HOW THEY SUCCEEDED 2: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves - Orison Swett Marden (1901) - SECRETS OF SUCCESS: Masters’ Greatest Wisdom

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How they succeeded. Life stories of successful men told by
themselves by Orison Sweat Martin Chapter twelve. John d. Rockefeller,
the richest man in the United States, John Davidson Rockefeller
has consented to break his rule never to talk for publication,
and he has told me the story of his early

(00:21):
struggles and triumphs, and given utterance to some strikingly interesting
observations anent the same. In doing so, he was influenced
by the argument that there is something of helpfulness, of
inspiration in the career of every self made man. While
many such careers have been prolific of vivid contrasts, this
one is simply marvelous. Whatever may be said by political

(00:44):
economists of the dangers of vast aggregations of wealth in
the hands of the few, there can be no question
of the extraordinary interest attaching to the life story of
a man who was a farm labor at the age
of fifteen, who left school at eighteen because he felt
it to be his duty to care for his mother
and brother, and who, at the zenith of his business career,
has endowed Chicago University with seven million, five hundred thousand

(01:08):
dollars out of a fortune estimated at over three hundred
million dollars, probably the largest single fortune on earth. The
story opens in a fertile valley in Tioga County, New York,
near the village of Richford, where John D. Rockefeller was
born on his father's farm in July eighteen thirty eight.
The parents of the boy were church going, conscientious, dead

(01:31):
abhorring folk who preferred the independence of a few acres
to a mortgage domain. They were Americans to the backbone, intelligent,
industrious people, not very poor, and certainly not very rich.
For at fourteen, John hired out to neighboring farmers during
the summer months in order to earn his way and
not be dependent upon those he loved. His father was

(01:52):
able to attend to the little farm himself, and thus
it happened that the youth spent several summers away from home,
toiling from sunrise eyes to sunset, and sharing the humble
life of the people he served his early dream and purpose.
Did the tired boy, peering from his attic window ever
dream of his future? He said to a youthful companion

(02:14):
of Richford, a farmer's boy like himself, I would like
to own all the land in this valley as far
as I can see, I sometimes dream of wealth and power.
Do you think we shall ever be worth one hundred
thousand dollars? You and I, I hope to some day
who can estimate the influence such a life as this

(02:34):
must have had upon the future multi millionaire. I asked
mister Rockefeller about this, and found him enthusiastic over the
advantages which he had received from his rural surroundings, and
full of faith in the ability of the country boy
to surpass his city cousin. To my mind, he said,
there is something unfortunate in being born in a city.

(02:55):
Most young men raised in New York and other large
centers have not had the struggles which come unto us
who were reared in the country. It is a noticeable
fact that the country men are crowding out the city
fellows who have wealthy fathers. They are willing to do
more work and go through more for the sake of
winning success. In the end, sons of wealthy parents haven't

(03:15):
a ghost of a show in competition with the fellows
who come from the country with a determination to do
something in the world. The next step in the young
man's life was his going to Cleveland, Ohio, in his
sixteenth year. That was a great change in my life,
said he. Going to Cleveland was my first experience in
a great city, and I shall never forget those years.

(03:38):
I began work there as an office boy and learned
a great deal about business methods while filling that position.
But what benefited me most in going to Cleveland was
the new insight I gained as to what a great
place the world really is. I had plenty of ambition
then and saw that if I was to accomplish much,
I would have to work very, very hard. Indeed, school days,

(04:03):
he found time during the year eighteen fifty four to
attend the sessions of the school, which is now known
as the Central High School. It was a brick edifice
surrounded by grounds which contained a number of hickory trees.
It has long since been superseded by a larger and
handsomer building, but Andrew J. Freese, the teacher, is still living.

(04:25):
It is one of the proudest recollections of this delightful
old gentleman's life that John D. Rockefeller went to school
with him. I visited him at his residence in Cleveland
the other day, and he said, John was one of
the best boys I had. He was always polite, but
when the other boys threw hickory clubs at him or
attempted any undue familiarities with him, he would stop smiling

(04:48):
and sail into them. Young Hannah Marcus, a Hannah who
was also a pupil, learned this to his cost more
than once, and so did young Jones, the present Nevada Senator.
I have had several very distinguished pupils, you see, and
one of my girls is now missus John D. Rockefeller.

(05:08):
I had Edward Walcott, the Colorado Senator later on. Yes,
John was about as intelligent and well behaved a chap
as I ever had. Here is one of his essays,
which you may copy if you wish. Mister Rockefeller, I
am quite sure will pardon me for copying his composition
at this late day, for its tone and subject matter

(05:30):
reflect credit upon him. Freedom is one of the most
desirable of all blessings. Even the smallest bird or insect
loves to be free. Take, for instance, a robin that
has always been free to fly from tree to tree
and sing its cheerful song from day to day. Catch
it and put it into a cage, which is to
it nothing less than a prison. And although it may

(05:53):
be there tended with the choicest care, yet it is
not content. How eloquently does it plead, though in silence
for liberty. From day to day it sits mournfully upon
its perch, meditating, as it were, some way for its escape.
And when at last this is effected, how cheerfully does
it wing its way out from its gloomy prison house,

(06:13):
to sing undisturbed in the branches of the first trees.
If even the birds of the heirlove freedom? Is it
not natural that man, the lord of creation? Should I
reply that it is, and that it is a violation
of the laws of our country and the laws of
our God, that man should hold his fellow man in bondage. Yet,
how many thousands there are at the present time, even

(06:35):
in our own country, who are bound down by cruel
masters to toil beneath the scorching sun of the South.
How can America, under such circumstances call herself free? Is
it extending freedom by granting to the South one of
the largest divisions of land that she possesses, for the
purpose of holding slaves. It is a freedom that, if

(06:56):
not speedily checked, will end in the ruin of our country.
It was greatly to the regret of the teacher that
John came to him one day to announce his purpose
to leave school. Mister Freeze urged him to remain two
years longer in order that he might complete the course,
but the young man told him he felt obliged to
earn more money than he was getting because of his

(07:16):
desire to provide for his mother and brother. He had
received an offer, he said, of a place on the
freight docks as a bill clerk, and this job would
take him away from his studies a raft of hoop poles.
A short time afterwards, when mister Freese visited his former
pupil at the freight dock, he found the young man

(07:37):
seated on a bale of goods, bill book and pencil
in hand. Pointing to a raft of hoop poles in
the water. John told his caller that he had purchased
them from a Canadian who had brought them across Lake Erie,
expecting to sell them. Failing in this, the owner gladly
accepted a cash offer from young Rockefeller, who named a
price below the usual market rates. The young man explained,

(08:00):
saying that he had saved a little money out of
his wages, and that this was his first speculation. He
afterwards told mister Freeze that he rafted the purchase himself
to a flour mill and disposed of his bargain at
a profit of fifty dollars. This who Poll story is
matched by another related by a friend of Rockefeller's later
warehouse days in Cleveland. He one day bought a lot

(08:23):
of beans. He bought them cheap because they were damaged.
Instead of selling them at a slight advance, as most
dealers would have done, he spent all his spare time
for weeks in the attic of his warehouse sorting over
those beans. He took out all the blackened and injured ones,
and in the end he got a fancy price for

(08:43):
the remainder because they were of extra quality the odor
of oil. It was mister Freeze too who first got
the young man interested in oil. They were using sperm
oil in those days at a dollar and a half
a gallon. Somebody had found natural petroleum, thick, slimy, and
foul smelling in the Pennsylvania creeks, and a quantity of

(09:07):
it had been received in Cleveland by a next door
neighbor of the schoolmaster. The neighbor thought it could be
utilized in some way, but his experiments were as crude
as the ill favored stuff itself. These consisted of boiling, burning,
and otherwise testing the oil, and the only result was
the incurring of the disfavor of the nearby residence. The

(09:27):
young man became interested at once. He too, experimented with
the black slime, draining off the clearer portions and touching
matches to it. The flames were sickly yellow and melodorous.
There must be some way of deodorizing this oil, said John,
and I will find it. There ought to be a
good sale for it for illuminating purposes, if the good

(09:51):
oil can be separated from the sediment, and that awful
smell gotten rid of. How well the young man profited
by the accidental meeting is a matter of history, But
I am digressing his first ledger and the items in it.
While in Cleveland, slaving away at his tasks, mister Rockefeller
was training himself for the more busy days to come.

(10:14):
He kept a small ledger in which he entered all
his receipts and expenditures. And I had the privilege of
examining this interesting little book and having its contents explained
to me, it was nothing more than a small, paperbacked
memorandum book. When I looked this book up the other day,
I thought I had but the cover said mister Rockefeller.
But on examination I perceived that I had utilized the

(10:37):
cover to write on. In those days, I was very economical,
just as I am economical now. Economy is a virtue.
I hadn't seen my little ledger for a long time
when I found it among some old things. It is
more than forty two years ago since I wrote what
it contains. I called it ledger A, and I wouldn't

(10:59):
exchange it now for all the ledgers in New York
City and their contents. A glance through it shows me
how carefully I kept account of my receipts and disbursements.
I only wish more young men could be induced to
keep accounts like this nowadays. It would go far toward
teaching them the value of money. Every young man should

(11:19):
take care of his money. I think it is a
man's duty to make all the money he can, keep
all he can, and give away all he can. I
have followed this principle religiously all my life as is
evidenced in this book. It tells me just what I
did with my money during my first few years in business.
Between September eighteen fifty five and January eighteen fifty six,

(11:44):
I received just fifty dollars. Out of this sum, I
paid for my washing and my board, and managed to
save a little. Besides. I find in looking through the
book that I gave a cent to Sunday School every Sunday.
It wasn't much, but it was all that I could
afford to give to that particular object. What I could
afford to give to the various religious and charitable works

(12:07):
I gave regularly. It is a good habit for a
young man to get into. During my second year in Cleveland,
I earned twenty five dollars a month. I was beginning
to be a capitalist, said mister Rockefeller. And I suppose
I ought to have considered myself a criminal for having
so much money. I paid all my own bills at

(12:27):
this time and had some money to give away. I
also had the happiness of saving some I am not sure,
but I was more independent than than now. I couldn't
buy the most fashionable cut of clothing, but I dressed
well enough. I certainly did not buy any clothes I
couldn't pay for as some young men do that I

(12:47):
know of. I didn't make any obligations I could not meet,
and my earnest advice is for every young man to
live within his means. One of the swiftest toboggan slides
I know of is for a young fellow just starting
out into the world to go into debt. During the
time between November eighteen fifty five and April eighteen fifty six,

(13:09):
I paid out just nine dollars and nine cents for clothing.
And there is one item that was certainly extravagant, as
I usually wore mittens in the winter. This item is
for fur gloves two dollars and a half. In this
same period I gave away five dollars and fifty eight
cents In one month. I gave to foreign missions, ten

(13:30):
cents to the Mite Society, fifty cents and twelve cents
to the Five Points Mission in New York. I wasn't
living here then, of course, but I suppose I thought
the mission needed money. These little contributions of mine were
not large, but they brought me into direct contact with
church work, and that has been a benefit to me
all my life. It is a mistake for a man

(13:53):
to think that he must be rich to help others.
Ten thousand dollars he earned and saved ten thousand dollars
before he was twenty five years old. Before he attained
his majority, Rockefeller formed a partnership with another young man
named Hewett and began a warehouse and produce business. This
was the natural outgrowth of his freight clerkship on the docks.

(14:16):
In five years he had amassed about ten thousand dollars,
besides earning a reputation for business capacity and probity. He
remembered the oil. He never forgot those experiments with the
crude oil. Discoveries became more and more frequent in the
Pennsylvania oil territory. There was a rush of speculators to

(14:37):
the new land of fortune. Men owning impoverished farms suddenly
found themselves rich. Thousands of excited men bid wildly against
each other for newly shot wells, paying fabulous sums occasionally
for dry holes. Keeping his head, John D. Rockefeller looked
the entire field over carefully and calmly. Never for a

(14:59):
moment did he lose his head. His Cleveland bankers and
business friends had asked him to purchase some wells if
he saw fit, offering to back him up with seventy
five thousand dollars for his own investment. He was worth
about ten thousand dollars at the time, and to put
in four hundred thousand dollars more on his report. The
business judgment of this young man at twenty five was

(15:20):
so good that his neighbors were willing to invest half
a million dollars at his bidding. He returned to Cleveland
without investing a dollar. Instead of joining the mad crowd
of producers, he sagaciously determined to begin at the other
end of the business, the refining of the product. There
was more money in a refinery. The use of petroleum

(15:41):
was dangerous at that time on account of the highly
inflammable gases it contained. Many persons stuck to candles and
sperm oil through fear of an explosion if they used
the new aluminant. The process of removing these superfluous gases
by refining or distilling, as it was then called, was
in its infancy. There were few men who knew anything

(16:03):
about it. Among Rockefeller's acquaintances in Cleveland was one of
these men. His name was Samuel Andrews. He had worked
in a distillery and was familiar with the process. He
believed that there was a great business to be built
up by removing the gases from the crude oil and
making it safe for household use. Rockefeller listened to him

(16:26):
and became convinced that he was right. Here was a
field as wide as the world, limited only by the
production of crude oil. It was a proposition on which
he could figure and make sure of the result. It
was just the thing Rockefeller had been looking for. He
decided to leave the production of oil to others and
to devote his attention to preparing it for market. Andrews

(16:49):
was a brother commission merchant. The two started a refinery,
each closing out his former business connection. In two weeks,
it was running night and day to fill orders. So
great was the demand, and so great was the judgment
of young Rockefeller, seeing what no one else had seen.
A second refinery had to be built at once, and

(17:10):
in two years their plants were turning out two thousand
barrels of refined petroleum per day. Henry M. Flagler, already wealthy,
came into the firm the name of which then became Rockefeller,
Flagler and Andrews. More refineries were built, not only at Cleveland,
but also at other advantageous points. Competing refineries were bought

(17:32):
or rendered ineffective by the cutting of prices. It is
related that mister Andrews became one day dissatisfied, and he
was asked, what will you take for your interest? Andrews
wrote carelessly on a piece of paper one million dollars.
Within twenty four hours he was handed that amount mister Rockefeller,
saying cheaper at one million than ten. In building up

(17:56):
the refinery business, Rockefeller was the head. The others were
the hands. He was always the general, commanding, the tactician.
He made the plans, and his associates carried them out.
Here was the post for which he had fitted himself,
and in which his genius for planning had full sway.
In the conduct of the refinery affairs, as in every

(18:17):
enterprise in which he has taken part, he exemplified another
rule to which he had adhered from his boyhood days.
He was the leader in whatever he undertook. In going
into any undertaking, John D. Rockefeller has made it his
rule to have the chief authority in his own hands,
or to have nothing to do with the matter Standard Oil.

(18:39):
In eighteen seventy, when mister Rockefeller was thirty two years old,
the business was merged into the Standard Oil Company, starting
with a capital of one million dollars. Other pens have
written the later story of that great corporation, How it
started pipelines to carry the oil to the sea board,
how it earned millions in by products which had formerly
run to waste. How it covered the markets of the

(19:01):
world in its keen search for trade, distancing all competition
and cheapening its own processes, so that its dividends in
one year eighteen ninety nine amounted to twenty three million
dollars in excess of the fixed dividend upon the whole
capital stock. This is the outcome of thirty years development.
The corporation is now the greatest business combination of modern

(19:23):
times or of any age of the world. Mister Rockefeller's
annual income from misholdings of Standard Oil stock is estimated
at about sixteen millions of dollars. Mister Rockefeller's personality the
brains of all this, the owner of the largest percentage
of the stock in the parent corporation and in most
of the lesser ones. Is now sixty two years old.

(19:46):
His personality is simple and unaffected, his tastes domestic, and
the trend of his thoughts decidedly religious. His Cleveland residential
estate is superb covering a large tract of park like land,
but even their he has shown his unselfishness by donating
a large portion of his land to the city for
park purposes. His New York home is not a pretentious place,

(20:08):
solid but by no means elegant in outward appearance. Between
the two homes, he divides his time with his wife
and children. He is an earnest and hard working member
of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in New York, and
does much to promote the good work carried on by
that organization. He is particularly interested in a Sunday school

(20:29):
work at the office. He arises early in the morning
at his home, and after a light breakfast, attends to
some of his personal affairs there. He is always early
on hand at the Great Standard Oil Building on Lower Broadway,
New York, and during the day he transacts business connected
with the management of that vast corporation. There is hardly

(20:52):
one of our business men of whom the public at
large knows so little. He avoids publicity as most men
with the plague. The result is that he is the
only one of our very wealthy men who maintains the
reputation of being different from the ordinary run of mortals.
To most newspaper readers, he is a man of mystery,
a sort of financial wizard who sits in his office

(21:14):
and heaps up wealth after the fashion of Aladdin and
other fairy tale heroes. All this is wide of the mark.
It would be hard to find a more commonplace, matter
of fact man than John D. Rockefeller. His tall form
with the suggestion of a stoop in it, his pale,
thoughtful face and reserved manner suggests the scholar or professional man,

(21:35):
rather than an industrial Hercules or a Napoleon of finance.
He speaks in a slow, deliberate manner, weighing each word.
There is nothing impulsive or bombastic about him, but his
conversation impresses one as consisting of about one hundred percent
of cold, compact, boiled down common sense. Here is to

(21:56):
be noted one characteristic of the great oil magnate, which
has helped to make him what he is. The popular
idea of a multi millionaire is a man who has
taken big risks and has come out luckily. He is
a living refutation of this conception. He is careful and
cautious by nature, and he has made these traits habitual
for a lifetime. He conducts all his affairs on the

(22:19):
strictest business principles foresight. The qualities which have made him
so successful are largely those which go to the making
of any successful business man. Industry, thrift, perseverance, and foresight.
Three of these qualities would have made him a rich man.
The last has distinguished him as the richest man. One

(22:41):
of his business associates said of him the other day,
I believe the secret of his success, so far as
there is any secret, lies in power of foresight, which
often seems to his associates to be wonderful. It comes
simply from his habit of looking at every side of
a question, of weighing the favorable and unfavorable features of
a situation, and of sifting out the inevitable result through

(23:04):
his unfailing good judgment. This is his own personal statement,
put into other words, so it may be accepted as true.
The encouraging part of it is that while such foresight,
as Rockefeller displays, may be ascribed partly to natural endowment.
Both he and his friends say that it is more
largely a matter of habit, made effective by continual practice hygiene.

