One of the sons of
Anselm Moses must be a Rabbi. The parents of little Mayer Anselm set him
apart for the synagogue—he was so clever at reciting prayers and so glib
with responses. Then he had an eczema for management, and took charge of
all the games when the children played Hebrew I-Spy through the hallways
and dark corners of the big, rambling and mysterious "Red Shield."
Little Mayer must have been nine years old when his father first took him
along on one of his trips. It was a wonderful event—they were gone three
days, and when they returned the boy entertained the whole Judengasse
with tales, slightly hand-illumined, about the wonderful things they had
seen.
One thing he learned, and that was that Christians were not the drunken,
fighting, treacherous and bloodthirsty people he had supposed—at least,
they were not all bad. Not once were they insulted or molested.
They had called at the great house or castle of the Landgrave to sell
handkerchiefs, combs and beads to the servants, and accidentally they had
met the Landlord, himself. He it was who owned the "Red Shield." The
agent of the Landgrave came every month to collect the rent from
everybody. That word "Landgrave" simply meant "Landlord," a term still
used even in America, where there are, of course, no Lords, only "ramrods."
The Landgrave had invited Anselm Moses into his library to see his
wonderful collection of coins, and Mayer Anselm, of course, slipped in, too.
To describe the wonders of that house would take a book as big as the Torah
—I think so!
The Landgrave had a son, aged eleven, going on twelve, and his name was
William. He wasn't so big as Mayer, and Mayer wouldn't be so old as
William for a year, and even then he wouldn't.
Children know nothing of social caste. Caste is a disease of grown-ups. It is
caused by uric acid in the ego. Children meet as equals—they respond
naturally without so much as a thought as to whether they ought to love one
another or not.

William got acquainted with Mayer by holding up a big speckled marble,
and then in a burst of good-fellowship giving the marble to the little
stranger boy, all before a word had been said. Then while the Landgrave
was showing his treasures to Anselm who himself was a collector in a small
way, the boys slipped out of the door, and William took Mayer to see the
stables. "What's it for?" asked William, pointing to the yellow patch sewed
tight to the breast of Mayer's jacket. "That?" answered Mayer proudly,
"why, that means that I am a Jew, and I live in the Ghetto!" William gave a
little start of alarm. He looked at the other lad, so brown and sturdy and
frankly open-eyed, and said slowly, "You can't be a Jew, because—because
Jews eat children!"
"I'm a Jew—my father is a Jew—all our folks are Jews—the Jews are the
Chosen People of God!" Little Mayer spoke slowly and with feeling.
"The Chosen People of God?" echoed William.
"Yes!"
They saw the horses, and Mayer looked at them with wondering eyes. There
were no horses in the Ghetto—just pushcarts and wheelbarrows. William
had been lame—hip disease, or something, and so had never been away
down to the city, except with a nurse, or in a carriage with his tutor. The
boys entered the house and the Landgrave was still explaining to Anselm
Moses how all coins made by the Assyrians were modeled by hand, not
stamped out with a die, as was done by the Greeks.
The boys hadn't been missed. "Can't I have one of those to wear on my coat,
too?" asked William, pulling at his father's sleeve, and pointing to the
yellow patch on Mayer's jacket.
"One of what, my son?" asked the Landgrave seriously.
"One of those yellow medals!"
The Landgrave looked at Mayer's yellow patch, and then involuntarily at
the badge worn by the boy's father.
The Landgrave's fine face flushed scarlet. His gaze met the steady, manly
look of Anselm Moses.

They understood each other. No one was near, save the two boys. They met
as equals, as men meet on the plain or desert. "It's all a mistake—a foolish
mistake, Anselm, and some day we will outgrow it. A man's a man!"
He held out his hand. The Jew grasped it firmly and both men smiled—the
smile of friendship and understanding.
As the Jew and his son started to go, the Landgrave gave little Mayer a big
copper penny, and asked him to come back some day and play with
William.
And Anselm Moses, the Jew, took up his pack that he had left at the
servants' quarters, and holding the hand of little Mayer Anselm, they walked
out of the castle yard, down among the winding trees to the road.

Mayer Anselm took to his father's business as a bird takes to the air. From
selling trinkets he began dealing in jewelry, old coins, curiosities and
paintings. He picked his customers, and knew the weaknesses of each—
certain things were bought for certain people.
The idea of becoming a Rabbi was abandoned—he wanted temporal power,
not spiritual. Money to the intelligent Jew is the symbol of power—of
independence. There may be men who love the money itself, but surely this
man didn't. He was daring in its use—he had the courage to take risks. His
was a quest for power.
When about twenty, he traveled as far as Hanover to visit a kinsman, and
there he served for several months in a bank. He had a mind like those
Japanese who travel to absorb, and waste no time in battling error.
Returning to Frankfort he transformed his father's little store into a bank
and filled the window with real money, to the great delight and
astonishment of the neighbors. From Hanover he brought a collection of
rare coins. The business his father had established gradually took on a
cosmopolitan look. The house of the Red Shield became a sort of center of
trade for the whole Judengasse.

And all the time the friendship with the Landgrave and his son had
continued. Commissions were given to Mayer to buy certain coins and
pictures. Finally he was entrusted to collect the rents of the Red Shield. He
did this so thoroughly and well, and was so prompt in his reports, that he
was finally named as custodian of the property. Other property was given to
him to look after.
Jews came to him for advice, and Christians counseled with him as to loans.
He became known as the "Honest Jew," which title, we hope, carried with it
no reflection on his co-religionists. There are men—a very, very few—who
are thus honored with the title of "Honest John." Gamblers can be recalled
whose word was worth more than their bond. There are horsemen—
gamblers, too, if you please—who have little respect for the moral code, but
who never prove false to a trust.
Mayer Anselm had the coolness and the courage of a good gambler—in
business he surely was ever ready to back his opinion. He would pay five
hundred thalers for a jewel, give the man his price and pocket the gem
silently, while the hagglers and quibblers were screwing up their courage to
offer a hundred for it. But here was the difference—Mayer Anselm knew
what he was going to do with the jewel. He had a customer in mind. He
knew the customer, he knew the jewel, and he knew his own mind.
The Landgrave grew to lean on Mayer Anselm of the Red Shield. He made
him "Court Jew," or official treasurer of the principality. This carried with it
"the freedom of the city," and being a free man—no longer technically a
Jew—he had a name, and the name he chose was "Rothschild," or the Red
Shield, Mayer Anselm Rothschild.
He no longer wore the yellow badge of a despised race. Yet he refused to
leave the Ghetto. The House of the Red Shield was his birthplace—here his
parents had lived and died, here would he live and die. He was still a Jew,
earnest and zealous in keeping the Law, the "President" or head of the
synagogue.
He was happily married to Letizia—she had no other name—and babies
were coming along with astonishing regularity.

To him and his good wife were born five sons and five daughters. The Red
Shield was now his own property, he having purchased the freehold—a
thing he could not do until he had attained "the freedom of the city."
Then we get the rather curious condition of Mayer Anselm supervising the
municipal affairs of the whole city; and his sons, grown to manhood, still
wearing the yellow badge and obliged to keep within the Ghetto at certain
hours, on serious penalty.
And it is worth while noting that Mayer Anselm kept the laws of the Ghetto,
and asked no favor for himself beyond that granted to other Jews, save that
he did not wear the badge. Beyond this he was a Jew, and his pride refused
to allow him to be anything else. And yet he served the Christian public
with a purity of purpose and an unselfishness that won for him the
reputation of honesty that was his all his life.
By his influence the Ghetto was enlarged, several of the streets widened,
and all houses were placed under sanitary inspection. He established a
compulsory free-school system and maintained an art-gallery in the Ghetto
that was a center of education for the entire district.
When this gallery was dedicated, Goethe came, and made a speech of
congratulation. He was the guest of the Red Shield. Afterward, Rothschild
returned the visit and spent several days at Weimar with the great poet, and
always they were on very friendly terms.

The son of the Landgrave became, himself, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel,
and afterward Elector. He is also known as William the Ninth. He was a
booklover, a numismatist, and a man of many gentle virtues. I know of only
one blot on his official 'scutcheon, but this was so serious that, for a time, it
blocked his political fortune. In this affair, Rothschild was co-respondent.
Rothschild was Court Jew, and beyond a doubt attended to all details.
During the American Revolutionary War, William the Ninth loaned twelve
thousand soldiers, a goodly portion of his army, to one George the Third of
England, to go and fight the American Colonies. This is the first and only

time that Germans have ever carried arms against Americans. These
Hessians were splendid, sturdy soldiers and would have been almost
invincible if fighting to protect their homes, but in America they were only
half-hearted.
The bones of many of these poor fellows were scattered through New
Jersey and Pennsylvania, and most of those who survived until Cornwallis
offered his sword to Washington—and had it refused—settled down and
became good Pennsylvania Dutch.
Around Reading and Lancaster are various worthy Daughters of the
Revolution, whose credential is that their grandsires fought with
Washington. The fact that the grandsires aforesaid were from Hesse, sold at
so much a head by a Governor in need of ready cash, need not weigh in the
scale. A woman's a woman for a' that.
The amount of money which the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel received from
the English Government for the use of his twelve thousand men was six
hundred thousand thalers; and while a thaler is equivalent to only about
seventy-five cents, it was then worth as much as an American dollar is
worth now.
These six hundred thousand thalers were a straight bonus, for the English
Government agreed to pay the Hessian soldiers the same as they paid their
own English soldiers, and to treat them in all other ways as their own.
A second division of four thousand men was afterward supplied, for which
the Landgrave of Hesse was paid two hundred thousand thalers.
Alluring tales of loot were held out to the soldiers, also educational
advantages, somewhat after the style of the recruiting-posters in this Year of
Grace, Nineteen Hundred Thirteen, that seek to lead and lure the lusty youth
of America to enlist in the cause of Mars.
Of course the common people knew nothing of the details of this deal of
Hesse with England. The Americans were represented to them as savages
who had arisen against their masters, and were massacring men, women and
children.

To stop this bloodshed was looked upon as a duty for the sake of humanity.
Let it be stated that these Hessian soldiers were not sent to America against
their will. They voted by regiments to go to the defense of their English
Cousins. All of the officers were given a month's pay as a bonus, and this no
doubt helped their zeal. The soldiers were to go simply until the war was
over, which, it was represented, would be in one year, or possibly less.
The money came so easily that the Landgrave of Hesse, in Seventeen
Hundred Ninety-four, supplied the English with a third detachment of four
thousand troops—this time, to fight the French.
It is not always the case that the terms of sale of human beings in war-time
are so well known as are these particular deals. The Hessian officials kept
no books. They made no records, and wrote no letters. Boards of
Investigation were powerless. The business was transacted by personal
messengers, who went to London and closed the deal by word of mouth,
and later brought back the coin. Wise men write few letters. What would
you? Is Farley a rogue and a varlet? However, things in Threadneedle Street
can not be done in secret.
England has a wonderful system of bookkeeping and bureaucraft—there are
spies upon spies, and checks and counterchecks, so that filching a large sum
from the Bank of England has been a trick never so far successfully turned.
England's share in this transaction was not dishonorable—that is to say, to
buy a man is not so bad as to sell one. All she did was to hire strike-
breakers. English statesmen generally regarded the matter as a bit of
necessary war-time expediency. If the rebel Colonies could be put down by
hiring a few extra soldiers, why, hire them, of course.
Not so, said Edmund Burke, who gave the matter an unlooked-for publicity
by denouncing the Hessians as "hired assassins." He prophesied that the
Americans would not consider these hirelings as amenable to the rules of
civilized warfare, but would "welcome them with bloody hands to
hospitable graves"—a phrase so fine that it was, years after, seized upon by
Tom Corwin and applied to the conquest of Mexico.
Charles Fox took a like view of the situation, and between him and Burke
the word "Hessian" reached America with a taint upon it which a century of

use has not been able to disinfect.
The protest in the House of Commons did not directly avail, but there is a
suspicion that a wise protest against a great wrong never dies on the empty
air. Burke's accusation of barter and sale rumbled throughout Europe, and
created a sentiment of sympathy for America, especially in France.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Silas Deane made capital of it, and
repeated the words "hired assassins" and thereby helped us to borrow
money to fight said assassins. So much for the Law of Compensation.
As for the Landgrave, there was a cool million in bullion in his strongbox.
He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and calmly explained that George
Washington, the Rebel, had united with the Indian Savages and was
murdering all loyal English subjects in America, and for a few good
Germans to go to the rescue of England and help put down the insurrection
was a Christian act, and moreover, "it was nobody's business but their own."
He thought that this disposed of the matter, but the ghost would not down.
In Eighteen Hundred Eight, an Imperial Decree was issued by the Emperor
to this effect: "Whereas, it seems that the House of Hesse-Cassel has for
some years persisted in selling its subjects to the English Crown, to bear
arms in quarrels that are none of ours, and that by this means has amassed a
large fortune, therefore this detestable avarice has now brought its own
punishment, and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel from now on ceases to
exist, being incorporated with the Kingdom of Westphalia."

Troubles, we are told, never come singly. Of this William the Elector was
convinced. The Emperor had cut off his official head with a stroke of the
pen. The money he possessed was to be taken by legal attachment, its
lawful ownership to be determined in the courts.
The lawsuit would have been a long and tedious one, but happily it was not
to be. Napoleon with his conquering army was sweeping Europe. The
Corsican was approaching Frankfort. The rumor was that the city was to be
wiped out of existence. Napoleon hated the Hessians—he knew all about
their having hired themselves out to fight the Americans. Aye! and the

French! The Hessians must be punished. Justice! The late Elector of Hesse-
Cassel was now only a private citizen, but his record was his offense. Word
had been brought to him that Napoleon had said he would hang him—when
he caught him. It is not at all likely that this would have happened—
Napoleon must have secretly admired the business stroke that could extract
so large a sum from England's exchequer. It was on this same excursion that
Napoleon placed a guard in Goethe's house to protect the poet from possible
harm. "If I were not Napoleon, I would be Wolfgang Goethe," bluntly said
the little man without removing his cocked hat, when he met the King of
Letters, thus paraphrasing his prototype, Alexander. Goethe gave him a
copy of his last book. "It lacks one thing—your autograph!" said the man
who was busy conquering a world.
Goethe, being an author, had waited, expecting this, and so was not
disappointed. Frankfort was looted, but not burned. Money, jewelry and
portable wealth were all the French wanted. The Castle was used as a
stable, and the paintings and statuary served as targets for the rollicking
soldiers who had exploited the wine-cellars. The vast amount of specie
which it was reported the Elector possessed, was missing—the strongboxes
were empty. Soldiers were set to work digging all about the house for signs
of hidden treasure, but none was found. The Elector and his family were
distributed, as they say of the type in limited editions. Gone—no one knew
where!
The French visited the Ghetto, but by order of Napoleon, his soldiers were
never severe upon the Jews. The Jews had little or nothing to do with
politics, and Napoleon, with his usual nonchalance, said, "They have
suffered enough!" Napoleon called himself "The Protector of the
Oppressed," and tried occasionally to live up to his self-conferred title.
The Red Shield received a call, and Mayer Rothschild handed over his keys
to the officer, in person. The house was searched, and cash to the extent of
ten thousand thalers appropriated. The officer gave Rothschild a receipt for
the amount, and assured the banker it was but a loan. He thanked
Rothschild for his courtesy. They drank a bottle of wine together, and the
Frenchman, with profuse apologies, excused himself, having pressing duties
to perform, and withdrew, first cordially shaking hands. The French were
convinced that when William the Elector fled, he had taken with him his

money. That he should have entrusted it to another, and especially a Jew,
seemed preposterous. Yet such was the case. William had fled, disguised as
a civil engineer, carrying with him in his chaise an outfit of surveying-
instruments. All of his money had been turned over to Mayer Anselm
Rothschild. The many biographers place the sum anywhere from one to
fifty million dollars. The fact seems to be that it was a little less than two
million. Not even a receipt was given for the money, for such a document
might have led to locating the gold. The Elector would not even count it. He
said: "If I do not come back, it is yours—you helped me get it. If I return,
you are an honest man—and that is all there is about it." The Jew was
touched to tears. The obligation was one fraught with great risk for the
money, and for himself. But there was only one thing to do—assume the
responsibility.
That this vast sum of money was given into the hands of Rothschild, no one
has ever denied. But as to how he secreted it from the French has been
explained by the very childlike tale that he buried it in the garden back of
his house. In the first place, there were no gardens in the Ghetto, and in the
second place, money buried in a garden yields no return, and can not to
advantage be left there forever.
At this time England was just becoming a Mecca for Jews, for no matter
how much the Corsican had to say about his regard for the Jews, they had
no regard for him. He stood for war and violence, and his soldiers, as a rule,
knew not their master's leniency for the Jew. Banks, vaults, and the shops of
jewelers stood small chance in the face of an advancing army, drunk on
success.
Many Jews, rich and poor, were fleeing to England. Rothschild had special
boats under his direction upon which he sold passages to his brethren. Even
before the treasure of the Elector was placed in his hands he had inwardly
planned for its transportation. England was then the safest country in
Europe. England, alone, was the one country that had not been seriously
threatened by revolution. And it was the one country that was reasonably
safe from the grasp of the French.
Rothschild's faith in England was proven when he sent all of his own spare
cash to London. That he would transport there the treasure of William the

Elector was the one purpose in his mind. And how to carry it! You may send
treasure by armed guards, in which case you invite attack by advertising
what you are doing. Or you can divide your money up among poor
travelers, and by sending your people at different times, thus lessen the risk.
Rothschild had been entrusting the safe transportation of money to London
in the care of Jews—poor Jews. And now he picked his immigrants and
took them into his confidence.
He was an honest man—the title of the "Honest Jew" was his by divine
right. To serve him was looked upon as a precious privilege. And now
almost every mother of a big family, bound for England and freedom,
carried around her ample waist a belt of gold. As soon as she and her brood
reached London, it was to be given to Nathan Rothschild, the son of Mayer
Rothschild, who was now established as a banker in London.
Rothschild trusted the poor and lowly, and in so doing his faith, so far as we
know, was never misplaced. It is not at all likely that the Jews knew whose
money it was they were carrying, nor did they know that several hundred
other Jews were being trusted in a similar way. All they knew was that
Mayer Anselm had come to them and asked them as a great favor, as a
friend, to carry this belt and give it to his dear son Nathan, in England. Of
course Rothschild's confidence was not misplaced. A few years later this
was the Rothschild method of transporting treasure all over Europe—to
dispatch, say, a hundred poor Jews at different times, and mixed up among
them was the treasure. Honest men can safely trust others—honest men, as
a rule, are safe even with rogues. There is a spiritual law which governs
here—ask Ben Lindsey!
And so the treasure which had originally come from England found its way
back to Britain. It was deposited among various banks and bankers, to the
personal credit of the House of Rothschild, drawing interest at five per cent.
In the meantime Mayer Anselm remained at Frankfort, living in the Red
Shield, occupying the little shop which had been occupied by his father. He
smoked his big pipe, smiled, went to prayers—and waited. When the
French soldiers had gutted his safe, he sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and
said: "It is the Lord's will—those whom He loveth He chasteneth. Blessed
be the name of the Lord." He waited.

Rothschild brought his children up to economize time and money, and to be
useful. In childhood, all had served as clerks and helpers in the little bank—
the girls included. They were bankers by prenatal tendency and by
education. So strong was the banking instinct in the family that three of the
girls married men who afterward became bankers, probably being led into
the financial way they should walk through marital influences. And so they
were duly absorbed into the great House of Rothschild. In order to facilitate
the business of the Landgrave, who had considerable property in Hanover,
Rothschild sent his third son, Nathan, there and established a bank. This
boy Nathan was the financial genius of the family. He was the only one of
the five boys who surpassed their father in initiative. And this is saying
much, because the other four were all strong and able men. Anselm, the
oldest boy, took his father's work and became head of the Frankfort house.
Solomon managed the branch at Vienna; Nathan founded the branch in
Hanover, and turned it over to one of his brothers-in-law and went to
London; Carl did good work in Paris, and James was at Naples and Rome.
In addition to these six principal banks, the House of Rothschild had
agencies in more than forty different European cities.
William the Elector had turned his money over to Rothschild in the year
Eighteen Hundred Six. He had remained in hiding for four years. The
French had placed a price upon his head on account of his having sold his
troops to the English to fight the French. He had not communicated with
Rothschild for fear of involving him.
And now behold! Like lightning put of a clear sky, came a pardon from
Napoleon, "for all alleged offenses," and a reinstatement of the House of
Hesse-Cassel to its former proud position. This whole procedure was
essentially Napoleonic. The Corsican killed or kissed, as the mood took
him. Napoleon hated the Emperor Frederick the Second, who had done the
deposing, and as a sort of insult or rebuke to that particular royal party, he
sought out the man's enemies and exalted them.
William came out of hiding, back to Frankfort, and was received by the
people with open arms. He sought out Rothschild at his office in the

Judengasse of the Ghetto. The banker received him with courtesy, but
without emotion.
"My money—my treasure, Mayer Anselm,—the French stole it from you, I
know," said William. "Spare me the details, I only come to you now for a
loan—you will not refuse me—we were boys together, Mayer Anselm, boys
together. I loved you. Fate has smitten me sore, but now I have my name
back and my broken estate—I must begin all over. The loan—you will not
refuse me?" The banker coughed gently, smiled, and answered: "I regret I
have no money to loan now, but the funds you deposited with me are safe.
The best I can do is to give you Exchange on London, with such little ready
money as you now require. I have been expecting you, so here is the
schedule. The principal, with interest at five per cent, makes me your debtor
for a little over two million thalers. My son Nathan, in London, has the
money subject to your check."
William stared, started, clutched the bars across the little window for
support, and burst into tears. He was taken to the residence part of the
house, and Letizia served him with tea and things Kosher. William became
calm, and then declared: "The principal, Mayer, I shall never touch. I should
not know what to do with it, anyway. Pay me two per cent interest on it, and
it is all I shall ever ask." And it was all done as William desired. To his
credit let it be said that he spent the money wisely and well: he did much
for the development of the economic and intellectual improvement of the
country.

Mayer Anselm died in Eighteen Hundred Twelve, aged sixty-nine. But long
before he passed out, he had fixed in the minds of his children the wisdom
of being loyal to the family interests. "One banking-house may fail, but five
standing true to each other, in different countries, never can," he said.
Nathan had gravitated by divine right to the head of the concern. In times of
doubt all the others looked to him.
To Nathan Rothschild must be given the credit for a financial stroke that
lifted the Rothschilds absolutely out and away from competition.

It was in the spring of Eighteen Hundred Fifteen.
Napoleon had been banished to Elba, and now returned like a conquering
hero. His magnetic name was rolling opposition before him as the sun
dissipates the clouds. Europe was in a tumult of terror!
Would Napoleon do again what he had done before—trample the cities
beneath his inconsiderate feet and parcel out the people and the land among
his favorites?
England was shaken to her center. "This time Britain shall not go
unpunished," declared the Corsican.
Business was paralyzed. The banks were not loaning a dollar; many had
closed and refused to honor the checks of depositors. People with money
were hoarding it. England was trying to raise funds to strengthen her
defenses, and fit out her soldiery in better fighting shape, but the money
was not forthcoming. Government bonds had dropped to sixty-five, and a
new loan at seven per cent had met with only a few straggling applications.
This was the condition on the First of June, Eighteen Hundred Fifteen. The
Armies of the Allies were gathering gear for a final struggle, but there were
those who declared that if Napoleon should walk out before certain
divisions of this Army, wearing his uniform of the Little Corporal, bearing
no weapons, and address the soldiers as brothers, they would throw down
their guns and cry, "Command us!"
Nathan Rothschild there in London made his plans. With him to think was
to act. There was no time to consult his brothers or his mother, as he usually
did on affairs of great moment. He called his cashier and gave him quick
and final orders: "I am going across to the Continent. I shall see the
downfall of Napoleon—or his triumph. If Napoleon goes down, I shall send
a letter to myself—a blank sheet of paper in an envelope. When you get
this, buy English bonds—buy quickly, but use a dozen different men, so as
not to stampede the market. We have a million pounds in British gold—use
it all, and buy, if necessary, up to five points of par." He rode away on
horseback. He left a man with a strong and fast horse every forty miles from
London to Dover, then from Calais to Brussels. A swift-sailing yacht waited
at Calais, with a reward of one hundred guineas for the captain if he crossed
the Channel inside of four hours, after getting a special letter addressed to

Nathan Rothschild. There was a rich reward also for each rider if he rode
his forty miles in less than four hours. Rothschild watched away the night
of the Seventeenth of June, circling uneasily the outposts of Brussels.
He saw the Battle of Waterloo—or such of that mad confusion as was
visible. He saw the French ride headlong into that open ditch; and he saw
the last stand of the Old Guard.
Whether Napoleon was beaten or not no one could say. "He'll be back
tomorrow with reinforcements," many said. Nathan Rothschild thought
otherwise.
At nightfall he drew the girth of his saddle two holes tighter, threw away his
pistols, coat and hat, and rode away, on a gentle patter. After two miles this
was increased to a stiff gallop. He knew his horse—he was turning off each
mile in just five minutes. He rode sixty miles in five hours, using up three
horses. The messenger to whom he tossed his saddlebags asked no
questions, but leaping astride his horse, dived into the darkness and was
gone. Rothschild's men were twenty-four hours ahead of the regular post.
When the news reached London that Wellington had won, the Banking
House of Rothschild had no cash, but its safe was stuffed with English
Securities.
Nathan Rothschild made his way leisurely back to London. On arriving
there he found himself richer, by more than five hundred thousand pounds,
than he was when he rode away.

In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two, the Emperor of Austria conferred the title
of Baron on the sons of Mayer Anselm Rothschild.
It was the first and only time in history where five brothers were so honored
at one time.
Certain sarcastic persons have pointed out the fact that this wholesale
decoration was done immediately after the Rothschilds had floated a rather
large and risky loan for his Kingship. This is irrelevant, inconsequential,

and outside the issue. That the House of Rothschild with its branches had an
open sesame upon the purse-strings of Europe for half a century is a fact.
Nations in need of cash had to apply to the Rothschilds. The Rothschilds
didn't loan them the money—they merely looked after the details of the
loan, and guaranteed the lender that the interest would not be defaulted.
Their agencies everywhere were in touch with investors. The nobility are a
timid sort—they like to invest their hard-earned savings outside of their
bailiwick—nobody knows what will happen!
The Rothschilds would not float a loan until they were assured that the
premises were not mortgaged. More than this, there was a superstition all
'round that they were backed up by J. Bull, and J. Bull is a close collector.
The Rothschilds made government loans popular—before this, kings got
their cash mostly by coercion.
For their services the Rothschilds asked only the most modest fee—a fee so
small it was absurd—a sixteenth of one per cent, or something like that.
It is safe to say that only one Government in the world, at some time or
other from Eighteen Hundred Fifteen to Eighteen Hundred Seventy, never
courted the Rothschilds with "intentions."
America never quite forgot, nor forgave, that Hessian incident, and the
Rothschilds were never asked for favors by your Uncle Samuel.
There were four generations of Rothschilds, among whom there have been
very able men. This beats the rule by three generations, and the record by
one.
The Frankfort House of Rothschild was dissolved in Nineteen Hundred
One. The London firm still continues, but I am advised that the Rothschilds,
while interesting in a historic way, are no longer looked upon as a world
power.
Letizia, the mother of ten, is worthy of more space than I am able here to
give her. There are those who say she was the real founder of the House of
Rothschild. She died aged exactly one hundred, in the Red Shield, where
she was married and where all of her children were born.

She outlived the fall of Napoleon just forty years. She had a fine and
pardonable pride in her kingly sons.
Politics and world problems interested her. She was sane and sensible and
happy to the last.

PHILIP D. ARMOUR
Anybody can cut prices, but it takes brains to make a better
article.
—Philip D.
Armour

PHILIP D. ARMOUR
Philip D. Armour was born on May Sixteenth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-
two, near the little village of Stockbridge, New York. He died at Chicago,
January Sixth, Nineteen Hundred One. The farm owned by his father was
right on the line between Madison and Oneida Counties. The boys used to
make a scratch in the road and dare the boys from Madison to come across
into Oneida. The Armour farm adjoined the land of the famous Oneida
Community, where was worked out one of the most famous social

experiments ever attempted in the history of civilization. However, the
Armour family constituted a little community of its own, and was never
induced to abandon family life for the group. Yet, for John Humphrey
Noyes, Danforth Armour always had great respect. But he was philosopher
enough to know that one generation would wind up the scheme, for the
young would all desert, secrete millinery, and mate as men and young
maidens have done since time began. "Oneida is for those whose dream did
not come true—mine has," he said.
The Armours of Stockbridge traced a pedigree to Jean Armour, of Ayr,
brown as a berry, pink and twenty, sweet and thrifty, beloved of Bobbie
Burns.
The father of Philip was Danforth Armour, and the father of Danforth
Armour was James Armour, Puritan, who emigrated from the North of
Ireland. James settled in Connecticut and fortified his Scotch-Irish virtues
with a goodly mixture of the New England genius for hard work, economy
and religion. His grandfather had fought side by side with Oliver Cromwell
and had gone into battle with that doughty hero singing the songs of Zion.
He was a Congregationalist by prenatal influence. And I need not here
explain that the love of freedom found form in Congregationalism, a
religious denomination without a pope and without a bishop, where one
congregation was never dictated to nor ruled by any other. Each
congregation was complete in itself—or was supposed to be.
This love of liberty was the direct inheritance of James Armour. It
descended to Danforth Armour, and by him was passed along to Philip
Danforth Armour. All of these men had a very sturdy pride of ancestry,
masked by modesty, which oft reiterated: "Oh, pedigree is nothing—it all
lies in the man. You do or else you don't. To your quilting, girls—to your
quilting!"
When Nancy Brooks was beloved by Danforth Armour the Fates were
propitious. The first women schoolteachers in America evolved in
Connecticut. Miss Brooks was a schoolteacher, the daughter of a farmer for
whom Danforth Armour worked as hired man.
Danforth was given to boasting a bit as to the part his ancestors had played
as neighbors to Oliver Cromwell at the time, and the only time, when

England was a republic.
Miss Brooks did not like this kind of talk and told the young man so straight
at his red head. The Brooks family was Scotch, too, but they had fought on
the side of Royalty. They were never rebels—they were true to the King—
exactly so!
Now, there are two kinds of Scotch—the fair and the dark—the Highland
and the Lowland—the Aristocrats and the Peasantry. Miss Brooks was dark,
and she succeeded in convincing the freckled and sandy-haired man that he
was of a race of rebels, also that the rule of the rebels was brief—brief, my
lord, as woman's love. Then they argued as to the alleged brevity of
woman's love.
Here they were getting on dangerous ground. Nature is a trickster, and she
spread her net and caught the Highland maid and the Lowland laddie, and
bound them with green withes as is her wont. So they were married by the
Congregational "meenister," and for a wedding-tour fared forth Westward to
fame and fortune. "Out West" then meant York State, and the "Far West"
was Ohio. They reached Oneida County, New York, and stopped for a few
days ere they pushed on to the frontier. The site was beautiful, the location
favorable. And the farmer at whose house they were making their stay was
restless and wanted to sell out.
That night the young couple talked it over. They had a few hundred dollars
saved, sewed in a belt and in a dress bodice. They got the money out and
recounted it. In the morning they told their host how much money they had
and offered to give him all of this money for his farm. He was to leave them
a yoke of oxen, a cow, a pig and six sheep.
He accepted the offer, the money was paid, the deed made out and the man
vacated, leaving the bride and groom in possession.
So here they lived their lives; here they worked, planned, aspired and
prospered; here, too, their children were born and raised; and down at the
little village cemetery they sleep, side by side. In life they were never
separated and in death they are not divided.

"The first requisite in education," said Herbert Spencer, "is that man shall
be a good animal."
Philip D. Armour fulfilled the requirements.
He was dowered with a vital power that fed his restless brain and made him
a regular dynamo of energy for sixty-nine years—and with a little care at
the last should have run for ninety years with never a hotbox.
He used to say, "If my ancestors had been selected for me by Greek
philosophers, specialists in heredity, they could not have done better. I can
not imagine a better woman than my mother. My childhood was ideal. God
did not overlook me."
Well did this happy, exuberant, healthy man say that his parentage and
childhood environment were ideal. Here was a family of six boys and three
girls, brought up on a beautiful hillside farm amid as peaceful and lovely a
landscape as ever the sun shone upon. Down across the creek there were a
hundred acres of bottom-land that always laughed a harvest under the
skilful management of Danforth Armour. Yet the market for surplus
products was distant, so luxury and leisure were out of the question. And
yet work wasn't drudgery. Woods, hills, running streams, the sawmill and
the gristmill, the path across the meadow, the open road, the miracle of the
seasons, the sugar-bush, the freshet that carried away the bridge, the first
Spring flowers peeping from beneath the snow on the south side of rotting
logs, the trees bursting into leaf, the hills white with blossoms of wild
cherry and hawthorn, the Saturday afternoon when the boys could fish, the
old swimming-hole, the bathing of the little ones in the creek, the growing
crops in the bottom-land, bee-trees and wild honey, coon-hunts by
moonlight, the tracks of deer down by the salt-lick, bears in the green corn,
harvest-time, hog-killing days, frost upon the pumpkin and fodder in the
shock, wild turkeys in the clearing, revival-meetings, spelling-bees, debates
at the schoolhouse, school at the log schoolhouse in Stockbridge, barn-
raisings, dances in the new barn, quilting-bees, steers to break, colts to ride,
apple butter, soft soap, pickled pigs' feet, smoked hams, side-meat, shelled
walnuts, coonskins on the barn-door, Winter and the first fall of snow, boots
to grease, harness to mend, backlogs, hickory-nuts, cider, a few books and
all the other wonderful and enchanting things that a country life, not too

isolated, brings to the boys and girls born where the rain makes musical
patter on the roof and the hand of a loving mother tucks you in at night!
Here was a mother who gave to the world six sons, five of whom grew to an
honored manhood and proved themselves men of power. One of the girls,
Marietta, was a woman of extraordinary personality, as picturesquely heroic
as Philip Armour, himself.
This mother never had a servant-girl, a laundress or a dressmaker. The
manicure and the beauty-doctor were still in the matrix of time, as yet
unguessed.
On Sunday there was a full wagonload of Armours, big and little, to go to
the Congregational Church at Stockbridge. Let us hope the wagon was
yellow and the horses gray.
Do not imagine that a family like this is lonely. There is constant work; the
day is packed with duties, and night comes with its grateful rest. There is no
time to be either bad or unhappy, nor is there leisure to reflect on your
virtues. No one line of thought receives enough attention to disturb the
balance of things. To be so busy that you "forget it" is very fortunate. The
child brought up with a happy proportion of play and responsibility, of work
and freedom, of love and discipline, has surely not been overlooked by
Providence.
The "problem of education" is a problem only to the superlatively wise and
the tremendously great. To plain people life is no problem. Things become
complex only when we worry over them.
So the recipe for educating children is this: Educate yourself.

When Philip D. Armour was nineteen the home nest seemed crowded.
The younger brothers were coming along to do the work, and the absence of
one "will be one less to feed" he said to his mother.

The gold-fields of California were calling. This mother was too sensible and
loving to allow her boy to run away—if he was going, he should go with
her blessing. She got together a hundred dollars in cash. With this and a
pack on his back Philip started on foot for the land of Eldorado. Four men
were in the party, all from Oneida County.
He walked all the way and arrived on schedule, after a six months' journey.
Philip was the only one in the party who did not grow sick nor weary. One
died, two turned back, but Philip trudged on with the procession that
seemed to increase as it neared the gold-fields.
Arriving in California, this very sensible country boy figured it out that
mining was a gamble. A very few grew rich, but the many were desperately
poor. Most of those who got a little money ahead spent it in prospecting for
bigger finds and soon were again penniless. He decided that he would not
bet on anything but his own ability. Instead of digging for gold, he set to
work digging ditches for men who had mines, but no water. This making
ditches was plain labor, without excitement, chance or glamour. You knew
beforehand just how much you would make. Philip was strong and patient;
he could work from sunrise to sunset.
He was paid five dollars a day. Then he took contracts to dig ditches, and
sometimes he made ten dollars a day. Parties who were "busted" and wished
to borrow were offered a job. He set them to work and paid them for what
they did, and no more. It was all a question of mathematics. In five years
Philip Armour had saved eight thousand dollars. It was enough to buy the
best farm in Oneida County, and this was all he wanted. There was a girl
back there who had taunted him and dared him to go away and make his
fortune. They parted in a tiff—that's the way she got rid of him. There was
another man in the case, but Philip was too innocent to know this. The
peaceful hills of New York lured and beckoned. He responded to the call
and started back home. In half the time it took to go, he had arrived. But
alas, the hills had shrunken. The mighty stream that once ran through
Stockbridge was but a rill.
And the girl—the girl had married another—a worthy horse-doctor. Philip
called on her. She was yellow and tired and had two fine babies. She was
glad to see her old friend Philip, but the past was as dead to her as the

present. In her handgrasp there was no thrill. She had given him a big
chase; and soon his sadness made way for gratitude in that she had married
the horse-doctor. He gave them his blessing. Philip looked around at farms
—several were for sale, but none suited him.
On the way back from California he had traveled by way of the Great Lakes
and stopped two days at Milwaukee. It was a fine city—a growing place,
the gateway of the West and the market-place where the vessels loaded for
the East.
Milwaukee had one rival—Chicago, eighty-five miles south.
Chicago, however, was on low, flat, marshy ground. It would always be a
city, of course, because it was the end of navigation, but Milwaukee would
feed and stock the folks who were westward bound. So to Milwaukee went
Philip Armour, resolved there to stake his fortune in trade. Opportunity
offered and he joined with Fred B. Miles, on March First, Eighteen
Hundred Fifty-nine, in the produce and commission business. Each man put
in five hundred dollars. The business prospered. One of the great products
in demand was smoked and pickled meats. At that time farmers salted and
smoked hams and brought them to town, with furs, pelts and bags of wheat.
All the tide of humanity that streamed into Milwaukee, westward bound,
bought smoked or pickled meats—something that would keep and be
always handy.
These were Winter-packed. The largest packer was John Plankinton, who
was a success. John was knowing, and he made Phil. Armour his junior
partner, as Plankinton and Armour. Then business sizzled. They were at the
plant at four o'clock in the morning. They discovered how to make a hog
yield four hams. Our soldiers needed the hams and the barreled pork, so
shortly more hogs came to market. The War's end found the new firm much
stronger and well stocked with large orders for mess-pork, sold for future
delivery at war-time prices, which contracts they filled at a much lower cost
and to their financial satisfaction. Their guesser was good and they
prospered.
Meantime, the city of Chicago grew faster than Milwaukee. There was a
rich country south of Chicago, as well as west, and of this Philip Armour

had really never thought.
Chicago was a better market for pickled pork and corned beef than
Milwaukee, as more boats fitted out there, and more emigrants were landing
on their way to take up government land.
One of Mr. Armour's brothers, Joe, was a packer in Chicago. Another
brother, H. O., was in the commission business there. Joe's health, it seems,
was pretty bad, so in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, Philip Armour came to
Chicago, and shortly the house of Armour and Company came into being—
H. O. Armour going to New York to look after Eastern trade and financing.
In those days branch houses were unknown and packing-house products
were handled by jobbers.

The Father of the Packing-House Industry was Philip Danforth Armour. The
business of the Packing-House Industry is to gather up the food-products of
America and distribute them to the world.
Let the fact here be stated that the world is better fed today than it ever has
been since Herodotus sharpened his faber and began writing history, four
hundred fifty years before Christ. In this matter of food, the danger lies in
overeating and not in lack of provender.
The business of Armour and Company is to buy from the producer and
distribute to the consumer. So Armour and Company have to satisfy two
parties—the producer and the consumer. Both being fairly treated have a
perfect right to grumble.
The buyer of things which Nature forces the man to buy, is usually a
complainer, and he complains of the seller because he is near, just as a man
kicks the cat and takes it out on his wife, or the mother scolds the children.
To the farmers, Armour used to say with stunning truth, "You get more for
your produce today than you got before I showed up on the scene; and you
get your money on the minute, without haggle or question. I furnish you an
instantaneous market."

To the consumer he said: "I supply you with regularity and I give you
quality at a price more advantageous to you than your local butcher can
command. My profit lies in that which has always been thrown away. As for
sanitation, go visit your village slaughter-house and then come and see the
way I do it!"
Upton Sinclair scored two big points on Packingtown and its Boss Ogre.
They were these: First, the Ogre hired men and paid them to kill animals.
Second, these dead animals were distributed by the Ogre and his minions
and the corpses eaten by men, women and children. It was a revolting
revelation. It even shook the nerves of a President, one of the killingest men
in the world, who, not finding enough things to kill in America, went to
Africa to kill things.
"You live on the dead," said the Eastern pundit, reproachfully, out of his
yellow turban, to the American who had just ordered a ham-sandwich. "And
you eat the living," replied the American, as he handed a little hand-
microscope to the pundit and asked him to focus it upon his dinner of dried
figs. The pundit looked at the figs through the glass, and behold, they were
covered with crawling, wiggling, wriggling, living life! And then did the
man from the East throw the microscope out of the window, and say, "Now
there are no bugs on these figs!"
That which we behold too closely is apt to be repulsive. Fix your vision
upon any of the various functions of life and the whole thing becomes
disgusting, especially so if we contemplate the details of existence in others.
Personally, of course, we, ourselves, in thought and action are sweet and
wholesome—but the others, oh, ah, bah, phew, ouch, or words to that
effect!
Armour's remark about the village slaughter-house was getting close home.
If bad meat was ever put out, it was from these secret places, managed by
one or two men who did things in their own sweet way. Their work was not
inspected. They themselves were the sole judges. There were not even
employees to see and blackmail them if they failed to walk the chalk-line.
They bought up cattle, drove them in at night and killed them. No effort was
made to utilize the blood or offal and this putrefying mass advertised itself
for miles. Savage dogs and slaughter-houses go together, as all villagers

know, and there were various good reasons why visitors didn't go to see the
local butcher perform his pleasing obligations.
The first slaughter-houses in Chicago were just like those in any village.
They supplied the local market.
At first the offal was simply flung out in a pile. Then, when neighbors
complained, holes were dug in the prairie and the by-product buried. About
Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two, a decided change in methods occurred. The
first thing done was to dry the blood, bones and meat-scrap, and sell this for
fertilizer. Next came the scientific treatment of the waste for glues and other
products. Chemists were given a hearing, patient and most courteous.
One day Armour beckoned C. H. MacDowell into his private office and
said, "I say, Mac, if a man calls who looks like a genius or a fool, wearing
long hair, whiskers and spectacles, treat him gently—he's a German and
may have something in his head besides dandruff." MacDowell is one of the
Big Boys at Armour's. He was a stenographer, like my old Bryant and
Stratton chum, Cortelyou, and in fact is very much such a man as
Cortelyou. "Mac" is the head of the Armour Fertilizer Works and is
distressed because he can't utilize the squeal—so much energy evaporating.
It is his business to capitalize waste.
It was the joke of the place that if a German chemist arrived, all business
was paralyzed until his secret was seized. Jena, Gottingen and Heidelberg
became names to conjure with. Buttons were made from bones, glue from
feet, combs and ornaments from horns, curled hair from tails, felt from
wool, hair was cured for plaster, and the Armour Fertilizer Works slowly
became grounded and founded on a scientific basis, where reliable advice
as to growing cotton, rice, yams, potatoes, roses or violets could be had.
"Meat" is the farmer's product. This meat is consumed by the people. One-
half of our population are farmers, and all farmers raise cattle, sheep,
poultry and hogs. Trade follows the line of least resistance; and the natural
thing is for the local butcher to slaughter, and supply his neighborhood.
There is only one reason why the people in East Aurora should buy meat of
Armour, as they occasionally do, and that is because Armour supplies better
meat at a lower price than we can produce it. If Armour is higher in price
than our local butcher, we buy of the local man. The local butcher fixes the

price, not Armour, and the local farmer fixes the price for the local butcher.
Armour always and forever has to face this local competition.
"I am in partnership with the farmer," Philip Armour used to say. "Their
interests are mine and their confidence and good-will I must merit, or over
goes my calabash."
The success of capital lies in ministering to the people, not in taking
advantage of them. And every successful business house is built on the bed-
rock of reciprocity, mutuality and co-operation. That legal Latin maxim,
"Let the buyer beware," is a legal fiction. It should read, "Let the seller
beware," for he who is intent on selling the people a different article from
what they want, or at a price beyond its value, will stay in trade about as
long as that famous snowball will last in Biloxi.

Besides being father of the Packing-House industry, Philip D. Armour was a
manufacturer of and a dealer in Portable Wisdom. His teeming brain took in
raw suggestions and threw off the completed product in the form of
epigrams, phrases, orphics, symbols. To have caught these crumbs of truth
that fell from the rich man's table might have placed many a penny-a-liner
beyond the reach of mental avarice. One man, indeed, swept up the crumbs
into a book that is not half crumby. The man is George Horace Lorimer, and
his book is called, "Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son." Lorimer
was a department-manager for Armour and busied himself, it seems, a good
deal of the time, in taking down disjecta, or the by-product of business.
Armour was always sincere, but seldom serious. There is a lot of quiet fun
yet among the Armour folks. When the Big Boys dine daily together, they
always pass the persiflage. Lorimer showed me a bushel of notes—with
which he proposes some day to Boswellize his former Chief. Incidentally,
he requested me never to mention it, but secrets being to give away, I state
the fact here, in order to help along a virtuous and hard-working young
man, the son of the Reverend Doctor George C. Lorimer, a worthy Baptist
preacher.

"Keep at it—do not be discouraged, Melville—a preacher's son is usually
an improvement on the sire," said Philip D. Armour to Melville Stone, who
was born at Hudson, McLean County, Illinois, the son of a Presiding Elder.
"I'm not worrying," replied the genealogical Stone. "You and I were both
born in log houses, which puts us straight in line for the Presidency." "Right
you are, Melville, for a log house is built on the earth, and not in the
clouds." Then this came to Armour, and he could not resist the temptation to
fire it: "Boys, all buildings that really endure are built from the ground up,
never from the clouds down."
No living man ever handed out more gratuitous advice than Philip Armour.
He was the greatest preacher in Chicago. With every transaction, he passed
out a premium in way of palaver. He loved the bustle of business, but into
the business he butted a lot of talk—helpful, good-natured, kindly, paternal
talk, and often there was a suspicion that he talked for the same reason that
prizefighters spar for time. "Here, Robbins, get off this telegram, and
remember that if the rolling stone gathers no moss, it at least acquires a bit
of polish."
"Say, Urion, if you make a success as my lawyer you have got to get into
the rings of Orion; be there yourself, the same as the man that's to be
hanged. You can't send a substitute."
To Comes—now Secretary of Armour and Company—"I suppose if I told
you to jump into the lake you'd do it. Use your head, young man—use your
skypiece!" And he did. This preaching habit was never pedantic, stiff or
formal—it gushed out as the waters gushed forth from the rock after Moses
had given it a few stiff raps with his staff. Armour called people by their
first names as if they all belonged to his family, as they really did, for all
mankind to him were one. He thought in millions, where other big men
thought in hundreds of thousands, or average men thought in dozens.
"Hiram," he once said to the Reverend Hiram W. Thomas—for when he met
you, you imagined he had been looking for you to tell you something
—"Hiram, I like to hear you preach, for you are so deliberate that as you
speak I am laying bets with myself as to which of a dozen things you are
going to say. You supply me lots of fun. I can travel around the world
before you get to your firstly."

For all preachers he had a great attraction, and it wasn't solely because he
was a rich man. He supplied texts, and he supplied voltage. Most men put
on a pious manner and become hypocritically proper when a preacher joins
a group, but not so Philip Armour. If he used a strong word, or a simile
uncurried, it was then. They liked it.
"Mr. Armour, you might use a little of your language for fertilizer, if times
were hard," once said Robert Collyer. He answered, "Robert, I'm fertilizing
a few of your fallow acres now, as any one who goes to hear you preach
next Sunday will find out, if they know me."
A committee of four preachers once came to him from a country town a few
miles out of Chicago, asking him to pay off the debt on their churches. It
seems they had heard of the Armour benevolence and decided to beard the
lion in his den. He listened to the plea, and then figured up on a pad the
amount of the debt. It was fifteen hundred dollars. The preachers were
encouraged—they had the ejaculation, "God bless you!" on tap, when Mr.
Armour said: "Gentlemen, four churches in a town the size of yours are too
many. Now, if you will consolidate and three of you will resign and go to
farming, I'll pay off this debt now." The offer was not accepted.
When Armour was asked to subscribe one thousand dollars to a fund to
provide an auditorium and keep Professor Swing in Chicago, Swing having
just been tried for heresy, he said: "Chicago must not lose Swing—we need
him. If I had a few of his qualities, and he had a few of mine, there would
be two better men in Chicago today. Yes, we must keep Swing right here.
Put me down for a thousand. I don't always understand what Swing is
driving at, but that may be my fault. And say, if you find you need five
thousand from me, just let me know, and the money is yours."
There is no use trying to work the apotheosis of Philip D. Armour: he was
in good sooth a man. "I make mistakes—but I do not respond to encores,"
he used to say. When a man told of spending five thousand dollars on the
education of his son, Armour condoled with him thus: "Oh, never mind,
he'll come out all right—my education is costing me that much every
week."
One of the Big Boys at Armour's is a character called "Alibi Tom." Time
has tamed Alibi, but when he was twenty-two—well, he was twenty-two.

Now Philip Armour was an early riser, and at seven o'clock he used to be at
the office ready for business, the office opening at eight. Sometimes he
would come even earlier, and if he saw a clerk at work before eight, he
might, under the inspiring spell of the brisk early-morning walk, step over
and give the fellow a five-dollar bill.
Well, Alibi had never gotten one of these five-dollar bills, because he was
usually in just before Saint Peter closed the gate. Several times he had been
reproved, and once Mr. Armour had said, "Tom, be late once more and you
are a has-wazzer." Shortly after this, one night, Alibi Tom had a half-dozen
stockmen to entertain. They had gone to Hooley's and Sam T. Jack's, then to
the Athletic Club and then they called on Hinky Dink and "Bath-House
John," the famous Cook County literary light. Where else they had gone
they could not remember.
It was about three o'clock in the morning, when it came over Tom like a pall
that if he started for home now and went to bed he would surely be late
again and it might cost him his job.
He proposed that they make a night of it. The stockmen were quite willing.
They headed for the Stockyards, stopping along the way to make little visits
on certain celebrities. At five o'clock they reached the Armour plant, and
Tom stowed his friends away with the help of a friendly watchman. Then he
made for the shower-bath, rubbed down, drank two cups of coffee and went
to his desk. It was just six-thirty, and being Winter, was yet dark. He hadn't
any more than yawned twice and stretched himself, wondering if he could
hold out until noon, when he heard the quick step of "the old man." Tom
crouched over his pretended work like a devilfish devouring its prey. He
never looked up, he was that busy.
Mr. Armour stopped, stared, came closer—yes, it was Tom, the late Alibi
Tom, the chronic delinquent.
"Well, well, well, Tom, the Lord be praised! You have given yourself a
hunch at last—keep this!" And Armour handed out a brand-new, crisp, five-
dollar bill.
Tom had now set a stake for himself—and it was up to him to make good,
die or hike. He decided to make good. The next month his pay was raised

twenty-five dollars, and it has been climbing a little every year since.

Philip D. Armour was a man of big mental and physical resources—big in
brain, rich in vital power, bold in initiative, yet cautious.
He had two peculiar characteristics—he refused to own more land than he
could use.
His second peculiarity was that his only stimulant was tea. If he had an
unusually big problem to pass upon, he cut down his food and increased his
tea. Tea was his tipple. It opened up his mental pores and gave him cosmic
consciousness. Armour had so much personality—so much magnetism—
that he had but few competitors in his business. One of these was Nelson
Morris.
Now, Morris was a type of man that Armour had never met. Morris was a
Jew, a Bavarian, who affected music, art and philosophy. Nelson Morris,
small, smooth of face, humming bars from Bach and quoting Schopenhauer,
buying hogs at the Chicago Stockyards and then killing these hogs for the
gastronomical delectation of Christians, was a sort of all-round Judaic
genius.
The Mosaic Law forbids the Jews eating pork, but it places no ban or bar on
their dealing in it. Nelson Morris bought hogs at four A. M., or as soon as it
was light. Armour found him at it when he arrived, and Philip Armour was
usually the earliest bird on the job. Yet Armour wasn't afraid of Morris—the
Jew merely perplexed him. One day Armour said to MacDowell, his
secretary, "I say, Mac, Nelson doesn't need a guardian!"
The Jew was getting on the Armour nerves—just a little. Armour was
always on friendly terms with his competitors. As a matter of fact, he was
on friendly terms with everybody—he had no grouch and never got in a
grump. Socially he was irresistible. He got up close—invited confidence—
made friends and held them. There was never a man he wouldn't speak to.
He was above jealousy and beyond hate; yet, of course, when it came to a

show-down, he might hit awfully hard and quick, but he always passed out
his commercial wallop with a smile.
When Sullivan met Corbett at New Orleans, Gentleman Jim landed the
champion a terrific jolt with his right, smiled sweetly and said, "To think,
John, of your coming all the way from Boston to get that—also this"; then
he gave him another with his left. One morning, at daylight, when Morris
got to the Stockyards, he found all the pens empty.
Armour and his pig-buyers had been around with lanterns all night hunting
up the owners and bulling the market. "To think," said Armour to Morris,
"to think of your coming all the way from Bavaria hoping to get the start of
me!" Both men smiled serenely. The next week whole train-loads of pigs
were coming to Chicago consigned to Nelson Morris. He had sent his
agents out and was buying of the farmers, direct.
Soon after, Armour casually met Morris and suggested that they lunch
together that day. The Jew smiled assent. He had scored a point—Armour
had come to him.
So they lunched together. The Jew ate very little. Both men talked, but said
nothing. They were waiting. The Jew ate little, but he drank three cups of
tea.
Armour insisted on paying the check, excused himself somewhat abruptly,
and hurried to his office. He sent for his lieutenants. They came quickly,
and Armour said: "Boys, I've just lunched with Nelson Morris. I think we'd
better come to an understanding with him as to a few things we shall do and
a few we shall not do—he drinks nothing but tea."

Prior to the invention of the refrigerator-car, the business of the packer was
to cure salt meats and pack them for transportation. Besides this, he
supplied the local market with fresh meats.
Up to the early Eighties fresh meat was not shipped any distance except in
midwinter, and then as frozen meat. Surplus Western cattle were shipped
East alive—and subject to heavy risks, shrinkage and expense. About fifty

per cent of the live weight was dressed beef—balance non-edible—so
double freight was paid on the edible portion. Could this freight be saved?
About this time Hammond, of Detroit, mounted a refrigerator on car-
wheels, loaded it with dressed beef and headed it for New York, where the
condition of the meat on arrival satisfied every one in the trade except the
local slaughterer.
The car was crude—but it turned the trick—a new era had arrived. The
corn-belt came into its own. "Corn was King"—the steer, the heir apparent.
Phil Armour saw the point. Pay freight on edible portions only. Save the
waste. Make more out of the critter than the competitor can. Pay more for
him—get him. Sell the meat for less. Get the business—grow. And he got
busy perfecting the refrigerator-car.
Armour called together railroadmen and laid the project before them. They
objected that a car, for instance, sent from Chicago to New York would
require to be iced several times during the journey, otherwise there might be
the loss of the entire load. A car of beef was worth fifteen hundred dollars.
The freight was two hundred dollars or less. The railroadmen raised their
hands in horror. Besides transporting goods they would have to turn
insurance company. Armour still insisted that they could and should provide
suitable cars for their patrons.
The railroadmen then came back with this rejoinder: "You make your own
cars and we will haul them, provided you will ask us to incur only the
ordinary risks of transportation." Armour accepted the challenge—it was
the only thing to do. He made one car, and then twenty.
Fresh beef was shipped from Chicago to New York, and arrived in perfect
order. To ship live cattle long distances, he knew was unwise. And he then
declared that Omaha, Kansas City, Saint Paul and various other cities of the
West would yet have great slaughter-houses, where livestock could be
received after a very short haul. The product could then be passed along in
refrigerator-cars, and the expense of ice would not be so much as to unload
and feed the stock. But better than all, the product would be more
wholesome.

Armour began to manufacture refrigerator-cars. He offered to sell these to
railroad-companies. A few railroads bought cars, and after a few months
proposed to sell them back to Armour—the expense and work of operating
them required too much care and attention. Shippers would not ship unless
it was guaranteed that the car would be re-iced, and that it would arrive at
its destination within a certain time.
In the Fall, fresh peaches were being shipped across the lake to Chicago
from Michigan. If the peaches were one night on the way they arrived in
good order.
This gave Armour an idea—he sent a couple of refrigerator-cars around to
Saint Joseph, loaded them with fresh peaches, and shipped them to Boston.
He sent a man with the cars who personally attended to icing the cars, just
as we used to travel in the caboose to look after the livestock. The peaches
reached Boston, cool and fresh, and were sold in an hour at a good profit.
At once there was a demand for refrigerator-cars from Michigan: the new
way opened the markets of America to the producer of fruits and
vegetables. There was a clamorous demand for refrigerator-cars.
The reason a railroad can not afford to have its own refrigerator-cars is
because the fruit or berry season in any one place is short. For instance, six
weeks covers the grape period of the Lake Erie grape-belt; one month is
about the limit on Michigan peaches; strawberries from Southern Illinois
are gone in two or three weeks.
Therefore, to handle the cars advantageously, the railroads find it much
better to rent them, or simply to haul them on a mileage. The business is a
specialty in itself, and requires most astute generalship to make it pay. Cars
have to be sent to Alabama in February and March; North Carolina a little
later; then West Virginia. These same cars then do service in the Fall in
Michigan. It naturally follows that much of the time cars have to be hauled
empty, and this is a fact that few people figure on when computing receipts
from tonnage. Now, instead of the good old way of sending a man in
charge, there are icing-stations, where the car is looked for, thoroughly
examined and cared for as a woman would look after a baby. In order to
bring apples from Utah to Colorado, and oranges from California to

Arizona, icehouses have to be built on the desert at vast expense. And this
in a climate where frost is unknown.
To work the miracle of modern industrialism requires the help of
bespectacled scientists from Germany, and a fine army of artists, poets,
painters, plumbers, doctors, lawyers, beside the workers in wood and
metals.
The whole business is a creation, and a beneficent one. It has opened up
vast territories to the farmer, gardener and stock-raiser, where before cactus
and sagebrush were supreme; and the prairie-dog and his chum, the
rattlesnake, held undisputed sway.
To the wealth of the world it has added untold millions, not to mention the
matters of health, hygiene and happiness for the people.

The Scotch-Irish blood carries a mighty persistent corpuscle. It is the blood
that made the Duke of Wellington, Lord "Bobs," Robert Fulton, James
Oliver, James J. Hill, Cyrus Hall McCormick and Thomas A. Edison. It
makes fighters, inventors and creators—stubborn men who never know
when they are licked. They can live on nothing and follow an idea to its lair.
They laugh at difficulties, grow fat on opposition, and obstacle only inspires
them to renewed efforts.
Yet their fight is fair, and in the true type there is a delicate sense of
personal honor which only the strong possess. Philip D. Armour's word was
his bond. He never welched, and even his most persistent enemies never
accused him of double-dealing. When he fought, it was in the open, and he
fought to a finish. Then when his adversary cried, "Enough!" he would
carry him in his arms to a place of safety and bind up his wounds. Rightly
approached his heart was as tender as a girl's.
In business he paid to the last cent; and he expected others to pay, too. For
clerks in a comatose state, and the shirker who would sell his labor and then
connive to give short count, he had no pity; but for the stricken or the fallen,

his heart and his purse were always open. He gloried in work and could not
understand why others should not get their enjoyment out of it also.
He kept farmers' hours throughout his life, going to bed at nine o'clock and
getting up at five. He prized sleep—God's great gift of sleep—and used to
quote Sancho Panza, "God bless the man who first invented sleep."
Yet he slept only that he might arise and work. To be well and healthy and
strong and joyous was to him not only a privilege but a duty. If he used
tobacco it was never during business hours. For strong drink he had an
abhorrence, simply because he thought it useless, save possibly as a
medicine, and he believed that no man would need medicine if he lived
rightly.
Philip Armour foresaw the possibilities of the West and the Northwest, and
in company with Alexander Mitchell, "Diamond Joe" Reynolds, Fred
Layton, John Plankinton and others, took great personal pride in the
upbuilding of the country. He was possessed of an active imagination. In a
bigger, broader sense he was a dreamer. In his every action and thought he
was a doer. He was very fond of children and would drop almost any work
he had in hand to talk for a few minutes with a small boy or girl. He kept a
stock of small Swiss watches in his desk to present to his junior callers. His
great hobby was presenting his men with a suit of clothes should they
suggest anything out of the ordinary or do anything which attracted his
commendation. Nearly all of those close to him were presented with gold
watches.
It was in the late Seventies. Mr. Armour, with officials, was inspecting the
Saint Paul Railway. A rumor was circulated that Armour and Company was
in financial trouble, and Mr. Armour was so advised. His return was so
prompt that it was suggested that he must have come down over the wire.
He was very much incensed, and his first query was as to who had started
the rumor.
The president of a Chicago bank had loaned Armour and Company one
hundred thousand dollars, note due in ninety days. For some reason known
only to himself, he had made a demand on the cashier for the payment of
this note some sixty days before it was due, and very naturally, in the
absence of Mr. Armour, did not get his money.

Everett Wilson at that time was a member of the Ogden Boat Club, and was
quite friendly with a son of the president of the bank above referred to. This
young man remarked to Mr. Wilson that he had never felt so sorry for a man
in his life as he did for his father the day before. He said Phil Armour had
come over to the bank—had bearded his father in his den, and had gone
after him so fiercely—had gotten under him in so many ways—had
lampooned him up dale and down hill, that there was nothing left of his
father but a bunch of apologetic confusion, and that the interview had ended
by Mr. Armour's throwing a hundred thousand dollars in currency in the
gentleman's face. The young man said he never knew that a man could be
so indignant and so voluble as Mr. Armour was, and that it had made a
lasting impression on him.
Philip Armour had very high business ideals. To sell an article at more than
it was worth, or to deceive the buyer as to quality in any way, he would
have regarded as a calamity. He delighted in the thought that the men with
whom he traded were his friends. That his prosperity had been the
prosperity of the producing West, and also to the advantage of the
consuming East, were great sources of satisfaction. To personal criticism he
very seldom made reply, feeling that a man's life should justify itself, and
that explanation, excuse or apology is unworthy in a man who is doing his
best to help himself by helping humanity. But in spite of his indifference to
calumny his years were shortened by the stab of a pen—the thing which
killed Keats—the tumult of wild talk concerning "embalmed beef," started
by a Doctor William Daly (who shortly after committed suicide) and taken
up to divert public attention from the unpreparedness of the country
properly to take care of the health of its volunteer soldiery.
Mr. Armour, as Father of the Packing-House Industry, was keenly sensitive
to these slanders on the quality of the product and the honesty of the
packers. The charges were thoroughly investigated by a board of army
officers and declared by them to be without foundation.
Scandal and defamation in war-time are imminent; the literary stinkpot
rivals the lyddite of the enemy; fever, envy, malice and murderous tongues
strike in the dark and retreat in a miasmic fog. Here were forces that Philip
Armour, as unsullied and as honorable as Sir Philip Sidney, could not fight,
because he could not locate them.

About the same time came one Joseph Leiter, who tried to corner the wheat
of the world. Chicago looked to Armour to punish the presumptuous one.
And so Armour, already bowed with burdens, kept the Straits of Mackinaw
open in midwinter, and delivered millions of bushels of real wheat for real
money to meet the machinations of the bounding Leiter. Here, too, Armour
was fighting for Chicago, to redeem, if possible, her good name in the eyes
of the nations.
And Armour won; but it was like that last shot of Brann's, sent after he,
himself, had fallen. Philip Armour slipped down into the valley and passed
out into the shadow, unafraid. Like Cyrano de Bergerac he said, "I am
dying, but I am not defeated, nor am I dismayed!" And so they laid his tired,
overburdened body in the windowless house of rest.

JOHN J. ASTOR
The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine
o'clock, usually gets rich and is always reliable. Of course,
going to bed does not make him rich—I merely mean that such a
man will in all probability be up early in the morning and do a
big day's work, so his weary bones put him to bed early. Rogues
do their work at night. Honest men work by day. It's all a matter
of habit, and good habits in America make any man rich. Wealth
is largely a result of habit.
—John
Jacob Astor

JOHN JACOB ASTOR

It was Victor Hugo who said, "When you open a school, you close a
prison."
This seems to require a little explanation. Victor Hugo did not have in mind
a theological school, nor yet a young-ladies' seminary, nor an English
boarding-school, nor a military academy, and least of all a parochial
institute. What he was thinking of was a school where people—young and
old—were taught to be self-respecting, self-reliant and efficient—to care for
themselves, to help bear the burdens of the world, to assist themselves by
adding to the happiness of others.
Victor Hugo fully realized that the only education which serves is the one
that increases human efficiency, not the one that retards it. An education for
honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles, position—immunity—may tend to
exalt the individual ego, but it weakens the race, and its gain on the whole is
nil.
Men are rich only as they give. He who gives service gets great returns.
Action and reaction are equal, and the radiatory power of the planets
balances their attraction. The love you keep is the love you give away.
A bumptious colored person wearing a derby tipped over one eye, and a
cigar in his mouth pointing to the northwest, walked into a hardware-store
and remarked, "Lemme see your razors."
The clerk smiled pleasantly and asked, "Do you want a razor to shave
with?" "Naw," said the colored person; "for social purposes."
An education for social purposes isn't of any more use than a razor
purchased for a like use. An education which merely fits a person to prey on
society, and occasionally slash it up, is a predatory preparation for a life of
uselessness, and closes no prison. Rather it opens a prison and takes captive
at least one man. The only education that makes free is the one that tends to
human efficiency. Teach children to work, play, laugh, fletcherize, study,
think, and yet again, work, and we will raze every prison.
There is only one prison, and its name is Inefficiency. Amid the bastions of
this bastile of the brain the guards are Pride, Pretense, Greed, Gluttony,
Selfishness. Increase human efficiency and you set the captives free. "The

Teutonic tribes have captured the world because of their efficiency," says
Lecky the historian. He then adds that he himself is a Celt.
The two statements taken together reveal Lecky to be a man without
prejudice. When the Irish tell the truth about the Dutch the millennium
approaches. Should the quibbler arise and say that the Dutch are not
Germans, I will reply, true, but the Germans are Dutch—at least they are of
Dutch descent.
The Germans are great simply because they have the homely and
indispensable virtues of prudence, patience and industry. There is no
copyright on these qualities. God can do many things, but so far, He has
never been able to make a strong race of people and leave these ingredients
out of the formula.
As a nation, Holland first developed them so that they became characteristic
of the whole people. It was the slow, steady stream of Hollanders pushing
southward that civilized Germany. Music as a science was born in Holland.
The grandfather of Beethoven was a Dutchman. Gutenberg's forebears were
from Holland. And when the Hollanders had gone clear through Germany,
and then traversed Italy, and came back home by way of Venice, they struck
the rock of spiritual resources and the waters gushed forth.
Since Rembrandt carried portraiture to the point of perfection, two hundred
fifty years ago, Holland has been a land of artists—and it is so even unto
this day. John Jacob Astor was born of a Dutch family that had migrated
down to Heidelberg from Antwerp.
Through some strange freak of atavism the father of the boy bred back, and
was more or less of a Stone-Age cave-dweller. He was a butcher by trade,
in the little town of Waldorf, a few miles from Heidelberg. A butcher's
business then was to travel around and kill the pet pig, or sheep, or cow that
the tender-hearted owners dare not harm. The butcher was a pariah, a sort of
unofficial, industrial hangman.
At the same time he was more or less of a genius, for he climbed steeples,
dug wells, and did all kinds of disagreeable jobs that needed to be done, and
from which cautious men shrank like unwashed wool.