(23:28):
At noon, he takes a very simple lunch at his
club or at some downtown restaurant. The lunch usually consists
of a bowl of bread and milk. He remains at
the office until late in the afternoon, and before dinner
he takes some exercise. In winter, he skates when possible,
and at other seasons of the year he nearly always

(23:49):
drives in the park or on the avenues. Mister Rockefeller
has great faith in fresh air as a tonic at home,
the evenings are nearly always spent at home, for neither
mister Rockefeller or any of the children are fond of
society as the word is understood in New York. The
children seem to have inherited many of their father's sensible ideas,

(24:11):
and John D. Rockefeller Junior has apparently escaped the fate
of most rich men sons. He has a deep sense
of responsibility as the heir apparent to so much wealth,
and since his graduation from college, he has devoted himself
to a business career, starting at the bottom and working
upward step by step. It is now generally known that

(24:33):
he has been very successful in his business ventures, and
he bids fair to become a worthy successor to his father.
He is now actively engaged in important philanthropic enterprises in
New York. Miss Bessie became the wife of a poor
clergyman of the Baptist Church in Cleveland, while Miss Alta
is married to a prominent young business man in Chicago.

(24:55):
Philanthropy mister Rockefeller has, during many years turned over to
his children a great many letters from needy people, asking
them to exercise their own judgment in distributing charities. While
he has himself given away millions for education and charity,
he would have given more were it not for his
dread of seeming ostentatious. But he never gives indiscriminately nor

(25:17):
out of hand. When a charity appeals to him, he
investigates it thoroughly, just as he would a business scheme.
If he decides that its object is worthy, he gives liberally.
Otherwise not a cent can be got out of him.
It may be imagined that such a man is busy
to the full limit of his working capacity. This is true.

(25:39):
He is too busy for any of the pastimes and
pleasures in which most wealthy men seek diversion. He is
thoroughly devoted to his home and family, and spends as
much as possible of his time with them. He is
a man who views life seriously, but in his quiet way.
He can get as much enjoyment out of a good
story or a meeting with an old friend as can

(26:00):
any other man. Perseverance. When I asked mister Rockefeller what
he considers has most helped him in obtaining success in business,
he answered it was early training and the fact that
I was willing to persevere. I do not think there
is any other quality so essential to success of any
kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything,

(26:22):
even nature. It is to be said of his business enterprises,
looking at them in a large way, that he has
given to the world good, honest oil of standard quality.
That his employees are always well paid, That he has
given away more money in benevolence than any other business
man in America. And everything about the man indicates that
he is likely to persevere in the course he has

(26:45):
so long pursued. Turning his vast wealth into institutes for
public service. A genius for money making. There are men
born with a genius for money making, says Matthews. They
have the instinct of accumulation. The talent and the inclination
to convert dollars into doubloons by bargains or shrewd investments

(27:05):
are in them just as strongly marked and as uncontrollable
as were the ability and the inclination of Shakespeare to
produce Hamlet and Othello, of Raphael to paint his cartoons,
of Beethoven to compose his symphonies, or Morse to invent
an electric telegraph. As it would have been a gross
dereliction of duty, a shameful perversion of gifts, had these

(27:25):
latter disregarded the instincts of their genius and engaged in
the scramble for wealth. So would a Rothschild, an Astor,
and a Peabody have sinned, had they done violence to
their natures and thrown their energies into channels where they
would have proved dwarfs and not giants. The opportunity which
came to young Rockefeller does not occur many times, in
many ages, and in a generous interpretation of his opportunity.

(27:48):
He has already invested a great deal of his earnings
in permanently useful philanthropies. How they succeeded. Life stories of
successful men told by themselves by Orison Sweat Martin, chapter thirteen,
the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Her
Views of Education for Young Women. A poet, author, lecturer,

(28:11):
wit and conversationalist, Missus Julia Ward How unites with the
attributes of a tender, womanly nature which has made her
the idol of her husband and children, the sterner virtues
of a reformer, the unflinching courage which dares to stand
with a small minority in the cause of right. The
indomitable perseverance and force of character which persist in the
demand for justice in face of the determined opposition of

(28:34):
narrow prejudice and old time conservatism. Although more Bostonian than
the Bostonians themselves, Missus How first saw the light in
New York and has spent much of her later life
at Newport, born in eighteen nineteen in a stately mansion
near the Bowling Green, then the most fashionable quarter of
New York. She was the fourth child of Samuel Ward

(28:55):
and Julia Cutler Ward people of unusual culture, refinement, and
high ideal. Mister Ward was a man of spotless honour
and business integrity, and although not wealthy as compared with
the millionaires of today, his fortune was ample enough to
surround his wife and children with all the luxuries and
refinements that the most fastidious nature could crave. Missus Ward

(29:17):
possessed a rare combination of personal charms and mental gifts,
which endeared her to all who had the privilege of
knowing her. All too soon the death angel came and
bore away the lovely young wife and mother, then in
her twenty eighth year. Rousing himself with a great effort
from the grief into which the death of his wife
had plunged him, mister Ward devoted himself to the training

(29:40):
and education of his children, far in advance of his age.
In the matter of higher education for women, he selected
as the tutor of his daughters the learned doctor Joseph
Greene Cogswell, with instruction to teach them the full curriculum
of Harvard College. Little miss Ward the scholarly and refined
atmosphere of her fe father's home, which was the resort

(30:01):
of the most distinguished men of letters of the day,
was an admirable school for the development of the literary
and philosophic mind of the little Miss Ward, as mister
Ward's eldest daughter had been called, from childhood, learned even
beyond advanced college graduates of to day, an accomplished linguist,
a musical amateur of great promise, the young and beautiful

(30:21):
Miss Julia Ward of Bond Street soon became a leader
of the cultured and fashionable circle in which she moved.
In the series Authors at Home by M. C. Sherwood,
we get a glimpse of her about that time in
a whimsical entry from the Diary of a Miss Hamilton,
written at the time of the return of doctor Howe
from Greece, whither he had gone to fight the Turks.

(30:44):
I walked down Broadway with all the fashion and met
the pretty blue stocking Miss Julia Ward with her admirer
Doctor Howe, just home from Europe. She had on a
blue satin cloak and a white muslin dress. I looked
to see if she had on blue stockings, but I
think not. I suspect that her stockings were pink, and
she wore low slippers as Grandmamma does. They say. She

(31:09):
dreams in Italian and quotes French verses. She sang very
prettily at a party last evening. I noticed how white
her hands were. Still, though attractive, the muse is not handsome.
She married a reformer soon after the loss of her father.
In eighteen thirty nine, Miss Ward paid the first of

(31:30):
a series of visits to Boston, where she met, among
other distinguished people who became life long friends, Sarah Margaret Fuller,
Horace Mann, Charles Summer, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In eighteen
forty three, she was married to the director of the
Institute for the Blind in South Boston, the physician and reformer,
doctor Samuel G. Howe, of whom Sidney Smith spoke referring

(31:53):
to the remarkable results attained in his education of Laura
Bridgeman as a modern Pygmalion who has put life into
a statue. Immediately after their marriage, doctor and missus Howe
sailed for Europe, making London their first stopping place. There
they met many famous men and women, among them Charles Dickens,
Thomas Carlyle, Sidney Smith, Thomas Moore, the Duchess of Sutherland,

(32:17):
John Forster, Samuel Rogers, Richard Monckton, Milns, and many others.
After an extensive continental tour, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France,
and Italy, Doctor and Missus Howell returned home and took
up their residence in South Boston. One of her friends
has said, Missus Howe wrote leading articles from her cradle,

(32:39):
and it is true that at seventeen at least she
was an anonymous but valued contributor to The New York Magazine,
then a prominent periodical. In eighteen fifty four, her first
volume of poems was published. She named it Passion Flowers,
and the Boston World of Letters hailed her as a
new poet. Though public pished anonymously, the volume at once

(33:02):
revealed its author, and Missus Howe was welcomed into the
poetic fraternity by such shining lights as Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Bryant,
and Holmes. The poem by which the author will be
forever enshrined in her country's memory is par Excellence, the
Battle Hymn of the Republic, which, like Kipling's Recessional sang
itself at once into the heart of the nation, as

(33:25):
any sketch of Missus Howe would be incomplete without the
story of the birth of this great song of America,
it is here given in brief story of the battle
Hymn of the Republic. It was in the first year
of our Civil War that Missus Howe, in company with
her husband and friends, visited Washington. During their stay in
that city, the party went to see a review of troops, which, however,

(33:48):
was interrupted by a movement of the enemy and had
to be put off for the day. The carriage in
which Missus Howe was seated with her friends was surrounded
by armed men, and as they rode along, she began
to sing to the great delight of the soldiers. John Brown,
good for you, shouted the boys in blue, who with
a will took up the refrain. Missus Howe then began

(34:11):
conversing with her friends on the momentous events of the hour,
and expressed the strong desire she felt to write some
words which might be sung to this stirring tune, adding
that she feared she would never be able to do so.
She went to sleep, says her daughter maud how Eliot,
full of thoughts of battle, and awoke before dawn the
next morning, to find the desired verses immediately present to

(34:33):
her mind. She sprang from her bed, and, in the
dim gray light, found a pen and paper, whereon she wrote,
scarcely seeing them the lines of the poem. Returning to
her couch, she was soon asleep, but not until she
had said to herself, I like this better than anything
I have ever written before. Eighty years young. Of missus,

(34:55):
how it may very fittingly be said that she is
eighty years young. Her blue eye eye retains its brightness,
and her dignified carriage betokens none of the feebleness of age.
Above all, her mind seems to hold in a marvelous
degree its youthful vigor and elasticity, a fact that especially
impressed me, as the author of the Battle Hymn of

(35:15):
the Republic, expressed her views on the desirability of a
college training for girls. The girls who go to college,
said missus, HOWE are very much in request, I should say,
for everything, certainly for teaching. Then, naturally, if they wish
to follow literature, they have a very great advantage over
those who have not had the benefit of a college course,

(35:37):
having a liberal education to begin with, which is the
greater advantage to a girl to have talent or great
perseverance in order to accomplish anything really worth doing. I
think great perseverance is of the first importance. On the
other hand, one cannot do a great deal without talent,
while special talent without perseverance never amounts to much. I

(36:00):
once heard mister Emerson say genius without character is mere friskiness.
And we all know of highly gifted people who, because
lacking the essential quality of perseverance, accomplish very little in
the world. Do you think the college girl will exercise
a greater influence on modern progress and the civilization of
the future than her untrained sister. Oh very much greater,

(36:24):
was the quick emphatic reply. In the first place, I
think that college bred girls are quite as likely to
marry as others. And when a college girl marries, then
the whole family is lifted to a higher plane, the
natural result of the well trained, cultivated mind. Mothers of old,
you know, were very ignorant. Indeed, it is sad to

(36:45):
think what few advantages they had. Of course, some of
them had opportunities to study alone, but this solitary study
could not accomplish for them what the colleges, with their
corps of specialists and trained professors, are doing for the
young women of Tay the Ideal College. Speaking of the
advantages and disadvantages of co educational institutions, missus House said,

(37:10):
while there are many advantages in coeducation, there are also
some dangers. The great advantage consists in the mingling of
both sorts of mind, the masculine and the feminine. This
gives a completeness that cannot otherwise be obtained. I have
observed that when committees are made up of both men
and women, we get a roundness and completeness that are

(37:30):
lacking when the membership is composed of either sex alone.
And so in college recitations, where the boys present their
side and the girls theirs, we get better results. This,
of course is natural. Fortunately, so far, scandals have been
very rare, if found at all, in coeducation at colleges.

(37:51):
Many people, however, would not care to trust their children,
nor would we send every girl to such colleges, And
for this reason I am glad that we have women's colleges.
I think, however, that if the students are at all
earnest and have high ideals set before them, the co
educational is the ideal college. For the course in these

(38:12):
colleges is like a great intellectual race which arouses and
stimulates all the nobler faculties. What influence do you think
environment has on one's career, on success in life? What
do you mean by environment? Well, I mean especially the
sort of people with whom one is associated, their order
of mind. I think it has a very important effect.

(38:36):
If we are kept perpetually under lowering influences, lowering both
morally and esthetically, the tendency will inevitably be to drag
us down. I say esthetically because I think in that
sense good taste is a part of good morals. You can,
of course have good taste without good morals, But with
morality there is a certain feeling or measure of reserve

(38:58):
and nicety which does not accompany taste without good morals.
You know, Saint Paul says, evil communications corrupt good manners.
That is as true today as it ever was. We
can't always be with our equals or our superiors. However,
we must take people as we find them, But we
should try to be with people who stand for high

(39:19):
things morally and intellectually. Then when we have to be
among people of a lower grade. We can help them
because I think human nature on the whole desires to
be elevated rather than lowered. Do you think it is
necessary to success in life to have a special aim.
I think it is a great thing to have a
special aim or talent, and it is better to make

(39:41):
one thing the leading interest in life than to run
after half a dozen. How they succeeded Life stories of
successful men told by themselves by Orison sweat Martin chapter fourteen,
a talk with Edison dramatic incidents in his early life.
To o discover the opinion of Thomas A. Edison concerning

(40:04):
what makes and constitutes success in life is an easy
matter if one can first discover mister Edison. I camped
three weeks in the vicinity of Orange, New Jersey, awaiting
the opportunity to come upon the great inventor and voice
my questions. It seemed a rather hopeless and discouraging affair
until he was really before me. But truth to say,

(40:25):
he is one of the most accessible of men, and
only reluctantly allows himself to be hedged in by pressure
of endless affairs. Mister Edison is always glad to see
any visitor, said a gentleman who is continually with him,
except when he is hot on the trail of something
he has been working for, and then it is as
much as a man's head is worth to come in
on him. He certainly was not hot on the trail

(40:48):
of anything. On the morning, when for the tenth time
I rang at the gate and the fence which surrounds
the laboratory on Valley Road, Orange, a young man appeared
who conducted me up the walk to the Edison Life
Laboratory office. The library is a place not to be
passed through without thought, for with a further store of

(41:08):
volumes in his home, it contains one of the most
costly and well equipped scientific libraries in the world. The
collection of writings on patent laws and patents, for instance,
is absolutely exhaustive. It gives at a glance an idea
of the breadth of thought and sympathy of this man
who grew up with scarcely a common school education. On

(41:29):
the second floor, in one of the offices of the
machine shop, I was asked to wait while a grimy
youth disappeared with my card, which he said he would
slip under the door of mister Edison's office. Curious, I thought,
what a lord this man must be if they dare
not even knock at his door. Thinking of this and
gazing out the window, I waited until a working man

(41:51):
who had entered softly, came up beside me. He looked
with a sort of well what is it in his eyes?
And quickly it became began to come to me that
the man in the sudy oil stained clothes was Edison himself.
The working garb seemed rather incongruous, but there was no
mistaking the broad forehead, with its shock of blackish hair

(42:12):
streaked with gray. The gray eyes, too, were revelations in
the way of alert comprehensiveness. Oh, was all I could
get out at the time. Want to see me, he said,
smiling in the most youthful and genial way. Why, yes, certainly,
to be sure, I stammered. He looked at me blankly.