One such man—a German, too—lives in East Aurora. I joined him in
walking along a country road, the other day. He carried a big basket on his
arm, and was peacefully smoking a big Dutch pipe. We talked of music and
he was regretting the decline of a taste for Bach, when he happened to shift
the basket to the other arm. "What have you there?" I asked.
And here is the answer: "Oh, noddings—noddings but dynamite. I vas
going up on der hill to blow me some stumps oud." And I suddenly
bethought me of an engagement at the village.

John Jacob Astor was the youngest of four sons, and as many daughters.
The brothers ran away early in life, and went to sea or joined the army. One
of these boys came to America, and followed his father's trade of butcher.
Jacob Astor, the happy father of John Jacob, used to take the boy with him
on his pig-killing expeditions—this for two reasons: one, so the lad would
learn a trade, and the other to make sure that the boy did not run away.
Parents who hold their children by force have a very slender claim upon
them. The pastor of the local Lutheran Church took pity on this boy who
had such disgust for his father's trade, and hired him to work in his garden
and run errands. The intelligence and alertness of the lad made him look
like good timber for a minister.
He learned to read, and was duly confirmed as a member of the church.
Under the kindly care of the village parson John Jacob grew in mind and
body—his estate was to come later. When he was seventeen, his father
came and made a formal demand for his services. The young man must take
up his father's work of butchering. That night John Jacob walked out of
Waldorf by the wan light of the moon, headed for Antwerp. He carried a big
red handkerchief in which his worldly goods were knotted, and in his heart
he had the blessings of the Lutheran clergyman, who walked with him for
half a mile, and said a prayer at parting.
To have youth, high hope, right intent, health and a big red handkerchief is
to be greatly blessed. John Jacob got a job next day as oarsman on a

lumber-raft.
He reached Antwerp in a week. There he got a job on the docks as a laborer.
The next day he was promoted to checker-off. The captain of a ship asked
him to go to London and figure up the manifests on the way. He went. The
captain of the ship recommended him to the company in London, and the
boy was soon piling up wealth at the rate of a guinea a month. In
September, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-three, came the news to London that
George Washington had surrendered. In any event, peace had been
declared: Cornwallis had forced the issue, so the Americans had stopped
fighting. A little later it was given out that England had given up her
American Colonies, and they were free.
Intuitively, John Jacob Astor felt that the "New World" was the place for
him. He bought passage on a sailing-ship bound for Baltimore, at a cost of
five pounds. He then fastened five pounds in a belt around his waist, and
with the rest of his money—after sending two pounds home to his father,
with a letter of love—bought a dozen German flutes.
He had learned to play on this instrument with proficiency, and in America
he thought there would be an opening for musicians and musical
instruments. John Jacob was then nearly twenty years of age.
The ship sailed in November, but did not reach Baltimore until the middle
of March, having had to put back to sea on account of storms when within
sight of the Chesapeake. Then a month more was spent hunting for the
Chesapeake. There was plenty of time for flute-playing and making of
plans. On board ship he met a German, twenty years older than himself,
who was a fur-trader and had been home on a visit.
John Jacob played the flute, and the German friend told stories of fur-
trading among the Indians. Young Astor's curiosity was excited. The
Waldorf-Astoria plan of flute-playing was forgotten. He fed on fur-trading.
The habits of the animals, the value of their pelts, the curing of the furs,
their final market, were all gone over again and again. The two extra
months at sea gave him an insight into a great business, and he had the time
to fletcherize his ideas. He thought about it—wrote about it in his diary, for

he was at the journal age. Wolves, bears, badgers, minks and muskrats filled
his dreams.
Arriving in Baltimore he was disappointed to learn that there were no fur-
traders there. He started for New York. Here he found work with a certain
Robert Bowne, a Quaker, who bought and sold furs.
Young Astor set himself to learn the business—every part of it. He was
always sitting on the curb at the door before the owner got around in the
morning, carrying a big key to open the warehouse. He was the last to leave
at night. He pounded furs with a stick, salted them, sorted them, took them
to the tanners, brought them home. He worked, and as he worked, learned.
To secure the absolute confidence of a man, obey him. Only thus do you get
him to lay aside his weapons, be he friend or enemy. Any dullard can be
waited on and served, but to serve requires judgment, skill, tact, patience
and industry.
The qualities that make a youth a good servant are the basic ones for
mastership. Astor's alertness, willingness, loyalty, and ability to obey,
delivered his employer over into his hands. Robert Bowne, the good old
Quaker, insisted that Jacob should call him Robert; and from boarding the
young man with a near-by war widow who took cheap boarders, Bowne
took young Astor to his own house, and raised his pay from two dollars a
week to six.
Bowne had made an annual trip to Montreal for many years. Montreal was
the metropolis for furs. Bowne went to Montreal himself because he did not
know of any one he could trust to carry the message to Garcia. Those who
knew furs and had judgment were not honest, and those who were honest
did not know furs. Honest fools are really no better than rogues, as far as
practical purposes are concerned. Bowne once found a man who was honest
and also knew furs, but alas! he had a passion for drink, and no prophet
could foretell his "periodic," until it occurred.
Young Astor had been with Bowne only a year. He spoke imperfect English,
but he did not drink nor gamble, and he knew furs and was honest. Bowne
started him off for Canada with a belt full of gold; his only weapon was a
German flute that he carried in his hand. Bowne being a Quaker did not

believe in guns. Flutes were a little out of his line, too, but he preferred
them to flintlocks.
John Jacob Astor ascended the Hudson River to Albany, and then with pack
on his back, struck north, alone, through the forest to Lake Champlain. As
he approached an Indian settlement he played his flute. The aborigines
showed no disposition to give him the hook. He hired Indians to paddle him
up to the Canadian border. He reached Montreal.
The fur-traders there knew Bowne as a very sharp buyer, and so had their
quills out on his approach. But young Astor was seemingly indifferent. His
manner was courteous and easy. He got close to his man, and took his pick
of the pelts at fair prices. He expended all of his money, and even bought on
credit, for there are men who always have credit.
Young Astor found Indian nature to be simply human nature. The savage
was a man, and courtesy, gentleness and fairly good flute-playing soothed
his savage breast. Astor had beads and blankets, a flute and a smile. The
Indians carried his goods by relays and then with guttural certificates as to
his character passed him on to other red men, and at last he reached New
York without the loss of a pelt or the dampening of his ardor.
Bowne was delighted. To young Astor it was nothing. He had in his blood
the success corpuscle. He might have remained with Bowne and become a
partner in the business, but Bowne had business limitations and Astor
hadn't. So after a three years' apprenticeship, Astor knew all that Bowne did
and all he himself could imagine besides. So he resigned.
In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-six, John Jacob Astor began business on his
own account in a little store on Water Street, New York. There were one
room and a basement. He had saved a few hundred dollars: his brother, the
butcher, had loaned him a few hundred more, and Robert Bowne had
contributed a bale of skins to be paid for "at thy own price and thy own
convenience."
Astor had made friends with the Indians up the Hudson clear to Albany, and
they were acting as recruiting-agents for him. He was a bit boastful of the
fact that he had taught an Indian to play the flute, and anyway he had sold
the savage the instrument for a bale of beaver-pelts, with a bearskin thrown

in for good measure. It was a musical achievement as well as a commercial
one.
Having collected several thousand dollars' worth of furs he shipped them to
London and embarked as a passenger in the steerage. The trip showed him
that ability to sell was quite as necessary as the ability to buy—a point
which with all of his shrewdness Bowne had never guessed.
In London furs were becoming a fad. Astor sorted and sifted his buyers, as
he had his skins. He himself dressed in a suit of fur and thus proved his
ability as an advertiser. He picked his men and charged all the traffic would
bear. He took orders, on sample, from the nobility and sundry of the gentry,
and thereby cut the middleman. All of the money he received for his skins
he invested in "Indian Goods"—colored cloth, beads, blankets, knives, axes,
and musical instruments. His was the first store in New York that carried a
stock of musical instruments. These he sold to the savages, and also he
supplied the stolid Dutch the best of everything in this particular line, from
a bazoo to a Stradivarius violin.
When he got back to New York, he at once struck out through the
wilderness to buy furs of the Indians, or, better still, to interest them in
bringing furs to him.
He knew the value of friendship in trade as no other man of the time did. He
went clear through to Lake Erie, down to Niagara Falls, along Lake Ontario
across to Lake Champlain and then down the Hudson. He foresaw the great
city of Buffalo, and Rochester as well, only he said that Rochester would
probably be situated directly on the lake. But the water-power of the
Genesee Falls proved a stronger drawing power than the lake front. He
prophesied that along the banks of the Niagara Falls would be built the
greatest manufacturing city in the world. There were flourmills and
sawmills there then. The lumber first used in building the city of Buffalo
was brought from the sawmills at "The Falls."
Electric power, of course, was then a thing unguessed, but Astor prophesied
the Erie Canal, and made good guesses as to where prosperous cities would
appear along its line.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety, John Jacob Astor married Sarah Todd. Her
mother was a Brevoort, and it was brought about by her coming to Astor to
buy furs with which to make herself a coat. Her ability to judge furs and
make them up won the heart of the dealer. The marriage brought young
Astor into "the best Dutch New York society," a combination that was quite
as exclusive then as now.
This marriage was a business partnership as well as a marital, and proved a
success in every way. Sarah was a worker, with all the good old Dutch
qualities of patience, persistence, industry and economy. When her husband
went on trips she kept store. She was the only partner in whom he ever had
implicit faith. And faith is the first requisite in success.
Captain Cook had skirted the Pacific Coast from Cape Horn to Alaska, and
had brought to the attention of the fur-dealing and fur-wearing world the
sea-otter of the Northern Pacific. He also gave a psychological prophetic
glimpse of the insidious sealskin sack.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety, a ship from the Pacific brought a hundred
otter-skins to New York. The skins were quickly sold to London buyers at
exorbitant prices.
The nobility wanted sea-otter, or "Royal American Ermine," as they called
it. The scarcity boomed the price. Ships were quickly fitted out and
dispatched. Boats bound for the whale fisheries were diverted, and New
Bedford had a spasm of jealousy. Astor encouraged these fur-seeking
expeditions, but at first declined to invest any money in them, as he
considered them "extra hazardous." He was not a speculator.

Astor lived over his store in Water Street until the year Eighteen Hundred
when he moved to the plain and modest house at Two Hundred Twenty-
three Broadway, on the site of the old Astor House. Here he lived for
twenty-five years.
The fur business was simple and very profitable. Astor now was confining
himself mostly to beaver-skins. He fixed the price at one dollar, to be paid

to the Indians or trappers. It cost fifty cents to prepare and transport the skin
to London. There it was sold at from five to ten dollars. All the money
received for skins was then invested in English merchandise, which was
sold in New York at a profit. In Eighteen Hundred, Astor owned three ships
which he had bought so as absolutely to control his trade. Ascertaining that
London dealers were reshipping furs to China, early in the century he
dispatched one of his ships directly to the Orient, loaded with furs, with
explicit written instructions to the captain as to what the cargo should be
sold for. The money was to be invested in teas and silks. The ship sailed
away, and had been gone a year. No tidings had come from her. Suddenly a
messenger came with the news that the ship was in the bay. We can imagine
the interest of Mr. and Mrs. Astor as they locked their store and ran to the
Battery. Sure enough, it was their ship, riding gently on the tide, snug,
strong and safe as when she had left.
The profit on this one voyage was seventy thousand dollars. By Eighteen
Hundred Ten, John Jacob Astor was worth two million dollars. He began to
invest all his surplus money in New York real estate. He bought acreage
property in the vicinity of Canal Street. Next he bought Richmond Hill, the
estate of Aaron Burr. It consisted of one hundred sixty acres just above
Twenty-third Street. He paid for the land a thousand dollars an acre. People
said Astor was crazy. In ten years he began to sell lots from the Richmond
Hill property at the rate of five thousand dollars an acre. Fortunately for his
estate he did not sell much of the land at this price, for it is this particular
dirt that makes up that vast property known as "The Astor Estate."
During the Revolutionary War, Roger Morris, of Putnam County, New
York, made the mistake of siding with the Tories.
A mob collected, and Morris and his family escaped, taking ship to
England. Before leaving, Morris declared his intention of coming back as
soon as "the insurrection was quelled." Roger Morris never came back.
Roger Morris is known in history as the man who married Mary Philipse.
And this lady lives in history because she had the felicity of being proposed
to by George Washington. George himself tells us of this in his Journal, and
George, you will remember, could not tell a lie. George was twenty-five, he
was on his way to Boston, and was entertained at the Philipse house, the

Plaza not having then been built. Mary was twenty, pink and lissome.
Immediately after supper, George, finding himself alone in the parlor with
the girl, proposed. He was an opportunist.
The lady pleaded for time, which the Father of his Country declined to give.
He was a soldier and demanded immediate surrender. A small quarrel
followed, and George saddled his horse and rode on his way to fame and
fortune. Mary thought he would come back, but George never proposed to
the same lady twice. Yet he thought kindly of Mary and excused her
conduct by recording, "I think ye ladye was not in ye moode."
Just twenty-two years after this bout with Cupid, General George
Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, occupied the
Roger Morris Mansion as headquarters, the occupants having fled.
Washington had a sly sense of humor, and on the occasion of his moving
into the mansion, remarked to Colonel Aaron Burr, his aide, "I move in here
for sentimental reasons—I have a small and indirect claim on the place."
It was Washington who formally confiscated the property, and turned it over
to the State of New York as contraband of war. The Morris estate of about
fifty thousand acres was parceled out and sold by the State of New York to
settlers. It seems, however, that Roger Morris had only a life-interest in the
estate, and this was a legal point so fine that it was entirely overlooked in
the joy of confiscation. Washington was a great soldier, but an indifferent
lawyer.
John Jacob Astor accidentally ascertained the facts. He was convinced that
the heirs could not be robbed of their rights through the acts of a
leaseholder, which legally was the status of Roger Morris. Astor was a good
real-estate lawyer himself, but he referred the point to the best counsel he
could find. They agreed with him. He next hunted up the heirs and bought
their quitclaims for one hundred thousand dollars. He then notified the
parties who had purchased the land, and they in turn made claim upon the
State for protection.
After much legal parleying the case was tried according to stipulation with
the State of New York, directly, as defendant, and Astor and the occupants,
as plaintiffs. Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren appeared for the State,
and an array of lesser legal lights for Astor.

The case was narrowed down to the plain and simple point that Roger
Morris was not the legal owner of the estate, and that the rightful heirs
could not be made to suffer for the "treason, contumacy and contravention"
of another. Astor won, and as a compromise the State issued him twenty-
year bonds bearing six per cent interest, for the neat sum of five hundred
thousand dollars—not that Astor needed the money, but finance was to him
a game, and he had won.

In front of the first A. T. Stewart store there used to be an old woman who
sold apples. Regardless of weather, there she sat and mumbled her wares at
the passer-by. She was a combination beggar and merchant, with a
blundering wit, a ready tongue and a vocabulary unfit for publication.
Her commercial genius is shown in the fact that she secured one good-
paying customer—Alexander T. Stewart. Stewart grew to believe in her as
his spirit of good luck. Once when bargains had been offered at the Stewart
store and the old woman was not at her place on the curb, the merchant-
prince sent his carriage for her in hot haste, "lest offense be given." And the
day was saved.
When the original store was abandoned for the Stewart "Palace," the old
apple-woman, with her box, basket and umbrella, was tenderly taken along,
too.
John Jacob Astor had no such belief in luck-omens, portents, or mascots as
had A. T. Stewart. With him success was a sequence—a result—it was all
cause and effect. A. T. Stewart did not trust entirely to luck, for he, too,
carefully devised and planned. But the difference between the Celtic and the
Teutonic mind is shown in that Stewart hoped to succeed, while Astor knew
that he would. One was a bit anxious; the other exasperatingly placid.
Astor took a deep interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition. He went to
Washington to see Lewis, and questioned him at great length about the
Northwest. Legend says that he gave the hardy discoverer a thousand
dollars, which was a big amount for him to give away.

Once a committee called on him with a subscription-list for some worthy
charity. Astor subscribed fifty dollars. One of the disappointed committee
remarked, "Oh, Mr. Astor, your son William gave us a hundred dollars."
"Yes," said the old man, "but you must remember that William has a rich
father."
Washington Irving has told the story of Astoria at length. It was the one
financial plunge taken by John Jacob Astor. And in spite of the fact that it
failed, the whole affair does credit to the prophetic brain of Astor. "This
country will see a chain of growing and prosperous cities straight from New
York to Astoria, Oregon," said this man in reply to a doubting questioner.
He laid his plans before Congress, urging a line of army-posts, forty miles
apart, from the western extremity of Lake Superior to the Pacific.
"These forts or army-posts will evolve into cities," said Astor, when he
called on Thomas Jefferson, who was then President of the United States.
Jefferson was interested, but non-committal. Astor exhibited maps of the
Great Lakes, and the country beyond. He argued with a prescience then not
possessed by any living man that at the western extremity of Lake Superior
would grow up a great city. Yet in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, Duluth
was ridiculed by the caustic tongue of Proctor Knott, who asked, "What will
become of Duluth when the lumber-crop is cut?" Astor proceeded to say
that another great city would grow up at the southern extremity of Lake
Michigan. General Dearborn, Secretary of War under Jefferson, had just
established Fort Dearborn on the present site of Chicago. Astor commended
this, and said, "From a fort you get a trading-post, and from a trading-post
you will get a city."
He pointed out to Jefferson the site, on his map, of the Falls of Saint
Anthony. "There you will have a fort some day, for wherever there is water-
power, there will grow up mills for grinding grain, and sawmills as well.
This place of power will have to be protected, and so you will have there a
post which will eventually be replaced by a city." Yet Fort Snelling was
nearly fifty years in the future, and Saint Paul and Minneapolis were dreams
undreamed.
Jefferson took time to think about it and then wrote Astor thus: "Your
beginning of a city on the Western Coast is a great acquisition, and I look

forward to a time when our population will spread itself up and down along
the whole Pacific frontage, unconnected with us, except by ties of blood
and common interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government."
The Pilgrim Fathers thought land that lay inward from the sea was
valueless. The forest was an impassable barrier. Later, up to the time of
George Washington, the Alleghanies were regarded as a natural barrier.
Patrick Henry likened the Alleghany Mountains to the Alps that separated
Italy from Germany and said, "The mountain-ranges are lines that God has
set to separate one people from another."
Later, statesmen have spoken of the ocean in the same way, as proof that a
union of all countries under an international capital could never exist.
Great as was Jefferson, he regarded the achievement of Lewis and Clark as
a feat, and not an example. He looked upon the Rocky Mountains as a
natural separation of peoples "bound by ties of blood and mutual interest,
but otherwise unconnected." To pierce these mighty mountains with
tunnels, and whisper across them with the human voice, were of course
miracles as yet unguessed. But Astor closed his eyes and saw great pack-
trains, mules laden with skins, winding across these mountains, and down
to tidewater at Astoria. There his ships would be lying at the docks, ready to
sail for the Far East. James J. Hill was yet to come.

A company was formed, and two expeditions set out for the mouth of the
Columbia River, one by land and the other by sea.
The land expedition barely got through alive; it was a perilous undertaking,
with accidents by flood and field and in the imminent deadly breach. But
the route by the water was feasible.
The town was founded and soon became a center of commercial activity.
Had Astor been on the ground to take personal charge, a city like Seattle
would have bloomed and blossomed on the Pacific, fifty years ago. But
power at Astoria was subdivided among several little men, who wore
themselves out in a struggle for honors, and to see who would be greatest in

the kingdom of heaven. John Jacob Astor was too far away to send a current
of electricity through the vacuum of their minds, light up the recesses with
reason, and shock them into sanity. Like those first settlers at Jamestown,
the pioneers at Astoria saw only failure ahead, and that which we fear we
bring to pass. To settle a continent with men is almost as difficult as
Nature's attempt to form a soil on a rocky surface. There came a grand grab
at Astoria and it was each for himself and the devil take the hindmost—it
was a stampede.
System and order went by the board. The strongest stole the most, as usual,
but all got a little. And England's gain in citizens was our loss.
Astor lost a million dollars by the venture. He smiled calmly and said: "The
plan was right, but my men were weak—that is all. The gateway to China
will be from the Northwest. My plans were correct. Time will vindicate my
reasoning."
When the block on Broadway, bounded by Vesey and Barclay Streets, was
cleared of its plain two-story houses preparatory to building the Astor
House, wise men shook their heads and said, "It's too far uptown." But the
free bus that met all boats solved the difficulty, and gave the cue to hotel-
men all over the world. The hotel that runs full is a goldmine. Hungry men
feed, and the beautiful part about the hotel business is that the customers are
hungry the next day—also thirsty. Astor was worth ten millions, but he took
a personal delight in sitting in the lobby of the Astor House and watching
the dollars roll into this palace that his brain had planned. To have an idea—
to watch it grow—to then work it out, and see it made manifest in concrete
substance, this was his joy. The Astor House was a bigger hostelry in its day
than the Waldorf-Astoria is now.
Astor was tall, thin, and commanding in appearance. He had only one
hallucination, and that was that he spoke the English language. The accent
he possessed at thirty was with him in all its pristine effulgence at eighty-
five. "Nopody vould know I vas a Cherman—aind't it?" he used to say. He
spoke French, a dash of Spanish, and could parley in Choctaw, Ottawa,
Mohawk and Huron. But they who speak several languages must not be
expected to speak any one language well.

Yet when John Jacob wrote, it was English without a flaw. In all his
dealings he was uniquely honorable and upright. He paid and he made
others pay. His word was his bond. He was not charitable in the sense of
indiscriminate giving. "To give something for nothing is to weaken the
giver," was one of his favorite sayings. That this attitude protected a miserly
spirit, it is easy to say, but it is not wholly true. In his later years he carried
with him a book containing a record of his possessions. This was his
breviary. In it he took a very pardonable delight. He would visit a certain
piece of property, and then turn to his book and see what it had cost him ten
or twenty years before. To realize that his prophetic vision had been correct
was to him a great source of satisfaction.
His habits were of the best. He went to bed at nine o'clock, and was up
before six. At seven he was at his office. He knew enough to eat sparingly
and to walk, so he was never sick.
Millionaires as a rule are wofully ignorant. Up to a certain sum, they grow
with their acquisitions. Then they begin to wither at the heart. The care of a
fortune is a penalty. I advise the gentle reader to think twice before
accumulating ten millions. John Jacob Astor was exceptional in his
combined love of money and love of books. History was at his tongue's
end, and geography was his plaything. Fitz-Greene Halleck was his private
secretary, hired on a basis of literary friendship. Washington Irving was a
close friend, too, and first crossed the Atlantic on an Astor pass. He banked
on Washington Irving's genius, and loaned him money to come and go, and
buy a house. Irving was named in Astor's will as one of the trustees of the
Astor Library Fund, and repaid all favors by writing "Astoria."
Astor died, aged eighty-six. It was a natural death, a thing that very seldom
occurs. The machinery all ran down at once. Realizing his lack of book
advantages, he left by his will four hundred thousand dollars to found the
Astor Library, in order that others might profit where he had lacked. He also
left fifty thousand dollars to his native town of Waldorf, a part of which
money was used to found an Astor Library there. God is surely good, for if
millionaires were immortal, their money would cause them great misery
and the swollen fortunes would crowd mankind, not only 'gainst the wall,
but into the sea. Death is the deliverer, for Time checks power and equalizes
all things, and gives the new generation a chance.

Astor hated gamblers. He never confused gambling, as a mode of money-
getting, with actual production. He knew that gambling produces nothing—
it merely transfers wealth, changes ownership. And since it involves loss of
time and energy it is a positive waste. Yet to buy land and hold it, thus
betting on its rise in value, is not production, either. Nevertheless, this was
to Astor legitimate and right.
Henry George threw no shadow before, and no economist had ever written
that to secure land and hold it unused, awaiting a rise in value, was a dog-
in-the-manger, unethical and selfish policy. Morality is a matter of
longitude and time.
Astor was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and yet he lived out
his days with a beautiful and perfect disbelief in revealed religion. He knew
enough of biology to know that religions are not "revealed"—they are
evolved. Yet he recognized the value of the Church as a social factor. To
him it was a good police system, and so when rightly importuned he gave,
with becoming moderation, to all faiths and creeds.
A couple of generations back in his ancestry there was a renegade Jew who
loved a Christian girl, and thereby molted his religion. When Cupid crosses
swords with a priest, religion gets a death-stroke. This stream of free blood
was the inheritance of John Jacob Astor.
William B. Astor, the son of John Jacob, was brought up in the financial
way he should go. He was studious, methodical, conservative, and had the
good sense to carry out the wishes of his father. His son, John Jacob Astor,
was very much like him, only of more neutral tint. The time is now ripe for
another genius in the Astor family. If William B. Astor lacked the courage
and initiative of his parent, he had more culture, and spoke English without
an accent. The son of John Jacob Astor second is William Waldorf Astor,
who speaks English with an English accent, you know.
John Jacob Astor, besides having the first store for the sale of musical
instruments in America, organized the first orchestra of over twelve players.
He brought over a leader from Germany, and did much to foster the love of
music in the New World.

Every worthy Mæcenas imagines that he is a great painter, writer, sculptor
or musician, sidetracked by material cares thrust upon him by unkind Fate.
John Jacob Astor once told Washington Irving that it was only business
responsibility that prevented his being a novelist; and at other times he
declared his intent to take up music as a profession as soon as he had gotten
all of his securities properly tied up. And whether John Jacob worked out
his dreams or not, there is no doubt that they added to his peace, happiness
and length of days. Happy indeed is the man who escapes the critics by
leaving his literary masterpiece in the ink.

PETER COOPER

Let our schools teach the nobility of labor and the beauty of
human service, but the superstitions of ages past—never!
—Peter
Cooper

PETER COOPER
Peter Cooper was born in New York City in the year Seventeen Hundred
Ninety-one. He lived to be ninety-two years old, passing out in Eighteen
Hundred Eighty-three.
He was, successively, laborer, clerk, mechanic, inventor, manufacturer,
financier, teacher, philanthropist and philosopher.
If Robert Owen was the world's first modern merchant, Peter Cooper was
America's first businessman. He seems to have been the first prominent
man in the United States to abandon that legal wheeze, "Caveat emptor." In
fact, he worked for the buyer, and considered the other man's interests
before he did his own. He practised the Golden Rule and made it pay, while

the most of us yet regard it as a kind of interesting experiment. I have said a
few oblique things about city-bred boys and city people in general, but I
feel like apologizing for them and doing penance when I think of restless,
tireless, eager, brave, honest and manly Peter Cooper.
When that New York City woman, last week, observing a beautiful brass
model of an Oliver Plow on my mantel, asked me, "What is this musical
instrument?" she proved herself not of the Peter Cooper tribe. She was the
other kind—the kind that seeing the pollywogs remarks, "Oh, how lovely—
they will all be butterflies next week!" Or, "Which cow is it that gives the
butter-milk?" a question that once made Nathan Straus walk on his hands.
Although Peter Cooper was born in New York City and had a home there
most of his life, he loved the country, and for many years made Sunday
sacred for the woods and fields. Yet as a matter of strictest truth let it be
stated that, although Peter Cooper was born in New York City, when he was
two years old, like Bill Nye, he persuaded his parents to move. The family
gravitated to the then little village of Peekskill, and here the lad lived until
he was seventeen years old.
Next to Benjamin Franklin, Peter Cooper was our all-round educated
American. His perfect health—living to a great age—with sanity and
happiness as his portion, proves him to be one who knew the laws of health
and also had the will to obey them. He never "retired from business"—if he
quit one kind of work it was to take up something more difficult.
He was in the fight to the day of his death; and always he carried the flag
further to the front.
He was a Freethinker at a time when to have thoughts of your own was to
be an outcast. His restless mind was no more satisfied with an outworn
theology than with an outgrown system of transportation. His religion was
blended with his work and fused with his life.
He built the first railway-locomotive in America, and was its engineer until
he taught others how. He rolled the first iron rails for railroads. He made the
first iron beams for use in constructing fireproof buildings. He was the near
and dear friend and adviser of Cyrus W. Field, and lent his inventive skill,

his genius and his money, to the laying of the Atlantic Cable; and was the
President of the Atlantic Cable Company for eighteen years.
In building and endowing Cooper Union, he outlined a system of education
so beneficent that it attracted the attention of the thinking men of the world.
And it is even now serving as a model upon which our entire public-school
system will yet be founded—a system that works not for culture, for bric-a-
brac purposes, but for character and competence. A what-not education may
be impressive, but is worthless as collateral. The achievements of Peter
Cooper make the average successful man look like a pigmy.
What the world needs is a few more Peter Coopers—rich men who do not
absolve themselves by drawing checks for charity, but who give their lives
for human betterment.
Let us catch up with Peter Cooper.

John Cooper, the father of Peter Cooper, was of English stock. He was
twenty-one years old in that most unforgetable year, Seventeen Hundred
Seventy-six. At the first call to arms, he enlisted as a minuteman. He fought
valiantly through the war, in the field, and in the fortifications surrounding
New York City, and came out of Freedom's fight penniless, but with one
valuable possession—a wife.
In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-nine, he married the daughter of General
John Campbell, his commander, who was then stationed at West Point. It
was an outrageous thing for a sergeant to do, and I am sorry to say it was
absolutely without orders or parental permission. The bride called it a
Cooper union.
The Campbells, very properly, were Scotch, and the Scotch have a bad habit
of thinking themselves a trifle better than the English. Like the Irish, they
regard an Englishman with suspicion. The Scotch swear that they have
never been conquered, certainly not by J. Bull, who has always been quite
willing to give them anything they ask for.

At the time of his marriage, Sergeant Cooper was engaged in the laudable
business of looking after General Campbell's horses, and also, let it be
known, of making garden for the Campbell family.
In his garden work, John Cooper was under the immediate orders of
Margaret Campbell. After hours, the Sergeant used to play a piccolo, and
among other tuneful lays he piped one called "The Campbells Are Coming."
It was on one such musical occasion that the young couple simply walked
off and got married, thus proving a point which I have long held, to wit:
Music is a secondary love manifestation.
On being informed of the facts, General Campbell promptly ordered that
Sergeant John Cooper be shot. Before the execution could take place, the
sentence was commuted to thirty days in the guardhouse. After serving one
day, the culprit was pardoned on petition of his wife.
In a month he was made a captain, and later a lieutenant. The business of a
soldier is not apt to be of a kind to develop his mental resources. Soldiers
fight under orders; and initiative, production and economy are mere
abstractions to your man of the sword.
Suffice it to say that in the war, John Cooper lost the ability to become a
civilian of the first rank. He was industrious but improvident; he made
money and he lost it. He had a habit of abandoning good inventions for
worse ones. The ability to eliminate is good, but in sifting ideas let us
cleave to those that are workable, until Fate proves there is something really
better.
Peter Cooper was the fifth child in a family of nine. Bees know the secret of
sex, but man does not. Peter Cooper's mother thought that her fifth child
was to be a girl, but it was not until after the boy had grown to be a man and
was proving his prowess, that his parents remembered why they had called
him Peter, and said, "On this rock shall our family be built."
To be born of parents who do not know how to get on, and be one of a big
family, is a great blessing. We are taught by antithesis quite as much as by
injunction and direction. And chiefest of all we are taught through struggle,
and not through immunity in that vacuum called complete success.

Peter Cooper's childhood was one of toil and ceaseless endeavor. Just one
year did he go to school, just one year in all his life, and then for only half a
day at a time. His short ration of books made him anxious to know, anxious
to learn, and so his disadvantages gave him a thing which college often fails
to bestow—that is, the Study Habit. And the reason he got it was because he
wanted to go to school and could not. Happy Peter Cooper!
And yet he never really knew that many a youth is sent to school and
dinged at by pedagogues until examinations become a nightmare, and
college a penalty. Thus it happens that many a college graduate is so
rejoiced on getting through and standing "on the threshold," that he never
looks in a book afterward. Of such a one we can very properly say, "He got
his education in college"—when all the world knows that the education that
really amounts to anything is that which we get out of Life.

The climbing propensities of Peter Cooper were made manifest very early
in life. Later, they developed into a habit; and shifting ground from the
physical to the psychic, he continued to climb all his life.
Also he made others climb, for no man climbeth by himself alone. At
twelve, Peter Cooper proudly walked the ridgepole of the family residence,
to the great astonishment and admiration of the little girls and the jealousy
of the boys. When the children would run in breathlessly and announce to
the busy mother, "Peter, he is on the house!" the mother would reply, "Then
he will not get drowned in the Hudson River!" At other times it was, "Peter,
he is swimming across the river!" The mother then found solace in the
thought that the boy was not in immediate danger of sliding off the house
and breaking his neck. Once, little Peter climbed a lofty elm to get a
hanging bird's-nest that was built far out on a high projecting limb. He
reached the nest all right, but his diagnosis was not correct, for it proved to
be a hornets' nest, beyond dispute.
To escape the wrath of the hornets, Peter descended the tree "overhand,"
which being interpreted means that he dropped and caught the limbs as he
went down so as to decrease the speed. The last drop was about thirty feet.