(42:34):
You'll have to talk louder, said an assistant who worked
in another portion of the room. He don't hear. Well,
this fact was new to me, but I raised my
voice with celerity and piped thereafter in an exceedingly shrill key.
After the usual hundrum opening remarks in which he acknowledged
his age as fifty two years, and that he was

(42:54):
born in Erie County, oh of Dutch parentage, the family
having emigrated to America in Sei seventeen thirty. The particulars
began to grow more interesting. His great grandfather, I learned,
was a banker of high standing in New York, and
when Thomas was but a child of seven years, the
family fortune suffered reverses so serious as to make it

(43:15):
necessary that he should become a wage journer at an
unusually early age, and that the family should move from
his birthplace to Michigan. Did you enjoy mathematics as a boy,
I asked, Not much, he replied, I tried to read
Newton's Principia at the age of eleven. That disgusted me

(43:35):
with pure mathematics, and I don't wonder now I should
not have been allowed to take up such serious work
you were anxious to learn? Yes, indeed I attempted to
read through the entire free library at Detroit, but other
things interfered before I had done a chemical newsboy, Were
you a bookworm and dreamer? I questioned, not at all,

(44:00):
he answered, using a short, jerky method, as though he
were unconsciously checking himself up. I became a newsboy and
liked the work. Made my first coup as a newsboy
in eighteen sixty nine. What was it? I ventured? I
bought up on futures a thousand copies of the Detroit

(44:21):
Free Press, containing important war news. Gained a little time
on my rivals, and sold the entire batch like hot cakes.
The price reached twenty five cents of paper before the
end of the route, and he laughed. I ran the
Grand Trunk Herald too at that time A little paper
I issued from the train. When did you begin to

(44:41):
be interested in invention, I questioned, well, he said, I
began to dabble in chemistry at that time. I fitted
up a small laboratory on the train. In reference to this,
mister Edison subsequently admitted that during the progress of some
occult experiments in workshop, certain complications ensued, in which a

(45:03):
jolted and broken bottle of sulfuric acid attracted the attention
of the conductor. He, who had been long suffering in
the matter of unearthly odors, promptly ejected the young devotee
and all his works. This incident would have been only
amusing but for its relation to an explanation of his deafness.
A box on the ear administered by the irate conductor

(45:26):
caused the lasting deafness. Telegraphy. What was your first work
in a practical line? I went on a telegraph line
between my home and another boy's. I made with the
help of an old river cable, some stovepipe wire and
glass bottle insulators. I had my laboratory in the cellar

(45:46):
and studied telegraphy outside. What was the first really important
thing you did? I saved a boy's life. How the
boy was playing on the track near the depot. I
I saw he was in danger and caught him getting
out of the way just in time. His father was
station master and taught me telegraphy. In return, dramatic situations

(46:10):
appear at every turn of this man's life. He seems
to have been continually arriving on the scene at critical moments,
and always with the good sense to take things in
his own hands. The chance of learning telegraphy only gave
him a chance to show how apt a pupil he was,
and the railroad company soon gave him regular employment. At seventeen,

(46:31):
he had become one of the most expert operators on
the road. Did you make much use of your inventive
talent at this time? I questioned, Yes, he answered, I
invented an automatic attachment for my telegraph instrument which would
send in a signal to show I was awake at
my post when I was comfortably snoring in a corner.

(46:52):
I didn't do much of that, though, he went on
for some such boyish trick sent me in disgrace over
the line into Canada. Were you there long only a winter?
If its incident you want, I can tell you one
of that time. The place where I was in Sarnier,
the American town were cut off from telegraphic and other

(47:13):
means of communication by the storms, until I got at
a locomotive whistle and tooted a telegraphic message. I had
to do it again and again, but eventually they understood
over the water and answered in the same way. According
to his own and various recorded accounts, Edison was successively
in charge of important wires in Memphis, Cincinnati, New Orleans,

(47:34):
and Louisville. He lived in the free and easy atmosphere
of the tramp operators, a boon companion with them, yet
absolutely refusing to join in the dissipations to which they
were addicted. So highly esteemed was he for his honesty
that it was the custom of his colleagues, when a
spree was on hand, to make him the custodian of
those funds which they felt obliged to save. On a

(47:57):
more than usually hilarious occasion, one of them returned rather
the worse for wear, and knocked the treasurer down on
his refusal to deliver the trust money. The other depositors,
we may be glad to note, gave the ungentlemanly tippler
a sound thrashing his use of money. Were you good
at saving your own money? I asked, no, he said, smiling,

(48:21):
I never was much for saving money as money. I
devoted every cent, regardless of future needs, to scientific books
and materials for experiments. You believed that an excellent way
to succeed. Well, it helped me greatly to future success inventions.
What was your next invention? I inquired an automatic telegraph recorder,

(48:47):
a machine which enabled me to record dispatches at leisure
and send them off as fast as needed. How did
you come to hit upon that? Well? At the time,
I was in such straits that I had to walk
from me Emphis to Louisville. At the Louisville station, they
offered me a place. I had perfected a style of
handwriting which would allow me to take legibly from the

(49:09):
wire long hand forty seven and even fifty four words
a minute. But I was only a moderately rapid sender.
I had to do something to help me on that side,
and so I thought out that little device. Later I
discovered an article by one of his biographers in which
a paragraph referring to this Louisville period says true to

(49:30):
his dominant instincts, he was not long in gathering around
him a laboratory, printing office, and machine shop. He took
press reports during his whole stay, including on one occasion
the presidential message by Andrew Johnson, and this at one
sitting from three thirty p m. To four thirty a m.
He then paragraphed the matter he had received over the wires,

(49:52):
so that printers had exactly three lines each, thus enabling
them to set up a column in two or three
minutes time. For this, he was allowed all the exchanges
he desired, and the Louisville press gave him a dinner.
How did you manage to attract public attention to your ability,
I questioned. I didn't manage, said the wizard. Some things

(50:15):
I did, created comment. A device that I invented in
eighteen sixty eight, which utilized one submarine cable for two circuits,
caused considerable talk, and the Franklin Telegraph Office of Boston
gave me a position. It is related of this mister
Edison's first trip east that he came with no ready
money and in a rather dilapidated condition. His colleagues were

(50:37):
tempted by his hatied appearance to salt him. As professional
slang terms, the process of giving a receiver matter faster
than he can record it. For this purpose, the new
man was assigned to a wire manipulated by a New
York operator famous for his speed. But there was no
fun at all, notwithstanding the fact that the New Yorker

(50:58):
was in the game and was doing his most speedy clip.
Edison wrote out the long message accurately, and when he
realized the situation, was soon firing taunts over the wire
at the sender's slowness. Had you patented many things up
to the time of your coming Yeast, I queried, nothing,
said the inventor ruminatively. I received my first patent in

(51:21):
eighteen sixty nine for what a machine for recording votes
and designed to be used in the state legislature. I
didn't know such machines were in use. I ventured the
ar ent. He answered with a merry twinkle. The better
it worked, the more impossible. It was the sacred right

(51:42):
of the minority. You know, couldn't filibuster if they used it.
Didn't use it? Oh, yes, it was an ingenious thing.
Votes were clearly pointed and shown on a roll of
paper by a small machine attached to the desk of
each member. I was made to learn that such an
innovation was out of the question. But it taught me something,

(52:03):
and that was to be sure of the practical need
of and demand for a machine before expending time and
energy on it. Is that one of your maxims of success?
It is it is a good rule to give people
something they want and they will pay money to get it.
His arrival at the Metropolis in this same year, Edison

(52:26):
removed from Boston to New York, friendless and in debt
on account of the expenses of his experiment. For several weeks,
he wandered about the town with actual hunger staring him
in the face. It was a time of great financial excitement,
and with that strange quality of fortunism which seems to
be his chief characteristic. He entered the establishment of the

(52:47):
Law Gold Reporting Company just as their entire plant had
shut down on account of an accident in the machinery
that could not be located. The heads of the firm
were anxious and excited to the last degree, and a
crowd of the Wall Street eat fraternity waited about for
the news, which came not. The shabby stranger put his
finger on the difficulty at once and was given lucrative

(53:08):
employment in the rush of the metropolis. A man finds
his true level without delay, especially when his talents are
of so practical and brilliant a nature as were this
young telegraphers. It would be an absurdity to imagine an
Edison hidden in New York. Within a short time he
was presented with a check for forty thousand dollars as

(53:29):
his share of a single invention, an improved stock printer.
From this time a national reputation was assured him. He
was too, now engaged upon the duplex and quadruplex systems,
systems for sending two and four messages at the same
time over a single wire, which were to inaugurate almost
a new era in telegraphy mental concentration. Recalling the incident

(53:54):
of the law Gold Reporting Company, I inquired, do you
believe what urges a man to greater efforts and so
to greater success? It certainly makes him keep a sharp lookout.
I think it does push a man along. Do you
believe that invention is a gift or an acquired ability?
I think it's born in a man. And don't you

(54:16):
believe that familiarity with certain mechanical conditions and defects naturally
suggests improvements to any one. No, some people may be
perfectly familiar with a machine all their days, knowing it inefficient,
and never see a way to improve it. What do
you think is the first requisite for success in your
field or any other? The ability to apply your physical

(54:39):
and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
Twenty hours a day. Do you have regular hours, mister Edison,
I asked, Oh, he said, I do not work hard now.
I come to the laboratory about eight o'clock every day
and go home to tea at six, and then I

(54:59):
still study or work on some problem until eleven, which
is my hour for bed. Fourteen of fifteen hours a
day can scarcely be called loafing, I suggested, well, he replied,
for fifteen years I have worked on an average of
twenty hours a day. When he was forty seven years old,
he estimated his true age at eighty two, since working

(55:21):
only eight hours a day would have taken till that time.
Mister Edison has sometimes worked sixty consecutive hours upon one problem,
then after a long sleep he was perfectly refreshed and
ready for another a run for breakfast. Mister Dixon, a
neighbor and familiar, gives an anecdote told by Edison which

(55:42):
well illustrates his untiring energy and phenomenal endurance. In describing
his Boston experience, Edison said he bought faira day's works
on electricity, commenced to read them at three o'clock in
the morning, continued until his roommate arose when they started
on their long walk to get breakfast. That object was
entirely subordinated in Edison's mind to Faraday, and he suddenly

(56:05):
remarked to his friend Adams, I have got so much
to do, and life is so short that I have
got to hustle. And with that I started off on
a dead run for my breakfast. I've known Edison since
he was a boy of fourteen set another friend, and
of my own knowledge I can say he never spent
an idle day in his life. Often when he should

(56:26):
have been asleep, I have known him to sit up
half the night reading. He did not take to novels
or wild Western adventures, but read works on mechanics, chemistry,
and electricity, and he mastered them too. But in addition
to his reading, which he could only indulge in at
odd hours, he carefully cultivated his wonderful powers of observation

(56:46):
till at length when he was not actually asleep. It
may be said he was learning all the time, not
by accident and not for fun. Are your discovery's often
brilliant intuitions? Do they come to you while you are
lying awake nights? I asked him. I never did anything
worth doing by accident, he replied, Nor did any of

(57:08):
my inventions come indirectly through accident except the phonograph. No.
When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting,
I go about it. And make trial after trial until
it comes. I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone,
said Edison, when the vibrations of my voice caused a
fine steel point to pierce one of my fingers held

(57:29):
just behind it. That set me to thinking if I
could record the motions of the point and send it
over the same surface. Afterward, I saw no reason why
the thing would not talk. I determined to make a
machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistance the
necessary instructions, telling them what I had discovered. That's the
whole story. The phonograph is the result of the pricking

(57:53):
of a finger. I have always kept, continued mister Edison,
strictly within the lines of commercial, useful inventions. I have
never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable
only as novelties to catch the popular fancy. I like
I t I hate it. What makes you work? I asked,

(58:14):
with real curiosity. What impels you to this constant, tireless struggle.
You have shown that you care comparatively nothing for the
money it makes you, and you have no particular enthusiasm
for the attending fame. What is it? I like it?
He answered, after a moment of puzzled expression. I don't

(58:34):
know any other reason. Anything I have begun is always
on my mind, and I am not easy while away
from it until it is finished. And then I hate it,
hate it, I said, yes, he affirmed. When it is
all done and is a success, I can't bear the
sight of it. I haven't used a telephone in ten years,

(58:56):
and I would go out of my way any day
to miss an incandescent light. After I have completed an invention,
remarked Edison, upon another occasion, I seem to lose interest
in it. One might think that the money value of
an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves
his work. But speaking for myself, I can honestly say

(59:16):
this is not so. Life was never more full of
joy to me than when a poor boy I began
to think out improvements in telegraphy and to experiment with
the cheapest and crudest appliances. But now that I have
all the appliances I need and am my own master,
I continue to find my greatest pleasure and sow my
reward in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

(59:41):
Doing one thing eighteen hours is the secret you laid
down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed
in life. I ventured working eighteen hours a day, not
at all, he said, You do something all day long,
don't you. Every one does. If you get out up
at seven o'clock can go to bed at eleven, you

(01:00:02):
have put in sixteen good hours. And it is certain
with most men that they have been doing something all
the time. They have been either walking or reading, or
writing or thinking. The only trouble is that they do
it about a great many things, and I do it
about one. If they took the time in question and
applied it in one direction to one object, they would succeed.

(01:00:25):
Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies
in the fact that people do not have an object,
one thing to which they stick, letting all else go.
Success is the product of the severest kind of mental
and physical application possibilities in the electrical field, you believe,
of course, I suggested that much remains to be discovered

(01:00:48):
in the realm of electricity. It is the field of fields,
he answered. We can't talk of that, but it holds
the secrets which will reorganize the life of the world.
You have discover much about it, I said, smiling, Yes,
he said, and yet very little in comparison with the
possibilities that appear, only six hundred inventions. How many inventions

(01:01:13):
have you patented? Only six hundred, he answered, But I
have made application for some three hundred more. And do
you expect to retire soon after all this? I hope not,
he said, almost pathetically. I hope I will be able
to work right on to the clothes. I shouldn't care
to loaf his courtship and his home. The idea of

(01:01:37):
the great electricians marrying was first suggested by an intimate friend,
who told him that his large house and numerous servants
ought to have a mistress. Although a very shy man,
he seemed pleased with the proposition and timidly inquired whom
he should marry. The friend, annoyed at his apparent want
of sentiment, somewhat testily replied any one. But Edison was

(01:01:59):
not without say gentiment when the time came. One day,
as he stood behind the chair of a miss Stillwell,
a telegraph operator in his employ he was not a
little surprised when she suddenly turned round and said, mister Edison,
I can always tell when you are behind me or
near me. It was now miss Stillwell's turn to be surprised,

(01:02:20):
for with characteristic bluntness and ardor, Edison fronted the young lady, and,
looking her full in the face, said I've been thinking
considerably about you of late, and if you are willing
to marry me, I would like to marry you. The
young lady said she would consider the matter and talk
it over with her mother. The result was that they

(01:02:40):
were married a month later, and the union proved a
very happy one. It was, in fact, no more an
accident than other experiments in the Edison laboratory, his bride
having been long the subject of the wizard's observation, her
mental capacity, her temper and temperament, her aptitude for home
making being duly tested and noted how they succeeded. Life

(01:03:02):
Stories of successful Men told by themselves by Oarson Sweat Marten,
Chapter fifteen, A fascinating story by General lew Wallace I
and his study a curiously shaped building, lighted from the
top and combining in equal portions the Byzantine, Romanesque and
Doric styles of architecture. The gray haired author of Benhurt,

(01:03:26):
surrounded by his pictures books and military trophies, is spending
in serene and comfortable retirement the evening of his life.
As I sat beside him the other day and listened
to the recital of his earlier struggles and later achievements,
I could not help contrasting his dignified bearing, careful expression,
and gentle demeanor with another occasion in his life, when,

(01:03:48):
as a vigorous, black haired young military officer in the
spring of eighteen sixty one, he appeared with flashing eye
and uplifted sword at the head of his regiment, the
gallant and historic eleventh Indiana Volunteers. General Wallace never repels
a visitor, and his greeting is cordial and ingenuous. If

(01:04:08):
I could say anything to stimulate or encourage the young
men of today, he said, I would gladly do so.
But I fear that the story of my early days
would be of very little interest or value to others.
So far as school education is concerned, it may be
truthfully said that I had but little, if any, And
if in spite of that deficiency I ever arrived at proficiency,

(01:04:31):
I reached it. I presume, as Topsy attained her stature,
just growed into it. A boyhood of wasted opportunities. Were
you denied early school advantages, I asked, not in the least.
On the contrary, I had most abundant opportunity in that respect.

(01:04:51):
My father was a lawyer enjoying a lucrative practice in Brookville, Indiana,
a small town which bears the distinction of having given
to the world more wre prominent men than any other
place in the Hoosier State. Not long after my birth
he was elected lieutenant governor, and finally governor of the state.
He himself was an educated man, having been graduated from

(01:05:14):
the United States Military Academy at West Point, and having
served as instructor in mathematics there. He was not only
an educated man, but a man of advanced ideas generally,
as shown by the fact that he failed of a
re election to Congress in eighteen forty because, as a
member of the Committee on Commerce, he gave the casting
vote in favor of an appropriation to develop Morse's magnetic telegraph.

(01:05:39):
Of course, he believed in the value and tried to
impress upon me the necessity of a thorough school training.
But in the face of all the solicitude and encouragement
which an indulgent father could waste on an unappreciative son.
I remained vexatiously indifferent. I presume I was like some
man in history. It was Lincoln, I believe, who said

(01:06:00):
that his father taught him to work, but he never
quite succeeded in teaching him to love it. My father
sent me to school and regularly paid tuition for in
those days there were no free schools, But much to
my discredit, he failed to secure anything like regular attendance
at recitations, or even a decent attempt to master my
lessons at any time. In fact, much of the time

(01:06:23):
that should have been given to school was spent in fishing, hunting,
and roaming through the woods. His boyhood love for history
and literature. But were you thus indifferent to all forms
of education? No, my case was not quite so hopeless
as that I did not desert the schools entirely. But
my attendance was so provokingly irregular, and my indifference so supreme.

(01:06:47):
I wonder now that I was tolerated at all. But
I had one mainstay. I loved to read. I was
a most inordinate reader in some lines of literature, especially
history and some kind of fiction. My appetite was insatiate,
and many a day, while my companions were clustered together
in the old red brick school house, struggling with their

(01:07:08):
problems in fractions or percentage, I was carefully hidden in
the woods near by, lying upon my elbows, munching in apple,
and reveling in the beauties of Plutarch, Byron or Goldsmith.
Did you not attend college or the higher grade of schools? Yes?
For a brief period, my brother was a student in

(01:07:28):
Wabash College here in Crawfordsville, and hither I also was sent.
But within six weeks I had tired of the routine,
was satiated with discipline, and made my exit from the institution.
I shall never forget what my father did when I
returned home. He called me into his office, and, reaching
into one of the pigeon holes above his desk, withdrew

(01:07:50):
there from a package of papers, neatly folded and tied
with the conventional red tape. He was a very systematic man,
due perhaps to his West Point training, and these papers
proved to be the receipts for my tuition, which he
had carefully preserved. He called off the items and asked
me to add them together. The total, I confess staggered me.

(01:08:13):
A father's fruitful warning. That sum my son, he said,
with a tone of regret in his voice, represents what
I have expended in these many years past to provide
you with a good education. How successful I have been,
you know better than any one else. After mature reflection,
I have come to the conclusion that I have done

(01:08:33):
for you in that direction all that can reasonably be
expected of any parent. And I have therefore called you
in to tell you that you have now reached an
age when you must take up the lines yourself. If
you have failed to profit by the advantages with which
I have tried so hard to surround you, the responsibility
must be yours. I shall not upbraid you for your neglect,

(01:08:54):
but rather pity you for the indifference which you have
shown to the golden opportunities you have, through my indulgence,
been enabled to enjoy a manhood of splendid effort. What
effect did his admonition have on you? Did it awaken
or arouse you? It aroused me, most assuredly. It set
me to thinking as nothing before had done. The next

(01:09:17):
day I set out with a determination to accomplish something
for myself. My father's injunction rang in my years. New
responsibilities rested on my shoulders. As I was, for the
first time in my life my own master, I felt
that I must get work on my own account. After
much effort, I finally obtained employment from the man with

(01:09:40):
whom I had passed so many afternoons strolling up and
down the little streams in the neighborhood trying to fish.
He was the county clerk, and he hired me to
copy what was known as the complete record of one
of the courts. I worked for months in a dingy,
half lighted room, receiving from my pay something like ten
cents per hundred words. The tediousness and the regularity of

(01:10:01):
the work was a splendid drill for me, and taught
me the virtue of persistence as one of the avenues
of success. It was at this time I began to
realize the deficiency in my education, especially as I had
an ambition to become a lawyer. Being deficient in both
mathematics and grammar, I was forced to study evenings. Of course,

(01:10:22):
the latter was a very exacting study after a full
day's hard work, but I was made to realize that
the time I had spent with such lavish prodigality could
not be recovered, and that I must extract every possible
good out of the golden moments then flying by all
too fast. Self education by reading and literary composition. Had
you a distinct literary ambition at that time, well, I

(01:10:46):
had always had a sort of literary bent or inclination.
I read all the literature of the day, besides the
standard authors, and finally began to devote my odd moments
to a book of my own, a tale based on
the days of the Crusades. When completed, it covered about
three hundred and fifty pages and bore the rather high
sounding title The Man at Arms. I read a good

(01:11:09):
portion of it before a literary society to which I belonged.
The members applauded it, and I was frequently urged to
have it published. The Mexican War soon followed, however, and
I took the manuscript with me when I enlisted, But
before the close of my service it was lost, and
my production therefore never reached the public eye. But did

(01:11:30):
not the approval which the book received from the few
persons who read it encourage you to continue writing fully
fifty years have elapsed since then, and it is therefore
rather difficult at this late day to recall just how
such things affected me. I suppose I was encouraged thereby,
for in due course of time another book, which turned

(01:11:51):
out to be The Fair God, my first book to
reach the public, began to shape itself in my mind.
The composition of this work was not, as the theatrical
people would say, a continuous performance, for there were many
in singular interruptions, and it would be safe to say
that months and in one case years intervened between certain chapters.

(01:12:13):
A few years after the war, I finished a composition,
strung the chapters into a continuous narrative, leveled up the
uneven places, and started east with the manuscript. A letter
from whitelaw Read, then editor of the New York Tribune,
introduced me to the head of one of the leading
publishing houses in Boston. There I was kindly received and

(01:12:34):
delivered my manuscript, which was referred to a professional reader
to determine its literary and also, I presume, its commercial value.
It would be neither a new nor an interesting story
to acquaint the public with the degree of anxious suspense
that pervaded my mind when I withdrew to await the
reader's judgment. Every other writer has, I assume, at one

(01:12:55):
time or another, undergone much the same experience. It was
not long until I learned from the publisher that the
reader reported in favor of my production. Publication soon followed,
and for the first time in a literary sense, I
found myself before the public and my book before the critics.
The origin of ben Her? How long after this did

(01:13:18):
Benher appear? And what led you to write it? I
began Ben Her about eighteen seventy six, and it was
published in eighteen eighty. The purpose at first was a
short serial for one of the magazines, descriptive of the
visit of the Wise Men to Jerusalem, as mentioned in
the first two verses of the second chapter of Matthew.

(01:13:39):
It will be recognized in book first of the work
as now published. For certain reasons, however, the serial idea
was abandoned, and the narrative, instead of ending with the
birth of the Savior, expanded into a more pretentious novel
and only ended with the death scene on Calvary. The
last ten chapters were written in the old Adobe Palace

(01:14:00):
at Santa fe New Mexico, where I was serving as governor.
It is difficult to answer the question what led me
to write the book, or why I chose a piece
of fiction which used Christ as its leading character. In explanation,
it is proper to state that I had reached an
age in life when men usually begin to study themselves
with reference to their fellow men, and reflect on the

(01:14:21):
good they may have done in the world up to
that time. Never having read the Bible, I knew nothing
about sacred history and in matters of a religious nature.
Although I was not in every respect and infidel, I
was persistently and notoriously indifferent. I did not know, and
therefore did not care. I resolved to begin the study

(01:14:42):
of the Good Book in earnest influence of the story
of the Christ upon the author. I was in quest
of knowledge, but I had no faith to sustain, no
creed to bolster up. The result was that the whole
field of religious and biblical history opened up before me,
and my vision, not being clouded by previously formed opinions,

(01:15:03):
I was enabled to survey it without the aid of lenses.
I believe I was thorough and persistent. I know I
was conscientious in my search for the truth. I weighed,
I analyzed, I counted and compared. The evolution from conjecture
into knowledge through opinion and belief was gradual, but irresistible,

(01:15:24):
and at length I stood firmly and defiantly on the
solid rock. Upward of seven hundred thousand copies of Benhur
have been published, and it has been translated into all languages,
from French to Arabic. But whether it has ever influenced
the mind of a single reader or not, I am
sure its conception and preparation if it has done nothing

(01:15:45):
more have convinced its author of the divinity of the
lowly Nazarene who walked and talked with God, how they succeeded.
Life Stories of successful men told by themselves by Orison
Sweat Marten, Chapter sixteen, Andrew Carnegie Carnegie as a metal worker.

(01:16:05):
There is no doubt, said mister Carnegie, in reply to
a question from me, that it is becoming harder and
harder as business gravitates more and more to immense concerns
for a young man without capital to get a start
for himself, And in the large cities it is especially
so where large capital is essential. Still it can be
honestly said that there is no other country in the

(01:16:27):
world where able and energetic young men and women can
so readily rise as in this A president of a
business college informed me recently that he has never been
able to supply the demand for capable first class mark
the adjective bookkeepers, and his college has over nine hundred students.
In America. Young men of ability rise with most astonishing rapidity,

(01:16:51):
as quickly as when you were a boy, much more so.
When I was a boy, there were but very few
important positions that a boy could aspire to. Every position
had to be made. Now a boy doesn't need to
make the place. All he has to do is to
fit himself to take it. Early work in wages. Where

(01:17:12):
did you begin life? In Dunfermline, Scotland. During my earliest years,
the service of my life has all been in this country,
in Pittsburgh. Largely so, my father settled in Allegheny City
when I was only ten years old, and I began
to earn my way in Pittsburgh. Do you mind telling

(01:17:33):
me what your first service was? Not at all? I
was a bobbin boy in a cotton factory, then an
engine man or boy in the same place, and later
still I was a messenger boy for a telegraph company
at small wages. I suppose one dollar and twenty cents
a week was what I received as a bobbin boy,

(01:17:54):
and I considered it pretty good at that. When I
was thirteen, I had learned to run a steam engine,
and for that I received a dollar and eighty cents
a week. You had no early schooling then, none except
such as I gave myself Colonel Anderson's books. There were
no fine libraries then, But in Allegheny City, where I lived,

(01:18:17):
there was a certain Colonel Anderson, who was well to
do and of a philanthropic turn. He announced, about the
time I first began to work, that he would be
in his library at home every Saturday, ready to lend
books to working boys and men. He had only about
four hundred volumes, but I doubt if ever so few
books were put to better use. Only he who has longed,

(01:18:40):
as I did, for Saturday to come, that the spring
of knowledge might be opened anew to him, can understand
what Colonel Anderson did for me and others. Of the
boys of Alleghany, quite a number of them have risen
to eminence, and I think their rise can be easily
traced to this splendid opportunity. It was Colonel Anderson's kindness
that led Carnegie to bestow his wealth so generously for

(01:19:03):
founding libraries, as he is now doing every year. His
first glimpse of paradise. How long did you remain an
engine boy? Not very long, mister Carnegie replied, perhaps a year,
and then I entered a telegraph office as a messenger boy.
Although mister Carnegie did not dwell much on this period,

(01:19:25):
he once described it at a dinner given in honor
of the American consul at Dunfermline, Scotland, when he said,
I awake from a dream that has carried me away
back to the days of my boyhood, the day when
the little white haired Scottish laddie, dressed in a blue jacket,
walked with his father into the Telegraph office in Pittsburgh
to undergo examination as an applicant for a position as

(01:19:46):
messenger boy. Well, I remember when my uncle spoke to
my parents about it, and my father objected because I
was then getting one dollar and eighty cents per week
for running the small engine in a cellar in Allegheny City.
But my uncle said, a messenger's wages would be two
dollars and fifty cents. If you want an idea as
to heaven on earth, imagine what it is to be

(01:20:08):
taken from a dark cellar where I fired the boiler
from morning until night, and dropped into an office where
light shone from all sides, with books, papers and pencils
in profusion around me. And oh the tick of those
mysterious brass instruments on the desk, annihilating space and conveying
intelligence to the world. This was my first glimpse of paradise,

(01:20:29):
and I walked on air. How did you manage to
rise from this position? I learned how to operate a
telegraph instrument, and then waited an opportunity to show that
I was fit to be an operator. Eventually my chance came.
The truth is that James d Read, the superintendent of
the office, and himself a Scotchman, favored the ambitious lad.

(01:20:52):
In his History of the Telegraph, he says of him,
I liked the boy's looks, and it was easy to
see that though he little, he was full of spirit.
He had not been with me a month when he
asked me to teach him to telegraph. He spent all
his spare time in practice, sending receiving by sound and
not by tape, as was the custom in those days.

(01:21:15):
Pretty soon he could do as well as I could
at the key. Introduced to a broom. As you look
back upon it, I said to mister Carnegie, do you
consider that so lowly? A beginning is better than one
a little less trying for young men starting upon their
life work. It is much the best to begin as
I did at the beginning, and occupy the most subordinate positions.

(01:21:38):
Many of the present day leading men of Pittsburgh had
serious responsibility thrust upon them at the very threshold of
their careers. They were introduced to the broom and spent
the first hours of their business life sweeping out the office.
I notice we have janitors and janitresses now in offices,
and our young men unfortunately missed that salutary branch of

(01:21:59):
earth education. It does not hurt the newest comer to
sweep out the office. Did you many's the time? And
who do you suppose were my fellow sweepers? David mac
bargo afterwards superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railroad, Robert Pitcairn
afterwards superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad and mister Morland subsequently

(01:22:23):
City Attorney of Pittsburgh. We all took turns two each
morning doing the sweeping. And now I remember Davy was
so proud of his clean shirt bosom that he used
to spread over it an old silk handkerchief, which he
kept for the purpose, and we other boys thought he
was putting on airs, so he was. None of us
had a silk handkerchief. After you had learned to telegraph,

(01:22:46):
did you consider that you had reached high enough? Just
at that time, my father died and the burden of
the support of the family fell upon me. I earned
as an operator twenty five dollars a month and a
little additional money by copying telegraphic messages for the newspapers,
and managed to keep the family independent an expert telegrapher.

(01:23:07):
More light on this period of mister Carnegie's career is
given by the Electric Age, which says as a telegraph operator,
he was abreast of older and experienced men, and although
receiving messages by sound was at that time forbidden by
authority as being unsafe, young Carnegie quickly acquired the art,
and he can still stand behind the ticker and understand

(01:23:28):
its language. As an operator, he delighted in full employment
and a prompt discharge of business, and a big day's
work was his chief pleasure. How long did you remain
with the Telegraph Company until I was given a place
by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company as an operator, at first,

(01:23:48):
until I showed how the telegraph could minister to railroad
safety and success. Then I was made secretary to Thomas A. Scott,
the superintendent, and not long afterwards, when Colonel Scott became
vice president, I was made superintendent of the Western Division.
Colonel Scott's attention was drawn to Carnegie by the operators
devising a plan for running trains by telegraph, so making

(01:24:11):
the most of a single track. Up to this time,
no one had ever dreamed of running trains in opposite
directions towards each other, directing them by telegraph, one train
being sidetracked while the other passed. The boy studied out
a train dispatching system, which was afterwards used on every
single track railroad in the country. Nobody had ever thought

(01:24:32):
of this before, and the officials were so pleased with
the ingenious lad that they placed him in charge of
a division office, and before he was twenty made him
superintendent of the Western Division of the road. What employers
think of young men concerning this period of his life?
I asked mister Carnegie if his promotion was not a
matter of chance, and whether he did not at the

(01:24:54):
time feel it to be so. His answer was emphatic.
Young men give all kinds of reasons. Why in their
cases failure is attributable to exceptional circumstances which rendered success impossible.
Some never had a chance according to their own story.
This is simply nonsense. No young man ever lived who

(01:25:18):
had not a chance, and a splendid chance too. If
he was ever employed at all, he is assayed in
the mind of his immediate superior from the day he
begins work, and after a time, if he has merit,
he is a sayed in the council chambers of the firm.
His ability, honesty, habits, associations, temper disposition, all these are

(01:25:40):
weighed and analyzed. The young man who never had a
chance is the same young man who has been canvassed
over and over again by his superiors and found destitute
of necessary qualifications, or is deemed unworthy of closer relations
with the firm owing to some objectionable act, habit, or
association of which he thought his amployers ignorant. It sounds true.

(01:26:03):
It is the right men in demand. Another class of
young men attributes failure to rise to employers having near
relatives or favorites, whom they advance unfairly. They also insist
that their employers dislike brighter intelligences than their own, and
are disposed to discourage aspiring genius and delighted in keeping

(01:26:24):
young men down. There is nothing in this. On the contrary,
there is no one suffering more for lack of the
right man in the right place as the average employer,
nor anyone more anxious to find him. Was this your
theory on the subject when you began working for the
railroad company? I had no theory then, although I have
formulated one since it lies mainly in this. Instead of

(01:26:49):
the question what must I do for my employer? Substitute
what can I do faithful and conscientious discharge of duties
assigned you? Is all very well, but the verdict in
such cases generally is that you perform your present duties
so well that you would better continue performing them. Now.
This will not do. It will not do for the

(01:27:10):
coming partners. There must be something beyond this. We make clerks, bookkeepers, treasurers,
bank tellers of this class, and there they remain to
the end of the chapter. The rising man must do
something exceptional and beyond the range of his special department.
He must attract attention. How to attract attention? How can

(01:27:32):
he do that well? If he is a shipping clerk,
he may do so by discovering in an invoice and
error with which he has nothing to do, and which
has escaped the attention of the proper party. If a
weighing clerk, he may save for the firm in questioning
the adjustment of the scales and having them corrected, even
if this be the province of the master mechanic. If

(01:27:54):
a messenger boy, he can lay the seat of promotion
by going beyond the letter of his instructions in order
to secure the desigreired reply. There is no service so
low and simple, neither any so high, in which the
young man of ability and willing disposition cannot readily and
almost daily prove himself capable of greater trust and usefulness, And,
what is equally important, show his invincible determination to rise

(01:28:18):
in what manner did you reach out to establish your
present great fortune? I asked, by saving my money. I
put a little money aside, and it served me later
as a matter of credit. Also, I invested in a
sleeping car industry, which paid me well. Sleeping see our invention.