The fall didn't hurt, but the sudden stop broke his collar-bone, knocked out
three teeth, and cut a scar on his chin that lasted him all of his days.
Life is a dangerous business—few get out of it alive. Life consists in betting
on your power to do—to achieve—to accomplish—to climb—to become. If
you mistake hornets for birds, you pay the penalty for your error, as you pay
for all mistakes. The only men who do things are those who dare.
Safety can be secured by doing nothing, saying nothing, being nothing.
Here's to those who dare!
Because a thing had never been done before was to Peter Cooper no reason
why it should not be done now. And although he innocently stirred up a few
hornets' nests, he became a good judge of both birds and hornets through
personal experience. That is the advantage of making mistakes. But wisdom
lies in not responding to encores.
Peter Cooper's body was marked by the falls, mauls, hauls, and scars of
burns and explosions. Surely if God does not look us over for medals and
diplomas, but for scars, then Peter Cooper fulfilled the requirements.
When seventeen years old, he went down to New York and apprenticed
himself to a coachmaker, Woodward by name. He was to get his board,
washing and mending, and twenty-five dollars a year. It was a four-year
contract—selling himself into service and servitude. The first two years he
saved twenty dollars out of his wages. The third year his employer
voluntarily paid him fifty dollars; and the fourth year seventy-five. In short,
the young man had mastered the trade.
Woodward's shop was at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street,
which was then the northern limit of the city. Just beyond this was a big
garden, worked by a prosperous and enterprising Irishman who supplied
vegetables to ship-captains. This garden later was transformed into City
Hall Park, and here the city buildings were erected, the finest in America for
their purpose. The Irish still command the place.
New York City then had less than forty thousand inhabitants. Peter Cooper
was to see the city grow to two million. For seventy-one years after his
majority he was to take an active and intelligent interest in its evolution,
tinting its best thought and hopes with his own aspiration.

The building of coaches then was a great trade. It was stagecoach times, and
a good coach was worth anywhere from three hundred to a thousand
dollars. The work was done by small concerns, where the proprietors and
their 'prentices would turn out three or four vehicles a year. To build the
finest coaches in the world was the ambition of Peter Cooper.
But to get a little needed capital he hired out to a manufacturer of woolen
cloth at Hempstead, Long Island, for a dollar and a half a day. A dollar a
day was good wages then, but Cooper had inventive skill in working with
machinery. He had already invented and patented a machine for mortising
the hubs of wagon-wheels. Now he perfected a machine for finishing
woolen cloth. As the invention was made on the time of, and in the mill
where he worked, he was given only a one-third interest in it.
He went on a visit to his old home at Peekskill and there met Matthew
Vassar, who was to send the name of Vassar down the corridors of time, not
as that of a weaver of wool and the owner of a very good brewery, but as
the founder of a school for girls, or as it is somewhat anomalously called, "a
female seminary."
Peter Cooper sold the county-right of his patent to Matthew Vassar for five
hundred dollars. It was more money than the father had ever seen at one
time in all his life.
The War of Eighteen Hundred Twelve was on, and woolen cloth was in
great demand, the supply from England having been shut off.
Opportunity and Peter Cooper met, or is the man himself Opportunity?
The ratio of marriages, we are told, keeps pace with the price of corn. On
the strength of his five hundred dollars, Peter Cooper embarked on the sea
of matrimony, as the village editors express it. When Peter Cooper married
Sarah Bedell, it was a fortunate thing for the world. Peter Cooper was a
Commonsense Man, which is really better than to be a genius. A
Commonsense Man is one who does nothing to make people think he is
different from what he is. He is one who would rather be than seem! But a
Commonsense Man needs a Commonsense Woman to help him live a
Commonsense Life. Mrs. Cooper was a Commonsense Woman. She was of
Huguenot parentage.

Persecution had given the Huguenots a sternness of mental and moral fiber,
just as it had blessed and benefited the Puritans. The habit of independent
thought got into the veins of these Huguenots, and they played important
parts in the War of the Revolution. Like the Jews, they made good
Freethinkers. They reason things out without an idolatrous regard for
precedent.
For fifty-seven years Peter and Sarah fought the battle of life together. He
clarified his thought by explaining his plans to her, and together they grew
rich—rich in money, rich in knowledge, rich in experience, rich in love.

There are men who are not content to put all their eggs into one basket, and
then watch the basket.
Peter Cooper craved the excitement of adventure. His nature demanded new
schemes, new plans, new methods upon which to break the impulse of his
mind. The trade-wind of his genius did not blow constantly from one
direction. Had he been content to focus on coach-building, he could have
become rich beyond the dream of avarice. As it was, the fact that he could
build as good a coach as any one else satisfied that quarter-section of his
nature.
When the war of Eighteen Hundred Twelve closed, there was a great
shrinkage in wool. Peter Cooper sold his holdings for a grocery-store,
which he ran just long enough to restock and sell to a man who wanted it
more than he did.
Then he started a furniture-factory, for he was an expert worker in wood.
But the bench for him was only by-play. As he worked, his mind roamed
the world.
He used glue in making the furniture. He bought his glue from a man who
had a little factory on the site of what is now the Park Avenue Hotel. The
man who made the glue did not like the business. He wanted to make
furniture, just as comedians always want to play Hamlet. Peter Cooper's
furniture-shop was in a rented building. The glue-man owned his site. Peter

Cooper traded his furniture-shop for the glue-factory, and got a deed to the
premises.
He was then thirty-three years old. The glue-factory was the foundation of
his fortune. He made better glue and more glue than any other concern in
America. Few men of brains would get stuck on the glue business. There
are features about it not exactly pleasant. The very difficulties of it,
however, attracted Cooper. He never referred to his glue-factory as a
chemical laboratory, nor did he call it a studio. He was proud of his
business. He made the first isinglass manufactured in America, and for
some years monopolized the trade.
But one business was not enough for Peter Cooper. Attached to the glue-
factory was a machine-shop which was the scene of many inventions. Here
in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven and Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight,
Peter Cooper worked out and made a steam-engine which he felt sure was
an improvement on the one that Watt had made in England.
Peter Cooper's particular device was a plan to do away with the crank, and
transform the rectilinear motion of the piston into rotary motion. He figured
it out that this would save two-fifths of the steam, and so stated in his
application for a patent, a copy of which is before the writer.
The Patent Office then was looked after by the President in person. Peter
Cooper's patent was signed by John Quincy Adams, President, Henry Clay,
Secretary of State, and William Wirt, Attorney General. The patent was
good for fourteen years, so any one who cares to infringe on it can do so
now without penalty.
There were then no trained patent-examiners, and the President and
Secretary of State were not inclined to hamper inventors with technicalities.
You paid your fee, the patent was granted, and all questions of priority were
left to be fought out in the courts. More patents have been granted to one
individual—say, Thomas A. Edison—than were issued in America, all told,
up to the time that Peter Cooper went down to Washington in person and
explained his invention to John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, who
evidently were very glad to sign the patent, rather than bother to understand
the invention. In his application Peter Cooper states, "This invention is a
suitable motor for hauling land-carriages."

It was one year before this that Stephenson in England had given an
exhibition of his locomotive, the "Rocket," on a circular two-mile track in
Manchester. Cooper had not seen the "Rocket," but Stephenson's example
had fired his brain, and he had in his own mind hastened the system.
At this time he was thirty-six years old. His glue business was prosperous.
Several thousand dollars of his surplus he had invested in charcoal-kilns
near Baltimore. From this he had gone into a land speculation in the
suburbs of that city. His partners had abandoned the enterprise and left him
to face the disgrace of failure.
Commerce was drifting away from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New
York. The Erie Canal had been opened and it looked as if this would be the
one route to the West—the Hudson River to Albany, thence by canal to
Buffalo, and on by the Great Lakes to the land of promise.
Pennsylvania had a system of canals, partially in use, and the rest in
building, which would open up a route to the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. But
engineers had looked the ground over, and given it as their opinion that
Baltimore was hedged in by insurmountable difficulties. Prophecies were
made that soon ships would cease to come to Baltimore at all. And under
this lowering commercial sky, Peter Cooper saw his Baltimore investments
fading away into the ether.
At this time the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad was in operation. The
coaches and wagons were simply those in use on the roads, but with new
tires that carried a flange to keep the wheel on the rail. It was found that a
team of horses could draw double the load on a railroad that they could if
the wheels of the vehicle were on the ground.
The news was brought to America. Wooden rails were first tried, and then
these were strengthened by nailing strap iron along the top. It was a great
idea—build a railroad from Baltimore to the Ohio River, and thus compete
with the Pennsylvania canals to the Ohio!
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company was formed. It was the first railroad company in America. Peter
Cooper bought shares to the extent of his ability. It was a life-and-death
struggle. If the railroad was a success, Baltimore was saved, and Peter

Cooper was a rich man; otherwise he was a bankrupt. Stephenson's
"Rocket" in England was pulling three or four carriages at a speed of ten
miles an hour, while a team of horses on the same track could pull only one
carriage at the rate of six or seven miles an hour.
The City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland were empowered to buy
shares in the new transportation company. Thus we find government
ownership of the first American railroad. The Mayor of the City and the
Governor of the State had heard of Peter Cooper's engine, which he said
could be used for "land-carriages," and they now importuned him to come
to their rescue.
Robert Fulton had already proved that the steamship was practicable; but
Fulton wasn't interested in railroads. He maintained, as did almost every
one else, that the water-route was the only safe and sure and economical
way of transportation. When the railroad was built from Albany to
Schenectady the first idea was to have the engine tow canal-boats. Peter
Cooper heard the wail of the Baltimoreans, and said, "I'll knock an engine
together in six weeks that will pull carriages ten miles an hour and beat any
canal-boat that ever collected barnacles."

Peter Cooper went back from Baltimore to New York with a few misgivings
as to whether he had not promised too much.
The real fact was he had gotten a patent on his engine before he had put it to
an actual test. He had made the engine, but now he must make a boiler in
which to generate the steam to make the wheels go round. This boiler he
made and riveted with his own hands. It stood upright and was as high as
his shoulder. It had a furnace beneath. It contained no tubes, and the
proposition was to fill it half-full of water and then boil this water.
It took three weeks to make the boiler. It was about as big as the tank in an
average kitchen-range. There were no water-gauges or steam-gauges. The
engineer had to guess as to the pressure he was carrying.

When the boiler was complete, the great difficulty was how to carry the
steam from the boiler to the engine. There were no wrought-iron pipes then
made or sold in America. Cooper took a couple of muskets and used the
barrels for pipes to connect his boiler and engine. These were duly soldered
into place. The engine and boiler were then placed on a small, flat-top
wagon and bolted down. The engine had a wheel which projected over the
side, and an endless chain was run over the projecting hub of the wagon.
Peter experimented and found that the water in the boiler would last one
hour; then the fire would have to be drawn, and the boiler cooled and
refilled. He tried the engine and it worked, but there was no railroad upon
which to try the wagon until the machine was taken down to Baltimore. A
team was hitched to the wagon, and the drive was made to Baltimore in
three days.
Peter placed his wagon with its flange-wheels on the track and pushed it up
and down along the rail. It fitted the track all right. He then went back to his
hotel with the two boys who were helping him. After the boys were abed,
he sneaked off in the darkness, filled up his boiler, screwed down the top,
and fired up. It was a moment of intense excitement. He turned on the
steam—the wheels revolved—then the thing stuck. He had a pike-pole and
using this pushed himself along for a few rods. The endless chain was
working, and the machine was going—flying—almost as fast as a man
could run. And Peter ran the machine back into the barn, went home and
went to bed. He had succeeded. The next day he invited the President of the
road and the Mayor of the City to ride with him.
The machine had to be poled or pushed to start it, but it proved the
principle. The following day a public exhibition was given. Forty men and
one woman responded to the request for volunteers to ride. They rode on
the engine and in a big coach attached behind. They covered the top of the
coach and clung to the sides. A dozen men got hold and gave a good push
and they were off.
The road was just thirteen miles long. The distance was made in one hour
and twelve minutes. The fire was then drawn and the boiler refilled. Also,
all the passengers refilled, for whisky flowed free.

Peter Cooper was ready to start back. He ordered every man to hold on to
his hat. A push and a pull, all together, and they were off. They ran the
thirteen miles back in just fifty-eight minutes. The engine was a success
beyond the fondest hopes of Peter. There were difficulties in the way,
however. One was that the pulling only on one side caused a cramping of
the flange on the other side against the rail. This was remedied by putting a
wheel on both sides and running a chain on the two projecting hubs.
The pulling by hand to start was also criticized. Next, the fact that the
engine had to be shut down every hour for water was noted. Peter Cooper
stopped the mouths of the carpers by calling attention to the fact that even a
horse had to be watered. And as for giving a push on starting, it was a
passenger's duty to collaborate with the engineer. Besides that, passengers
get thirsty and hungry as well as horses, and want a little change. Peter
Cooper assured the critics that the boiler could be refilled while a man was
getting a drink and stretching his legs.
The people who owned the stagecoach-line that ran parallel with the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad made a lot of fun of Peter Cooper's teakettle.
On one occasion they loosened a rail, so the thing ran into the ditch. For a
time this sort of discouraged traffic, but there were others who prophesied
that in a few years horses could not be given away.
Finally, the owner of the stagecoach-line challenged the railroad folks to
race from Riley's Tavern to Baltimore, a distance of nine miles. The race
was between a noted gray horse, famed for speed and endurance, and the
teakettle. The road ran right alongside of the wagon route. In truth, it took
up a part of the roadway, which was one cause of opposition. The race
occurred on September Eighteenth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty. Thousands of
dollars were bet, and a throng of people lined the route from start to finish.
The engine pulled but one coach, and had one passenger. The gray horse
was hitched to a buggy that carried one man besides the driver.
The engine led for five miles, when the boiler sprang a leak and stopped,
the engineer in his anxiety getting on too much pressure. The horse won,
and this proved to many people a fact which they had suspected and
foretold; namely, that the steam-engine for land-carriages was only a

plaything. Farmers in that vicinity took heart and began again to turn their
attention to raising horses.

In the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-one, when Peter Cooper was forty
years old, he was worth fifty thousand dollars; when he was forty-five, he
was worth a hundred thousand dollars; when he was fifty, he was worth
more than two hundred thousand dollars. He was one of the richest men of
New York, and he was a man of influence. Had he centered on money-
making, he might have become the richest man in America.
He held political office that he might serve the people, not that he might
serve a party or himself. In all deliberative bodies, the actual work is done
by a few. A dozen men or less run Congress.
For forty years Peter Cooper served the City of New York and the State, and
always to his own financial loss. He saw the last remains of the Indian
Stockade removed from Manhattan Island. When he was elected alderman,
the city was patrolled by night-watchmen, who made their rounds and cried
the hour and "All's Well!" For five hours, from midnight until five o'clock
in the morning, they walked and watched. They were paid a dollar a night,
and the money was collected from the people who owned property on the
streets they patrolled, just as in country towns they sprinkle the streets in
front of the residences owned by the men who subscribe.
Peter Cooper inaugurated a system of "public safety," or police protection.
He also replaced the old volunteer fire-department with a paid service. He
was the first man to protest against the use of wells as a water-supply for a
growing city.
The first water-pipes used in New York City were bored logs; he fought
against these, and finally induced the city to use iron pipes. As there was no
iron pipe at this time made in America, he inaugurated a company to cast
pipe. Very naturally his motives in demanding iron pipes were assailed, but
he stood his ground and made the pipes and sold them to the city rather than
that the city should not have them. He was brave enough to place himself in
a suspicious position, that the people might prosper.

In Eighteen Hundred Thirty, he organized "The Free School Society," to
fight the division of the school funds among sectarian schools. The idea that
any form of religion should be taught at public expense was abhorrent to
him. He was denounced as an infidel and an enemy of society, but his purity
of life and unselfish devotion to what he knew was right were his shield and
defense. The fight was kept up from Eighteen Hundred Thirty to Eighteen
Hundred Fifty-three, when it was fixed in the statute that "no fund raised by
taxation should be provided or used for the support of any school in which
any religious or sectarian doctrine or tenet is taught, inculcated or
practised." The Free School Society was then fused with the School Board,
and ceased to exist as a separate institution. That the amalgamation was a
plan to shelve Peter Cooper's secular ideas dawned upon him later. And that
the struggle for a school free from superstition's taint was not completely
won, Peter Cooper fully realized.
During this long service on the School Board of New York City, Peter
Cooper worked out in his own mind an ideal of education which he was
unable to impress upon his fellow townsmen. No doubt their indifference
and opposition tended to crystallize his own ideas.
It will not do to say that Peter Cooper was exactly disgusted with the
public-school system of New York, for he, more than any other one man,
had evolved it and carried it forward from very meager beginnings.
Democracy is a safeguard against tyranny, but it often cramps and hinders
the man of genuine initiative. If the entire public-school system of the State
had been delegated to Peter Cooper in Eighteen Hundred Fifty, he as sole
commissioner could and would have set the world a pace in pedagogy.
Disraeli's contention that democracy means the rule of the worst has in it a
basis of truth. Peter Cooper's appeals to his colleagues on the School Board
fell on idle ears. And so he decided to do the thing himself, and the extent to
which he would do it was to be limited only by his fortune.
Cooper Union was to be a model for every public school in America.

The block bounded by Third and Fourth Avenues and the Bowery was
bought up by Peter Cooper, a lot at a time, with the idea of a model school
in mind. When Peter Cooper bought the first lot there in Eighteen Hundred
Thirty-six, the site was at the extreme north limit of the city. Later, A. T.
Stewart was to build his business palace near at hand.
Cooper offered his block of land to the city, gratis, provided a school would
be built according to his plans. His offer was smilingly pigeonholed.
In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four, when Peter Cooper was sixty-one years
old, he began the building of his model school on his own account.
His business affairs had prospered, and besides the glue-factory he was
making railroad-iron at Ringwood, New Jersey, and Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. These mills were very crude according to our present-day
standards. But Peter Cooper believed the consumption of iron would
increase. Bridges were then built almost entirely of wood. Peter Cooper
built his bridges of rolled iron "boards," as they were first called, riveted
together. But he found it difficult to compete with the wooden structures.
When he began building Cooper Union, he found himself with a big stock
of bridge-iron on hand for which there was no market. The excavations
were already made for the foundations, when the idea came to Peter Cooper
that he could utilize this bridge-iron in his school-building and thus get an
absolutely fireproof structure. The ability of Peter Cooper to adapt himself
to new conditions, turning failure into success, is here well illustrated.
Not until he had accumulated an overstock of bridge-iron did he think of
using iron for the frames of buildings. It was the first structural use of iron
to re-enforce stone and brick, in America.
Cooper Union was nearly five years in building. A financial panic had set
in, and business was at a stand-still. But Peter did not cheapen his plan, and
the idea of abandoning it never occurred to him.
The land and the building cost him six hundred thirty thousand dollars and
came near throwing him into bankruptcy. But business revived and he
pulled through, to the loss of reputation of many good men who had
persistently prophesied failure. Be it said to the credit of his family that the
household, too, partook of the dream and lent their aid.

Altogether, the assets of Cooper Union are now above two million dollars.
The ideal man in the mind of Peter Cooper was Benjamin Franklin. He
wanted to help the apprentice—the poor boy. He saw many young men
dissipating their energies at saloons and other unprofitable places. If he
could provide a place where these young men could find entertainment and
opportunity to improve their minds, it would be a great gain. Peter Cooper
thought that we are educated through the sense of curiosity quite as much as
in reading books. So Cooper Union provided a museum of waxworks and
many strange, natural-history specimens. There was also an art-gallery, a
collection of maps and statuary; and a lecture-hall was placed in the
basement of the building. Peter Cooper had once seen a panic occur in a
hall located on a second story and the people fell over one another in a mass
on the stairway. He said a panic was not likely to occur going upstairs. This
hall is a beautiful and effective assembly-room, even yet. It seats nineteen
hundred people, and the audience so surrounds the speaker that it does not
impress one as being the vast auditorium which it is.
Cooper Union has always been the home of free speech. Next to Faneuil
Hall it is the most distinguished auditorium in America, from a historic
standpoint.
William Cullen Bryant, Edward Everett, Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell
Phillips, and every great speaker of the time, spoke here. Victoria Woodhull
brought much scandal on the devoted head of Peter Cooper when he
allowed her to use the platform to ventilate her peculiar views. Peter Cooper
met the criticism by inviting her to come back and speak again. She did so,
being introduced by Theodore Tilton. Here came Lincoln, the gaunt and
homely, and spoke before he was elected President. His "Cooper Union
Speech" is a memorable document, although it was given without notes and
afterwards written out by Lincoln, who seemed surprised that any one
should care to read it.
The speech given in Cooper Union by Robert G. Ingersoll lifted him from
the rank of a Western lawyer to national prominence in a single day. Other
men had criticized the Christian religion, but no man of power on a public
platform had up to that time in America expressed his abhorrence and
contempt for it. The reputation of Ingersoll had preceded him. He had given

his lecture in Peoria, then in Chicago, and now he made bold to ask Peter
Cooper for permission to use the historic hall. Cooper responded with
eagerness. There was talk of a mob when the papers announced an "infidel
speech."
The auspicious night came, and Peter Cooper himself introduced the
speaker. He sat on the platform during the address, at times applauding
vigorously. It was an epoch, but then Peter Cooper was an epoch-making
man. Cooper Union is now conducted along the identical lines laid out by
its founder.
It is a Free University, dedicated to the People. It has a yearly enrolment of
over thirty-five hundred pupils. Only three Universities in America surpass
it in numbers. Its courses are designed to cover the needs of practical, busy
people. Art, architecture, engineering, business and chemistry are its
principal features. Its fine reading-room and library have a yearly
attendance of a million visitors. The great hall is used almost every night in
the year. And just remember that this has continued for fifty years.
When the building was put up, there were no passenger-elevators in New
York, or elsewhere. Peter Cooper's mechanical mind saw that higher
buildings would demand mechanical lifts, and so he provided a special
elevator-shaft. He saw his prophecy come true, and there is now an elevator
in the place he provided. The demand now upon the building overtaxes its
capacity.
The influx of foreign population in New York City makes the needs of
Cooper Union even more imperative than they were fifty years ago. So
additional buildings are now under way, and with increased funds from
various worthy and noble people, Cooper Union is taking a new lease of life
and usefulness. And into all the work there goes the unselfish devotion, the
patience and the untiring spirit of Peter Cooper, apprentice, mechanic,
inventor, businessman, financier, philosopher and friend of humanity.

ANDREW CARNEGIE
I congratulate poor young men upon being born to that ancient
and honorable degree which renders it necessary that they
should devote themselves to hard work.
—Andrew
Carnegie

ANDREW CARNEGIE
The fact that Andrew Carnegie is a Scotsman has, so far as I know, never
been refuted nor denied. Scotland is a wonderful country in which to slip
the human product. Then when this product is transplanted to a more
sunshiny soil we sometimes get a world-beater.

Scotland is a good country to be born in; and it is a good country to get out
of; and at times it may be a good country to go back to.
I once attended a dinner given to James Barrie in London. One of the
speakers sprung the usual joke about how when the Scotch leave Scotland
they never go back. When Barrie arose to reply he said: "Perhaps it is true
that the Scotch, when they leave their native land, seldom return. If so, there
is surely precedent. In truth, Englishmen have been known to go to
Scotland, and never return. Once there was quite a company of Englishmen
went to Scotland and they never returned. The place where they went was
Bannockburn." In literature Scotland has exceeded her quota. From Adam
Smith, with his deathless "Wealth of Nations," and Tammas, the Techy
Titan, with his "French Revolution," to Bobbie Burns and Robert Louis, the
Well-Beloved, we have a people who have been saying things and doing
things since John Knox made pastoral calls on Mary Queen of Scots, and
saw the devil's tail behind her chair.
Doctor Johnson pretended to hate the Scotch, but he lives for us only
because he was well Boswellized by a Scotchman. And now nobody knows
just how much of Boswell is Doctor Johnson and how much is Boswell.
What Connecticut has done for New England, Scotland did for Great
Britain. The Scotch gave us the iron ship, the lamp-chimney, the telephone.
Also, they supplied us Presbyterianism. And this being true, they also
supplied the antidote in David Hume.
We have been told that it is necessary to agree with a Scotsman or else kill
him. But this is a left-handed libel, like unto the statement that the reason
the Scotch cling to breeks is because the breeks have no pockets, and when
the drinks are mentioned Sandy fumbles for siller, but is never able to find
the price, and so lets some one else foot the bill. Another bit of classic
persiflage is to the effect that there are no Jews in Scotland, because they
could no more exist there than they could in New Hampshire, and this for a
like reason: they find competition too severe.
The canny Scot with his beautiful "nearness" lives in legend and story in a
thousand forms. The pain a Scotsman suffers on having to part with a
shilling is pictured by Ian MacLaren and Sir Walter. Then came Christopher

North and Doctor John Brown with deathless Scotch stories of sacrifice and
unselfishness that shame the world, and secure the tribute of our tears.
To speak of the Scotch as having certain exclusive characteristics is to be a
mental mollycoddle. As a people they have all the characteristics that make
strong men and women, and they have them, plus. The Scotch supply us the
eternal paradox. Against the tales of money meanness and miserly instincts,
we have Andrew Carnegie, who has given away more money in noble
causes than any other man who has ever lived since history began.
The Scotch stand in popular estimate for religious bigotry, yet the offense of
Andrew Carnegie to a vast number of people is his liberal attitude of mind
in all matters pertaining to religion. Then the Scotch are supposed to be a
pugnacious, quarrelsome and fighting people, but here is a man who has
made his name known as the symbol of disarmament and international
peace.
Those three great and good Scotsmen, leaders in the world of business—
James Oliver, Philip D. Armour and Andrew Carnegie—were each the very
antithesis of dogmatists and sectarians. They respected all religions, but had
implicit faith in none. All were learners; all were men of peace; all had a
firm hold on the plain, old, simple virtues which can not be waived when
you make up your formula for a man. They were industrious, systematic,
economical, persistent and physically sound. If there is any secret in the
success of the Scotch it lies in the fact that they are such good animals. The
basis of life is physical. The climate of Scotland makes for a sturdy
manhood that pays cash and seldom apologizes for being on earth.
Unlike James Oliver and Philip Armour, Andrew Carnegie is small in
stature. He belongs to the type of big little men, of which Napoleon, Aaron
Burr, Alexander Hamilton and General Grant are examples—deep-chested,
strong-jawed, well-poised, big little men who wear the crowns of their
heads high and their chins in. These are good men to agree with. They carry
no excess baggage. They travel light. They can change their minds and
plans easily. Such men take charge of things by a sort of divine right.

Now, be it known that Andrew Carnegie was born in decent poverty at
Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland, in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-
seven.
His father was a weaver by trade. This was in the day of the hand-loom.
There were four damask-looms in the Carnegie house, worked by the
family and apprentices. There was no ring-up clock, and no walking
delegates were in evidence. When business was good these looms sang their
merry tunes far into the night. When business was dull, perhaps one loom
echoed its tired solo. Then there came a time when there was no work;
hopeless melancholy settled on the little household, and drawn, anxious
faces looked into other faces from which hope had fled.
Steam was coming in, and the factories were starving out the roycrofters. It
is hard to change—in order to change your mind, you must change your
environment.
The merchants used to buy their materials and take them to the weaver, and
tell him how they wanted the cloth made. The weaver never thought that he
could get up a new pattern, buy materials and devise a scheme whereby one
man could tend four looms—or fourteen—and advertise his product so the
consumer would demand it, and thus force the merchant to buy.
Aye, and if that didn't work, the whole blooming bunch of middlemen who
batten and fatten between the factory and the family could be eliminated,
and the arrogant retailer, wholesaler, factor and agent be placed on the
retired list through the Mail-Order Plan. Or, aye again, the consumers'
wants could be anticipated as they are by The Standard Oil Company, and
the gentlemanly salesman, psychic in his instincts, would be at the door in
answer to your sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.
When the times changed, Carnegie the Elder was undone. A few years later
and his son Andy could have shown him fifty-seven ways by which the
consumer could be reached. Andy would have known only one defeat, and
that would have come when all the consumers were dead and ceased to
consume. When Carnegie the Elder quit the loom, the consumers were
using more cloth than ever, but the goods were being made in a new way.
"Hunger is the first incentive to migration," says Adam Smith.

Hunger and danger in right proportion are good things. It is a great idea for
a woman who would give to the world superior sons, to marry a man
without too much ambition. If too much is done for a woman she will never
do much for herself. This proves that she is a human being, whether she can
vote or not.
Hunger, hardship, deprivation breed big virtues. Before deeds are born they
are merely thoughts or aspirations. The desire to better her condition, and
the struggle with unkind fate on behalf of her children, often is the heritage
of mother to son. The mother endows the child with a tendency—a great
moral tendency—a reaching out towards a success which she has never
seen, as planet responds to the attraction of planet. And the things she
dreamed, her child grown to manhood makes come true. Temperance
fanatics are often the offspring of drunken parents. Shiftless fathers breed
financiers. We are taught by antithesis.
Andrew Carnegie is the son of his mother. When the looms stopped and the
piteous voice of the father said, "Andy, we have no work," the mother lifted
up her voice and sang one of the songs of Zion. There were always morning
prayers. When there was no work, the father would have forgotten the
prayers, because there was nothing to be thankful for, and prayer wouldn't
stop the steam-factory. "What's the use!" was the motto of Carnegie the
Elder.
The mother led the prayers just the same. There was a reading from the
Bible. Then each one present responded with a verse of Scripture. Legend
says that little Andy, once, at seven years of age, when it came his turn to
give a verse from the Bible, handed in this: "Let every tub stand on its own
bottom." But as the quotation was not exactly acceptable, he tried again
with this: "Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of
themselves." Thus do we see that the orphic habit was already beginning to
germinate.
Before Andrew Carnegie was ten years old he had evolved a beautiful
hatred of kings, princes and all hereditary titles. There was only one nobility
for him, and that was the nobility of honest effort. To live off another's labor
was to him a sin. To eat and not earn was a crime. These sterling truths were

the inheritance of mother to son. And these convictions Andrew Carnegie
still holds and has firmly held since childhood's days.
The other day, in reading a book on military tactics, I came across this: "An
army has but two duties to perform: one is to fight the enemy and the other
is to evade the enemy." Which duty is the more important the writer did not
say. So let that pass. There are two ways of dealing with misery. One is to
stay and fight the demon to a finish, and the other way is to beat a hasty and
honorable retreat.
"There is no work."
"Then we will go where work is," said the mother of a multimillionaire-to-
be. The furniture went to pay the grocer. The looms were sold for a song.
The debts were paid, and there was enough, with the contribution of a ten-
pound note by a fond uncle, to buy passage to New York for the father,
mother, Thomas and Andrew. It was the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight.
Thomas was sixteen, and Andrew was eleven. Tom was more handsome
than Andy, but Andy had the most to say. The Carnegies came to Pittsburgh,
because the mother's two sisters from Dunfermline were in Pittsburgh, and
they had always gotten enough to eat. Then the sound of the name was
good, and to this day Andrew Carnegie spells the final syllable "burgh," and
pronounces it with a loving oatmeal burr.
It was seven weeks in a sailing-ship to New York, and one week to
Pittsburgh by rail and raging canal.
The land of promise proved all that had been promised. The Carnegies
wanted jobs—they did not wait to accept situations. The father found a
place in a cotton-mill at a dollar and a half a day. Andy slipped in as
bobbin-boy and got one dollar and twenty cents a week. Five shillings a
week, all his own—to be laid in his mother's lap each Saturday night—
spelled paradise. He was helping to support the household! To know you
are useful, and realize that you are needed, is a great stimulus to growth.
Never again did the Carnegies hear that muffled groan, "There is no work!"
The synonym of the word "Carnegie" is work.
In a year little Andy had graduated to the boiler-room at two dollars a week.
It was twelve hours a day, a constant watching of water-gauges, and a

feeling of bearings for hotboxes.
Andy used to awaken the family in the dead of the night by roaring out in
hot-mush accents, "The boiler, it ha' busted!" And being shaken into
wakefulness the boy was much relieved to know that it was only a horrid
dream, and the factory had not been blown into kingdom come because a
wee laddie, red-headed and freckled, had nodded at his work.
"A rolling stone gathers no moss." This is true. However, it is also true that
if it does not gather moss, it may acquire polish.
Andrew Carnegie from boyhood had the habit of using his head as well as
his hands. The two years in the boiler and engine room of a little factory did
him a lot of good.
But when fourteen he firmly felt that he had to get out towards the sunlight,
just as potatoes in a dark cellar will in the Spring send their sprouts
reaching out towards the windows.
In Pittsburgh at this time was a young man by the name of Douglass Reid,
who was born in Edinburgh. On Sunday afternoon Reid used to visit the
Carnegies and talk about old times and new. Reid was an expert telegraph-
operator, and afterwards wrote "A History of the Telegraph." The more he
saw of Andy the more sure he was that the lad could learn the dot and dash,
and be an honor to the profession.
The Carnegies had never had a telegraph-message come to them, and didn't
want one, for folks only get messages when some one is dead.
The way you learned "the key" then was to start in as messenger, and when
there were no messages, to hang around the office and pick up the mystery
by induction. One great drawback to acting as messenger was that Andy did
not know the streets. So he started in memorizing the names of all the
business firms on Penn Avenue, up one side and down the other. Then he
tackled Liberty Street, Smithfield Street and Fifth Avenue. At home nights,
he would shut his eyes and call the names until the household cried for
mercy and shrieked, "Hold, enough!"
Before the operators got around in the morning, the boys used the keys,
calling up other boys up and down the line. Needless to say, young Andy

didn't spend all of his time on the streets. A substitute operator was needed
one day, and Andy volunteered to fill the place. He filled it so well that the
regular man, who was a bit irregular in his habits, was given a permanent
vacation. At this time all of the telegraph business was taken care of from
the railroad-offices, just as it is now in most villages.
"Who is the sandy, freckled one?" once asked Thomas A. Scott,
Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
"He's a Scot from Scotland, and his name is Carnegie," was the answer.
The play on words pleased Mr. Scott. He got into the habit of sending his
messages by young Carnegie. And when one day he discovered that the
Scotch lad had spoken of him as "Tomscot" over the wire, the economy of
the proceeding so pleased him that he took Andy into his personal service at
a raise of ten dollars a month.
About this time there came a sleet-storm which carried down the wires.
Volunteers who could climb were in demand. Young Carnegie's work
indoors had reduced his physical powers, so climbing was beyond his
ability. It was a pivotal point. Had he been able to climb he might have
evolved into a construction boss. As it was he stuck to his desk, and
eventually owned the line.
Thus did he prove Darwin's dictum that we are evolved by our weakness
quite as much as through our strength.
Daniel Webster once said that the great disadvantage in the practise of law
is that the better you do your work, the more difficult are the cases that
come to you. It is the same in railroading—or anything else, for that matter.
Cheap men can take care of the cheap jobs. The reward for all good work is
not rest, but more work, and harder work. Thomas A. Scott was a man of
immense initiative—his was the restless, tireless, ambitious nature which
makes up the composite that we call the American Spirit.
Andrew Carnegie very early in life developed the same characteristics. He
never made hasty and ill-digested suggestions and then left them to others
to carry out. When young Carnegie, just turned into his twenties, became
private secretary to Thomas A. Scott, he was getting along as well, I thank
you, as could be expected. And nobody was more delighted than Andy's

mother—not even Andy himself. And most of Andy's joy in his promotions
came from the pleasure which his mother found in his advancement.