(01:28:39):
Although I tried earnestly to get the great Iron King
to talk of this, he said little, because the matter
has been fully dealt with by him in his triumphant democracy.
From his own story there it appears that one day,
at this time, when mister Carnegie still had his fortune
to make, he was on a train examining the line
from a rear window of a car, when a tall

(01:29:00):
bear man accosted him and asked him to look at
an invention he had made. He drew from a green
bag a small model of a sleeping berth for railway cars,
and proceeded to point out its advantages. It was mister T. T. Woodruff,
the inventor of the sleeping car. As mister Carnegie tells
the story, he had not spoken a moment before, Like

(01:29:22):
a flash, the whole range of the discovery burst upon me. Yes,
I said, that is something which this continent must have.
Upon my return I laid it before mister Scott, declaring
that it was one of the inventions of the age.
He remarked, you are enthusiastic, young man, but you may
ask the inventor to come and let me see it.

(01:29:44):
I did so, and arrangements were made to build two
trial cars and run them on the Pennsylvania Railroad. I
was offered an interest in the venture, which I gladly accepted.
The notice came that my share of the first payment
was two hundred seventeen dollars and fifty cents. How well
I remember the exact sum, but two hundred and seventeen

(01:30:06):
dollars and a half were as far beyond my means
as if it had been millions. I was earning fifty
dollars per month, however, and had prospects, or at least
I always felt that I had. I decided to call
on the local banker and boldly ask him to advance
the sum. Upon my interest in the affair. He put
his hand on my shoulder and said, why, of course, Andy,

(01:30:29):
you are all right. Go ahead, Here is the money.
It is a proud day for a man when he
pays his last note. But not to be named in
comparison with the day in which he makes his first
one and gets a banker to take it. I have
tried both, and I know the cars furnished the subsequent
payments by their earnings. I paid my first note for

(01:30:52):
my savings so much per month, and thus I got
my foot upon fortune's ladder. It was easy to climb
after that, the mark of a millionaire. I would like
some expression from you, I said to mister Carnegie, in
reference to the importance of laying aside money from one's
earnings as a young man. You can have it. There

(01:31:14):
is one sure mark of the coming partner, the future millionaire.
His revenues always exceed his expenditures. He begins to save early,
almost as soon as he begins to earn. I should
say to young men, no matter how little it may
be possible to save, save that little, invest it securely,
not necessarily in bonds, but in anything which you have

(01:31:36):
good reason to believe will be profitable. Some rare chance
will soon present itself for investment. The little you have
saved will prove the basis for an amount of credit
utterly surprising to you capitalists. Trust the saving man. For
every hundred dollars you can produce as the result of
hard won savings. Midas in search of a partner, will

(01:31:57):
lend or credit a thousand for every thing thousand fifty thousand.
It is not capital that your seniors require. It is
the man who has proved that he has the business
habits which create capital. So it is the first hundred
dollars that tell an oil farm. What I asked, mister
Carnegie was the next enterprise with which you identified yourself.

(01:32:21):
In company with several others, I purchased the now famous
story farm on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had
been bored and natural oil struck the year before. This
proved a very profitable investment in triumphant democracy. Mister Carnegie
has expatiated most fully on this venture, which is so important.

(01:32:42):
When I first visited this famous well, he says, the
oil was running into the creek, where a few flat
bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated
down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each
week when the creek was flooded by means of a
temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural old
oil business. We purchased the farm for forty thousand dollars

(01:33:04):
and so small was our faith in the ability of
the earth to yield for any considerable time the hundred
barrels per day which the property was then producing, that
we decided to make a pond capable of holding one
hundred thousand barrels of oil, which we estimated would be
worth when the supply ceased one million dollars. Unfortunately for us,

(01:33:24):
the pond leaked fearfully. Evaporation also caused much loss, but
we continued to run oil and to make the losses good,
day after day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone
in this fashion. Our experience with the farm is worth reciting.
Its value rose to five million dollars, that is, the
shares of the company sold in the market upon this basis,

(01:33:46):
and one year it paid cash dividends of one million
dollars upon an investment of forty thousand dollars. Iron bridges.
Were you satisfied to rest with these enterprises in your hands?
I asked. No. Railway bridges were then built almost exclusively
of wood, but the Pennsylvania Railroad had begun to experiment

(01:34:09):
with cast iron. It struck me that the bridge of
the future must be of iron, and I organized in
Pittsburgh a company for the construction of iron bridges. That
was the Keystone Bridge Works. We built the first iron
bridge across the Ohio. His entrance of the realm of
steel was much too long for mister Carnegie to discuss,

(01:34:30):
although he was not unwilling to give information relating to
the subject, it appears that he realized the immensity of
the steel manufacturing business at once. The Union Iron Mills
soon followed as one of the enterprises, and later the
famous Edgar Thompson Steel rail Mill. The last was the
outcome of a visit to England in eighteen sixty eight,

(01:34:53):
when Carnegie noticed that English railways were discarding iron for
steel rails. The Bessemer process had been there perfected and
was making its way in all the iron producing countries. Carnegie,
recognizing that it was destined to revolutionize the iron business,
introduced it into his mills and made steel rails with
which he was enabled to compete with English manufacturers Homestead

(01:35:17):
Steel Works. His next enterprise was the purchase of the
Homestead Steel Works, his great rival in Pittsburgh. In eighteen
eighty eight. He had built or acquired seven distinct iron
steel works, all of which are now included in the
Carnegie Steel Company Limited. All the plants of this great
firm are within a radius of five miles of Pittsburgh.

(01:35:40):
Probably in no other part of the world can be
found such an aggregation of splendidly equipped steel works as
those controlled by this association. It now comprises the Homestead
Steel Works, the Edgar Thompson Steel Works and Furnaces, the
Duquesne Steel Works and Furnaces, all within two miles of
one another, the Lucy Furnaces, the Keystone own Bridge Works,

(01:36:01):
the Upper Union Rolling Mills, and the Lower Union Rolling Mills.
In all branches, including the Great Coke Works, Mines, et cetera,
there are employed twenty five thousand men. The monthly pay
roll exceeds one million, one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars,
or nearly fifty thousand dollars for each working day. Including

(01:36:23):
the Frick Coke Company, the united capital of the Carnegie
Steel Company exceeds sixty million dollars. A strengthening policy. You
believe in taking active measures, I said to make men successful.
Partial view of the Homestead Steel Works. I believe in
anything which will help men to help themselves to induce

(01:36:45):
them to save. Every workman in our company is allowed
to deposit part of his earnings not exceeding two thousand
dollars with the firm, on which the high interest rate
of six percent is allowed. The firm also lends to
any of its workmen to buy a lot or to
build a house, taking its pay by installments. Has this
contributed to the success of your company? I think so.

(01:37:09):
The policy of giving a personal interest to the men
who render exceptional service is strengthening with us. There are
many such, and every year several more are added as partners.
It is the policy of the concern to interest every
superintendent in the works, every head of a department, every
exceptional young man. Promotion follows exceptional service, and there is

(01:37:31):
no favoritism philanthropy. All you have said so far merely
gives the idea of getting money, without any suggestion as
to the proper use of great wealth. Will you say
something on that score? My views are rather well known.
I think what a man owns is already subordinate in

(01:37:51):
America to what he knows. But in the final aristocracy,
the question will not be either of these. But what
has he done for his fellows? Where has he shown
generosity and self abnegation. Where has he been a father
to the fatherless and the cause of the poor. Where
has he searched that out That mister Carnegie has lived

(01:38:12):
up in the past and is still living up to
this radical declaration of independence from the practice of men
who have amassed fortunes around him, will be best shown
by a brief enumeration of some of his almost unexampled philanthropies.
His largest gift has been to the city of Pittsburgh,
the scene of his early trials and later triumphs. There
he has built, at a cost of more than a

(01:38:34):
million dollars, a magnificent library, museum, concert hall, and picture gallery,
all under one roof, and endowed it with a fund
of another million, the interest of which fifty thousand dollars
per annum is being devoted to the purchase of the
best works of American art. Other libraries, to be connected
with this largest as a center, are now being constructed,

(01:38:55):
which will make the city of Pittsburgh and its environs
a beneficiary of his general rocity to the extent of
five million dollars. While thus endowing the city where his
fortune was made. He has not forgotten other places endeared
to him by association or by interest. To the Allegheny
Free Library, he has given three hundred and seventy five
thousand dollars to the Braddock Free Library, two hundred and

(01:39:19):
fifty thousand dollars to the Johnstown Free Library fifty thousand dollars,
and to the Fairfield, Iowa Library, forty thousand dollars to
the Cooper Institute, New York. He has given three hundred
thousand dollars to his native land. He has been scarcely
less generous. To the Edinburgh Free Library he has given

(01:39:40):
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and to his native
town of Dunfermline ninety thousand dollars. Other Scottish towns, to
the number of ten, have received helpful donations of amounts
not quite so large. He has given fifty thousand dollars
to aid poor young men and women to gain a
musical education at the Royal College of Music in London.

(01:40:02):
The misfortune of being rich men's sons, I should like
to cause you to say some other important things for
young men to learn and benefit by. Our young partners
in a Carnegie company have all won their spurs by
showing that we did not know half as well what
was wanted as they did. Some of them have acted,
upon occasions with me as if they owned the firm,

(01:40:22):
and I was but some airy New Yorker presuming to
advise upon what I knew very little about. Well, they
are not now interfered with. They were the true bosses,
the very men we were looking for. Is this all
for the poor boy? Every word? Those who have the
misfortune to be rich men's sons are heavily weighted in

(01:40:43):
the race. A basket full of bonds is the heaviest
basket a young man ever had to carry. He generally
gets to staggering under it. The vast majority of rich
men's sons are unable to resist the temptations to which
wealth subjects them, and they sink to unworthy lives. It
is not from this class that the poor beginner has

(01:41:04):
rivalry to fear. The partner's sons will never trouble you much.
But look out that some boys poorer, much poorer than yourselves,
whose parents cannot afford to give them any schooling. Do
not challenge you at the post and pass you at
the grand stand. Lookout for the boy who has to
plunge into work direct from the common school, and begins
by sweeping out the office. He is the probable dark

(01:41:26):
horse that will take all the money and win all
the applause. Mister Carnegie's recent retirement from business and the
sale of his vast properties to the Morgan Syndicate marks
a new era in his remarkable career, and it gives
him the more leisure to consider carefully every dollar he
bestows in a series of magnificent charities that he has inaugurated,

(01:41:47):
How they succeeded. Life stories of successful men told by
themselves by Orison Sweat Martin Chapter seventeen, Harishoff, the yacht
Builder one, The Voyage of Life, total eclipse, no sun,
no moon, darkness amid the blaze of noon Milton, amid

(01:42:10):
the ranks of the blind. We often find men and
women of culture and general ability, but we do not
look for world renowned specialists. No one is surprised at
a display of enterprise in a booming Western town where
everybody is hustling, but in a place which has once
ranked as the third seaport in America, but has seen
its maritime glory decline. A man who can establish a

(01:42:32):
marine industry on a higher plain than was ever before known,
and attract to his work such worldwide attention as to
restore the vanished fame of his town. Is no ordinary person. Moreover,
if such a man has laid his plans and done
his work in the disheartening eclipse of total blindness, he
must possess qualities of the highest order. The office of

(01:42:53):
the Hareschoff Manufacturing Company at Bristol, Rhode Island, is in
a building that formerly belonged to the burnt Side Rifle Company.
It is substantial but unpretentious, and is entered by a
short stairway on one side. The furniture throughout is also plain,
but has been selected with excellent taste, and is suggestive

(01:43:14):
of the most effective adaptation of means two ends. In
every detail. On the mantle and on the walls are
numerous pictures, most of them of vessels, but very few
relating directly to any of the great races for the
America's Cup. The first picture to arrest one's attention, indeed,
is an excellent portrait of the late General Ambrose E. Burnside,

(01:43:35):
who lived in Bristol and was an intimate friend of
John b Airishoff. Previous inquiry had elicited the information that
the members of the firm are very busy, with various
large orders in addition to the rush of work on
cup defenders. So it was a very agreeable surprise when
I was invited into the tasteful private office where the
blind President sat, having just concluded a short conversation with

(01:43:58):
an attorney. The work show well, Sir, said he, rising
and grasping my hand cordially, what do you wish? I
realize how very busy you must be, mister Harrishchoff, I replied,
and will try to be as brief as possible. But
I venture to ask a few minutes of your time
to obtain suggestions and advice from you to young people.

(01:44:20):
But why select me in particular as an adviser? This
was a poser at first, especially when he added, noting
my hesitation, we are frequently requested to give interviews in
regard to our manufacturing business. But since as it is
the settled policy of our house to do our work
just as well as we possibly can and then leave

(01:44:41):
it to speak for itself, we have felt obliged to
decline all these requests. It would be repugnant to our
sense of propriety to talk in public about our special industry.
Let the work show seems to us a good motto,
the voyage of life, true, said I, But the readers
of my books may not care to read of cutters

(01:45:02):
or skimming dishes, center boards, or fin keels, or copper
coils versus steel tubes for boilers. They leave the choice
in such matters to you, realizing that you have always
proved equal to the situation. What I want now is
advice in regard to the race of life, the voyage
in which each youth must be his own captain, but

(01:45:22):
in which the words of others who have successfully sailed
the sea before will help to avoid rocks and shoals,
and to profit by favoring currents and trade winds. You
have been handicapped in an unusual degree, sailing in total darkness,
and beset by many other difficulties, but have nevertheless made
a very prosperous voyage. In overcoming such serious obstacles, you

(01:45:45):
must have learned much of the true philosophy of both
success and failure, and I think you will be willing
to help the young with suggestions drawn from your experience.
I always want to help young people or old people either,
for that matter, If anything I can say will do so.
But what can I say a mother's mighty influence? What

(01:46:05):
do you call the prime requisite of success? I shall
have to answer that by a somewhat humorous but very
shrewd suggestion of another. Select a good mother, especially for boys.
I consider an intelligent, affectionate, but considerate mother an almost
indispensable requisite to the highest success. If you would improve
the rising generation to the utmost, appeal first to the

(01:46:28):
mothers in what way above all things? Else? Show them
that reasonable self denial is a thousandfold better for a
boy than to have his every wish gratified. Teach them
to encourage industry, economy, concentration of attention and purpose, and
indomitable persistence. But most mothers try to do this, don't they? Yes,

(01:46:51):
in a measure, But many of them, perhaps most of them,
do not emphasize the matter half enough. A mother may
wish to teach all these lets to her son, but
she thinks too much of him, or believes she does
to have him suffer any deprivation, and so indulges him
in things which are luxuries for him under the circumstances.
Rather than necessaries. Many a boy born with ordinary intellect

(01:47:16):
would follow the example of an industrious father, were it
not that his mother wishes him to appear as well
as any boy in the neighborhood. So, without exactly meaning it,
she gets to making a show of her boy and
brings him up with the habit of idling away valuable
time to keep up appearances. The prudent mother, however, sees
the folly of this course, and teaches her son to

(01:47:38):
excel in studying work rather than in vain display. The
difference in mothers makes all the difference in the world
to children, who, like Brooks, can be turned very easily
in their course of life. Self help what ranks next
in importance Boys and girls themselves, especially as they grow
older and have a chance to understand but life means,

(01:48:01):
should not only help their parents as a matter of duty,
but should learn to help themselves for their own good.
I would not have them forego recreation a reasonable amount
every day, but let them learn the reality and earnestness
of existence, and resolved to do the whole work and
the very best work of thorough, reliable young men and women.
What career, What would you advise as to choosing a career,

(01:48:25):
in that I should be governed largely by the bent
of each youth. What he likes to do best of
all that he should do, and he should try to
do it better than any one else. That is legitimate emulation.
Let him devote his full energy to his work, with
the provision, however, that he needs change or recreation more
in proportion. As he uses his brain more, the more

(01:48:48):
muscular the work, if not too heavy. The more hours
is a good rule, The more brain work, the fewer hours.
Children at school should not be expected to work so
long or so hard as if engaged in manual labor. Temperament, too,
should be considered. A highly organized, nervous person like a

(01:49:08):
race horse, may display intense activity for a short time,
but it should be followed by a long period of rest,
while the phlegmatic person, like the ox or the draft horse,
can go all day without injury. Education. I believe in
education most thoroughly, and think no one can have too
much knowledge if properly digested. But in many of our

(01:49:30):
colleges I have often thought not more than one in
five is radically improved by the course. Most collegiates waste
too much time and frivolity, and somehow there seems to
be little restraining power in the college to prevent this.
I agree that students should have self restraint and application themselves,
but in the absence of these, the college should supply

(01:49:52):
more compulsion than is now the rule apprentices, Do you
favor reviving the old apprentice system for would be mechanics
only in rare cases. As a rule, we have special
machines now that do as perfect work as the market requires,
some of them indeed better work than can be done
by hand. A boy or man can soon learn to

(01:50:15):
tend one of these when he becomes for ordinary purposes
a specialist. Very few shops now have apprentices. No rule, however,
will apply to all, and it may still be best
for one to serve an apprenticeship in a trade in
which he wishes to advance beyond any predecessor or competitor.
Prepare to the utmost, then do your best. Is success

(01:50:39):
dependent more upon ability or opportunity. Of course, opportunity is necessary.
You couldn't run a mammoth department store on the desert
of Sahara. But given the possibility, the right man can
make his opportunity and should do so if it is
not at hand or does not come after reasonable waiting.

(01:51:00):
Even Napoleon had to wait for his. On the other hand,
if there is no ability, none can display itself, and
the best opportunity must pass by unimproved. The true way
is to first develop your ability to the last outs,
and then you will be ready for your opportunity when
it comes, or to make one if none offers present opportunities.

(01:51:23):
Is the chance for a youth as good as it
was twenty five or fifty years ago. Yes, and no.
In any country, as it becomes more thickly populated, the
chance for purely individual enterprises is almost sure to diminish.
One notices this more as he travels through other and
older countries, where, far more than with us, boys follow

(01:51:45):
in the footsteps of their fathers generation after generation. But
for those who are willing to adapt themselves to circumstances,
the chance to day, at least from a pecuniary standpoint,
is better than ever before for those starting in life.
There was doubtless more chance for the individual boat builder
in the days of King Philip, when each Indian made

(01:52:06):
his own canoe, but there is certainly more profit now
for an employee of our firm of boat builders. Natural
executive ability granted, however, that he can find employment, how
do his chances of rising compare with those of your youth?
They still depend largely upon the individual. Some seem to
have natural executive ability, and others develop it, while most

(01:52:30):
men never possess it. Those who lack it cannot hope
to rise far, and never could. Jefferson's idea that all
men are created equal is true enough, perhaps so far
as their political rights are concerned. But from the point
of view of efficiency in business, it is ridiculous. In
any shop of one hundred men, you will find one

(01:52:51):
who is acknowledged at least tacitly as the leader, and
he sooner or later becomes so. In fact, a rich
boy may get and hold a place an office on
account of his wealth or influence. But in the works
merit alone will enable a man to hold a place
long the development of power, But what is his chance

(01:53:11):
of becoming a proprietor? That is smaller? Of course, as
establishments grow larger and more valuable. It is all bosh
for every man to expect to become a Vanderbilt or
a Rockefeller, or to be president But in the long run,
a man will still rise and prosper in almost exact
proportion to his real value to the business world. He

(01:53:34):
will rise or fall according to his ability. Can he
develop ability? Yes, to a certain extent. As I have said,
we are not all alike, and no amount of cultivation
will make some minds equal to those of others who
have had but little training. But whether great or small,
everyone has some weak point. Let him first study to

(01:53:55):
overcome that. How can he do it? The only way
I know of is to do it. But this brings
me back to what I told you at first. A
good mother will show one how to guard against his
weak points. She should study each child and develop his
individual character, for character is the true foundation. After all.

(01:54:17):
She should check extravagance and encourage industry and self respect.
My mother is one of the best, and I feel
I owe her a debt I can never repay my mother.
Your mother, Why I thought you had been a boat
builder for half a century. How old is she? She
is eighty eight and still enjoys good health. If I

(01:54:41):
have one thing more than another to be thankful for,
it is her care in childhood and her advice and
sympathy through life. How often have I thought of her
wisdom when I have seen mothers from Europe, where they
were satisfied to be peasants, seek to outshine all their
neighbors after they have been in America a few years,
and so bring financial ruined to their husbands or even

(01:55:01):
god them into crime, and cursed their children with contempt
for honest labor and positions for which they are fitted,
and a foolish desire to keep up appearances even by
living beyond their means, and by seeking positions they cannot
fill properly. A boat builder in youth, you must have
been quite young when you began to build boats, about

(01:55:23):
thirteen or fourteen years old. You see, my father was
an amateur boat builder in a small way and did
very good work, but usually not for sale. But I
began the work as a business thirty six years ago,
when I was about twenty two. He would not be discouraged.
You must have been terribly handicapped by your blindness. It

(01:55:46):
was an obstacle, but I simply would not allow it
to discourage me and did my best just the same
as if I could see. My mother had taught me
to think, and so I made thought and memory take
the place of eyes. I acquired a kind of habit
of mental projection, which has enabled me to see models
in my mind, as it were, and to consider their
good and bad points intelligently. Besides, I cultivated my powers

(01:56:12):
of observation to the utmost. In other respects. Even now
I take an occasional trip of observation, for I like
to see what others are doing, and so keep abreast
of the progress of the age. But I must stop
or I shall get to talking shop, the thing I
declined to do at first. The sum of it all,

(01:56:32):
the main thing for a boy is to have a
good mother, to heat her advice, to do his best,
and not get a swelled head as he rises. In
other words, not to expect to put a gallon into
a pint cup or a bushel into a peck. Measure. Concentration, decision, industry,
and economy should be his watchwords, and invincible determination and

(01:56:53):
persistence his rule of action. With another cordial handshake, he
bade me good bye. Two. What the Herreschoff brothers have
been doing. Their recent cup defenders have made their names
familiar to all, but shipping circles have long known them.
The business of the firm was long confined almost wholly

(01:57:14):
to the creation of boats with single masts, each craft
from twenty to thirty six feet long. In their first
ten years of associated work they built nearly two thousand
of these, but they were wonderful little boats, and of
unrivaled swiftness. Then they made as wonderful a success in
building steam fishing yachts. Then came torpedo boats. The race

(01:57:37):
between the Vigilant and the Valkyrie. The Vigilant Herreschoff boat
the winner, and in eighteen eighty one their proposal to
the British government to build two vedet boats was accepted
on condition they should outmatch the work of White, the
naval launch builder at Cows. No firm had ever been
able to compete with White, but in the following July

(01:57:59):
the TI two Herrischoff boats were in the Portsmouth Dockyard, England,
ready for trial. They were each forty eight feet long,
nine feet in beam and five feet deep, exactly the
same size as Whites. They made fifteen and one half
knots an hour, while Whites only recorded twelve and two
fifths knots. With all their machinery, coal and water in place,

(01:58:22):
the Herrischoff boats were filled with water, and then twenty
men were put aboard each, that human load being just
so much in excess the Admiralty test, and even then
each had a floating capacity of three tons. The examiners
pronounced enthusiastically in favor of the Herrischoff's safety coil boilers
as unexplodable, less liable to injury from shock, capable of

(01:58:44):
raising steam more quickly, far lighter, and in all respects
superior to those that had been formerly used for the purpose.
The boats were accepted and orders given at once for
two pinnases, each thirty three feet long. Again, John Samuel
White comp but his new boats could only make seven
and one eighth knots, while the harrishofs easily scored nine

(01:59:06):
and one quarter. Racing Jay Gould in July eighteen eighty three,
Jay Gould was highly elated over the speed of his
beautiful steam yacht Atlanta, which had several times met in
distanced Edward S. Jaffrey's Wonderful Stranger. But on the twentieth
of that month, his happiness, as the story is told,
was very suddenly dashed. After a hard day's work, the jaded,

(01:59:30):
Jay boarded the Atlanta and began to shake out his
pin feathers a little figuratively speaking. But before his boat
had gone far on her run to Irvington, the bold
manipulator of Wall Street made out a craft on his
weather quarter that seemed to be gliding after the Atlanta
with intent to overhaul her. He had a good start, however,
and sang out to the captain to keep a sharp

(01:59:52):
eye on the persistent little stranger. So unlike that a
stranger he had vanquished. I wonder what it is, he
exclaimed to a friend beside him. The friend looked long
and carefully at the oncoming boat, then turned a quizzical
eye on Jay, remarking, in a little while we can tell.
Will she get that close? I think she will. It

(02:00:16):
was not long before the strange boat was abreast of
the Atlanta, and Jay was then able to make out
the mystical number one hundred on her. He rubbed his eyes.
Those were the very figures he had long hoped to
see on the stock ticker after the words Western Union,
But that day they had lost their charm. Before long,
he was not only able to see the broadside of

(02:00:38):
the one hundred but also had a good view of
the stern of the vessel, whereon the same figures soon appeared,
and nearly as soon disappeared as the one hundred bade
goodbye to the Atlanta, which was burning every pound of
coal that could possibly be carried without putting mister Gould
or some efficient substitute on the safety valve. He seems
to be out of humor to night, said his coat Wachman,

(02:01:00):
after leaving his employer at the door of his Irvington mansion.
The Mystic one hundred, which by the way, was just
one hundred feet over all, was merely the hundred steamer
built by the Harrischoffs, but on her first trip up
the Hudson she attracted as much attention as the half
Moon of Henry Hudson or the Clermont of Robert Fulton.

(02:01:21):
She was the fastest yacht in the world and was
beaten on the river by only one vessel, the Merry Powell,
for and one half minutes in twenty miles. Although mister
Gould was considerably irritated at his defeat, he knew a
good thing when he saw it, and the next year
he ordered a small steam launch of the Harrishoffs. The
one hundred made a great stir in Boston Harbor. Later

(02:01:45):
on she steamed through the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes,
and made her home with the millionaire Mark Hopkins. The stiletto.
The versatility of the Harrishoffs has appeared in their famous
boiler improvement and in the great variety of vessels they
have built. The stiletto, only ninety four feet long overall,
astonished the yachting world in eighteen eighty five. On June tenth,

(02:02:10):
she beat the Mary Powell two miles in a race
of twenty eight miles on the Hudson. At one time
that the stiletto circled completely around the big steamer and
then moved rapidly away from her. Secretary Whitney bought the
stiletto for the United States Navy, in which she has
done valuable service. She was followed in eighteen ninety by

(02:02:32):
the still faster Cushing, whose record in the recent Spanish
American War is so well known. Admiral Porter wrote to
Secretary of the Navy Chandler that the little herreshof steam
launches were faster than any other owned by the government.
Their great superiority showing, especially against a strong head wind
and sea, when they would remain dry while their rivals

(02:02:53):
required constant bailing. They were better trimmed, lighter, more buoyant,
and in every way superior in nautical qualities, and twice
as fast as others in a gale. Nineteen vessels have
been built by this firm for the United States Government.
There is a certain speed that attaches to every vessel,
which may be called its natural rate, says Lewis Herrischaff.

(02:03:15):
It is mainly governed by its length and the length
of the carrier wave which always accompanies a vessel parallel
to her line of motion. When she reaches a speed
great enough to form a wave of the same length
as the moving body, then that vessel has reached her
natural rate of speed, and all that can be obtained
above that is done by sheer brute force. The natural

(02:03:36):
limit of speed of about forty feet long is about
ten miles an hour of a vessel sixty feet in length,
twelve and one quarter miles of one one hundred feet
long fifteen and three fourths miles of one two hundred
feet long twenty two miles. As the speed is increased,
this double or carrier wave one half on either side

(02:03:56):
of the yacht lengthens in such a way that the
vessel seems to settle more the faster she goes, and
so has to climb the very wave she makes. Hence,
the motive power must be increased much faster than the
speed increases further in order to avoid this settling in
consequent climbing as much as possible. Lightness of construction, next

(02:04:16):
to correct proportions is made the great desideratum. In the
Harishov's ideal boat, they use what wherever possible, as it
is not two ninety six only lighter than metal, but
is reasonably strong and generally much more durable. Wherever heavy
strains come, a bracing form of construction is adopted and
metal is used also. The engine of the Stiletto weighs

(02:04:39):
ten pounds for each indicated horse power that of the
Cushing fifteen. The entire motive plant of the Cushing weighs
sixty five pounds for each horse power that of the
city of Paris two hundred. Comparing displacement, the former has
eight times the power of the latter. For four years,
our government kept the staff of officers stationed that the

(02:05:01):
Herreschoff works to experiment with high speed machinery, in which
the firm then led the country. One of their steamers,
ascending the Saint Lawrence River to the Thousand Islands, ran
up all the rapids except the Lachine, where a detour
by canal was made. The Canadians were deeply impressed by
this triumph. The Blind Brothers, one of the Herreschoff's sisters

(02:05:25):
is blind and a remarkable musician, and one brother blind
who studied music in Berlin and who conducts a school
of music in Providence. Lewis Herreschoff, one of the boat builders,
is also blind. He too is a fine musician and
an excellent bass singer, having received careful vocal training in Europe.

(02:05:45):
He has fine literary taste, a very clear style, and
writes for magazines, especially on boat building and engineering. He
has a large foreign correspondence, all of which he answers
personally on the typewriter. It would be difficult to find
a greater favorite with young people, to whom he devotes
much of his time teaching them games or lessons, also

(02:06:07):
how to sail or row a boat, how to swim
or float, and how to save each other. From drowning.
When walking along the street with a group of chatting children,
he will ask what time is it by the clock
on Saint Michael's Church. Pointing right at the steeple, he
will win a clock and set it exactly and regulate
it if it does not go right. The personality of

(02:06:29):
John B. Herreshoff. From his boyhood, John B. Herreschoff evinced
a great fondness for boats and machinery, finding most pleasure
in his leisure hours when boys of his age usually
think only of play, in haunting boat builders yards and
machine shops, studying how and why things were done, and
reading what had been done elsewhere in those branches of

(02:06:51):
industry beyond his field of observation. At the age of eleven,
he was studying the best lines for vessels, holes and
making models, and three year years later he began building boats.
His terrible affliction has never seemed to weaken his self
reliance or turn him aside from following the chosen pursuit
of his life, but has rather strengthened his devotion to

(02:07:11):
it and his capacity for it, by concentrating all his
faculties upon it. His many years of blindness have given
him not only the serious patient introspective look common to
those who suffer like him and their gentle, clearly modulated voice,
but have also developed all his other faculties to such
an extent as to largely replace the missing sense. He

(02:07:32):
can tell as much about an ordinary sized steam launch,
her lines, methods of construction, et cetera by feeling as
others can buy seeing, and he goes on inventing and building,
just as if his eyes were not closed forever. He
is a tall, big brain man who couldn't help inventing
in working. If he tried, such a man would have

(02:07:53):
to suffer the loss of more than one of his
senses before his mental efficiency would be impaired. When he
wanted to build some deem launches for the government, he
went to the Navy yard at Washington and felt of
the government launches to discover their shape and how they
were made. Then he went to Bristol and made better
launches suitable for the government's use. Has he a sixth sense?

(02:08:16):
He reads and understands the most delicate intonations and modulations
of voices, addressing him as others read and understand facial expression.
His sensitive fingers detect differences in metals, and follow, as
if with a gift of perception, the lines of models
submitted to him, and his mind sees even more clearly
than by mere physical sight, the intricacies of the most

(02:08:37):
complicated machinery intelligently described to him, or over which his
fingers are allowed to move. That is a good stick,
he will say, examining a pile of lumber with his fingers,
here's a shaky piece. Throw it out. It won't do,
for this work may come next, or saw off this
end its poor stock. The rest is all right. On

(02:09:00):
hearing him criticize, direct and explain things within his province,
a stranger finds it hard to believe he cannot see,
at least a little out of one eye, seeing with
the fingers. By the constant practice he has, as he
expresses it, learned to see with his hands not quite
so quickly, but he believes as perfectly as he could

(02:09:21):
with his eyes. And this means more than it does
in the case of an ordinary blind man. For by
a touch he can tell whether the graceful double curves
of a boat's bottom are in correct proportion, one with another,
And then by a few rapid sweeps of his hands
over all he can instantly judge of the symmetry and
perfection of the whole. Even more than this, he will

(02:09:43):
give minute directions to the carpenters and mechanics. Running his
hand along the piece of work one had produced, will
immediately detect the slightest deviation from the instruction he has given.
If at all impatient, he will seize the plane or
other tool and do the work himself. And yet the
the world calls this man blind. While skill plays a

(02:10:03):
material part, one of John B. Herreshoff's boats is a
product of the mind in a very great degree. Psychologists
tell us that we do not see with our eyes,
but with the brain. Proper. This blind man sees and
constructs not that which is objective and real to others,
but that which is evolved from a transcendental intelligence applied

(02:10:24):
to the most practical purposes. Brother Nat, one of the
brothers who has good eyes, is a prominent chemist in
New York. And one who can see is Nat. The
designer for the boat building. Nathaniel G. The Great yacht designer,
was born in eighteen forty eight. When he was not
more than two years old, he was often found asleep

(02:10:46):
on the sand along shore with the rising tide, washing
his bare feet. Whenever he was missing, he was sought
for first on the shore, where he would generally be
found watching the ships or playing with toy boats. At
nine years of ai he was an excellent helmsman, and
at twelve he sailed the Sprite to her first victory
and won a prize. When older grown, he was known

(02:11:08):
as a vigilant watcher of every chance, as well as
a skillful sailor. Once, when steering the Giante in a
failing wind, he veered widely from a crowd of contestants
so as to run into a good breeze. He noted
far to starboard and won the race. He took a
four years course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and

(02:11:29):
then served an apprenticeship with the famous Corless Engine Company.
He worked on the Great Engine at the Centennial Exposition,
and took a course of engineering abroad, visiting many noted
ship yards. He joined the firm in eighteen seventy seven,
fourteen years after the works were opened. Nathaniel Greene Harishoff,
named for General Green of revolutionary fame, is seven years

(02:11:52):
younger and only less famous than his blind brother as
a boat builder only second to John B. In about
the same way that green was second to Washington. General
Greene is second to no one, said Washington. John B.
Would have done splendid work without Nat, as he did
for years before the latter joined the firm, but it
would have been in a smaller way. For years, John B,

(02:12:15):
his father, and his brothers, James B. Or Lewis and
Nathaniel G. Were accustomed to get together frequently in the
dining room of the old homestead and talk and plan
together in regard to boat building. Nat would usually make
the first model on lines previously agreed upon, and then
John B would feel it over and suggest changes which

(02:12:36):
would be made, and the consultation continued until all was satisfactory.
Nathaniel is described as a tall, thin man with a
full beard and a stoop, the latter said to have
been acquired in watching his rivals in his races, craning
his head in order to see them from under the boom.
We have been always together from boyhood, said John B,