When Thomas A. Scott became President of the Pennsylvania Railroad,
Andrew Carnegie became Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division, as a
matter of course. His salary was fifteen hundred dollars a year. And this was
the topmost turret of the tower: it was as far as the ambition of either the
mother or the young man could fly. But the end was not yet.
Thomas Alexander Scott was born at the forgotten hamlet of London,
Franklin County, Pennsylvania. London, Pennsylvania, did not flourish as
its founders had expected. Behold the folly of giving big names to little
things. Cæsar Augustus Jones used to be the town fool of East Aurora, until
he was crowded to the wall by Oliver Cromwell Robinson.
Scott walked out of his native village—a lad of ten who warmed his feet on
October mornings where the cows had lain down. Later he came back and
bought the county. Scott was a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks,
and he also took several post-graduate courses. He received knocks all his
life—and gave them. His parents had come from bonny Scotland, and it
was a joke along the whole line of the Pennsylvania Railroad that a man
with red hair and a hot-mush brogue could always get a job by shouting
"Hoot, mon!" at "Tomscot."
Scott loved Andy as well, probably, as he ever loved any one outside of his
own family. He loved him because he was Scotch, and he loved him
because he rounded up every task he attempted. He loved him because he
smiled at difficulty; and he loved him because he never talked back and
said, "We never did it that way before."
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one, President Lincoln made Simon Cameron,
of Pennsylvania, Secretary of War.
Cameron was awfully Scotch, although I believe he was accidentally born
in America. Cameron in time made Thomas A. Scott Assistant Secretary of
War. And Thomas A. Scott made Andrew Carnegie Superintendent of

United States Railways and Telegraphs. Lincoln once said that it was the
most difficult and exacting position in the whole government service.
The bent of the minds of both Scott and Carnegie was towards construction
and peace. They were builders, financiers and diplomats. They accepted
government position as a duty and they did their work nobly and well. But
if these men had had their way there would have been no war. They would
have bought the slaves and paid for them, and at a price which we have paid
out for pensions and interest on the war debt every year since. They would
have organized the South on an industrial basis and made it blossom like
the rose, instead of stripping it and starving it into a dogged submission.
The lessons Carnegie learned in war-time burned deep into his soul, and
helped to make him as he is today, the foremost exponent of international
disarmament in the world. The game of finance Carnegie learned from
Scott, his foster-father. When but a salaried clerk Carnegie was once called
into Scott's office. "Andy, I know where you can buy ten shares of Adams'
Express stock—you had better get it!" "But I have no money," said Andy.
"Then go out and borrow some!" And Andy did, the mother mortgaging
their little home to raise the money—she never failed her Andy. He bought
the stock at par. It was worth a third more, and paid dividends "every few
minutes," to use the phrase of Scott. There is a suspicion that Scott threw
this little block of stock in the way of Andy on purpose.
It was an object-lesson in finance. Scott taught by indirection and did good
by stealth.
When Carnegie helped to organize the Woodruff Sleeping-Car Company,
which later was absorbed by the Pullman Company, he was well out on the
highway to fortune. Next came investments in oil-lands, and Andrew
Carnegie, twenty-seven years of age, sold his oil interests for a decently few
hundred thousand dollars.
At this time all the bridges on the Pennsylvania Railroad were made of
wood. It was a wooded country, and the natural thing was to use the
material at hand. But there were fires, accidents, washouts, and the
prophetic vision of Andrew Carnegie foresaw a time when all railroad-
bridges would be made of iron. He organized the Keystone Bridge Works,
and took a contract to build a railroad-bridge across the Ohio River. The

work was a success, and practically the Keystone Bridge Works was
without a competitor in America. But America was buying most of her iron
in Birmingham.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight, Andrew Carnegie made a trip to Europe,
taking his mother with him. He was then thirty-one years old and a man of
recognized worth and power. The pride of the mother in her son was modest
yet profound, and his regard for her judgment, even in bridge-building and
railroad affairs, was sincere and earnest. Besides, she was a good listener,
and by explaining his plans to his mother, Andy got them straight in his
own mind.
The trip to Europe was for the double purpose of seeing whether old
Dunfermline was really the delightful spot that memory pictured, and of
getting the latest points in bridge-building and iron-making. Timber was
scarce in England, and iron bridges and iron boats were coming as an actual
necessity.
Sir Henry Bessemer had invented his process of blowing a blast of cold air
through the molten metal and thus converting iron into steel. The plan was
simple, easy and effective. The distinguishing feature of Andrew Carnegie's
mind has always been his ability to put salt on the tail of an idea. He came
back from England with the Bessemer process well outlined in his square
red head. Others had put the invention through the experimental stage—he
waited. That shows your good railroadman. Let your inventors invent—
most of their inventions are worthless—when the thing is right we will take
it on.
The Carnegie fortune owes its secret to the Bessemer steel rail. The
fishplate instead of the frog, and the steel rail in place of the good old
snakehead! "The song of the rail" died out to a low continuous hum when
Carnegie began making steel rails and showed the section-hands how to
bolt them together as one.
Andrew Carnegie was a practical railroadman. He knew the buyers of
supplies and he knew how to convince them that they needed his product.
Manufacturing is a matter of formula, but salesmanship is genius.
Moreover, to get the money to equip great factories is genius, and up to the
Nineties the Carnegie Mills were immense borrowers of capital.

Our socialistic friends sometimes criticize Andrew Carnegie for making the
vast amount of money that he has. We can't swear a halibi for him, and so
my excuse for the man is this: He never knew it was loaded—it was largely
accidental. In truth he couldn't help making the money. Fate forced it on
him. He has played this game of business for all there was in him. And he
has played it according to the rules. Carnegie has never been a speculator.
He is no gambler. He never bought a share of stock on margin in his life.
The only thing he has ever bet on has been his ability to execute. He has
been a creator and a builder. That his efforts should have brought him this
tremendous harvest of dolodocci is a surprise to him. He knew there would
be a return, but the size of the return no living man was able to foresee or
foretell.
Andrew Carnegie has acted on the times, and the times have acted on him.
He is a product—a child, if you please—of Opportunity and Divine Energy.

When James Anderson, of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, stagecoach boss and
ironmaster, about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty threw open his library to
the public, he did a great thing.
Anderson owned four or five hundred books. Any one who wanted to read
these books was welcome to do so. Especially were the boys made
welcome. Anderson did not know what a portentous thing he was doing—
nobody does when he does a big thing. Actions bear fruit—sometimes.
And into Anderson's library, one Sunday afternoon, walked a diffident, wee
Scotch laddie, who worked in a boiler-room all the week. "Where would
you like to begin?" asked Mr. Anderson, kindly. And the boy answered, as
another boy by the name of Thomas A. Edison answered on a like occasion,
"If you please, I'll begin here." And he pointed to the end of a shelf. And he
read through that library, a shelf at a time. He got the library habit.
Andrew Carnegie has given away two thousand libraries. The first library
built by Mr. Carnegie was in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-seven, at Braddock,
Pennsylvania. This was for the benefit, primarily, of the employees of the
Carnegie Steel Works.

In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, it was suggested that the city of
Allegheny was in need of a library, quite as much as was Braddock. Mr.
Carnegie proposed to build a library, art-gallery and music-hall combined,
at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars, provided the city would supply
the site, and agree to raise fifteen thousand dollars a year for maintenance.
The offer was accepted and the building built, but at a cost of nearly one
hundred thousand dollars more than was expected.
Yet Mr. Carnegie did not complain. To show that his heart was with the
venture, he also presented a ten-thousand-dollar organ for the hall. It was a
first attempt, but the "North Side Library" is a model of beauty and
convenience today.
The way in which the people of Allegheny awakened, responded and
availed themselves of the benefits to be obtained from the Carnegie Library
at Allegheny was most gratifying. The place was formally dedicated on
February Thirteenth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety. President Harrison was
present and made an address. The music for the occasion was supplied by
"Young Damrosch" and his orchestra. Leopold Damrosch, the noted leader,
had died only a few years before, and his son Walter had taken up his work.
The manly ways of "Young Damrosch" and his superb skill as a conductor
made an impression on Mr. Carnegie then and there that bore speedy fruit.
In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-one, Mr. Carnegie built the Carnegie Music-
Hall at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue in New York
City, especially with Walter Damrosch and the Damrosch needs in mind. I
have spoken in this hall a score or more of times, and I never stand upon its
spacious platform but that I think with admiration of the ironmaster who
had the courage to back with two million dollars his faith in the musical
appreciation of New York City.
It is good to know that the prophetic business instincts of Mr. Carnegie did
not here play him false. The various offices and studios connected with the
splendid auditorium were quickly rented, and the investment has paid a fair
return from the first. When it was built it was the noblest auditorium in
America. One of its chief benefits has been to show the people of America
that such a building will pay. For one thing, it gave certain Western
capitalists heart to erect the Fine Arts Building in Chicago. And now in a

dozen cities of the United States there are great auditoriums where big
events, musical and oratorical, bring the people together in a way that
enlarges their spiritual horizon. Andrew Carnegie has ever had a passion for
music. At Skibo Castle the meals are announced by bagpipe. Of course I
admit that whether the bagpipe is a musical instrument or not is a matter of
argument, for just what constitutes music my Irish friend, George Bernard
Shaw, says is a point of view.
Andrew Carnegie has given the musical interests of America an immense
impulse. His presentation of pipe-organs to churches, schools and halls bids
fair to revive the age of Sebastian Bach. "Music helps us to get rid of our
whims, prejudices and petty notions," says Andrew Carnegie. The famous
Pittsburgh Orchestra was first made possible by his encouragement, and
without Carnegie we would have had no Damrosch, or at least a different
Damrosch.
From almost its inauguration, Mr. Carnegie has been President of the New
York Oratorio, and for many years President of the Philharmonic Society.
I was once present at a meeting of this Society when a memorial volume of
thanks from "The Philharmonic" was presented to Mr. Carnegie. The book
contained the autographs of every member, working and honorary, of the
association. Among the rest I added my name to the list. Shortly after the
presentation exercises I met Mr. Carnegie on the stairs. He had the book
under his arm. He graciously thanked me for adding my name, and spoke of
how he prized my autograph. I replied somewhat loftily, "Oh, don't mention
it—it is nothing—it is nothing!" And then I felt how feeble my attempted
pleasantry was. To Mr. Carnegie it was no joke. In fact, he was as tickled
with his book of names, and its assurance of affection, as a girl who has just
been presented by her lover with a volume of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poems.
Then I saw how sensitive and tender is the heart of this most busy man, and
how precious to him is human fellowship. This is a side of his nature that
was new to me.
Shakespeare says, "Sad is the lot of princes." They are pushed out and away
from the common heart of humanity. Most of the men they meet want
something, and as these folks want the thing they want awful bad, they
never tell the prince the truth. In his presence they are like brass monkeys,

or, more properly, like monkeys filled with monkey desires. They are shorn
of all human attributes. Pity the lot of the multimillionaire who has most
incautiously allowed it to become known that he considers it "a disgrace for
any man to die rich."
Five hundred letters a day are sent to Andrew Carnegie, with suggestions
concerning the best way in which he can escape disgrace. The lazzaroni of
America are as bad as the same tribe in Italy, only they play for bigger
stakes. The altruistic graft is as greedy as the grab of commercialism, that
much-berated thing.
Mr. Carnegie can not walk a block on Broadway without being beset by
would-be philanthropists who offer to pit their time against his money, and
thereby redeem the world from its sin and folly. And these philanthropists
do not realize for a moment that they are, for the most part, plain
grabheimers from Grabville. And all of their pious plans for human
betterment have their root in a selfish desire for personal aggrandizement.
Mr. Carnegie's plan of giving only where the parties themselves also agree
to give is a most wise and prudent move.
The town that accepts thirty thousand dollars for a library and agrees to
raise three thousand a year to maintain it, is neither pamperized, patronized
nor pauperized. In ten years the town has put as much money into the
venture as did Mr. Carnegie. Like Nature, Andrew Carnegie is a good deal
of a schemer. Ask a town to start in and raise three thousand dollars a year
for library purposes, and the whole Common Council, His Honor the
Mayor, and the Board of Education will throw a cataleptic fit. But get them
fired with a desire to secure thirty thousand dollars from Mr. Carnegie, and
they make the promise to love, honor, obey—and maintain—and strangely
enough, they do. An action for non-support is a mighty disgraceful thing. It
is a wonderful bit of psychology—this giving with an obligation—and
Andrew Carnegie is not only the Prince of Ironmasters, but he is a
pedagogic prestidigitator, and an artistic financial hypnotist. Not only does
he give the library, but he sets half the town hustling to maintain it. The
actual good comes, not from the library building, but from the human
impulses set in motion—the direction given to thousands of lives. The
library is merely an excuse—a rallying-point—and around it swings and
centers the best life of the town.

This working for a common cause dilutes the sectarian ego, dissolves
village caste, makes neighbor acquainted with neighbor, and liberates a vast
amount of human love which otherwise would remain hermetically sealed.
Gossip is only the lack of a worthy theme. A town library supplies topics for
talk, and the books there supply ten thousand more. To accept a Carnegie
library means to take on an obligation. Achievement always stands for
responsibility. "Is it possible that you are nervous?" asked the man of
Abraham Lincoln when the orator was about to appear before an audience.
"Young man," was the reply, "young man, I have spoken well." To have
done well and then live up to your record is a serious matter. Responsibility
is ballast. A town that has taken on a Carnegie Library is one big committee
intent on making the thing a success. There is furniture needed, pictures to
secure, statuary to select, books to buy. A Carnegie Library is usually an
annex to the High School.
O most clever, cunning and canny Carnegie! did you know how great and
wise was your scheme? Not at all, any more than when you were a bobbin-
boy you could have guessed that one day you would own two hundred fifty
million dollars in five-per-cent bonds. You are as much astonished as any
one to see the perfection of your plan. Like all great men, you sail under
sealed orders.
As you "worked" the people by allowing them to "work" you for a gift,
which once secured turns out to be not gift but a responsibility, so has a
Supreme Something been using you for a purpose you wist and wot not of.
And the end, it seems, is not yet.

The only time I ever heard Mr. Carnegie relate one of my pleasing stories
was at a banquet of railroad officials, some months ago, in New York. Be it
said, as a matter of truth, that Mr. Carnegie gave me due credit, although if
he had not mentioned my name I would have been complimented to know
that he had read the Good Stuff closely and pondered it well. As brother
authors, you will please take notice that we observe the amenities.

So here is the story: One lowering Fall day I was walking along the road
that leads from the village to my farm, two miles out of town. And as I
trudged along I saw a horseshoe in the middle of the road. Now, I never go
by a horseshoe—it means good luck!
So I picked up the horseshoe, and instantly my psychic sky seemed to
brighten. And as I walked along with the horseshoe in my hand I saw
another horseshoe in the road. "Everything is coming my way," I said. I
picked up the second horseshoe, and then I had one in each hand.
I had gone about a quarter of a mile when I saw two more horseshoes right
together in the road. "It seems as if some one is working me," I said. I
looked around and could see no one. "And anyway, I accept the bluff," I
said to myself, as I picked up the two horseshoes. Then I had two
horseshoes in each hand, but I wasn't four times as happy as when I had
one.
I had gone about a quarter of a mile when I saw a pile of horseshoes in the
road. "I've got 'em, I fear!" I said to myself. But I braced up and walking up
to the pile of horseshoes I kicked into them. They were horseshoes all right.
And just then I saw a man coming down the street picking up horseshoes in
a bag. I watched him with dazed eyes and swallowed hard as I tried to
comprehend the meaning of this strange combination. Just then I saw the
man's horse and wagon ahead.
He was a junk gentleman and had lost the tailboard out of his wagon and
been strewing horseshoes all along the way. He called to me and said, "Hey,
ol' man, dem's my horseshoes!" "I know," said I; "I've been picking them up
for you." And the moral is: While it is true that one horseshoe brings you
good luck, a load of horseshoes is junk.

In way of personal endowments, Mr. Carnegie has favored two individuals:
Booker T. Washington and Luther Burbank. And so far as I know, these are
the only men in America who should be endowed. Even the closest search,

as well as a careful scrutiny in the mirror, fails to find any one else whom it
would be wise or safe to make immune from the struggle.
To make a man secure against the exigencies of life is to kill his ambition
and destroy his incentive. To transform a man into a jellyfish, give him a
fixed allowance, regardless of what he does. This truth also applies to
women. Women will never be free until they are economically free.
The fifteen million dollars which Mr. Carnegie has given for a pension-fund
for superannuated college professors is quite another thing from pensioning
a man so he will be free to work out his ideal. The only people who have
ideals are those in the fight.
But even this beneficent pension-fund for teachers turned out to grass
requires the most delicate and skilful handling. Several instances have
already arisen where colleges have retired men well able to work, in order
that these men might secure the pensions and the college could put in
younger men at half-price. There has even been a suspicion that the
pensioner "divvied" with the college.
To supply an incentive or temptation for a man in middle life to quit work
in order that he may secure a pension is a danger which the donor mildly
anticipated, but which he finds it very hard to guard against. What is
"middle life"? Ah, it depends upon the man. Some men are young at
seventy, and Professor Mommsen at eighty was at the very height of his
power. Some teachers want to "retire," others don't. Nature knows nothing
of pensions. Let each man be paid for his labor and let him understand that
economy of expenditure is the true and only insurance against want in old
age.
The pensioning of the youth is really more dangerous than to pension age.
The youth should ask for nothing but opportunity. To make him immune
from work and economy is to supply him a ticket—one way—to
Matteawan.
In order to educate a boy for life, we should not lift him out of life. The
training for life should slide into life at an unknown and unrecognizable
point. The boy born into poverty, who fetches in wood for his mother and
goes after the cows, has already entered upon a career. His brown bare feet

are carrying messages, and his hands are taking on the habit of helpfulness.
He is getting under the burden; and such a one will never be a parasite on
society.
In East Aurora there used to live a noted horseman. He bred, raised, trained
and drove several trotters that made world's records. Then behold another
man comes on the scene—and a good man, too—and says, "Go to, I will
raise and train horses that will go so fast that Pa Hamlin's horses will do
only for the plow."
So he built a covered and enclosed track, a mile around. It cost nearly a
hundred thousand dollars. And here the wise one was to train his colts all
Winter, while the other man's horses ran barefoot, and with long woolly
coats plowed through snowdrifts waiting for Spring to come with chirrup of
birds and good roads.
Result—the man with the covered track had his horses "fit" in April, but in
July and August, when the races begin, they had "gone past." Moreover, it
was discovered that horses trained on a covered track could not be raced
with safety on an open course. The roofed track had shut the horse in,
giving him a feeling of protection and safety; but when he got on an open
track, the sun, the sky, the crowds, the moving vehicles, sent him into a
nervous dance. A bird flying overhead would stampede him. He lost his
head and wore out his nerve.
But the horses that had been woolly in February grew sleek in May, and
being trained in the open grew used to the sights, and for them every day
was a race-day. In August they were hard and cool and level-headed, and
always had one link left when called upon at the home-stretch.
The covered track was all right in theory, but false in practise. It ruined a
thousand colts, and never produced a single trotter. Don't train either horses
or children indoors, and out of season, and expect a world-beater.
Next, make your teaching and training, life, not an indoor make-believe.
The school that approximates life will be the school whose pupils make
records. What is needed now is a line of colleges in the North that will do
for white folks what Booker T. Washington does for the colored. And the

reason we do not have such schools is because we have not yet evolved
men big enough as teachers to couple business and books.
The men who can make money can't teach, and those who can teach can't
make money. The man of the future will do both. Tuskegee has no servants,
no menials, and employs no laborers. The work of housing and feeding two
thousand persons is all student labor. This is a great achievement. But the
university that is to come will go beyond Tuskegee in this: it will supply
commodities to supply to the world what the world wants.
Three or four hours of manual labor a day will not harm either the body or
the brain of a growing youth. On the other hand, such a course will give
steadiness to life. This labor will be paid for, so the student will be
independent of all outside help at all times. Thus will it make for manhood
and self-reliance.

Mr. Carnegie's success, like that of every master businessman, has turned
on his selection of men. He has always been on the lookout for young men
who could carry the Message.
His success proves his ability to judge humanity. Whenever he was sure he
had the genuine article he would tender the young man an interest in the
business, often a percentage on sales or output. This was the plan of
Marshall Field.
By this method he transformed a good man into a master, and bound the
man to him in a way that no outside influence could lend a lure. The only
disadvantage in this, Mr. Carnegie says, is that when the young man
becomes a millionaire you may have him for a competitor, but even with
this risk, it is much wiser than to try to carry all the burden yourself. A
multimillionaire should raise a goodly brood of millionaires, and of
necessity does. Wise is the man who sees to it that he has an understudy.
Once upon a time, along in the Eighties, Mr. Carnegie got somewhat
overworked and took a trip to Europe. Just before going, he went around
and bade good-by to each of the Big Boys who ran the mills. One of these

was Captain William Jones, more familiarly known to fame as plain Bill
Jones. "Bill," said Mr. Carnegie, "I'm a bit weary and I feel I must get away,
and the only place for me to go is Europe. I have to place an ocean between
me and this mighty hum of industry before I can get rest. And do you know,
Bill, no matter how oppressed I am, just as soon as I round Sandy Hook and
get out of sight of land, I get perfect relief." And Bill answered, "And, O
Lord, just think of the relief we all get," and everybody roared, Andy
loudest of all. And the last thing that Andy did before sailing was to raise
Bill's salary just ten thousand dollars a year.
Mr. Carnegie has always liked men who are not afraid of him; and when
one of his workers could convince him that he—the worker—knew more
about some particular phase of the business than Mr. Carnegie, that man
was richly rewarded. Mr. Carnegie has ever been on friendly terms with his
men.
And had he been in America when the Homestead labor trouble arose, there
would have been no strike. He is firm when he should be, but he is always
friendly. He is wise enough and big enough to give in a point. Like Lincoln,
he likes to let people have their own way. He manages them, if need be, by
indirection, rather than by formal edict, order and injunction.

Barbaric folk prize gold and make much use of silver. But the consumption
of iron is the badge of civilization. Iron rails, iron steamboats, iron
buildings! And who was there thirty years ago who foresaw the modern
sky-scraper, any more than a hundred years ago men foretold the iron
steamship!
The business of Andrew Carnegie has been to couple the iron-mines of
Lake Superior with the coal-fields of Pennsylvania. And to load the ore at
Duluth and transport it to Pittsburgh, a thousand miles away, and transform
it into steel rails, was a matter of ten days. When the Carnegie Steel
Company was reconstructed in Nineteen Hundred, it was with no intention
of selling out. It was the biggest, best-organized business concern in
America, with possibly one exception. Its capital was one hundred million

dollars. It owned the Homestead, the Edgar Thomson and the Duquesne
Mills. Besides these, it owned seven other smaller mills.
It owned thousands of acres of ore-land in the Lake Superior country. It
owned a line of iron steamships that carried the ore to the Pittsburgh
railroad connections. It owned the railroads that brought the ore from the
mines to the docks, and it owned the docks. It owned vast coalmines in
Pennsylvania, and it owned a controlling interest in the Connellville coke-
ovens, whence five miles of freight-cars, in fair times, were daily sent to the
mills, loaded with coke.
These properties were practically owned by Mr. Carnegie personally, and
his was the controlling hand. He had a daily report from every mill, which
in a few lines told just what the concern was doing. There was also a daily
report from each branch office, and a report from the head cashier, where
one line of figures presaged the financial weather. When "the billion-dollar
trust"—the United States Steel Corporation—was formed, Mr. Carnegie
sold his interests in the Carnegie plants to the new concern for two hundred
fifty million dollars, and took his pay in five-per-cent bonds.
It was the biggest and cleanest clean-up ever consummated in the business
world. As a financial get-away it has no rival in history.
There were many wise ones who said, "Oh, he will foreclose and have the
works back in a few years." But not so—the United States Steel
Corporation has made money and is making money, because it is being
managed by men who, for the most part, were trained by Carnegie in the
financial way they should go.
As far as money is concerned, Mr. Carnegie could have made much more
by staying in business than by selling out, but Andrew Carnegie quit one
job to take up a harder one. "To die a millionaire will yet be a disgrace," he
said. To give away money is easy, but to give it away wisely, so it will
benefit the world for generations to come—that is a most difficult and
exacting task.
The quarter of a thousand million in Steel Bonds did not constitute Mr.
Carnegie's whole wealth. He had several little investments outside of that.
In fact, that clever saying, "Put all your eggs in one basket," is exoteric, not

esoteric. What Mr. Carnegie really meant was, if you are only big enough to
watch one basket, to have two were folly. Mr. Carnegie himself has always
had his eggs in a dozen or so baskets, but he never has had any more
baskets than he could watch. His baskets were usually coupled together like
the "grasshopper," which pumps several oil-wells with one engine. Wealth
is good for those who can use it; power the same; but when you cease to
manage a thing and the thing begins to manage you, it may eat you up.
In East Aurora there used to be a good friend of mine who had a peanut-
stand at the station. The business flourished and some one advised my
friend that he should put in popcorn as a sideline. He did so, and got
nervous prostration. You see, he was a peanut man, and when he got outside
of his specialty he was lost. One realizes the herculean task of dying poor
which confronts Mr. Carnegie, when you think that he is worth, say, five
hundred million dollars. This is invested so that it brings an income of five
per cent, or twenty-five million dollars a year.
So far, Mr. Carnegie has been barely able to give away his income, to say
nothing of the principal. His total benefactions up to the present time
amount to about two hundred millions. He has nearly worked the territory
with libraries. You can't give two libraries to a town, except in the big cities
—people protest and will not have them. There is a limit to pipe-organs.
Heroes are so plentiful that it is more or less absurd to distinguish them
with medals. Dunfermline is almost done for by a liberality that would
damn any American town.
To give faster than people grow is to run the grave risk of arresting
development. A benefaction must bestow a benefit. Give to most people and
they will quit work and get a job with George Arliss, for the devil still finds
mischief for idle hands to do.
To relieve the average man from work would simply increase the trade in
cigarettes, cocaine, bromide and strong drink, and supply candidates for
Sing Sing. To make a vast fortune and then lose the tailboard out of your
hearse and dump your wealth on a lazy world merely causes the growler to
circulate rapidly. And so we sympathize with Andrew Carnegie in his
endeavor to live up to his dictum to die poor, and yet not pauperize the
world by his wealth. But let us not despond. The man is only seventy-eight.

His eyes are bright; his teeth are firm; his form is erect; his limbs are agile;
and his brain is at its best. Most hopeful sign of all, he can laugh. He can
even laugh at himself. If this counts for anything at all, it means sanity and
length of days.

GEORGE PEABODY
The great deeds for human betterment must be done by
individuals—they can never be done by the many.
—George
Peabody.

GEORGE PEABODY
George Peabody was a noted American merchant and banker. He was born
in the village of Danvers, Massachusetts, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-
five. He died in London in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine.
In childhood, poverty was his portion. But he succeeded, for he had the
persistent corpuscle, and he had charm of manner—two things which will
make any man a winner in the game of life.

He gave away during his lifetime eight million dollars. When he died he
had four million dollars left, which was distributed, by his will, largely for
the betterment of society. The fact that Peabody left so much money was
accidental. He intended to give this money away, under his own personal
supervision, but Death came suddenly.
Has the world made head the past forty years? Listen, Terese; it has made
more progress during the past forty years than in the two thousand years
preceding.
The entire fortune of George Peabody, including what he gave away during
his life and what he left, was twelve million dollars. This is just the income
of Andrew Carnegie for six months. We scarcely realize how much
civilization smells of paint until we remember that George Peabody was the
world's first philanthropist. No doubt there were many people before him,
with philanthropic impulses, but they were poor. It's easy to sympathize
with humanity when you have nothing to give but advice. The miracle
comes in when great wealth and great love of mankind are combined in one
individual.
In the Occident, giving to the poor is lending to the devil. The plan has
always been more or less of a pastime to the rich, but the giving has usually
been limited to sixpences, with absolute harm to the poor. All any one
should ask is opportunity. Sailors just ashore, with three months' pay, are
the most charitable men on earth—we might also say they are the most
loving and the least lovable. The beggars wax glad when Jack lumbers their
way with a gay painted galley in tow; but, alas, tomorrow Jack belongs to
the poor. Charity in the past has been prompted by weakness and whim—
the penance of rogues—and often we give to get rid of the troublesome
applicant.
Beggary and virtue were imagined to have something akin. Rags and
honesty were sort of synonymous, and we spoke of honest hearts that beat
'neath ragged jackets. That was poetry, but was it art? Or was it just a little
harmless exercise of the lacrimal glands? Riches and roguery were spoken
of in one breath, unless the gentleman was present—and then we curtsied,
cringed or crawled, and laughed loudly at all his jokes.

These things doubtless dated back to a time when the only mode of
accumulating wealth was through oppression. Pirates were rich—honest
men were poor. To be poor proved that you were not a robber. The heroes in
war took cities, and all they could carry away was theirs. The monasteries
were passing rich in the Middle Ages, because their valves opened only one
way—they received much and paid out nothing. To save the souls of men
was a just equivalent for accepting their services for the little time they
were on earth.
The monasteries owned the land, and the rentals paid by the fiefs and
villeins went into the church treasuries. Sir Walter Scott has an abbot say
this: "I took the vow of poverty, and find myself with an income of twenty
thousand pounds a year."
But wealth did not burden the monks forever. Wealth changes hands—that
is one of its peculiarities. War came, red of tooth and claw, and the soldiery,
which heretofore had been used only to protect the religious orders, now
flushed with victory, turned against them. Charges were trumped up against
churchmen high in authority, and without doubt the charges were often true,
because a robe and a rope girdle, or the reversal of haberdashery, do not
change the nature of a man. Down under the robe, you'll sometimes find a
man frail of soul—grasping, sensual, selfish.
The monasteries were looked upon as contraband of war. "To the victors
belong the spoils," was the motto of a certain man who was President of the
United States, so persistent was the war idea of acquiring wealth.
The property of the religious orders was confiscated, and as a reward for
heroic services, great soldiers were given great tracts of land. The big
estates in Europe all have their origin in this well-established custom of
dividing the spoils. The plan of taking the property of each or all who were
guilty of sedition, treason and contumacy was well established by
precedents that traced back to Cain. When George Washington appropriated
the estate of Roger Morris, forty centuries of precedent looked down upon
him.
Also, it might be added that if a man owned a particularly valuable estate,
and a soldier desired this estate, it was easy for this soldier to massage his

conscience by listening to and believing the report that the owner had
spoken ill of the king and given succor to the enemy.
Then the soldier felt it his "duty" to punish the recreant one by taking his
property. And so the Age of the Barons followed the Age of the
Monasteries. And now the Barons have given way to the Age of the
Merchant.
The Monks multiplied the poor by a monopoly on education. Superstition,
poverty and incompetence formed the portion of the many. "This world is
but a desert drear," was the actual fact as long as priests and soldiers were
supreme. The Reign of the Barons was merely a transfer of power with no
revision of ideals. The choice between a miter and a helmet is nil, and when
the owner converses through his head-gear, his logic is alike vulnerable and
valueless.
So enter the Merchant, whose business it is to carry things from where they
are plentiful to where they are scarce. And comes he so quietly and with so
little ostentation that men do not realize the change.
And George Peabody, an American, gives three million dollars to the poor
of London. This money was not tossed out to purchase peace, and to
encourage idleness, and to be spent in strong drink and frills and finery, and
the ways that lead to Nowhere, but to provide better homes for men, women
and children.
"Lay hold on eternal life," said Paul, writing to Timothy. The proper
translation we now believe should be, "Lay hold on the age to come."
Philanthropy now seeks to lay hold on the age to come. We are building for
the future.
The embryo has eyes, ears and organs of speech. But the embryo does not
see, nor hear, nor speak. It is laying hold on the age to come—it is
preparing to live—it is getting ready for the future. The past is dead, the
present is dying, and only that which is to come is alive.
The life of George Peabody was not in what he gave, but in what he taught
the millionaires that are to be. He laid hold on the age to come.

George Peabody is another example of a boy who succeeded in spite of his
parents. The rigors of climate and the unkindness of a scanty soil may be
good things. They are good, like competition, very excellent, provided you
do not get more than your constitution requires.
New England has her "white trash," as well as the South. The Peabodys of
Danvers were good folks who never seemed to get on. They had come
down from the mountains of New Hampshire, headed for Boston, but got
stuck near Salem. If there was anything going on, like mumps, measles,
potato-bugs, blight, "janders" or the cows-in-the-corn, they got it. Their roof
leaked, the cistern busted, the chimney fell in, and although they had
nothing worth stealing the house was once burglarized while the family was
at church. The moral to little George was plain: Don't go to church and
you'll not get burgled. Life was such a grievous thing that the parents forgot
how to laugh, and so George's joke brought him a cuff on the ear in the
interests of pure religion and undefiled. A couple of generations back there
was a strain of right valiant heroic Peabody blood.
Among the "Green Mountain Boys" there was a Peabody, and another
Peabody was captain of a packet that sailed out of Boston for London. To
run away and join this uncle as cabin-boy was George's first ambition.
People in the country may be poor, but in America such never suffer for
food. If hunger threatens, the children can skirmish among the neighbors.
The village of Danvers was separated by only a mile or so of swale and
swamp from Salem, a place that once rivaled Boston commercially, and in
matters of black cats, and elderly women who aviated on broomsticks by
night, set the world a pace. Fish, clams, water-lilies, berries, eels, and other
such flora and fauna were plentiful, and became objects of merchandising
for the Peabody boys, bare of foot and filled with high emprise.
Parents often bestow upon their progeny the qualities which they
themselves do not possess, so wonderful is this law of heredity.
George was the youngest boy in the brood, and was looked after by his
"other mother," that is to say, by an elder sister. When this sister married,
the boy was eleven years old. To the lad this marriage was more like a
funeral. He could read and write and count to a hundred, having gone to
school for several months each Winter since he was seven. He could write

better than his father or mother—he wrote like copperplate, turning his head
on one side and chewing his tongue, keeping pace with his lips, as the pen
glided gracefully over the paper. His ambition was to make a bird with a
card in its bill, and on this card, written so small no one could read it, the
proud name, G. Peabody.
This ability to write brought him local fame, and Sylvester Proctor, who
kept a general store in the village, offered to take him on a four years'
apprenticeship and teach him the trade of green grocer and dealer in W. I.
Goods. The papers were duly made out and signed, the boy being consulted
afterward. What the consideration was, was not stated, but rumor has it that
the elder Peabody was paid twenty-five dollars in "W. I. Goods" and also
wet goods.
Proctor was a typical New England merchant of the Class B type. He was
up at daylight, shaved his upper lip, and swept off the sidewalk in front of
his store. At night he put up the shutters with his own hands. He
remembered every article he had on his shelves and what it cost. He bought
nothing he could not pay for. There was one clerk besides the boy. After
George came, the merchant and his clerk made all the memoranda on brown
paper, and the items were duly copied into the ledger by George Peabody.
I have been told that a man who writes pure Spencerian can never do
anything else. This, however, is a hasty generalization, put forth by a party
who wrote a Horace Greeley hand.
A country store is the place for a boy to learn merchandising. In such a
place he is never swallowed up by a department. He learns everything, from
shaking down the ashes in the big stove to buying and selling fadeless
calico. He becomes an expert with a nail-puller, knows strictly fresh eggs
from eggs, and learns how to adapt himself to the whims, caprices and
notions of the customers who know little and assume much.
George Peabody slept in the attic over the store. He took his meals with the
Proctor family, and used to wipe the dishes for Mrs. Proctor. He could wait
on store, tend baby, wash a blue wagon, drive a "horse and team" and say
"backsshe!" in a way that would throw you off the front seat when the horse
stopped, if you didn't look out.

That is to say, he was a New England village boy, alive and alert to every
phase of village life—strong, rapid, willing, helpful. The villager who
knows too much gets "fresh" and falls a victim of arrested development.
The boy in a village who works, and then gets out into a wider sphere at
that critical period when the wanderlust strikes him, is in the line of
evolution.
George Peabody remained at Proctor's store until nine o'clock in the
evening of the day that marked the close of his four years of apprenticeship.
He was fifteen, and all tempting offers from Mr. Proctor to pay him wages
thereafter in real money were turned aside. He had a new suit of clothes,
five dollars in his pocket, and ambition in his heart. He was going to be a
draper, and eliminate all "W. I. Goods."

Over at Newburyport, George had a brother, David Peabody, who ran a
"draper's shop." That is to say, David Peabody was a drygoods merchant.
This was a comparatively new thing in America, for a "store," at that time,
usually kept everything that people wanted. The exclusive draper idea came
from London. It seemed to work in Boston, and so Newburyport tried it.
David and George had talked it over together, and a partnership was in
mind. In the meantime George was only fifteen years old, and David thirty.
"I am twice as old as you," once said David to George, with intent to make
the lad know his proper place. "Yes, I know; but you will not be twice as
old as I very long," replied George, who was up in mathematics.
The brothers did not mix very well. They were tuned to a different
vibration. One had speed: the other was built for the plow.
And when the store caught fire and burned, and almost all of Newburyport
was burned up, too, it was a good time for George to strike for pastures
new. He walked down to Boston, and spent all his money for a passage on a
coaster that was about to sail for Washington, in the District of Columbia.
This was in the latter part of the year Eighteen Hundred Eleven.

Washington was the capital of the country, and there was an idea then that it
was also going to be the commercial metropolis—hence the desire to get in
on the ground floor. Especially was the South to look to Washington for her
supplies. George Peabody, aged sixteen, looked the ground over, and
thought he saw opportunity nodding in his direction.
He sat down and wrote to a wholesale drygoods-dealer by the name of Todd
in Newburyport, ordering draperies to the amount of two thousand dollars.
Blessed is that man who knows what he wants, and asks for it.
Todd remembered the boy who had given him orders in Proctor's, and at
once filled the order. In three months Todd got his money and an order for
double the amount. In those days the plan of calling on the well-to-do
planters, and showing them the wares of Autolycus, was in vogue. English
dress-goods were a lure to the ladies. George Peabody made a pack as big
as he could carry, tramped, smiled and sold the stuff. When he had emptied
his pack, he came back to his room where his stock was stored and loaded
up again. If there were remnants he sold them out to some crossroads store.
The fact that the Jews know a few things in a worldly way, I trust will not
be denied. George Peabody, the Yankee, adopted the methods of the Chosen
People. And at that early date, it comes to us as a bit of a miracle that
George Peabody said, "You can't afford to sell anybody anything which he
does not need, nor can you afford to sell it at a price beyond what it is
worth." Also this, "When I sell a woman draperies, I try to leave the
transaction so I can go back next week and sell her more." Also this: "Credit
is the sympathetic nerve of commerce. There are men who do not keep faith
with those from whom they buy, and such last only a little while. Others do
not keep faith with those to whom they sell, and such do not last long. To
build on the rock one must keep his credit absolutely unsullied, and he must
make a friend of each and all to whom he sells."
The Judaic mental processes have been sharpened by migration. To carry a
pack and peddle is better than to work for a Ph. D., save for the social
usufruct and the eclat of the unthinking. We learn by indirection and not
when we say: "Go to! Now watch us take a college course and enlarge our
phrenological organs." Our knobs come from knocks, and not from the
gentle massage of hired tutors. Selling subscription-books, maps, sewing-

machines or Mason and Hamlin organs, has given thousands of strong men
their initial impulse toward success. When you go from house to house to
sell things you catch the household in their old clothes and the dog loose.
To get your foot in the front door and thus avoid the slam, sweetening
acerbity by asking the impatient housewife this question, "Is your mother at
home?" and then making a sale, is an achievement. "The greatest study of
mankind is man," said Pope, and for once he was right, although he might
have said woman.
From fifteen to nineteen is the formative period, when the cosmic cement
sets, if ever. During those years George Peabody had emerged from a
clerkship into a Businessman.
What is a Businessman? A Businessman is one who gets the business, and
completes the transaction. Book-keepers, correspondents, system men,
janitors, scrub-women, stenographers, electricians, elevator-boys, cash-
girls, are all good people and necessary and worthy of sincere respect, but
they are not Businessmen, because they are on the side of expense and not
income. When H. H. Rogers coupled the coalmines of West Virginia with
tidewater, he proved himself a Businessman. When James J. Hill created an
Empire in the Northwest, he proved his right to the title. The Businessman
is a salesman. And no matter how great your invention, how sweet your
song, how sublime your picture, how perfect your card-system, until you
are able to convince the world that it needs the thing, and you get the
money for it, you are not a Businessman.
The Businessman is one who supplies something great and good to the
world, and collects from the world for the goods. Taffy, guff and oxaline are
all well and good in their way, but they have the great disadvantage of not
being legal tender.

In migrating from New England to the District of Columbia, George
Peabody had moved into a comparatively foreign country, and in the
process had sloughed most of his provincialism. It is beautiful to be a New
Englander, but to be nothing else is terrible.

George had proved for himself the most valuable lesson in Self-Reliance—
that he could make his way alone. He had kept his credit and strengthened
it.
He had served as a volunteer soldier in the War of Eighteen Hundred
Twelve, and done patrol duty on the banks of the Potomac. And when the
war was over, no one was quite so glad as he. Serving in the volunteer ranks
with him was one Elisha Riggs, several years his senior, and also a draper.
They had met before, but as competitors and on a cold business basis. Now
they were comrades in arms, and friends. Riggs is today chiefly
remembered to fame because he built what in its day was the most palatial
hotel in Washington, just as John Jacob Astor was scarcely known outside
of his bailiwick until he built that grand hostelry, the Astor House. Riggs
had carried a pack among the Virginia plantations, but now he had
established a wholesale drygoods house in Georgetown, and sold only to
storekeepers. He had felt the competitive force of Peabody's pack, and
would make friends with it. He proposed a partnership. Peabody explained
that his years were but nineteen, and therefore he was not legally of age.
Riggs argued that time would remedy the defect. Riggs was rich—he had
five thousand dollars, while Peabody had one thousand six hundred fifty
dollars and forty cents. I give the figures exact, as the inventory showed.
But Peabody had one thing which will make any man or woman rich. It is
something so sweetly beneficent that well can we call it the gift of the gods.
The asset to which I refer is Charm of Manner. Its first requisite is glowing
physical health. Its second ingredient is absolute honesty. Its third is good-
will.
Nothing taints the breath like a lie. The old parental plan of washing out the
bad boy's mouth with soft soap had a scientific basis. Liars must possess
good memories. They are fettered and gyved by what they have said and
done. The honest man is free—his acts require neither explanation nor
apology. He is in possession of all of his armament.
The outdoor work of tramping Maryland and Virginia highways had put the
glow of high health on the cheek of George Peabody. He was big in body,
manly, intelligent and could meet men on a basis of equality. If I were
president of a college, I would certainly have a Chair devoted to Psychic

Mixability, or Charm of Manner. Ponderosity, profundity and insipidity may
have their place, but the man with Charm of Manner keeps his capital
active. His soul is fluid. I have never been in possession of enough of this
Social Radium to analyze it, but I know it has the power of dissolving
opposition, and melting human hearts. But so delicate and illusive is it that
when used for a purely selfish purpose, it evaporates into thin air, and the
erstwhile possessor is left with only the mask of beauty and the husk of a
personality. George Peabody had Charm of Manner from his nineteenth
year to the day of his death. Colonel Forney crossed the Atlantic with him
when Peabody was in his seventy-first year, and here is what Forney says:
"I sat on one side of the cabin and he on the other. He was reading from a
book, which he finally merely held in his hands, as he sat idly dreaming. I
was melted into tears by the sight of his Jove-like head framed against the
window. His face and features beamed with high and noble intellect, and his
eyes looked forth in divine love. If ever soul revealed itself in the face, it
was here. He was the very King of Men, and I did not at all wonder that in
the past people had worked the apotheosis of such as he."

The firm of Riggs and Peabody prospered. It outgrew its quarters in old
"Congress Hall" in Georgetown, and ran over into a house next door, which
it pre-empted.
Moreover, it was apparent by this time that neither Georgetown nor
Washington would ever be the commercial metropolis of America. The city
of Baltimore had special harbor advantages that Washington did not have;
the ships touched there according to natural law. And when Riggs and
Peabody found themselves carting consignments to Baltimore in order to
make shipment to Savannah and Charleston, they knew the die was cast.
They packed up and moved to Baltimore. This was in the year Eighteen
Hundred Fifteen.
In order to do business you had better go where business is being done.
Trade follows the lines of least resistance. The wholesale dealer saw the
value of honesty as a business asset, long before the retailer made the same
unique discovery.

Doctor Algernon S. Crapsey says that truth is a brand-new virtue, and the
clergy are not quite sure about it yet. To hold his trade the jobber found he
had to be on the dead level: he had to consider himself the attorney for his
client. Peabody was a merchant by instinct. He had good taste, and he had a
prophetic instinct as to what the people wanted. Instead of buying his
supplies in Newburyport, Boston and New York, he now established
relations with London, direct. And London was then the Commercial Center
of the world, the arbiter of fashion, the molder of form, the home of finance
—frenzied and otherwise. Riggs and Peabody shipped American cotton to
London, and received in return the manufactured production in its manifold
forms.
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine Riggs withdrew from the firm, retaining
a certain financial interest, merely, and Peabody forged to the front, alone,
as a financier. For many years Peabody dealt largely with Robert Owen, and
thus there grew up a close and lasting friendship between these very able
men. Both were scouts for civilization. No doubt they influenced each other
for good. We find them working out a new policy in business—the policy of
reciprocity, instead of exploitation. Robert Owen always had almost
unlimited credit, for he prized his word as the immediate jewel of his soul.
It was exactly the same with Peabody.
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven Peabody visited England. He was then
thirty-two years old. The merchants from whom he bought discovered a
surprising thing when they met Peabody—he was not the bounding,
bragging, bustling, hustling American. He hustled, of course, but not visibly
nor offensively. He had the appearance of a man who had all the time there
was. He was moderate in voice and gentle in manner, and we hear of a
London banker paying him the somewhat ambiguous compliment of saying,
"Why, you know, he is a perfect gentleman—he does not seem like an
American, at all, you know!" Peabody had the rare gift of never defeating
his ends through haste and anxiety.
The second trip Peabody made to London was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-
five, and it was on a very delicate and important errand.
The State of Maryland was in sore financial distress. She had issued bonds,
and these were coming due. Certain Southern States had repudiated their

debts, and it looked as if Maryland was going to default. Peabody issued an
open letter calling on the citizens of Maryland to preserve their commercial
honor. The State bonds were held mostly in New York and Philadelphia,
and these were rival cities. Baltimore was to be tabu. Stephen Girard had
loaned money to Maryland, and in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine had
declined to renew, and this some said had led to the stringency which
reached its height in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five. Then it was that the
State of Maryland empowered George Peabody to go to London and
negotiate a loan. The initiative was his own. He went to London, and
floated a loan of eight million dollars. Robert Owen said that Peabody
borrowed the money "on his face."
He invited a dozen London bankers to a dinner, and when the cloth was
removed he explained the matter in such a lucid way that the moneybags
loosened their strings and did his bidding without parley. Peabody sailed
back to Baltimore with the gold coin. Another case of Charm of Manner.
Peabody knew the loan was a good thing to both borrower and lender. And
the man who knows what he is going to do with money, and when and how
he is going to pay it back, is never at a loss for funds.
In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three Andrew Carnegie called upon the banks
of Pittsburgh for a million-dollar loan. The bankers said, "Why, Mr.
Carnegie, this is unprecedented!" The reply was: "Well, I am a man who
does unprecedented things. If you believe that I know what I am doing, get
this money together for me—life is too short for apologies—I'll be back in
an hour."
Three of the bankers coughed, one sneezed, but they got the money and had
it ready when Andy called in an hour. In this transaction Andy held the
whip-hand. The Carnegie Mills were already owing the Pittsburgh banks a
tidy million or so, and they were compelled to uphold and support the credit
of their clients, or run the risk of having smokestacks fall about their ears. It
was so, in degree, with Peabody and the London bankers. A considerable
portion of Maryland's old bond issue had been hypothecated by the
Philadelphia and New York bankers with merchants in London. It was now
Peabody's cue to show London that she must protect her own. His gracious

presence and his logic saved the day. It is a great man who can flick a fly on
the off-leader's ear, when occasion demands.
As a commission for securing the London loan, the State of Maryland gave
Peabody a check for sixty thousand dollars. He endorsed the check,
"Presented to the State of Maryland with the best wishes of G. Peabody,"
and gave it back. Peabody's success with Threadneedle Street tapped for
him a reservoir of power. To bring Great Britain and America into closer
financial and industrial relationship now became his life-work. In Eighteen
Hundred Thirty-five he moved his principal office to London. This was for
the purpose of facilitating the shipment of English goods to America. The
English manufacturers were afraid to sell to American merchants. "Capital
is timid," said Adam Smith, the truth of which many of us can attest.
Peabody knew the trade of America; and his business now was to make
advances to English jobbers on shipments going to "the States." Thus did he
lubricate the wheels of trade.
London bankers had been trying to show English manufacturers that trading
with the "American Colonies" was very risky, inasmuch as these "Colonies"
were "rebels," and entertained a hate and jealousy toward the Mother
Country which might manifest itself in repudiation almost any time. This
fanning of old embers was to keep up the rate of discount. The postage on a
letter carried from England to America, or America to England, was twenty-
five cents when Peabody first went to England. He saw the rate reduced to
ten cents, and this largely through his own efforts.
Now we send a letter to Great Britain for two cents, or as cheaply as a letter
can be sent from New York City to Yonkers. Through the influence of
George Peabody, more than any other man of his time, the two great
countries grew to understand each other.
The business of Peabody was to maintain the credit of America. To this end
he made advances on shipments to the States. Where brokers had formerly
charged ten per cent, he took five. And moreover, where he knew the
American importer, he advanced to the full amount of the invoice.
He turned his money over four times a year, and thus got an interest on it of
twenty per cent. His losses averaged only one-half of one per cent. When he

wanted funds he found no difficulty in borrowing at a low rate of interest on
his own paper. The business was simple, easy, and when once started
yielded an income to Peabody of from three hundred thousand to a half-
million dollars a year. And no one was more surprised than George Peabody
himself, who had once worked for a certain Sylvester Proctor of Danvers
for four years, and at the end of that time had been paid five dollars and
given a suit of clothes!

Peabody lived and died a bachelor. Bachelors are of two kinds: There is the
Rara Avis Other Sort; and the common variety known as the Bachelorum
Vulgaris. The latter variety may always be recognized by its proclivity to
trespass on the preserve of the Pshaw of Persia, thus laying the candidate
open to a suit for the collection of royalties. Besides that, the Bachelorum
Vulgaris is apt to fall into the poison-ivy, lose his hair, teeth, charm and
digestion, and die at the top. The other sort is wedded to his work; for man
is a molecule in the mass and must be wedded to something. To be wedded
to your work is to live long and well.
For a man to wed a woman who has no interest in his work, and thus live
his life in an orbit outside of hers, often causes the party to oscillate into the
course followed by the Bachelorum Vulgaris and the Honorable Pshaw,
known as the Devil and the Deep Sea, and thus he completes the circle,
revealing the Law of Antitheses, that the opposites of things are alike. The
ideal condition is to be a bigamist, and wed a woman and your work at the
same time. To wed a woman and be weaned from your work is a tragedy; to
wed your work and eliminate the woman may spell success. If compelled to
choose, be loyal to your work. As specimens of those who got along fairly
well without either a feminine helpmeet or a sinker, I give you
Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Sir Isaac Newton, Herbert
Spencer and George Peabody.
George Peabody was the true apostolic predecessor of Harry G. Selfridge,
of Chicago and the round world, who has inaugurated American
Merchandising Methods in London, selling to the swells of Piccadilly the
smart suits created by Stein-Bloch.

Unlike most men of wealth and position, Peabody never assumed unusual
importance nor demanded favors. In London, where he lived for thirty
years, he resided in simple apartments, with no use for a valet nor the genus
flunkey. He was grateful to servants, courteous to porters, thankful to
everybody, always patient, never complaining of inattention. He grew to be
a favorite among the bus men who came to know him and sought to do him
honor. The poor of London blessed him as he walked by—with reasons,
probably, not wholly disinterested.
He used no tobacco, never touched spirituous liquors, and at banquets
usually partook of but a single dish.
His first great gift was three million dollars to erect model tenements for the
poor of London. The Peabody Apartments occupy two squares in Islington
and are worth a visit today, although they were built about Eighteen
Hundred Fifty. The intent was to supply a home for working people that
was sanitary, wholesome and complete, at a rental of exact cost. Peabody
expected that his example would be imitated by the rich men of the nobility,
and that squalor and indigence would soon become things of the past.
Alas, the Peabody Apartments accommodate only about a thousand people,
and half a million or more of human beings live in abasing poverty and
misery in London today.
Except in a few instances, the nobility of London are devoid of the
Philanthropic Spirit. In New York, the Mills Hotels are yet curiosities, and
the model tenements exist mostly on paper. Trinity Church with its millions
draws an income today from property of a type which Peabody prophesied
would not exist in the year Nineteen Hundred. One thing which Peabody
did not bank on was the indifference of the poor to their surroundings, and
the inherent taste for strong drink. He thought that if the rich would come to
the rescue, the poor would welcome the new regime and be grateful. The
truth seems to be that the poor must help themselves, and that beautiful as
philanthropy is, it is mostly for the philanthropist. The poor must be
educated to secrete their surroundings, otherwise if you supply them a
palace they will transform it into a slum tomorrow.
"The sole object of philanthropy," said Story the sculptor, "is to model a
face like George Peabody's."

When the news reached America of what George Peabody, the American,
was doing for London, there were many unkind remarks about his having
forsaken his native land. To equalize matters Peabody then gave three
million dollars, just what he had given to London, for the cause of
education in the Southern States. This money was used to establish
schoolhouses. Wherever a town raised five hundred dollars for a school
Peabody would give a like sum. A million dollars of the Peabody fund was
finally used for a Normal School at Nashville. The investment has proved a
wise and beneficent one. He next gave a million and a half dollars to found
the Peabody Institute of Baltimore. That this gift fired the heart of Peter
Cooper to do a similar work, and if possible a better work, there is no
doubt.
At the first World's Fair held in London in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one,
Peabody gave fifteen thousand dollars toward the exhibition of American
inventions, the chief of which at this time were the McCormick Reaper, Eli
Whitney's Cotton-Gin, and Colt's Revolver.
Peabody backed Doctor Kane with a gift of twenty thousand dollars in his
search for Franklin. He established various libraries; and gave a quarter of a
million dollars to his native town for a Peabody Institute. Danvers can yet
be found on the map, but Peabody is a place of pilgrimage for those who
reverence that American invention—a new virtue—the Art of Giving
Wisely.
Joshua Bates, through whose generosity Boston secured her Free Library,
was an agent of Peabody's, and afterward his partner. Later, Bates became a
member of the house of Baring Brothers, and carried on a business similar
to that of George Peabody. There is no doubt that Bates got his
philanthropic impulse from Peabody. In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six
Peabody visited his native town of Danvers after an absence of more than
forty years. There were great doings, in which all the school-children, as
well as the Governor of the State, had a part.
At Washington, Peabody was the guest of the President. The House of
Representatives and the Senate adjourned their regular business to do him
honor, and he made an address to them. The Judges of the Supreme Court
invited him to sit on the bench when he entered their Chamber. For twenty

years he was America's unofficial chief representative in London, no matter
who was Consul or who Ambassador.
Every year on July Fourth he gave a dinner to the principal Americans who
happened to be in London. To be invited to this dinner was an event.
Peabody himself always presided, and there was considerable oratory
sometimes of the brand known as Southwestern, which Peabody tolerated
with gentle smiles. On one occasion, however, things did not go smoothly.
Daniel Sickles was Consul to London and James Buchanan, afterwards our
punkest President, was Ambassador. Sickles was a good man, but a fire-
eater, and a gentleman of marked jingo proclivities. Sickles had asked that
Buchanan preside, in which case Buchanan was to call on Sickles for the
first toast, and this toast was to be, "The President of the United States." At
the same time Sickles intended to give the British lion's tail a few gratuitous
twists. Peabody declined to accede to Sickles' wish, but he himself presided
and offered the first, "To the Queen of England!" Thereupon Sickles walked
out with needless clatter, and Buchanan sat glued to his seat. The affair
came near being an international episode.
Peabody was always an American, and better, he was a citizen of the world.
He loved America, but when on English soil, really guest of England, he
gave the Queen the place of honor. This seems to us proper and right, and at
this distance we smile at the whole transaction, but we are glad that
Peabody, who paid for the dinner, had his way as to the oratorical guff.
The Queen offered Peabody a knighthood, but he declined, saying, "If Her
Majesty write me a personal letter endorsing my desire to help the poor of
London, I will be more than delighted." Victoria then wrote the letter, and
she also had a picture of herself painted in miniature and gave it to him. The
letter and portrait are now in the Peabody Institute at Peabody,
Massachusetts.
When Peabody died, in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine, Queen Victoria
ordered that his body be placed in Westminster Abbey. The Queen in person
attended the funeral, the flags on Parliament House were lowered to half-
mast, and the body was attended to Westminster Abbey by the Royal Guard.
Gladstone was one of the pallbearers.

Later, it was discovered that Peabody had devised in his will that his body
should rest by the side of his father and mother, in Harmony Grove, the
village cemetery at Danvers, and in a spot over which his boyish feet had
trod. The body was then removed from the Abbey and placed on board the
British man-of-war "Monarch," in the presence of the Prime Minister, the
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and many distinguished citizens. The
"Monarch" was convoyed to America by a French and an American
gunboat. No such honors were ever before paid to the memory of a simple
American citizen.
Well did the Reverend Newman Hall say, in his funeral oration: "George
Peabody waged a war against want and woe. He created homes; he never
desolated one.
"He sided with the friendless and the houseless, and his life was guided by a
law of love which none could ever wish to repeal. His was the task of
cementing the hearts of Briton and American, pointing both to their duty to
God and to humankind."

A. T. STEWART

The merchant of the future will not only be an economist and an
industrial leader—he will also be a teacher and a humanitarian.
—A. T. Stewart, in a Letter to
President Grant

A. T. STEWART
When His Excellency Wu Ting Fang was asked what country he would live
in, if he had his choice, his unhesitating answer was, "Ireland!"
The reply brought forth another question, as his secretive and clever
Excellency knew it would, namely, "Why?" "Because Ireland is the only
country in the world in which the Irish have no influence." Also, it might be
stated, although it has nothing to do with the case, that the Jews are very
much more influential in New York City than they are in Jerusalem. The
Turk is to Palestine what the English are to Ireland.
The human product has to be transplanted in order to get the best results,
just as the finest roses of California are slipped near Powers' Four Corners,

Rochester, Monroe County, New York, and are then shipped to the West. A
new environment means, often, spiritual power before unguessed. The
struggle of the man to fit himself into a new condition and thus harmonize
with his surroundings, brings out his latent energies and discovers for him
untapped reservoirs.
It was Edmund Burke who said, "The Irish are all right, but you must catch
them young." When England wants a superbly strong man she has to send
to Ireland for him. Note Burke, her greatest orator; Swift, her greatest
satirist; Goldsmith, her sweetest poet; Arthur Wellesley, her greatest fighter
—not to mention Lord Bobs—all awfully Irish. And to America comes
Alexander Turney Stewart, aged twenty, very Irish, shy, pink, blue of eye,
with downy whiskers, intending to teach school until he could prepare
himself for the "meenistry."
It was the year Eighteen Hundred Twenty; and at that time the stars of the
Irish schoolmaster were in the ascendant. For a space of forty years—say
from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Forty-five—eighty per
cent of all graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, came straight to America
and found situations awaiting them.
Young Stewart had been at Trinity College two years, when by the death of
his grandfather he found himself without funds. His father died when he
was three years old, and his grandparents took him in charge. His mother, it
seems, married again, and was busy raising a goodly brood of Callahans,
several of whom in after-years came to New York, and were given jobs at
the A. T. Stewart button-counter.
Young Stewart could have borrowed money to keep him in college, for he
knew that when he was twenty-one he would come into an inheritance from
his father's estate. However, on an impulse, he just sold his books, pawned
his watch and bought passage for America, the land of promise. The boy
had the look of a scholar, and he had dignity, as shy folks often have. Also,
he had a Trinity College brogue, a thing quite as desirable as a Trinity
College degree. Later, A. T. Stewart lost his brogue, but Trinity College sent
him all the degrees she had, including the LL. D., which arrived on his
seventieth birthday.

The Irish built our railroads, but Paddy no longer works on the section—he
owns the railroad. Note the Harrimans, the Hanrahans, the McCreas, the
McDougalls, the O'Donnells, the O'Days, the Hills—all just one generation
removed from the bog, and the smell of peat-smoke still upon them.
The Irish schoolmasters glided easily from taking charge of the school into
taking charge of our municipal affairs—for a consideration—and their
younger brothers, their cousins, their uncles and their aunts, found jobs
yawning for them as soon as they had pushed past the gates of Castle
Garden.
One year of schoolteaching in New York City, and A. T. Stewart reached his
majority. He had saved just two hundred dollars of his salary; and he sailed
away, back to Ould Ireland, a successful man. Now he would go back to
Trinity and complete his course, and be glorified. He had proved his ability
to meet the world on a fair footing and take care of himself. All of which
speaks well for young Misther Stewart, and it also speaks well for his
grandparents, who had brought him up in a good, sensible way to work,
economize and keep a civil tongue in his Irish head. His grandfather didn't
exactly belong to the gentry—it was better than that: he was an Irish clerque
who had become a scrivener, and then risen to a professorship.
A. T. Stewart was heir to a goodly amount of decent pride, which always
kept him in the society of educated people, and made him walk with the
crown of his head high and his chin in. He thought well of himself—and the
world is very apt to take a man at his own estimate.
A year in "The States" had transformed the young man from a greenhorn
into a gentleman. The climate of the West had agreed with him. He himself
told how on going back to Belfast the city seemed to have grown smaller
and very quiet. He compared everything to Broadway, and smiled at a
jaunting-car compared to a 'bus.
When he went to Trinity College, and saw his class, from whom he had
parted only a year before, all thought of remaining two years to graduate
faded from his mind. An ocean seemed to divide him from both teachers
and pupils. The professors were stupid and slow; the pupils were boys—he
was a man. They, too, felt the difference, and called him "Sir." And when
one of them introduced him to a Freshman as "an American," Freshy bowed

low, and the breast of A. T. Stewart expanded with pride. Not even the offer
of a professorship could have kept him in Ireland. He saw himself the
principal of an American College, "filling" the pulpit of the college chapel
on Sunday, picturing the fate of the unregenerate in fiery accents. The
Yankee atmosphere had made him a bit heady. The legacy left him by his
grandfather was exactly one thousand pounds—five thousand dollars. What
to do with this money, he did not know! Anyway, he would take it to
America and wisely invest it.
In New York he had boarded with an Irish family, the head of which was a
draper. This man had a small store on West Street, and Alexander had
helped tend store on Saturdays, and occasionally evenings when ships came
in and sailors with money to waste lumbered and lubbered past, often with
gay painted galleys in tow.
The things you do at twenty are making indelible marks on your character.
Stewart had no special taste for trade, but experience spells power—
potential or actual. With five thousand dollars in his belt, all in gold, he felt
uncomfortable. And so on a venture he expended half of it in good Irish
lace, insertions and scallop trimmings. Irish linens, Irish poplins and Irish
lace were being shipped to New York—it could not be a loss! He would
follow suit. If he was robbed of his money he could not at the same time be
robbed of the drapery. And so he sailed away for New York—and Ireland
looked more green and more beautiful as the great, uplifting, green hills
faded from sight and were lost to view in the mist.