(02:12:57):
speaking of Nat. We have had the same pleasure, the
same purposes, the same aspirations. In fact, we have almost
been one, and we have achieved nothing for which a
full share of credit is not his just due. Nothing
has ever been done by one without the other. Whenever
one found an obstacle or difficulty, the other helped him

(02:13:17):
to remove it, and he, being without the disadvantage, I
have never makes a mistake how they succeeded. Life stories
of successful Men told by themselves by Orison Sweat Marten,
Chapter eighteen. A successful novelist Fame after fifty practical Hints

(02:13:38):
to young authors by emis ameilia E Barr to o
b Successful. That is the legitimate ideal every true worker
seeks to realize. But success is not the open secret
which it appears to be. Its elements are often uncomprehended,
and its roots generally go deep down into the very
beginnings of life. I can compel my soul to look

(02:14:01):
back into that twilight which shrouds my earliest years, and
perceive even in them, monitions and tendencies working for that
future which in my destiny was fashioned and shaped, when
as yet there was neither hint nor dream of it.
Fortunately I had parents who understood the value of biblical
and imaginative literature in the formation of the intellect. The

(02:14:21):
men and women whom I knew first and best were
those of the Hebrew world, sitting before the nursery fire.
While the snow fell softly and ceaselessly, and all the
mountains round were white, and the streets of the little
English town choked with drifts. I could see the camels
and the caravans of the Ishmaelitish merchants passing through the hot,
sandy desert. I could see Hagar weeping under the palm,

(02:14:45):
and the waters of the Red Sea standing up like
a wall, Miriam clashing the timbrels, and Deborah singing under
the oak, and Ruth gleaning in the wheat fields of
Bethlehem were as real to me as were the women
of my own home. Before I was six years old,
I had been with Christian to the celestial City, and
had watched with Crusoe the mysterious footprint on the sand,

(02:15:07):
and the advent of the Savages. Then came the wonders
of Afrites and Genii, and all the marvels and miracles
of the Arabian tales. These were the mind builders, and
those schools and teachers and text books did much afterwards.
I can never nor will forget the glorious company of
men and women from the sacred world, and that marvelous

(02:15:28):
company of caliphs and kings and princesses from wonderland and
fairyland that expanded my whole nature and fitted me for
the future miracles of nature and science, and all the
marvelous people of the poet's realm. Eight. This is a
most remarkable story communicated to me by Missus Barr, and
related for the first time in this article. The distinguished novelist,

(02:15:50):
being a perfect housekeeper and the mother of a large family,
yet earns twenty thousand dollars a year by her books,
which have been translated into the language of almost every
every civilized country. O. S. M. For eighteen years, I
was amassing facts and fancies, developing a crude intelligence, waiting
for the vitalization of the heart. Then Love, the supreme

(02:16:14):
teacher came, and his first lesson was renunciation. I was
to give up father and mother, home and kindred friends
and country, and follow where he would lead me into
a land strange and far off, child bearing and child
losing the limitations and delights of frontier life. The intimate
society of such great and individual men as Sam Houston

(02:16:36):
and the men who fought with him the intense feelings
induced by war its uncertainties and possibilities, and the awful
abiding in the valley of the shadow of death, with
the pestilence that walked in darkness and the sickness that
destroyed at noonday. All these events, with their inevitable asides,
were instrumental in the education and preparation of the seventeen

(02:16:58):
years of my married life. The calamitous lesson of widowhood
under peculiarly tragic circumstances, was the last initiation of a
heart already broken and humbled before him who doeth all
things well, no matter how hard the stroke may be.
I thought all was over then, Yet all was just beginning.
It was the open door to a new life, a

(02:17:20):
life full of comforts and serene still delightful studies. Though
I had written stories to please my children and many
things to please myself, it had never occurred to me
that money could be made by writing. The late William Libby,
a man of singular wisdom and kindness, first made me
understand that my brain and my ten fingers were security

(02:17:41):
for a good living. From my first effort, I began
to gather in the harvest of all my years of
study and reading in private writing, for there is this
peculiarity about writing, that if in any direction it has merit,
it will certainly find a market. For fifteen years I
wrote short stories, poems, editory and articles on every conceivable subject,

(02:18:03):
from Herbert Spencer's theories to gentlemen's walking sticks, but bringing
to every piece of work, if it was only ten lines,
the best of my knowledge and ability, and so earning
with a great deal of pleasure a very good living.
During the earlier years of this time I worked and
read on an average fifteen hours a day. For I
knew that to make good work, I must have constant

(02:18:25):
fresh material, must keep up to date in style, method,
and must therefore read far more than I wrote. But
I have been an omnivorous reader all my life long,
and no changes, no cares of home and children, have
ever interfered with this mental necessity. In the most unlikely
places and circumstances, I looked for books and found them.

(02:18:47):
These fifteen years on the weekly and monthly periodicals gave
me the widest opportunities for information. I had an alcove
in the Astor library, and I practically lived in it.
I slept and aid at home. But I lived in
that city of books. I was in the prime of life.
But neither society, amusements, nor pleasures of any kind could

(02:19:08):
draw me away from the source of all my happiness
and profit. Suddenly, after this long novis, I received the
call for a different work. I had an accident which
confined me to my room, and which I knew would
keep me from active work for some months. I fretted
for my work as drywood frets an inch from the flame,

(02:19:29):
and said, I shall lose all I have gained. I
shall fall behind in the race. All these things are
against me. They were all for me. A little story
of what seemed exceptional Merit had been laid away in
the hope that I might some day find time to
extend it into a novel. A prisoner in my chair,
I finished the book in six weeks and send it

(02:19:50):
to DoD Mead and Company. On Thanksgiving morning, a letter
came accepting the book, and any of my readers can
imagine what a happy Thanksgiving Dave was. This book was
Jan Vetter's Wife, and its great and immediate success indicated
to me the work I was at length ready for.
I was then in my fifty second year, and every

(02:20:11):
year had been a preparation for the work I have
since pursued. I went out from that sick room sure
of my vocation and with a confidence founded on the
certainty of my equipment, and a determination to trust humanity
and take my readers only into green pastures and ways
of purity and heroism. I ventured on my new path
as a novelist. I cannot close this paper without a

(02:20:34):
few words. To those who wish to profit by it.
I want them to be sure of a few points
which in my narrative I may not have emphasized sufficiently.
Words of counsel. One. Men and women succeed because they
take pains to succeed. Industry and patience are almost genius,
and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and

(02:20:57):
perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make. Determination and unity
of purpose supply the place of ability. Two. Success is
the reward of those who spurn delights and live laborious days.
We learn to do things by doing them. One of
the great secrets of success is pegging away. No disappointment

(02:21:18):
must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed
in order to take a longer leap forward free. No
opposition must be taken to heart. Our enemies often help
us more than our friends. Besides, a head wind is
better than no wind. Whoever got anywhere in a dead
calm for a fatal mistake is to imagine that success

(02:21:42):
is some stroke of luck. This world is run with
far too tight a rain for luck to interfere. Fortune
sells her wares, she never gives them in some form
or other. We pay for her favors, or we go
empty away. Five. We have been told for centuries to
watch for opportunities and to strike while the iron is hot.

(02:22:05):
Very good, But I think better of Oliver Cromwell's amendment,
make the iron hot by striking it. Six. Everything good
needs time. Don't do work in a hurry. Go into details.
It pays in every way. Time means power for your work.
Mediocrity is always in a rush. But whatever is worth

(02:22:27):
doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius
is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone
can do badly. Seven. Be orderly. Slatternly work is never
good work. It is either affectation or there is some
radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the

(02:22:47):
spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy,
and without clearness and order. Eight. Never be above your profession.
I have had many letters from people who wanted all
the ammoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said
literature is the accident of my life. I am a lawyer,
or a doctor, or a lady or a gentleman. Literature

(02:23:10):
is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the
whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of
a devotee. Nine. Don't fail through defects of temper and
oversensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps
to success is to be cheerful, to go to work
with a full sense of life, to be determined to

(02:23:31):
put hindrances out of the way, to prevail over them,
and to get the mastery above all things. Else, be cheerful.
There is no beatitude for the despairing apparent. Success may
be reached by sheer impudence in defiance of offensive demerit.
But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for
are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry

(02:23:53):
may flourish, but when its bay tree is greenest. It
is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just.
It may it does patronize quacks, but it never puts
them on a level with true men. It is better
to have the opportunity of victory than to be spared.
The struggle for success comes. But as the result of

(02:24:13):
arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before
I can well remember. It was after at least forty
five years of conscious labor that I reached the object
of my hope. Many a time my head failed me,
my hands failed me, my feet failed me. But thank God,
my heart never failed me, because I knew that no

(02:24:35):
extremity would find God's arm shortened. How they succeeded Life
stories of successful men told by themselves by oars in
Sweat Marten, chapter nineteen, How Theodore Thomas brought the people
nearer to music and Mark Thomas is an early riser.
And as I found him one morning in his chambers

(02:24:57):
in Chicago, he was preparing to leave for Herard. So
the hale, old gentleman actively paced the floor while I
conversed with him. Mister Thomas, I said, those familiar with
the events of your life consider them a lesson of
encouragement for earnest and high minded artists. That is kind,
he answered, I should like, if you will, to have

(02:25:19):
you speak of your work in building up your great
orchestra in this country. That is too long a story.
I would have to begin with my birth. Where were
you born, i asked, in the Kingdom of Hanover in
eighteen thirty five. My father was a violinist, and from
him I inherited my taste. I suppose he taught me

(02:25:42):
music when I was only six years old. I played
the violin at public concerts. I was not an infant prodigy.
I was not an infant prodigy. However, my father had
too much wisdom to injure my chances in that way.
He made me key to my studies in a manner
that did me good. I came to America in eighteen

(02:26:04):
forty five. Was the American music field crowded? Then? On
the contrary, there wasn't any field to speak of. It
had to be made. Music was the pastime of a few.
The well educated and fashionable classes possessed or claimed a
knowledge of it. There was scarcely any music for the

(02:26:25):
common people. How did you get your start in the
New York world of music. I asked with four associates,
William Mason, Joseph Mozenthel, George Matzke, and Frederick Berger, I
began a series of concerts of chamber music, and for
many years we conducted this modest artistic enterprise. There was

(02:26:45):
much musical enthusiasm on our part, but very little reward
except the pleasure we drew from our own playing. These
Mason and Thomas soirees are still remembered by old time
music lovers of New York, not only for their excellence,
but for the peculiar character of the audiences. They were quiet,
little monthly reunions to which most of the guests came

(02:27:06):
with complimentary tickets. The critics hardly ventured to intrude upon
the exercises, and the newspapers gave them little notice. Beginning
of the orchestra, How did you come to found your
great orchestra? It was more of a growth than a
full fledged thought to begin with. It was in eighteen
sixty one that I severed my connection with the opera

(02:27:28):
and began to establish a genuine orchestra. I began with
occasional performances, popular Matine concerts, and so on, and in
a few years was able to give a series of
symphony soirees at the old Irving Hall in New York.
To the average person, this work of mister Thomas may
seem to be neither difficult nor great. Yet while any

(02:27:49):
one could have collected a band in a week, to
make such an orchestra as mister Thomas meant to have
required time and patience. It was when the Philharmonic Society,
after living through a great many hardships, was on the
full tide of popular favor. Its concerts and rehearsals filled
the Academy of Music with the flower of New York society.

(02:28:11):
Powerful social influences had been won to its support, and
Carl Bergmann had raised its noble orchestra of one hundred
performers to a point of proficiency then quite unexampled in
this country, and in some particular still unsurpassed. Ladies and
gentlemen who moved in the best circles hardly noticed the
parallel entertainment offered in such a modest way by mister

(02:28:31):
Thomas on the opposite side of the street. The patrons
of his chamber concerts, of course, went in to see
what the new orchestra was like professional musicians, hurried to
the hall with their free passes, and there were a
few curious listeners besides, who found in the programmes a
class of compositions somewhat different from those which mister Bergmann
chiefly favored, and in particular a freshness and novelty in

(02:28:55):
the selections, with an inclination not yet very strongly marked
towards the modern German school. Among such of the dilettante
as condescended to think of mister Thomas at all, there
was a vague impression that his concerts were started in
opposition to the Philharmonic Society, but that they were not
so good and much less genteel. It is true that

(02:29:15):
mister Thomas was surpassed at that time by mister Bergmann's
larger and older orchestra, and that he had much less
than an equal share of public favor, But there was
no intentional rivalry. The two men had entirely different ideas
and worked them out in perfectly original ways. It was
only the artist's dismal period of struggle and neglect, which

(02:29:36):
every beginner must pass through. He had to meet cold
and meager audiences and the false judgment of both the
critics and the people. Yet he was a singular compound
of good American energy and German obstinacy, and he never
lost courage. Was it a long struggle, I asked, not

(02:29:56):
very long. Matters soon began to mend. The orchestra improved,
the dreadful gaps in the audience soon filled up, and
at the end of the year the symphony soirees, if
they made no excitement in musical circles, had at least
achieved a high reputation. What was your aim at that time?
When I began, I was convinced that there is no

(02:30:19):
music too high for the popular appreciation, that no scientific
education is required for the enjoyment of Beethoven. I believe
that it is only necessary that a public whose taste
has been vitiated by overindulgence in trifles, should have time
and opportunity to accustom itself to better things. The American
people at large, then eighteen sixty four knew little or

(02:30:41):
nothing of the great composers for the orchestra. Three or
four more or less complete organizations had visited the principal
cities of the United States in former years, but they
made little permanent impression. Julian had brought over for his
Monster concerts only five or six solo players, and the
the band was filled up with such material as he

(02:31:02):
found here. The celebrated Germania Band of New York, which
had first brought mister Bergmann, famous then as the head
of the New York Philharmonic Society, into notice, did some
admirable work just previous to my start in New York.
But it disbanded after six years of vicissitude, And besides,
it was not a complete orchestra. You mean, I said,

(02:31:24):
as mister Thomas paused meditatively, that you came at a
time when there was a decided opportunity. Music had no
hold on the masses. Yes, there had been and were
then good organizations such as the New York Philharmonic Society
and the Harvard Musical Association in Boston, and a few
similar organizations in various parts of the country. I mean

(02:31:48):
no disparagement to their honorable labors, but in simple truth,
none of them had great influence on the masses. They
were pioneers of culture. They prepared the way for the
modern permanent orchestra. They were not important, No, no, that
cannot be said. It would be the grossest ingratitude to

(02:32:09):
forget what they did and have done and are still doing,
or detract in the smallest degree from their well earned fame.
But from the very nature of their organization, it was
inevitable that they should stand a little apart from the
common crowd. To the general public. Their performances were more
like mysterious rites, celebrated behind closed doors in the presence

(02:32:29):
of a select and unchanging company of believers. Year after year,
the same twenty five hundred people filled the New York
Academy of Music at the Philharmonic Concerts, applauding the same
class of master works, and growing more and more familiar
with the same standards of the strictly classical school. This
was no cause for complaint. On the contrary, it was

(02:32:50):
most fortunate that the reverence for the older forms of
art and canons of taste were thus kept alive. And
we know that little by little the culture which the
Philharmonic Society did fuses through the circle of its regular subscribers,
spreads beyond that small company, and raises the esthetic tone
of metropolitan life. But I believe then, as I believe now,

(02:33:11):
that it would require generations for this little leven to
leaven the whole mass, And so I undertook to do
my part in improving matters by forming an orchestra. You
wanted to get nearer the people with good music, No,
I wanted the people to get nearer to music. I
was satisfied that the right course is to begin at
the bottom instead of the top, and make the cultivation

(02:33:33):
of symphonic music a popular movement. Was the idea of
a popular permanent orchestra? Knew at that time. Yes, Why
was it necessary to effect a permanent orchestra? Why because
the first step in making music popular was to raise
the standard of orchestral performances and increase their frequency. Our

(02:33:55):
country had never possessed a genuine orchestra. For a band
of players gathered together at rare intervals for a special
purpose does not deserve the name. The musician who marches
at the head of a target company all the morning
in plays for a dancing party at night is out
of tune with the great masters. To express the deep
emotions of Beethoven, the romanticism of Schumann, or the poetry

(02:34:18):
of List. He ought to live in an atmosphere of
art and keep not only his hand in practice, but
his mind properly attempered. An orchestra therefore ought to be
a permanent body whose members play together every day under
the same conductor, and devote themselves exclusively to genuine music.
Nobody had yet attempted to found an orchestra of this

(02:34:39):
kind in America when I began, but I believed it
could be done working out his idea. Did you have
an idea of a permanent building for your orchestra? Yes?
I wanted something more than an ordinary concert room. The
idea needed it. It was to be a place suitable
for use at all seasons of the year. There was

(02:35:01):
to be communication in summer with an open garden, and
in winter. It was to be a perfect auditorium. Mister
Thomas's idea went even further. It must be bright, comfortable, roomy,
well ventilated. For a close and drowsy atmosphere is fatal
to symphonic music. It must offer to the multitude every
attraction not inconsistent with musical enjoyment. The stage must be

(02:35:25):
adapted for a variety of performances for popular summer entertainment
as well as the most serious of classical concerts. There
with an uninterrupted course of entertainments, night after night the
whole year round, the noblest work of all the great
masters might be worthily presented. The scheme was never wholly
worked out in New York great as mister Thomas's fame became,

(02:35:47):
but it was partially realized in the Old Exposition Building
in Chicago, where he afterwards gave his summer concerts, and
it is still nearer reality in the present permanent Chicago Orchestra,
which has the Great Auditorium for its home and a
fifty thousand dollars annual guarantee. What were your first steps
in this direction, I asked. I began with a series

(02:36:09):
of Alfresco entertainments in the old Terrace Garden in June
eighteen sixty six. They were well patronized and repeated in
eighteen sixty seven. Then in eighteen sixty eight we removed
to better quarters in Central Park Garden, and things prospered
so that in eighteen sixty nine I began those annual

(02:36:30):
tours which are now so common. The first itinerary of
this kind was not very profitable, but the young conductor
fought through it. Each new season improved somewhat, but there
were troubles and losses. More than once, the travelers trod
close upon the heels of calamity. The cost of moving
from place to place was so great that the most

(02:36:52):
careful management was necessary to cover expenses. They could not
afford to be idle even for a night, and the
towns capable of furnishing good audiences generally wanted fun. Hence,
they must travel all day, and Thomas took care that
the road should be smoothed with all obtainable comforts. Special
cars on the railways, special attendants to look after the luggage,

(02:37:15):
and lodgings at the best hotels contributed to make the
tour tolerably pleasant and easy, so that the men came
to their evening work fresh and smiling. They were tied
up by freshets and delayed by wrecks, but their fame
grew and the audiences became greater. Thomas's fame as a
conductor who could guarantee constant employment permitted him to take
his choice of the best players in the country, and

(02:37:37):
he brought over a number of European celebrities. As the
public taste improved, Theodore Thomas did another wise thing. He
treated New York like a provincial city, giving it a
week of music once in a while as he passed
through it on his travels. This excited the popular interest,
and when he came to stay the next season, a
brilliantly successful series of concerts was the result. At the close,

(02:38:02):
a number of his admirers united in presenting him a
rich silver casket holding a purse of thirty five hundred
dollars as a testimonial of gratitude for his services. The
Brooklyn Philharmonic Society placed itself under his direction. Chicago gave
him a fine invitation to attend benefit entertainments to himself,
and when he came, decked the hall with abundant natural flowers,

(02:38:26):
as if for the reception of a hero. He was
successful financially in every other way, and from that time
on he merely added to his laurels the chief element
of his success. What I asked of him, do you
consider the chief element of your success? That is difficult
to say. Perseverance, hard work, stern discipline each had its part.