On the ship that carried Stewart back to New York was a young man who
professed to be an adept in the draper's line. Very naturally, Stewart got
acquainted with this man, and told him of his investment in drygoods. The
man offered to sell the stock for Stewart.
In those days the Irish pedler with his pack full of curious and wonderful
things was a common sight at the farmhouses. He rivaled both Yankee-
Gentile and Jew, and his blarney was a commodity that stood him in good
stead. Stewart's new-found friend promised to sell the stock in short order,

by going right out among the people. He had no money of his own, and
Stewart was doubly pleased to think he could set a worthy man up in
business, and help himself at the same time. On reaching New York, the
friend was fitted out with all the goods he could carry, and duly headed for
New Jersey. In two days he came back. He had sold most of the goods all
right, and with the money gotten gloriously drunk; also, he had bought
drinks for all the Irishmen he could find, and naturally they were many.
Stewart even then did not give up the case. He rented a small store at Two
Hundred Eighty-three Broadway, and decided that by staying close to his
friend he could keep him in the straight and narrow path of probity. As for
himself he would teach school as usual; and he and his agent could use the
back of the little store for a sleeping-room.
It was a week before his school was to begin, but in that week he became
convinced that his friend was not a merchant, and to get that first month's
rent he would have to run the store himself. So he put the disciple of
Bacchus on the slide, and started in alone.
Stewart had a little inconvenient pride which prevented his turning pedler.
Instead of going to the world he would bring the world to him. With this
end, therefore, in view, the New York "Daily Advertiser" for September
Second, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five, contained this notice:
A. T. Stewart, just arrived from Belfast, offers for sale to the
Ladies of New York a choice selection of Fresh Drygoods at
Two Hundred Eighty-three Broadway.
The advertisement was a good one—the proof of which was that many
puffick ladies called to see the stock and the man just arrived from Belfast.
Stewart was a wise advertiser. His use of the word "ladies" showed good
psychology.
The young merchant hadn't much more than taken down his shutters before
a lady entered the store and acknowledged she was one. She lived in the
next block, and as soon as she read the advertisement in the paper, yet damp
from the press, she came right over.
Stewart spread out his wares with shaking hands—he must make a sale to
his first caller or he would never have luck. The lady bought "scallops" and

lace to the extent of two dollars, on Stewart's throwing her in gratis sundry
yards of braid, a card of buttons and a paper of hooks and eyes. The woman
paid the money, and A. T. Stewart was launched, then and there, on a career.
He was a handsome young fellow—intelligent, and never too familiar, but
just familiar enough. Women liked him; he was so respectful, almost
reverent, in his attitude toward them. It took a better man to be a salesman
then than now. Every article was marked in cipher, with two prices. One
figure represented what the thing cost and the other was the selling-price.
You secured the selling-price, if you could, and if you couldn't, you took
what you could get, right down to the cost figure. The motto was, never let
a customer go without selling him something. The rule now is to sell people
what they want, but never urge any one to buy.
Both buyer and seller then enjoyed these fencing-bouts of the bazaar. The
time for simple dealing between man and man had not yet come. To haggle,
banter and blarney were parts of the game, and parts which the buyer
demanded as his right. He would trade only at places where he thought he
was getting the start of the dealer and where his cleverness had an
opportunity for exercise. The thought of getting something for nothing was
in the air, and to get the better of somebody was regarded as proper and
right.
Had a retail dealer then advertised One Price and no deviation to any one,
the customers would surely have given him absent treatment. The verbal
fencing, the forays of wit, the clash of accusation and the final forlorn sigh
of surrender of the seller, were things which the buyer demanded as his, or
more properly her, right.
Often these encounters attracted interested by-standers, who saw the skilful
buyer berate the seller and run down his goods, until the poor man, abject
and undone, gave up. To get the better of the male man and force him to his
knees is the pleasant diversion of a certain type of feminine mind. Before
marriage the woman always, I am told, takes this high-handed attitude.
Perhaps she dimly realizes that her time for tyranny is short. To make the
man a suppliant is the delight of her soul. After marriage the positions are
reversed. But in the good old days, most women, not absolutely desiccated
by age or ironed out by life's vicissitudes, found a sort of secondary sexual

delight in these shopping assaults on the gentlemanly party on the other side
of the counter.
We have all seen women enter into heated arguments, and indulge in a half-
quarrel, with attractive men, about nothing. If the man is wise he allows the
woman to force him into a corner, where he yields with a grace, ill-
concealed, and thus is he victor, without the lady's knowing it. This is a sort
of salesmanship that Sheldon knows nothing of, and that, happily, is, for the
most part, not yet obsolete. A. T. Stewart was a natural salesman of the old
school. He was a success from the very start. He was tall; he had good
teeth, a handsome face, a graceful form and dressed with exquisite care.
This personal charm of manner was his chief asset. And while business then
was barter, and the methods of booth and bazaar prevailed, Stewart was
wise enough never to take advantage of a customer regarding either price or
quality. If the buyer held off long enough she might buy very close to cost,
but if she bought quickly and at Stewart's figures, he had a way of throwing
in a yard of ribbon, or elastic, or a spool or two of thread, all unasked for,
that equalized the transaction. He seems to have been the very first man in
trade to realize that to hold your trade you must make a friend of the
customer. In a year he had outgrown the little store at Two Hundred Eighty-
three Broadway, and he moved to a larger place at Two Hundred Sixty-two
Broadway. Then came a new store, built for him by a worthy real-estate
owner, John Jacob Astor by name. This store was thirty feet wide, one
hundred feet deep, and three stories high, with a basement. It was a genuine
Drygoods-Store.
It had a ladies' parlor on the second floor, and a dressing-room with full-
length mirrors ordered from Paris.
They were the first full-length mirrors in America, and A. T. Stewart issued
a special invitation to the ladies of New York to come and see them and see
themselves as others saw them. To arrange these mirrors so that a lady
could see the buttons on the back of her dress was regarded as the final
achievement of legerdemain.
The A. T. Stewart store was a woman's store. In hiring salesmen the owner
picked only gentlemen of presence. The "floorwalker" had his rise in A. T.
Stewart. Once a woman asked a floorwalker this question, "Do you keep

stationery?" and the answer was, "If I did I'd never draw my salary." This is
a silly story and if it ever happened, it did not transpire at A. T. Stewart's.
There the floorwalker was always as a cow that is being milked. For the
first fifteen years of his career, Stewart made it a rule to meet and greet
every customer, personally.
The floorwalker—or the "head usher," as he was called—was either the
proprietor or his personal representative. Stewart never offered to shake
hands with a customer, no matter how well he knew the lady, but bowed
low, and with becoming gravity and gentle voice inquired her wishes. He
then conducted her to the counter where the goods she wanted were kept.
As the clerk would take down his goods Stewart had a way of reproving the
man thus: "Not that, Mr. Johnson, not that—you seem to forget whom you
are waiting on!" When the lady left, Stewart accompanied her to the door.
He wore a long beard, shaved his upper lip, and looked like a Presbyterian
clergyman making pastoral calls. Silks, dress-goods and laces gradually
grew to be the A. T. Stewart specialties. That the man had taste and never
ran stripes around a stout lady, or made a very slim one look more so, is a
matter of history. "I have been hoping you would come, for we have a piece
of silk that seems to have been made for you. I ordered it put aside until you
could see it. Mr. Johnson, that silk pattern, please, that I told you not to
show to any one until Mrs. Brevoort called. Thank you; yes, that is the
one."
Then there were ways of saying, "Oh, Mr. Johnson, you remember the
duplicate of that silk-dress pattern which was made for Queen Victoria—I
think Mrs. Astor would like to examine it!" Thus was compliment fused
with commerce and made to yield a dividend.

The prevailing methods in trade are always keyed by the public. The
merchant is part of the public; he ministers to the public. A public that
demands a high degree of honesty and unselfish service will get it. Sharp
practise and double-dealing among the people find an outcrop in public
affairs. Rogues in a community will have no trouble in finding rogue
lawyers to do their bidding. In fact, rogue clients evolve rogue attorneys.

Foolish patients evolve fool doctors. And superstition and silliness in the
pew find a fitting expression in the pulpit.
The first man in New York to work the "Cost-Sale" scheme was A. T.
Stewart. In Eighteen Hundred Thirty he advertised: "Mr. A. T. Stewart,
having purchased a large amount of goods, soon to arrive, is obliged, in
order to make room for these, to dispose of all the stock he has on hand,
which will be sold at Actual Cost, beginning Monday at eight A. M. Ladies
are requested to come early and avoid the crush."
At another time he advertised: "A. T. Stewart is obliged to raise a large
amount of money to pay for silks and dress-goods that are now being made
for him in Europe. To secure this money he is obliged to hold a Cost Sale of
everything in his store. This sale will begin Friday at noon, and end at
midnight on Saturday, the day after."
Stewart also had "Fire Sales," although it speaks well for himself that he
never had a fire in his own store. If others had fires he was on hand to buy
the salvage, and whether he bought it or not he managed to have a "Fire
Sale." He loved the smoke of commercial rhetoric, and the excitement of
seeing the crowd. This applies more particularly to the first twenty years of
his career. During those first years he used to have a way of opening cases
on the sidewalk and selling from the case to the first person who made an
offer. This brought him good luck, especially if the person had cross-eyes or
was a hunchback. The messy clutter in front of the store and the pushing
crowds advertised the business. Finally, a competitor next door complained
to the police about Stewart's blocking the sidewalk.
The police interfered and Stewart was given one day to clear off the walk.
At once he put up a big sign: "Our neighbors to the right, not being able to
compete with us, demand that we shall open no more goods on the
sidewalk. To make room we are obliged to have a Cost Sale. You buy your
goods, pay for them and carry them away—we can't even afford to pay for
wrapping-paper and string."
All this tended to keep the town awake, and the old Irish adage of "Where
McGinty sits is the head of the table," became true of A. T. Stewart. His
store was the center of trade. When he moved, the trade moved with him.

To all charitable objects he gave liberally. He gave to all churches, and was
recognized as a sort of clergyman himself, and in his dress he managed to
look the part. The ten per cent off to clergymen and schoolteachers was his
innovation. This ten per cent was supposed to be his profit, but forty per
cent would have been nearer it. Of course the same discount had to be given
to any member of a clergyman's or a teacher's family. And so we hear of
one of Stewart's cashiers saying, "Over half of the people in New York are
clergymen or teachers." The temptation to pass one's self off for a
clergyman at Stewart's store was a bait that had no lure when you visited
Girard College.
All this was but a part and parcel of the times—an index of the Zeitgeist.

A. T. Stewart was alive, alert and sensitive to the spirit of the times. He kept
abreast with the best thought of the best people. The idea of opening boxes
and bales on the sidewalk was abandoned early in the game; and the
endeavor was to show the fabric only under the most favorable conditions.
Stewart was reaching out for a higher clientele. The motto became, "Not
how cheap, but how good." If A. T. Stewart sold goods at an average profit
of, say, thirty per cent, he could well afford to sell a small portion of his
stock at cost, or even at ten per cent below cost. He knew his stocks, and he
made it a point never to carry goods over from one year to another.
Before he held one of his famous "Cost Sales," he would personally work
all night, taking down from the shelves and out of drawers and showcases
everything in the store. Then he himself would dictate what each article
should be sold for. Here was exercise for a mind that worked by intuition.
The master decided instantly on how much this thing would bring. In
railroad managing there are two ways of making rates. One is the carefully
figured-out cost of transportation. The other plan is to make a rate that will
move the tonnage. A regular passenger rate is the rate that will afford a
profit. An "excursion rate," a "homeseekers' rate," an "old-home rate," is the
one that experience shows is necessary to tempt people to travel.

Drygoods deteriorate in quality when kept on the shelves for several
months. Worse than that, they cease to attract the buyers. People go where
there is life, activity, and are moved by that which is youthful, new and
fresh. Old stocks become dead stocks, and dead stocks mean dead business
and dead men, or bankruptcy. When it came to selling old stocks, Stewart
paid no attention to the cost. He marked the tag in big, plain figures in red
ink at the price he thought would move the goods. And usually he was right.
We hear of his marking a piece of dress-goods forty-nine cents a yard. A
department manager came in and in alarm explained that the goods cost
fifty-three. "That has nothing to do with the case," replied Stewart; "we
would not buy it today at fifty-three, and we do not want the stuff on our
shelves even at forty-nine."
"But," said the manager, "this is a Cost Sale, and if we sell below cost we
should explain that fact to our customers." And the answer was: "Young
man, you must tell the customer only what she will believe. The actual truth
is for ourselves."
Stewart worked for an average of profit and this he secured. His receipts
mounted steadily year by year, until in Eighteen Hundred Fifty they were
ten thousand dollars a day. And when he moved into his Business Palace at
Astor Place, Tenth Street and Broadway, the sales jumped to an average of
over fifty thousand dollars a day.

When A. T. Stewart built his Business Palace in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-
five, it was the noblest business structure in America. Much of the iron used
in it was supplied by Peter Cooper, and that worthy man was also consulted
as to the plans.
Just a square away from Stewart's Business Palace stands Cooper Union. In
selecting this location A. T. Stewart was influenced largely by the fact that it
was so near to that center of art and education which Peter Cooper had
made worldwide in fame. Stewart said, "My store shall vie with your
museum, and people will throng it as they do an exposition." And his
prophecy proved true.

At his death, in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, Stewart was the richest man
in New York, save an Astor and a Vanderbilt, and these had inherited their
wealth—wealth made through the rise of real estate—while Stewart had
made his money in legitimate trade.
A. T. Stewart was worth forty million dollars. This vast estate was mostly
frittered away, honeycombed and moth-eaten, by hungry attorneys. The
business was carried on by Hessians who worked both ends against the
middle, and let the estate foot the deficits.
A. T. Stewart had a genius for trade, but he had no gift for giving. The
world needs a school for millionaires, so that, since they can not take their
millions with them, they can learn to leave their money wisely and well.
After an up-and-down—mostly down—career of a decade, the Business
Palace was bought by John Wanamaker. Again, and almost instantly, the
Business Palace became a center of light and education, and the splendid
aisles that a generation before had known the tread of the best people of
Manhattan, again felt their step.
When Stewart built the Business Palace, people said, "Oh, it is too far
uptown—nobody will go there." But they were wrong. When John
Wanamaker moved in, many said, "Oh, it's beautiful—but you know, it is
too far downtown—nobody will go there." And these were as wrong as the
first. "Where McGinty sits is the head of the table." The trade siphoned
itself thither under the magic name of Wanamaker, as though the shade of
A. T. Stewart had been summoned from its confines in the Isles of Death.
In Stewart's day no sign had been placed on the building. He said,
"Everybody will know it is A. T. Stewart's!" And they did. After his death
the place was plastered with signs that called in throaty falsetto at the
passer-by, like eager salesmen on the Midway who try to entice people to
enter. The new management took all these signs down, and by the main
entrance placed a modest tablet carrying this inscription:
John Wanamaker
Successor to
A. T. Stewart

It was a comment so subtle that it took New York a year to awaken to its
flavor of tincture of iron.
That little sign reminds one of how Disraeli was once dining with an
American and two other Englishmen. In the course of the conversation the
American proudly let slip the information that he traced a pedigree to
parents who came to America in the Mayflower. One of the Englishmen
here coughed, and vouchsafed the fact that he traced a lineage to Oliver
Cromwell. A little pause followed, and the other guest spat, muzzled his
modesty and said he traced to William the Conqueror. Disraeli, with great
deliberation, made a hieroglyphic on the tablecloth with his fork and said,
"And I trace a pedigree to Moses, who walked and talked with God on
Mount Sinai, fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ."
John Wanamaker leaped the gulf of twenty years and traced direct to A. T.
Stewart, as well he might, for it was Stewart's achievement that had first
fired his imagination to do and become. A. T. Stewart was the greatest
merchant of his time. And John Wanamaker has been not only a great
merchant, but a teacher of merchants. And the John Wanamaker Stores now
form a High School of economic industrialism.
John Wanamaker is still teaching, tapping new reservoirs of power as the
swift-changing seasons pass. As a preacher and a teacher he has surely
surpassed the versatile Stewart.

To succeed in business today it is not enough that you should look out for
Number One: you must also look out for Number Two. That is, you must
consider the needs of the buyer and make his interests your own. To sell a
person something he does not want, or to sell him something at a price
above its actual value, is a calamity—for the seller. Business is built on
confidence. We make our money out of our friends—our enemies will not
trade with us.
In law the buyer and the seller are supposed to be people with equal
opportunity to judge of an article and pass on its value. Hence there is a
legal maxim, "Caveat emptor"—"Let the buyer beware"—and this provides

that when an article is once purchased and passes into the possession of the
buyer it is his, and he has no redress for short weight, count or inferior
quality. Behind that legal Latin maxim, "Caveat emptor," the merchant
stood for centuries, safely entrenched. It was about Eighteen Hundred
Sixty-five that it came to John Wanamaker, a young merchant just starting
business in Philadelphia, that the law is wrong in assuming that buyer and
seller stand on a parity, and have an equal opportunity for judging values.
The dealer is a specialist, while the buyer, being a consumer of a great
number of different things, has only a general knowledge, at best. The
person with only a general idea as to values, pitted against a trained
specialist, is at a great disadvantage. Therefore, to be on ethical ground the
seller must be the friend of the buyer—not his antagonist. For a seller to
regard the buyer as his prey is worse than non-ethical—it is immoral—a
violation of the Golden Rule.
These things came to the young man, John Wanamaker, with a great throb
and thrill, and he at once proceeded to put his theories into execution, and
on them his business was founded. The One-Price System—all goods
marked in plain figures, and money back if not satisfied—these things were
to revolutionize the retail trade of the world.
John Wanamaker, of all men in America, seems to know that to stand still is
to retreat. For more than forty years he has led the vanguard of the business
world. He has been a teacher of merchants. His insight, initiative,
originality and prophetic judgment have set the retailers of the world a pace.
Many have learned much from him, and all have been influenced by him.
Whether they knew it or not, and whether they would acknowledge it if
they did know it, matters little.
Professor Zueblin once said of William Morris: "There is not a well-
furnished house in Christendom but that shows the influence of his good
taste and his gracious ideas of economy, harmony and honesty in home
decoration." Likewise, we can truthfully say that there is not a successful
retail store in America that does not show the influence of A. T. Stewart and
his legitimate successor, John Wanamaker.

H. H. ROGERS
Success is rooted in reciprocity. He who does not benefit the
world is headed for bankruptcy on the high-speed clutch.
—H. H.
Rogers

H. H. ROGERS
One proof that H. H. Rogers was a personage and not a person lies in the
fact that he was seldom mentioned in moderate language. Lawson passed
him a few choice tributes; Ida Tarbell tarred him with her literary stick;
Upton Sinclair declared he was this and that; Professor Herren averred that
he bore no likeness whatever to Leo Tolstoy—and he might also have
added, neither did he resemble Francis of Assisi or Simeon Stylites. Those

who did not like him usually pictured him by recounting what he was not.
My endeavor in this sketch will be simply to tell what he was.
Henry Huddleston Rogers was a very human individual. He was born in the
village of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in the year Eighteen Hundred Forty.
He died in New York City in Nineteen Hundred Nine, in his seventieth year.
He was the typical American, and his career was the ideal one to which we
are always pointing our growing youth. His fault, if fault it may be, was that
he succeeded too well. Success is a hard thing to forgive. Personality repels
as well as attracts.
The life of H. H. Rogers was the complete American romance. He lived the
part—and he looked it. He did not require a make-up. The sub-cortex was
not for him, and even the liars never dared to say he was a hypocrite. H. H.
Rogers had personality. Men turned to gaze at him on the street; women
glanced, and then hastily looked, unnecessarily hard, the other way;
children stared.
The man was tall, lithe, strong, graceful, commanding. His jaw was the jaw
of courage; his chin meant purpose; his nose symboled intellect, poise and
power; his brow spelled brain. He was a handsome man, and he was not
wholly unaware of the fact. In him was the pride of the North American
Indian, and a little of the reserve of the savage. His silence was always
eloquent, and in it was neither stupidity nor vacuity. With friends he was
witty, affable, generous, lovable. In business negotiation he was rapid,
direct, incisive; or smooth, plausible and convincing—all depending upon
the man with whom he was dealing. He often did to others what they were
trying to do to him, and he did it first. He had the splendid ability to say
"No" when he should, a thing many good men can not do. At such times his
mouth would shut like a steel trap and his blue eyes would send the
thermometer below zero. No one could play horse with H. H. Rogers. He,
himself, was always in the saddle.
The power of the man was more manifest with men than with women, yet
he was always admired by women, but more on account of his austerity
than his effort to please. He was not given to flattery; yet he was quick to
commend. He had in him something of the dash that existed when
knighthood was in flower. To the great of the earth, H. H. Rogers never

bowed the knee. He never shunned an encounter, save with weakness, greed
and stupidity. He met every difficulty, every obstacle, unafraid and
unabashed. Even death to him was only a passing event—death for him had
no sting, nor the grave a victory. He prepared for his passing, looking after
every detail, as he had planned trips to Europe. Jauntily, jokingly, bravely,
tremendously busy, keenly alive to beauty and friendship, deciding great
issues offhand, facing friend or foe, the moments of relaxation chinked in
with religious emotion and a glowing love for humanity—so he lived, and
so he died.
An executive has been described as a man who decides quickly, and is
sometimes right. H. H. Rogers was the ideal executive. He did not decide
until the evidence was all in; he listened, weighed, sifted, sorted and then
decided. And when his decision was made the case was closed.
Big men, who are doing big things that have never been done before, act on
this basis, otherwise they would be ironed out to the average, and their
dreams would evaporate like the morning mist. The one thing about the
dreams of H. H. Rogers is that he made them come true.

"Give me neither poverty nor riches," said the philosopher. The parents of
H. H. Rogers were neither rich nor poor. They had enough, but there was
never a surfeit. They were of straight New England stock. Of his four great-
grandfathers, three fought in the Revolutionary War.
According to Thomas Carlyle, respectable people were those who kept a
gig. In some towns the credential is that the family shall employ a "hired
girl." In Fairhaven the condition was that you should have a washerwoman
one day in the week. The soapy wash-water was saved for scrubbing
purposes—this was in Massachusetts—and if the man of the house
occasionally smoked a pipe he was requested to blow the smoke on the
plants in the south windows, so as to kill the vermin. Nothing was wasted.
The child born into such a family where industry and economy are prized,
unless he is a mental defective and a physical cripple, will be sure to thrive.

The father had made one trip in a whaler. He was gone three years and got a
one-hundred-and-forty-seventh part of the catch. The oil market was on a
slump, and so the net result for the father of a millionaire-to-be was ninety-
five dollars and twenty cents. This happy father was a grocer, and later a
clerk to a broker in whale-oil. Pater had the New England virtues to such a
degree that they kept him poor. He was cautious, plus.
To make, you have to spend; to grow a crop, you have to plant the seed.
Here's where you plunge—it is a gamble, a bet on the seed versus the
eternal cussedness of things. It's you against the chances of a crop. If the
drought comes, or the flood, or the chinch-bug, or the brown-tailed moth,
you may find yourself floundering in the mulligatawney.
Aside from that one cruise to the whaling-grounds, Rogers Pere played the
game of life near home and close to shore. The easy ways of the villagers
are shown by a story Mr. Rogers used to tell about a good neighbor of his—
a second mate on a whaler. The bark was weighing anchor and about to sail.
The worthy mate tarried at a barroom over in New Bedford. "Ain't you
going home to kiss your wife good-by?" some one asked. And the answer
was: "What's the use? I'm only going to be gone two years."
Half of Fairhaven was made up of fishermen, and the rest were widows and
the usual village contingent. The widows were the washerwomen.
Those who had the price hired a washerwoman one day in the week. This
was not so much because the mother herself could not do the work, as it
was to give work to the needy and prove the Jeffersonian idea of equality.
The wash-lady was always seated with the family at table, and besides her
wage was presented with a pie, a pumpkin, or some outgrown garment.
Thus were the Christian virtues liberated.
Where the gray mare is the better horse, her mate always lets up a bit on his
whiffletree and she draws most of the load. It was so here. The mother
planned for the household. She was the economist, bursar and disburser.
She was a member of the Congregational Church, with a liberal bias, which
believed in "endless consequences," but not in "endless punishment." Later
the family evolved into Unitarians by the easy process of natural selection.
The father said grace, and the mother led in family prayers. She had ideas
of her own and expressed them.

The family took the Boston "Weekly Congregationalist" and the Bedford
"Weekly Standard." In the household there was a bookcase of nearly a
hundred volumes. It was the most complete library in town, with the
exception of that of the minister.
The house where H. H. Rogers was born still stands. Its frame was made in
Sixteen Hundred Ninety—mortised, tenoned and pinned. In the garret the
rafters show the loving marks of the broadax—to swing which musical
instrument with grace and effectiveness is now a lost art.
How short is the life of man! Here a babe was born, who lived his infancy,
youth, manhood; who achieved as one in a million; who died: yet the house
of his birth—old at the time—still stubbornly stands as if to make mock of
our ambitions. A hundred years ago Fairhaven had a dozen men or more
who, with an auger, an adz, a broadax and a drawshave, could build a boat
or a house warranted to outlast the owner.
I had tea in this house where H. H. Rogers was born and where his boyhood
days were spent. I fetched an armful of wood for the housewife, and would
have brought a bucket of water for her from the pump, only the pump is
now out of commission, having been replaced by the newfangled
waterworks presented to the town by a Standard Oil magnate. Here Henry
Rogers brought chips in a wheelbarrow from the shipyard on baking-days;
here he hoed the garden and helped his mother fasten up the flaming,
flaring hollyhocks against the house with strips of old sailcloth and tacks.
There were errands to look after, and usually a pig, and sometimes two, that
accumulated adipose on purslane and lamb's-quarters, with surplus clams
for dessert, also quahaugs to preserve the poetic unities. Then there came a
time when the family kept a cow, which was pastured on the common, the
herd being looked after by a man who had fought valiantly in the War of
Eighteen Hundred Twelve, and who used to tell the boys about it, fighting
the battles over with crutch and cane.
In the Winter the ice sometimes froze solid clean across Buzzards Bay. The
active and hustling boys had skates made by the village blacksmith. Henry
Rogers had two pair, and used to loan one pair out for two cents an hour.
Boys who had no skates and could not beg or borrow and who had but one
cent could sometimes get one skate for a while and thus glide gracefully on

one foot. There was good fishing through the ice, only it was awful cold
work and not much pay, for fish could hardly be given away. In the Summer
there were clams to dig, blueberries to gather, and pond-lilies had a value—
I guess so! Then in the early Spring folks raked up their yards and made
bonfires of the Winter's debris. Henry Rogers did these odd jobs, and
religiously took his money home to his mother, who placed it in the upper
right-hand corner of a bureau drawer. The village school was kept by an
Irishman who had attended Harvard. He believed in the classics and the
efficacy of the ferrule, and doted on Latin, which he also used as a
punishment. Henry Rogers was alive and alert and was diplomatic enough
to manage the Milesian pedagogue without his ever knowing it. The lessons
were easy to him—he absorbed in the mass. Besides that, his mother helped
nights by the light of a whale-oil lamp, for her boy was going to grow up to
be a schoolteacher—or possibly a minister, who knows!
Out in Illinois, when the wanderlust used to catch the evolving youth, who
was neither a boy nor a man, he ran away and went Out West. In New
England the same lad would have shipped before the mast, and let his
parents guess where he was—their due punishment for lack of appreciation.
To grow up on the coast and hear the tales of the seafaring men who have
gone down to the sea in ships, is to catch it sooner or later. At fifteen Henry
Rogers caught it, and was duly recorded to go on a whaler. Luckily his
mother got word of it, and canceled the deal. About then, good fortune
arrived in the form of Opportunity. The young man who peddled the New
Bedford "Standard" wanted to dispose of his route.
Henry bought the route and advised with his mother afterward, only to find
that she had sent the seller to him. Honors were even. His business was to
deliver the papers with precision. Later he took on the Boston papers, also.
This is what gave rise to the story that Henry Rogers was a newsboy.
He was a newsboy, but he was a newsboy extraordinary. He took orders for
advertisements for the "Standard," and was also the Fairhaven
correspondent, supplying the news as to who was visiting whom; giving
names of good citizens who were shingling their chicken-houses, and
mentioning those enjoying poor health. Whether the news did anybody any
good or not matters little—the boy was learning to write. In after-years he

used to refer to this period of his life as his "newspaper career."
Superstitious persons have been agitated about that word "Standard," and
how it should have ominously come into the life of H. H. Rogers at this
early time.
When the railroad came in, Henry got a job as assistant baggageman. The
conductorship was in sight—twenty years away, but promised positively by
a kind relative—when something else appeared on the horizon, and a good
job was exchanged for a better one.
An enterprising Boston man had established a chain of grocery-stores along
the coast, and was monopolizing the business or bidding fair to do so. By
buying for many stores, he could buy cheaper than any other one man
could. But the main point of the plan was the idea of going to the home,
taking the order and delivering the goods. Before that, if you wanted things
you went to the store, selected them and carried them home. To have asked
the storekeeper to deliver the goods to your house would have given that
gentleman heart-failure. He did mighty well to carry in stock the things that
people needed. But here was a revolutionary method—a new deal. Henry
Rogers' father said it was initiative gone mad, and would last only a few
weeks. Henry Rogers' mother said otherwise, and Henry agreed with her.
He had clerked in his father's grocery, and so knew something of the
business. Moreover, he knew the people—he knew every family in
Fairhaven by name, and almost every one for six miles around as well.
He started in at three dollars a week, taking orders and driving the delivery-
wagon. In six months his pay was five dollars a week and a commission. In
a year he was making twenty dollars a week. He was only eighteen—slim,
tall, bronzed and strong. He could carry a hundred pounds on his shoulder.
The people along the route liked him: he was cheerful and accommodating.
Not only did he deliver the things, but he put them away in cellar, barn,
closet, garret or cupboard. He did not only what he was paid to do, but
more. He anticipated Ali Baba, who said, "Folks who never do any more
than they get paid for, never get paid for anything more than they do." It
was the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, and Henry Rogers was making
money. He owned his route, and the manager of the stores was talking about
making him assistant superintendent. Had he stuck to his job he might have

become a partner in the great firm of Cobb, Bates and Yerxa, and put Bates
to the bad. It would have then been Cobb, Rogers and Yerxa—and later, H.
H. Rogers, Dealer in Staple and Fancy Groceries. But something happened
about this time that shook New Bedford to its center, and gave Fairhaven a
thrill.
Whale-oil was whale-oil then, and whale-oil and New Bedford were
synonymous. Now, a man out in Pennsylvania had bored down into the
ground and struck a reservoir. A sort of spouting sperm-whale! But with this
important difference: whales spout sea-water, while this gusher spouted
whale-oil, or something just as good.

The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine is an unforgetable date—a date that
ushers in the Great American Renaissance, in which we now live. Three
very important events occurred that year. One was the hanging of Old John
Brown, who was fifty-nine years old, and thus not so very old. This event
made a tremendous stir in Fairhaven, just as it did everywhere, especially in
rural districts. The second great event that happened in Eighteen Hundred
Fifty-nine was the publication of a book by a man born in Eighteen
Hundred Nine, the same year that Lincoln was born. The man's name was
Charles Darwin, and his book was "The Origin of Species." His volume was
to do for the theological world what John Brown's raid did for American
politics. The third great event that occurred in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine
was when a man by the name of Edwin L. Drake, Colonel by grace, bored a
well and struck "rock-oil" at Titusville, Pennsylvania.
At that time "rock-oil" or "coal-oil" was no new thing. It had been found
floating on the water of streams in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and
Pennsylvania.
There were rumors that some one in digging for salt had tapped a reservoir
of oil that actually flowed a stream. There were oil-springs around Titusville
and along Oil Creek. The oil ran down on the water and was skimmed off
by men in boats. Several men were making modest fortunes by bottling the
stuff and selling it as medicine. In England it was sold as "American

Natural Oil," and used for a liniment. The Indians had used it, and the world
has a way of looking to aborigines for medicine, even if not for health.
Spiritualistic mediums and doctors bank heavily on Indians. This natural oil
was known to be combustible. Out of doors it helped the campfire. But if
burned indoors it made a horrible smoke and a smell to conjure with. Up to
that time whale-oil mostly had been used for illuminating and lubricating
purposes. But whale-oil was getting too high for plain people. It looked as if
there were a "whale trust." Some one sent a bottle of this "natural" oil down
to Professor Silliman of Yale to have it analyzed. Professor Silliman
reported that the oil had great possibilities if refined, both as a luminant and
as a lubricant.
To refine it, a good man who ran a whisky-still tried his plan of the worm
that never dies, with the oil. The vapor condensed and was caught in the
form of an oil that was nearly white. This oil burned with a steady flame, if
protected by a lamp-chimney.
Rock-oil in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight was worth twenty dollars a barrel.
Lumbermen out of a job turned skimmers, and often collected a barrel a
day, becoming as it were members of the cult known as the Predatory Rich.
This is what tempted Colonel Drake to bore his well, and see if he might
possibly strike the vein that was making the skimmers turn octopi. It took
Drake nearly a year to drill his well. He met with various obstacles and
difficulties, but on August Twenty-second, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine,
that neck of the woods was electrified by the news that Drake's Folly was
gushing rock-oil.
Soon there were various men busily boring all round the neighborhood,
with the aid of spring-poles and other rude devices. Several struck it rich,
but many had their labor for their pains. One man was getting sixty-five
barrels a day and selling the oil for eighteen dollars a barrel.
The trouble was to transport the oil. Barrels were selling for five dollars
each, and there were no tanks. This was a lumber country, with no railroads
within a hundred miles. One enterprising man went down to Pittsburgh and
bought a raft-load of barrels, which he towed up the Allegheny River to the
mouth of Oil Creek. Then for ten dollars a day he hired farmers with teams
to take the barrels to Titusville and fill them and bring them back. The oil

was floated down to Pittsburgh and sold at a big profit. Stills were made to
refine the oil, which was sold to the consumer at seventy-five cents a
gallon. The heavy refuse-oils were thrown away.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty began the making of lamp-chimneys, a most
profitable industry. The chimneys sold for fifty cents each, and with the aid
of Sir Isaac Newton's invention did not long survive life's rude vicissitudes.
Men were crowding into the oil country, lured by the tales of enormous
fortunes and rich finds. No one could say what you might discover by
digging down into the ground. One man claimed to have struck a vein of
oyster-soup. And anyway he sold oyster-soup over his counter at a dollar a
dish. Gas-gushers were lighted and burned without compunction as to
waste. Gamblers were working overtime.
The first railroad into the oil country came from Pittsburgh, and was met
with fight and defiance by the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Teamsters,
who saw their business fading away. The farmers, too, opposed the railroad,
as they figured that it meant an end to horse-flesh, except as an edible. But
the opposition wore itself out, and the railroads replaced its ripped-up rails,
and did business on its grass-grown right of way and streaks of rust.
The second railroad came from Cleveland, which city was a natural
distributing-point to the vast consuming territory lying along the Great
Lakes.
John D. Rockefeller, a clerk in a Cleveland commission-house, became
interested in the oil business in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two. He was then
twenty-three years old, and had five hundred dollars in the bank saved from
his wages. He put this money into a refining-still at Titusville, with several
partners, all workingmen. John peddled the product and became expert on
"pure white" and "straw color." He also saw that a part of the so-called
refuse could be re-treated and made into a product that was valuable for
lubricating purposes.
Other men about the same time made a like discovery. It was soon found
that refined oil could not be shipped with profit; the barrels often had to be
left in the sunshine or exposed to the weather, and transportation facilities
were very uncertain. The still was then torn out and removed to Cleveland.

The oil business was a most hazardous one. Crude oil had dropped from
twenty dollars a barrel to fifty cents a barrel. No one knew the value of oil,
for no one knew the extent of the supply. An empty barrel was worth two
dollars, and the crude oil to fill it could be bought for less than half that.

At twenty-one, two voices were calling to Henry Rogers: love of country
and business ambition. The war was coming and New England patriotism
burned deep in the Rogers heart. But this young man knew that he had a
genius for trade. He was a salesman—that is to say, he was a diplomat and
an adept in the management of people. Where and how could he use his
talent best?
When Sumter was fired upon, it meant that no ship flying the Stars and
Stripes was safe. The grim aspect of war came home to New Bedford with a
reeling shock, when news arrived that a whaler, homeward bound, had been
captured, towed into Charleston Harbor, and the ship and cargo confiscated.
It was a blow of surprise to the captain and sailors on this ship, too, for they
had been out three years and knew nothing of what was going on at home.
Then certain Southern privateers got lists of the New England whale-ships
that were out, and lay in wait for them as whalers lie in wait for the
leviathan.
Prices of whale-oil soared like balloons. New England ships at home tied up
close or else were pressed into government service. The high price of oil
fanned the flame of speculation in Pennsylvania.
Henry H. Rogers was twenty-one. It was a pivotal point in his life. He was
in love with the daughter of the captain of a whaler. They were neighbors
and had been schoolmates together. Henry talked it over with Abbie Gifford
—it was war or the oil-fields of Pennsylvania! And love had its way, just as
it usually has. The ayes had it, and with nearly a thousand dollars of hard-
earned savings he went to the oil-fields. At that time most of the crude oil
was shipped to tidewater and there refined. In the refining process, only
twenty-five per cent of the product was saved, seventy-five per cent being
thrown away as worthless. It struck young Rogers that the refining should

be done at the wells, and the freight on that seventy-five per cent saved. To
that end he entered into a partnership with Charles Ellis, and erected a
refinery between Titusville and Oil City.
Rogers learned by doing. He was a practical refiner, and soon became a
scientific one. The first year he and Ellis divided thirty thousand dollars
between them.
In the Fall of Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, when he went back to Fairhaven
to claim his bride, Rogers was regarded as a rich man. His cruise to
Pennsylvania had netted him as much as half a dozen whales. The bride and
groom returned at once to Pennsylvania and the simple life. Henry and
Abbie lived in a one-roomed shack on the banks of Oil Creek. It was love in
a cottage all right, with an absolute lack of everything that is supposed to
make up civilization. It wasn't exactly hardship, for nothing is really
hardship to lovers in their twenties but separation. Still they thought, talked
and dreamed of the bluefish, the blueberries, the blue waters, and the sea-
breezes of Fairhaven.
About this time, Charles Pratt of Brooklyn, a dealer and refiner of oils,
appeared upon the horizon. Pratt had bought whale-oil of Ellis in Fairhaven.
Pratt now contracted for the entire output of Rogers and Ellis at a fixed
price. All went well for a few months, when crude suddenly took a skyward
turn, owing to the manipulation of speculators. Rogers and Ellis had no
wells and were at the mercy of the wolves. They struggled on, trying to live
up to their contract with Pratt, but soon their surplus was wiped out, and
they found themselves in debt to Pratt to the tune of several thousand
dollars.
Rogers went on to New York and saw Pratt, personally assuming the
obligation of taking care of the deficit. Ellis disappeared in the mist.
The manly ways of Rogers so impressed Pratt that he decided he needed
just such a man in his business. A bargain was struck, and Rogers went to
work for Pratt. The first task of young Rogers was to go to Pennsylvania
and straighten out the affairs of the Pennsylvania Salt Company, of which
Pratt was chief owner. The work was so well done that Pratt made Rogers
foreman of his Brooklyn refinery.

It was twenty-five dollars a week, with a promise of a partnership if sales
ran over fifty thousand dollars a year.
How Henry Rogers moved steadily from foreman to manager, and then
superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery, is one of the fairy-tales of
America. Pratt finally gave Rogers an interest in the business, and Rogers
got along on his twenty-five dollars a week, although the books showed he
was making ten thousand dollars a year. He worked like a pack-mule. His
wife brought his meals to the "works," and often he would sleep but three
hours a night, as he could snatch the time, rolled up in a blanket by the side
of a still.
Then comes John D. Rockefeller from Cleveland, with his plans of co-
operation and consolidation. Pratt talked it over with Rogers, and they
decided that the combination would steady the commercial sails and give
ballast to the ship. They named their own terms. The Rockefellers sneezed,
and then coughed. The next day John D. Rockefeller came back and quietly
accepted the offer exactly as Rogers had formulated it.
The terms were stiff, but Rockefeller, a few years later, got even with the
slightly arrogant Rogers by passing him this: "I would have paid you and
Pratt twice as much if you had demanded it." "Which you are perfectly safe
in saying now—since the past is a dry hole." And they shook hands
solemnly. Rockefeller ordered a glass of milk and Rogers took ginger-ale.
Rockefeller was only one year older than Rogers, but seemed twenty. John
D. Rockefeller was always old and always discreet; he never lost his
temper; he was warranted non-explosive from childhood. Henry Rogers at
times was spiritual benzine.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two there were twenty-six separate oil-
refineries in Cleveland. Refined oil sold to the consumer for twenty cents a
gallon; and much of it was of an unsafe and uncertain quality—it was what
you might call erratic. Some of the refineries were poorly equipped, and fire
was a factor that made the owners sit up nights when they should have been
asleep. Insurance was out of the question.

One of these concerns was the Acme Oil Company, of which John D.
Archbold was President. Its capital was forty thousand dollars, some of
which had been paid in, in cash. William Rockefeller was at the head of still
another company; and John D. Rockefeller, brother of William, and two
years older, had an interest in three more concerns.
Outbidding each other for supplies, hiring each other's men, with a
production made up of a multiplicity of grades, made the business one of
chaotic uncertainty. The rule was "dog eat dog."
Then it was that John D. Rockefeller conceived the idea of combining all
the companies in Cleveland and as many elsewhere as possible, under the
name of The Standard Oil Company. The corporation was duly formed with
a capital of one million dollars. The Pratt Oil Company, with principal
works in Brooklyn, but a branch in Cleveland, was one of the twenty
concerns that were absorbed. The stocks of the various concerns were taken
up and paid for in Standard Oil certificates.
And so it happened that Henry H. Rogers, aged thirty-two, found himself
worth a hundred thousand dollars, not in cash, but in shares that were
supposed to be worth par, and should pay, if rightly managed, seven or eight
per cent. He was one of the directors in the new company.
It was an enviable position for any young man. Of course there were the
wiseheimers then as now, and statements were made that The Pratt Oil
Company had been pushed to the wall, and would shortly have its neck
wrung by John D. Rockefeller and have to start all over. But these prophets
knew neither Rockefeller nor Rogers, and much less the resources and
wants of the world. In very truth, neither the brothers Rockefeller, Rogers,
nor Archbold, nor any one of that score of men who formed The Standard
Oil Company, ever anticipated, even in their wildest dreams, the
possibilities in the business. The growth of America in men and money has
been a thing unguessed and unprophesied. Thomas Jefferson seemed to
have had a more prophetic eye than any one else, but he never imagined the
railroads, pipe-lines, sky-scrapers, iron steamships, telegraphs, telephones,
nor the use of electricity and concrete. He did, however, see our public-
school system, and he said that "by the year Nineteen Hundred the United
States will have a population of fifty million people." This is why he made

that real-estate deal with Napoleon, which most Americans of the time
thought a bad bargain. Rogers had great hope and an exuberant imagination,
but the most he saw for himself was an income of five thousand dollars a
year, and a good house, unencumbered, with a library and a guest-room. In
addition, he expected to own a horse and buggy. He would take care of the
horse himself, and wash the buggy, also grease the axles. In fact, his
thoughts were on flowers, books, education, and on cultivating his mental
acreage.
John D. Rockefeller was sorely beset by business burdens. The Standard Oil
Company had moved its headquarters to New York City, where its business
was largely exporting. The brothers Rockefeller found themselves swamped
under a mass of detail. Power flows to the men who can shoulder it, and
burdens go to those who can carry them.
Here was a business without precedent, and all growing beyond human
thought. To meet the issues as they arise the men at the head must grow
with the business.
Rogers could make decisions, and he had strength like silken fiber. He
could bend, but never break. His health was perfect; his mind was fluid; he
was alive and alert to all new methods and plans; he had great good-cheer,
and was of a kind to meet men and mold them. He set a pace which only the
very strong could follow, but which inspired all. John D. Rockefeller
worked himself to a physical finish, twenty years ago; and his mantle fell
by divine right on "H. H." with John D. Archbold as understudy.
Since John D. Rockefeller slipped out from under the burden of active
management of The Standard Oil Company, about the year Eighteen
Hundred Eighty-eight, the business has more than quadrupled.
John D. Rockefeller never got mad, and Rogers and Archbold made it a rule
never to get mad at the same time. When the stress and strife began to cause
Rockefeller to lose his hair and his appetite, he once pulled down his long
upper lip and placidly bewailed his inability to take a vacation. Like many
another good man, he thought his presence was a necessity to the business.
"Go on with you," said H. H.; "am I not here? Then there is Archbold—he
is always Johnny on the spot." Rockefeller smiled a sphinx-like smile, as

near as he ever came to indulging in a laugh, and mosied out of the room.
That night he went up to the Catskills. The next day a telegram came from
Rockefeller addressed to "Johnny-on-the-Spot, Twenty-six Broadway." The
message was carried directly to John D. Archbold, without question, and
duly receipted for.
Since then the phrase has become almost a classic; but few people there be
who know that it was Rogers who launched it, or who generally are aware
that the original charter member of the On-the-Spot Club was Johnny
Archbold.

H. H. Rogers was a trail-maker, and as a matter of course was not
understanded of the people who hug close to the friendly backlog and talk
of other days and the times that were.
Rogers was an economist—perhaps the greatest economist of his time. And
an economist deals with conditions, not theories; facts, not fancies.
A few years ago, all retail grocers sold kerosene. The kerosene-can with its
spud on the spout was a household sign. Moreover, we not only had
kerosene in the can, but we had it on the loaf of bread, and on almost
everything that came from the grocer's. For, if the can did not leak, it sweat,
and the oil of gladness was on the hands and clothes of the clerk. The
grocers lifted no howl when the handling of kerosene was taken out of their
hands. In truth, they were never so happy, as kerosene was hazardous to
handle and entailed little profit—the stuff was that cheap! Besides that, a
barrel of forty-two gallons measured out to the user about thirty-eight
gallons. Loaded into cars, bumped out, lying in the sun on station-
platforms, it always and forever hunted the crevices. Schemes were devised
to line the inside of barrels with rosin, but always the stuff stole forth to
freedom. Freight, cartage, leakage, cooperage and return of barrels meant
loss of temper, trade and dolodocci. Realizing all these things, H. H.
Rogers, aided by his able major-general, John D. Archbold, revolutionized
the trade.

The man who now handles your kerosene does not handle your sugar. He is
a specialist.
In every town in America of more than one thousand people is a Standard
Oil agency. The oil is delivered from tank-cars into iron tanks. From there it
is piped into tank-wagons. This wagon comes to your door, and the
gentlemanly agent sees that your little household tank is kept filled. All you
have to do is to turn a faucet. Aye, in this pleasant village of East Aurora is
a Standard Oil agent who will fill your lamp and trim the wick, provided
you buy your lamps, chimneys and wicks of him.
And this service is Standard Oil Service—it extends from Halifax to San
Diego; from New Orleans to Hudson Bay. In very truth, it covers the world.
This service, with prohibition in the South, has ruined the cooper's trade, the
trade that introduced H. M. Flagler into the Standard Oil Company.
The investment in cooperage used in the oil business has shrunk from a
hundred millions to less than five millions, while the traffic in oil has
doubled.
And the germ of this service to the consumer came from the time when
Henry Rogers worked a grocery route for a co-operative concern that cut
out the expensive middleman and instead focused on a faultless service to
the consumer.

The name "petroleum" is Latin. The word has been in use since the time of
Pliny, who lived neighbor to Paul in Rome, when the Apostle abided in his
own hired house, awaiting trial under an indictment for saying things about
the Established Religion.
Until within sixty years, the world thought that petroleum was one simple
substance. Now we find it is a thousand, mixed and fused and blended in
the crucible of Time.
Science sifts, separates, dissolves, analyzes, classifies. The perfumes
gathered by the tendrils of violet and rose, in their divine desire for

expression, are found in petroleum. Aye, the colors and all the delicate tints
of petal, of stamen and of pistil, are in this substance stored in the dark
recesses of the earth.
Petroleum has yielded up over two thousand distinct substances, wooed by
the loving, eager caress of the chemist. All the elements that go to make up
the earth are there. Hundreds of articles used in commerce and in our daily
lives are gotten from petroleum. To secure these in a form fit for daily use
was the tireless task of Henry H. Rogers. Not by his own hands, of course,
for life is too short for that, but the universities of the round world have
been called upon for their men of brains.
Rogers' business was to discover men. This is a phase of the history of The
Standard Oil Company that has not yet been written, but which is of vastly
greater importance than the motions of well-meaning but non-producing
attorneys, whose mental processes are "dry holes."
"Science is classification," said Aristotle to his bad boy pupil, Alexander,
three hundred forty years before Christ. "Science is commonsense
classified," said Herbert Spencer. "Science eliminates the worthless and the
useless and then makes use of it in something else," said Thomas A. Edison.
H. H. Rogers utilized the worthless; and the dividends of The Standard Oil
Company are largely a result of cashing-in by-products. Rogers not only
rendered waste products valuable, but he utilized human energies, often to
the great surprise of the owner.
That gentle Tarbell slant to the effect that "even the elevator-boys in The
Standard Oil offices are hired with an idea of their development," is a great
compliment to a man who was not only a great businessman, but a great
teacher. And all influential men are teachers—whether they know it or not.
Perhaps we are all teachers—of good or ill—I really do not know.
But the pedagogic instinct was strong in Rogers. He barely escaped a
professorship. He built schoolhouses, and if he had had time he would have
taught in them. He looked at any boy, not for what he was, but for what he
might become. He analyzed every man, not for what he was, but for what
he might have been, or what he would be.

Humanity was Rogers' raw stock, not petroleum. And his success hinged on
bringing humanity to bear on petroleum, or, if you please, by mixing brains
with rock-oil, somewhat as Horace Greeley advised the farmer to mix
brains with his compost.
In judging a man we must in justice to ourselves ask, "What effect has this
man's life, taken as a whole, had on the world?"
To lift out samples here and there and hold them up does not give us the
man, any more than a sample brick gives you a view of the house. And
viewing the life of Rogers for years, from the time he saw the light of a
whale-oil lamp in Fairhaven, to the man as we behold him now, we must
acknowledge his initiative and his power. He gave profitable work to
millions. He directly made homes and comforts possible for thousands upon
thousands. He helped the young, without number, to find themselves in
their work and at their work. In a material way he added vast millions to the
wealth of the world by the utilization of products which were considered
worthless.
He gloried in the fresh air, in the blasts of Winter, or in the zephyrs of
Spring. The expanse of heaving, tossing ice was just as beautiful to him as
the smooth flow of Hendrick Hudson's waters, as they hasten to the sea.
The storied "Twenty-six Broadway" is no den of ogres, no gambling-resort
of dark and devious ways. It is simply an office-building, full of busy men
and women—workers who waste neither time nor money. You will find
there no figureheads, no gold lace, no pomps and ceremonies. If you have
business there, you locate your man without challenge. All is free, open,
simple and direct.
On the top floor is a restaurant, where all lunch in a common, fraternal way,
jolly and jocund, as becomes men who carry big burdens.
The place is democratic to a fault, for the controlling spirits of Twenty-six
Broadway are men who have come by a rocky road, having conquered great
difficulties, overcome great obstacles, and while often thirsting for human
sympathy have nevertheless been able to do without it.
Success is apt to sour, for it begets an opposition that is often cruel and
unjust. Reorganization gives the demagogue his chance; and often his

literary lyddite strikes close.
But Rogers was great enough to know that the penalty of success must be
paid. He took his medicine, and smiled.

Time was when a millionaire was a man worth a million dollars. But that
day is past.
Next, a millionaire was a man who made a million dollars a year. That, too,
is obsolete. The millionaire now is the man who spends a million dollars a
year. In this new and select class, a class which does not exist outside of
America, H. H. Rogers was a charter member.
"He was a royal gentleman," said Booker T. Washington to me. "When I
was in need, I held H. H. Rogers in reserve until all others failed me, then I
went to him and frankly told my needs. He always heard me through, and
then told me to state the figure. He never failed me."
Rogers gave with a lavish hand, but few of his benefactions, comparatively,
were known. The newspapers have made much of his throwing a hawser to
Mark Twain and towing the Humorist off a financial sand-bar. Also, we
have heard how he gave Helen Keller to the world; for without the help of
H. H. Rogers that wonderful woman would still be like unto the eyeless fish
in the Mammoth Cave. As it is, her soul radiates an inward light and science
stands uncovered. But there were very many other persons and institutions
that received very tangible benefits from the hands of H. H. Rogers.
One method he had of giving help to ambitious young men was to invest in
stock in companies that were not quite strong enough financially to weather
a gale. And very often these were very bad investments. Had Rogers stuck
to Standard Oil his fortune would have been double what it was. But for the
money he did not much care—he played the game.
Mr. Rogers was too wise to give to individuals. He knew that mortal
tendency referred to by Saint Andre de Ligereaux as "Hubbard's Law," or
the Law of Altruistic Injury. This law provides that whenever you do for a
person a service which he is able and should do for himself, you work him a

wrong instead of a benefit. H. H. Rogers sought to give opportunity, not
things. When he invested a million dollars in a tack-factory in Fairhaven, it
was with intent to supply employment to every man or woman, or boy or
girl, in Fairhaven, who desired work.
He wanted to make poverty inexcusable. Yet he realized that there were
cases where age and disease had sapped the person's powers, and to such he
gave by stealth, or through friends whom he loved and trusted. Mrs. W. P.
Winsor, of Fairhaven, for instance, worked days and months overtime on
the bidding of Mr. Rogers, caring for emergency cases, where girls and
boys were struggling to get an education and care for aged parents and
invalid brothers and sisters; or where Fate had been unkind and God,
seemingly, had forgot.
Houses were painted, mortgages were lifted, taxes paid, monuments
erected, roadways laid out, books furnished, trees planted, ditches dug,
bathrooms installed, swamps drained, bridges built, in hundreds of
instances.
This is not philanthropy of a high order, perhaps, but Rogers hated both the
words "charitable" and "philanthropic" as applied to himself. All he claimed
to be was a businessman who paid his debts and who tried to make others
pay theirs. The people he helped were the people he knew, or had known,
and they were folks who had helped him. He never forgot a benefit—nor a
wrong. He was a very human individual. To give to a person where the
account is not balanced by a mutual service is, probably, to add an enemy to
your list. You have uncovered the weakness of your man—he is an
incompetent—and he will never forgive you for making the discovery.
When H. H. Rogers paid off Mark Twain's indebtedness to the tune of
ninety thousand dollars, he did not scratch a poet and find an ingrate. What
he actually discovered was a philosopher and a prophet without a grouch.
Somewhere I have said that there were only two men in America who could
be safely endowed. One is Luther Burbank and the other Booker T.
Washington. These men have both made the world their debtors. They are
impersonal men—sort of human media through which Deity is creating.
They ask for nothing: they give everything.

Mark Twain belongs in the same select list. The difference between Mark
Twain and Luther Burbank is this: Mark hoes his spiritual acreage in bed,
while Luther Burbank works in the garden. Luther produces spineless cacti,
while Mark gives spineless men a vertebra. Mark makes us laugh, in order
that he may make us think.
The last time I saw H. H. Rogers was in his office at Twenty-six Broadway.
Out through a half-doorway, leading into a private conference-room, I saw a
man stretched out on a sofa asleep. A great shock of white hair spread out
over the pillow that held his head; and Huck Finn snores of peace, in
rhythmic measures, filled the room.
Mr. Rogers noticed my glance in the direction of the Morpheus music. He
smiled and said, "It's only Mark—he's taking a little well-earned rest—he
was born tired, you know."
If Mark Twain were not a rich man himself, rich in mines of truth, fields of
uncut fun, and argosies sailing great spiritual seas, coming into port laden
with commonsense, he would long since have turned on his benefactor and
nailed his hide on the barn-door of obliquity. As it is, Mark takes his own,
just as Socrates did from Mr. and Mrs. Pericles. Aye, or as did Bronson
Alcott, who once ran his wheelbarrow into the well-kept garden of Ralph
Waldo Emerson. The Orphic One was loading up with potatoes, peas, beans
and one big yellow pumpkin, when he glanced around and saw the man
who wrote "Self-Reliance" gazing at him seriously and steadily over the
garden-wall. The father of the author of "Little Women" winced, but
bracing up, gave back stare for stare, and in a voice flavored with
resentment and defiance said, "I need them!"
And the owner of the garden grew abashed before that virtuous gaze,
murmured apologies, and retreated in good order.
And Mark Twain used to explain it thus: "You see, it is like this: Rogers
furnishes the plans and I foot the bills." And this was all there was about it.
Only a big man can take his own without abasement.
Mark Twain has made two grins grow where there was only a growl before.
I don't care where he gets his vegetables—nor where he takes a well-earned
nap—and neither does he.

The average millionaire believes in education, because he has heard the
commodity highly recommended in the newspapers. Usually, he is a man
who has not had college advantages, and so he is filled with the fallacy that
he has dropped something out of his life. We idealize the things that are not
ours. H. H. Rogers was an exception—he was at home in any company. He
took little on faith. He analyzed things for himself. And his opinion was that
the old-line colleges tended to destroy individuality and smother initiative.
He believed that the High School was the key to the situation, and to carry
the youth beyond this was to run the risk of working his ruin. "The boy who
leaves the High School at seventeen, and enters actual business, stands a
much better chance of success than does the youth who comes out of
college at twenty-one, with the world yet before him," he said.
He himself was one of the first class that graduated from the old Fairhaven
Grammar School. He realized that his success in life came largely from the
mental ammunition that he had gotten there, and from the fact that he made
a quick use of his knowledge. Yet he realized that the old Fairhaven High or
Grammar School was not a model institution. "It has a maximum of
discipline and a minimum of inspiration," he used to say. The changing
order of education found a quick response in his heart. He never brooded
over his lack of advantages. On the other hand, he used often to refer to the
fact that his childhood was ideal. But all around he saw children whose
surroundings were not ideal, and these he longed to benefit and bless.
And so in Eighteen Hundred Eighty, when he was forty years of age, he
built a Grammar Manual-Training School and presented it to the town. It
was called the Rogers School. Such a gift to a town is enough to work the
local immortality of the giver. But the end was not yet. In a few years,
Rogers—or Mrs. Rogers, to be exact—presented to the village a Town Hall,
beautiful and complete, at a cost of something over two hundred fifty
thousand dollars. Next came the Millicent Public Library, in memory of a
beloved daughter.
When his mother passed away, as a memorial to her he built a church and
presented it to the Unitarian denomination. It is probably the most complete
and artistic church in America. Its cost was a million dollars.

The Fairhaven Waterworks System was a present from Mr. Rogers. And
lastly was the Fairhaven High School, as fair and fine an edifice, and as
completely equipped, as genius married to money could supply. The only
rival this school has in America is the Stout High School in Menominee,
Wisconsin, which is also the gift of an individual. No municipality in the
world has ever erected and completed so good a school—the taxpayers
would not allow it. Into our schoolteaching go the cheese-paring policies of
the average villager. In truth, George Bernard Shaw avers that we are a
nation of villagers.
The big deeds of the world are always done by individuals. One-man power
is the only thing that counts. The altruistic millionaire is a necessity of
progress—he does magnificent things, which the many will not and can not
do. So we find the model town of Fairhaven molded and fashioned by her
First Citizen. Everywhere are the marks of his personality, and the tangible
signs of his good taste.
The only political office to which Henry H. Rogers ever aspired was that of
Street Commissioner of Fairhaven. He filled the office to the satisfaction of
his constituents, and drew his stipend of three dollars a day for several
years. Good roads was his hobby. Next to this came tree-planting and
flowers. His dream was to have the earth transformed into a vast flower-
garden and park and given to the people.
His last item of public work was an object-lesson as to what the engineering
skill of man can do. He took a great bog or swamp that lay to the north of
the village and was used as a village dumping-ground. He drained this tract,
filled in with gravel, and then earth, and transformed it into a public park of
marvelous beauty.
The last great business effort of H. H. Rogers was the building of the
Virginian Railroad. This road connects the great coal-fields of West Virginia
with tidewater. The route is four hundred forty-three miles long. "By this
line a thousand million dollars' worth of coal is made available to the
world," said a great engineer to me. And then he added, "It will take twenty
years, however, to prove fully the truth of H. H. Rogers' prophetic vision."
This was the herculean task of a man in his thirties—not for one
approaching his seventieth milestone.

But Rogers built this road alone. He constructed and equipped it in a style
so complete that it has set a pace in railroading. You who know the history
of railroads realize that the first thing is to get the line through. Two streaks
of rust, a teakettle, and a right of way make a railroad. This allows you to
list your bonds. But H. H. Rogers had neither bonds nor stock for sale.
What other man ever put forty millions of money and his lifeblood into a
railroad? Was the work worth the price? It were vain to ask. The work is
done, the man is dead; and that his death was hastened by the work no one
can doubt.
Rogers had the invincible heart of youth. He died as he had lived, always
and forever in the thick of the fight. He had that American trinity of virtues,
pluck, push and perseverance. Courage, endurance, energy, initiative,
ambition, industry, good-cheer, sympathy and wonderful executive ability
were his attributes.

JAMES J. HILL
The armed fleets of an enemy approaching our harbors would be
no more alarming than the relentless advance of a day when we
shall have neither sufficient food nor the means to purchase it
for our population. The farmers of the nation must save it in the
future, just as they built its greatness in the past.
—James J.
Hill

JAMES J. HILL
James Jerome Hill has one credential, at least, to greatness—he was born in
a log house. But let the painful fact be stated at once, without apology, that
he could never be President of the United States, because this historic log

house was situated in Canada. The exact spot is about three miles from the
village of Rockwood, Wellington County, Ontario.
Rockwood is seven miles east of Guelph, forty from Toronto, and a hundred
from Buffalo.
Mr. Hill well remembers his first visit to Toronto. He went with his father,
with a load of farm produce. It took two days to go and two to return, and
for their load they got the princely sum of seven dollars, with which they
counted themselves rich.
James Hill, the father of James Jerome Hill, was a North of Ireland man; his
wife was Anne Dunbar, good and Scotch. I saw a portrait of Anne Dunbar
Hill in Mr. Hill's residence at Saint Paul, and was also shown the
daguerreotype from which it was painted. It shows a woman of decided
personality, strong in feature, frank, fearless, honest, sane and poised. The
dress reveals the columnar neck that goes only with superb bodily vigor—
the nose is large, the chin firm, the mouth strong. She looks like a Spartan,
save for the pensive eyes that gaze upon a world from which she has
passed, hungry and wistful. The woman certainly had ambition and
aspiration which were unsatisfied.
James J. Hill is the son of his mother. His form, features, mental
characteristics and ambition are the endowment of mother to son.
It was a tough old farm, then as now. As I tramped across its undulating
acres, a week ago, and saw the stone fences and the piles of glacial drift that
Jim Hill's hands helped pick up, I thought of the poverty of the situation
when no railroad passed that way, and wheat was twenty cents a bushel, and
pork one cent a pound—all for lack of a market!
Jim Hill as a boy fought the battle of life with ax, hoe, maul, adz, shovel,
pick, mattock, drawshave, rake and pitchfork. Wool was carded and spun
and woven by hand. The grist was carried to the mill on horseback, or if the
roads were bad, on the farmer's back. All this pioneer experience came to
James J. Hill as a necessary part of his education.
Life in Canada West in the Forties was essentially the same as life in
Western New York at the same period. The country was a forest, traversed
with swamps and sink-holes, on which roads were built by laying down

long logs and across these, small logs. This formed the classic corduroy
road. When ten years of age James Hill contracted to build a mile of
corduroy road, between his father's farm and the village. For this labor his
father promised him a two-year-old colt. The boy built the road all right. It
took him six months, but the grades were easy and the curves so-so. The
Tom Sawyer plan came in handy, otherwise it is probable there would have
been a default on the time-limit. And Jim got the colt. He rode the animal
for half a year, back and forth all Winter from the farm to the village, where
he attended the famous Rockwood Academy. Then some one to whom the
elder Hill was indebted, signified a desire for the colt, and the father turned
the horse over to the creditor. When little Jim went out and found that the
stall was empty he had a good cry, all by himself.
Three years after this, when his father died, he cried again, and that was the
last time he ever wept over any of his own troubles.

From his seventh to his fourteenth year young Jim Hill attended the
Rockford Academy. This "Academy" had about thirty boarding boys and a
dozen day-scholars. Jim Hill was a "day-scholar," and the pride of the
master. The boy was studious, appreciative, grateful. He wasn't so awfully
clever, but he was true.
The master of the Academy was Professor William Wetherald, stern to view,
but very gentle of heart. His wife was of the family of Balls. The Ball
family moved from Virginia two generations before, to Western New York,
and then when the Revolutionary War was on, slid over to Ontario for
political reasons best known to themselves.
There was quite an emigration to Canada about then, including those
worthy Mohawk Indians whose descendants, including Longboat the runner
and the Princess Viroqua, are now to be found in the neighborhood of
Brantford.
And certainly the Indians were wise, for Canada has treated the red brother
with a degree of fairness quite unknown on this side of the line. As for the
Tories—but what's the need of arguing!

The Balls trace to the same family that produced Mary Ball, and Mary Ball
was the mother of George Washington—so tangled is this web of pedigree!
And George Washington, be it known, got his genius from his mother, not
from the tribe of Washington.
William Wetherald died at an advanced age—near ninety, I believe—only a
short time ago. It is customary for a teacher to prophesy—after the pupil
has arrived—and declare, "What did I tell you!" Wetherald looked after
young Hill at school with almost a father's affection, and prophesied for him
great things—only the "great things" were to be in the realms of science,
oratory and literature.
Along about Eighteen Hundred Eighty-eight, when James J. Hill was
getting his feet well planted on the earth, he sent for his old teacher to come
to Saint Paul. Wetherald spent several weeks there, riding over the Hill
roads in a private car, and discussing old times with the owner of the car
and the railroad.
Mr. Hill insisted that Wetherald should remain and teach the Hill children,
but Fate said otherwise. There is no doubt that Hill's love of books, art,
natural history, and his habit of independent thought were largely fixed in
his nature through the influence of this fine Friend, teacher of children. The
Quaker listens for the "Voice," and then acts without hunting up precedents.
In other words, he does the things he wants to do. Mr. Hill's long hair and
full beard form a sort of unconscious tribute to Wetherald. In fact, let James
J. Hill wear a dusty miller's suit and a wide-brimmed hat and you get the
true type of "Hicksite."
James J. Hill is a score of men in one, as every great man is. But when the
kindly, philosophic, paternal and altruistic "Yim Hill" is in the saddle, you
will see the significance of this story: Just after Mr. Hill had gotten
possession of the Burlington, he made a trip over the road. A rear-end
flagman at Galesburg was boasting to some of his mates about how he had
gone over the division with the new "boss of the ranch."
Here a listener puts in a question, thus: "What kind of a lookin' fellow is th'
ol' man?" And he of the red lantern and torpedoes scratches his head, and
explains, "Well, you see, it's like this: He looks like Jesus Christ, only he's
heavier set!"

The father of James J. Hill was a worthy man, with a good hold on the
simple virtues, a weak chin and a cosmos of slaty gray.
His only claim to immortality lies in the fact that he was the father of his
son. Pneumonia took him, as it often does the physically strong, and he
passed out before he had reached his prime. "Death is the most joyfullest
thing in life," said Thomas Carlyle to Milburn, the blind preacher, "when it
transfers responsibility to those big enough to shoulder it, for that's the only
way you can make a man."
I once saw a boy of fourteen on the prairies of Kansas transformed into a
man, between the rising of the sun and its setting. His father was crushed
beneath a wagon that sluiced and toppled in crossing a gully. The hub
caught the poor man square on the chest, and after we got him out he never
spoke. Six children and the mother were left, the oldest boy being fourteen.
A grave was dug there on the prairie the next day, and this boy of fourteen
patted down the earth over his father's grave, with the back of a spade. He
then hitched up the horses, rounded up the cattle, and headed the cavalcade
for the West. He was a man, and in after-life he proved himself one.
On the death of his father, Jim Hill's schooldays were done. His aptitude in
mathematics, his ability to keep accounts, and his general disposition to
make himself useful secured him a place in the village store, which was
also the Post-Office. His pay was one dollar a week. This training in the
country store proved of great value, just as it did in the case of H. H.
Rogers, George Peabody and so many other men of mark.
It is one thing to get a job, and another to hold it. Jim Hill held his job, and
his salary was raised before the end of the first year to three dollars a week.
On the strength of this prosperity, the struggle on the old farm with its
stumps, boulders and mortgage was given up and the widow moved her
little brood to town. The log house on the rambling main street of the
village is now pointed out to visitors. Here the mother sewed for neighbors,
took in washing, made garden, and with the help of her boy Jim, grew
happy and fairly prosperous: more prosperous than the family had ever
been. Thus matters went on until Jim was in his eighteenth year, when the

wanderlust got hold of the young man. His mother saw it coming and being
wise did not apply the brake.
Man is a migrating animal. To sit still and stay in one place is to vegetate.
Jim with twenty dollars in his pocket started for Toronto on foot with a
bundle on a stick, followed by the prayers of his mother, the gaping wonder
of the children, and the blessing of Professor Wetherald. Toronto was
interesting, but too near home to think of as a permanent stopping-place. A
leaky little steamer ran over to Fort Niagara every other day. Jim took
passage, reached the foreign shore, walked up to Niagara Falls, and the next
day tramped on to Buffalo. This was in the wonderful year of Eighteen
Hundred Fifty-six, the year the Republican Party was born at Bloomington,
Illinois. It was a time of unrest, of a healthy discontent and goodly
prosperity, for things were in motion. The docks at Buffalo were all a-bustle
with emigrants going West—forever West.
Jim Hill, aged eighteen, strong, healthy, farmer boy, lumberman, clerk,
shipped as roustabout on a schooner bound for Chicago. His pay for the
round trip was to be ten dollars and board, the money payable when the
boat got back to Buffalo. If he left the ship at Chicago, he was to get no
cash.
The boat reached Chicago in ten days. It was a great trip—full of mild
adventure and lots of things that would have surprised the folks at
Rockford. Jim got a job on the docks as checker-off, or understudy to a
freight-clerk. The pay was a dollar a day. He now sent his original twenty
dollars back to his mother to prove to her that he was prosperous and
money was but a bagatelle and a burden. A month, and he had joined the
ever-moving westward tide. He was headed for California, the land of
shining nuggets and rainbow hopes. He reached Rock Island, and saw a
sign out at a sawmill, "Men Wanted." He knew the business and was given
work on sight. In a week his mathematics came in handy and he was handed
a lumber-rule and a blank-book.
Mr. Hill yet recalls his first sight of a Mississippi River steamboat coming
into Davenport. The tall smokestacks belching fire, the graceful, swanlike
motion, the marvelous beauty of the superstructure, the wonderful letter "D"
in gold, or something that looked like gold, swung between the stacks! It