(02:38:50):
You have never attempted to become rich. Po Do you
still believe in the best music for the mass of
the people. I do. My success has been with them.
It was so in New York. It is so here
in Chicago. Do you still work as hard as ever?
I inquired? Nearly so. The training of a large orchestra

(02:39:14):
never ends. The work must be gone over and over.
There is always something new, And your life's pleasure lies
in this wholly. So to render perfect music perfectly, that
is enough. How they succeeded. Life Stories of successful Men
told by themselves by Oarson Sweat Marten, Chapter twenty, John

(02:39:40):
Burrows at Home, the Hut on the Hilltop. When I
visited the hilltop retreat of John Burroughs, the distinguished writer
upon nature, at West Park, New York, it was with
the feeling that all success is not material, that mere
dollars are nothing, and that the influential man is the
successful man, whether he be rich or poor. John Burrows

(02:40:01):
is unquestionably both influential and poor, relatively poor, being an
owner of some real estate and having a modest income
from copyrights. He is content, knowing when he has enough.
On the wooden porch of his little bark covered cabin,
I waited one June afternoon until he should come back
from the woods and fields where he had gone for

(02:40:22):
a ramble. It was so still that the sound of
my rocker moving to and fro on the rough boards
of the little porch seemed to shock the perfect quiet
from afar Off came the plaintive cry of a wood dove,
and then all was still again. Presently the interpreter of
outdoor Life appeared in the distance, and, seeing a stranger
at his door, hurried homeward. He was without coat or

(02:40:46):
vest and looked cool in his white outing shirt and
large straw hat. After some formalities of introduction, we reached
the subject which I had called to discuss, and he said,
it is not customary to interview men of my books
concerning success, any one who has made a lasting impression
on the minds of his contemporaries. I began, and influenced

(02:41:08):
men and women. Do you refer to me, he interrupted, naively.
I nodded, and he laughed. I have not endowed a university,
nor made a fortune, nor conquered an enemy in battle,
he said, And those who have done such things have
not written Locusts and wild Honey and Wake Robin. I recognize,

(02:41:29):
he said, quietly, that success is not always where people
think it is. There are many ways of being successful,
and I do not approve of the mistake which causes
many to consider that a great fortune acquired means a
great success achieved. On the contrary, our greatest men need
very little money to accomplish the greatest work. I thought

(02:41:50):
that anyone leading a life so wholly at variance with
the ordinary ideas and customs would see success in life
from a different point of view. I observed, money is
really no object with you. The subject of wealth never
disturbs me. You lead a very simple life. Here such
as you see the sight would impress anyone. So far

(02:42:14):
is this disciple of nature away from the ordinary mode
of the world, that his little cabin, set in the
cup shaped top of a hill, is practically bare of
luxuries and the so called comforts of life. His surroundings
are of the rudest, the very rocks and bushes encroaching
upon his back door. All about the crest of the
hill encircles him and shuts out the world. Only the

(02:42:37):
birds of the air venture to invade his retreat from
the various sides of the mountain, and there is only
one approach by a straggling, narrow path. In his house
are no decorations, but such as can be hung upon
the exposed wood. The fireplace is of brick and quite wide.
The floor rough board, scrubbed white, the ceiling a rough

(02:42:57):
array of exposed rafters. And his bedrooms constructed. Very few
and very simple chairs, A plain table, and some shelves
for books make the wealth of the retreat and serve
for his ordinary use. Nine. This hut on the hilltop
is situated in an old lake bed, some three hundred
yards wide, half filled with peat and decomposed matter, swampy

(02:43:19):
and overgrown. This area was devoted by mister Burrows to
the raising of celery for the market, when he set
out to earn a living upon the land. Many people,
I said, think that your method of living is an
ideal example of the way people ought to live. There
is nothing remarkable in that. A great many people are
very weary of the way they think themselves compelled to live.

(02:43:43):
They are mistaken in believing that the disagreeable things they
find themselves doing are the things they ought to do.
A great many take their ideas of a proper aim
in life from what other people say and do. Consequently,
they are unhappy, and an independent existence such as mind
strikes them as ideal. As a matter of fact, it

(02:44:04):
is very natural. Would you say that to work so
as to be able to live like this should be
the aim of a young man by no means. On
the contrary, his aim should be to live in such
a way as will give his mind the greatest freedom
and peace. This can be very often obtained by wanting
less of material things and more of intellectual ones. A

(02:44:26):
man who achieved such an aim would be as well
off as the most distinguished man in any field. Money
getting is half a mania, and some other getting propensities
are manius. Also, the man who gets content comes nearest
to being reasonable. I should, like I said, to illustrate
your point of view from the details of your own life.

(02:44:48):
Students of nature do not, as a rule, have eventful lives.
I was born at Roxbury, New York, in eighteen thirty seven.
That was a time when conditions were rather primitive. My
father was a farmer, and I was raised among the
woods and fields. I came from an uncultivated, unreading class

(02:45:08):
of society, and grew up among surroundings the least calculated
to awaken the literary faculty. I have no doubt that
daily contact with the woods and fields will wakened my
interest in the wonders of nature, and gave me a
bent toward investigation in that direction. Ten blessed is he
whose youth was passed upon a farm, writes mister Burrows.

(02:45:29):
And if it was a dairy farm, his memories will
be all the more fragrant. The driving of the cows
to and from the pasture every day and every season
for years. How much of summer and of nature he
got into him on these journeys. What rambles and excursions
did this errand furnish? The excuse for the birds and
birds nests, the berries, the squirrels, the woodchucks, the beech

(02:45:52):
woods into which the cows loved so to wander and browse,
the fragrant winter greens, and a hundred nameless adventures, all
strong upon that brief journey of half a mile or
to and from the remote pasture. Did you begin early
to make notes and write upon nature? I questioned, Not
before I was sixteen or seventeen earlier than that. The

(02:46:14):
art of composition had anything but charms for me. I
remember that, while at school, at the age of fourteen,
I was required, like other students, to write compositions at
stated times but I usually evaded the duty one way
or another. On one occasion, I copied something from a
comic almanac and unblushingly handed it in as my own.

(02:46:37):
But the teacher detected the fraud and ordered me to
produce a twelve line composition before I left school. I
remember I racked my brain in vain, and the short
winter day was almost closing when Jay Gould, who sat
in the seat behind me, wrote twelve lines of doggerel
on his slate and passed it slyly over to me.
I had so little taste for writing that I coolly

(02:46:59):
copied that and handed it in as my own. You
were friendly with Gouldden, Oh, yes, chummy, they call it now.
His father's farm was only a little way from ours,
and we were fast friends, going home together every night.
His view of life must have been considerably different from yours,

(02:47:20):
it was. I always looked upon success as being a
matter of mind, not money, but Jay wanted the material appearances.
I remember that once we had a wrestling match, and
as we were about even in strength, we agreed to
abide by certain rules, taking what we called holts in
the beginning and not breaking them until one or the
other was thrown. I kept to this in the struggle,

(02:47:43):
but when Jay realized that he was in danger of
losing the contest, he broke the polt and through me.
When I remarked that he had broken his agreement, he
only laughed and said I threw you, didn't I? And
to every objection I made, he made the same answer.
The act of having one was pleasing to him. It
satisfied him, although it wouldn't have contented me. Did you

(02:48:06):
ever talk over success in life with him? Yes? Quite often.
He was bent on making money and did considerable trading
among us schoolboys, sold me some of his books. I
felt then that my view of life was more satisfactory
to me than his would have been. I wanted to
obtain a competence and then devote myself to high thinking

(02:48:28):
instead of to money making. Eleven, an old schoolmate in
a little red schoolhouse, has said that John and Jay
were not like the other boys. They learned their lessons easier,
and at recess, they looked on the games, but did
not join in them. John always knew where to find
the largest trout. He could show you birds nests, and

(02:48:48):
name all the flowers. He was fond of reading and
would walk five miles to borrow a book. Roxbury is
proud of John Burroughs. We celebrated Burrow's Day instead of
Arbor Day here last spring in the high school, in
honor of him. How did you plan to attain this
end by study? I began in my sixteenth or seventeenth

(02:49:12):
year to try to express myself on paper, and when
after I had left the country school, I attended the
seminary at Ashland and at Cooperstown. I often received the
highest marks in composition, though only standing about the average
in general scholarship. My taste ran to essays, and I
picked up the great works in that field at a
book store from time to time and filled my mind

(02:49:34):
with the essay idea. I bought the whole of doctor
Johnson's works at a second hand bookstore in New York,
because on looking into them, I found his essays appeared
to be solid literature, which I thought was just the thing.
Almost my first literary attempts were moral reflections, somewhat in
the Johnsonian style. You were supporting yourself during these years.

(02:49:56):
I taught six months and boarded round before I went
to the seminary that put fifty dollars into my pocket,
and the fifty paid my way at the seminary. Working
on the farm, studying and teaching filled up the years
until eighteen sixty three, when I went to Washington and
found employment in a treasury department. Twelve. It was when

(02:50:17):
he was attending the academy that young Boroughs first saw
that wonderful being a living author. I distinctly remember with
what emotion I gazed upon him, he said, and followed
him about in the twilight, keeping on the other side
of the street. He was of little account, a man
who had failed as a lawyer, and then had written
a history of Poland, which I have never heard of

(02:50:39):
since that time. But to me he was the embodiment
of the august spirit of authorship, and I looked upon
him with more reverence and enthusiasm than I had ever
before looked upon any man with I cannot divine why
I should have stood in such worshipful fear in awe
of this obscure individual, But I suppose it was the
instinctive tribute of a timid and imaginative youth to a

(02:51:00):
power he was just beginning to see or to feel
the power of letters. You were connected with the Treasury
then thirteen. My first book, Wake Robin, was written while
I was a government clerk in Washington, says mister Burrows.
It enabled me to live over again the days I
had passed with the birds and in the scenes of

(02:51:20):
my youth. I wrote the book while sitting at a
desk in front of an iron wall. I was the
keeper of a vault in which many million of bank
notes were stored. During my long periods of leisure, I
took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from
the iron wall in front of me, and sought solace
in memories of the birds and of summer fields and woods.

(02:51:43):
Oh yes, for nearly nine years. I left the department
in eighteen seventy two to become receiver of a bank,
and subsequently for several years I performed the work of
a bank examiner. I considered it only as an opportunity
to earn and save us up a little money on
which I could retire. I managed to do that and

(02:52:04):
came back to this region, where I bought a fruit farm.
I worked that into paying condition, and then gave all
my time to the pursuit of the studies I like.
Had you abandoned your interest in nature during your Washington life, No,
I gave as much time to the study of nature
and literature as I had to spare. When I was

(02:52:25):
twenty three, I wrote an essay on expression and sent
it to the Atlantic. It was so Emersony and in style,
owing to my enthusiasm for Emerson at that time, that
the editor thought some one was trying to palm off
on him an early essay of Emerson's which he had
not seen. He found that Emerson had not published any
such paper, however, and printed it, though it had not

(02:52:46):
much merit. I wrote off and on for the magazines.
The editor in question was James Russell Lowell, who, instead
of considering it without merit, often expressed afterwards the delight
with which he read this contribution from an unknown hand,
and the swift impression of the author's future distinction which
came to him with that reading. Your successful work then

(02:53:08):
has been in what direction I said, in studying nature.
It has all come by living close to the plants
and animals of the woods and fields, and coming to
understand them. There. I have been successful men who, like myself,
are deficient in self assertion, or whose personalities are flexible

(02:53:29):
and yielding make a poor show in business, But in
certain other fields these defects become advantages. Certainly it is
so in my case. I can succeed with bird or beast,
for I have cultivated my ability in that direction. I
can look in the eye of an ugly dog or
cow and win. But with an ugly man I have
less success. I consider the desire which most individuals have

(02:53:53):
for the luxuries which money can buy an error of mind,
he added, Those things do not mean anything except a
lack of higher tastes. Such wants are not necessary wants,
nor honorable wants. If you cannot get wealth with a
noble purpose, it is better to abandon it and get
something else. Peace of mind is one of the best

(02:54:15):
things to seek, and finer tastes and feelings. The man
who gets these and maintains himself comfortably is much more
admirable and successful than the man who gets money and
neglects these. The realm of power has no fascination for me.
I would rather have my seclusion and peace of mind.
This log hut, with its bare floors, is sufficient. I

(02:54:39):
am set down among the beauties of nature, and in
no danger of losing the riches that are scattered all about.
No one will take my walks or my brook away
from me. The flowers, birds and animals are plentifully provided.
I have enough to eat and wear, and time to
see how beautiful the world is and to enjoy it.

(02:55:00):
The entire world is after your money or the things
you have bought with your money. It is trying to
keep them that makes them seem so precious. I live
to broaden and enjoy my own life, believing that in
so doing I do what is best for everyone. If
I ran after birds only to write about them, I
should never have written anything that anyone else would have

(02:55:20):
cared to read. I must write from sympathy and love,
that is, from enjoyment, or not at all. I come
gradually to have a feeling that I want to write
upon a given theme. Whenever the subject recurs to me,
it awakens a warm personal response. My confidence that I
ought to write comes from the feeling or attraction which

(02:55:41):
some subjects exercise over me. The work is pleasure and
the result gives pleasure, and your work as a naturalist
is what. Climbing trees to study birds, lying by the
water side to watch the fishes, sitting still in the
grass for hours to study the insects, and tramping here
in there always to observe and study whatever is common

(02:56:03):
to the woods and fields. Men think you have done
a great work, I said, I have done a pleasant work,
he said, modestly. And the achievements of your schoolmate ghould
do not appeal to you as having anything in them
worth aiming for, I questioned, Not for me. I think
my life is better for having escaped such vast and

(02:56:25):
difficult interests. The gentle, light hearted naturalist and recluse came
down the long hill side with me to put me
right on the main road. I watched him as he
retraced his steps up the steep, dark path, lantern in hand,
his sixty years sat lightly upon him, And as he
ascended I heard him singing. Long after the light melody

(02:56:47):
had died away. I saw the serene little light bobbing
up and down in his hand, disappearing and reappearing, as
the lone philosopher repaired to his hut and his couch
of content. How they succeeded? Life stories of successful men
told by themselves by Orison Sweat Martin, Chapter twenty one

(02:57:08):
Freeland's romantic story how he came to transport a million
passengers a day. A short time ago, New York learned
with interest and some astonishment, that the head of its
greatest transportation system, Herbert H. Vreeland, had received from several
of his associates as individuals a Valentine present of one
hundred thousand dollars in recognition of his superb management of

(02:57:31):
their properties. Many New Yorkers then learned for the first
time what railroad experts throughout the country had long known,
that the transportation of a million people a day in
New York's busy streets, without serious friction or public annoyance,
is not a matter of chance, but is the result
of perhaps the most perfect traffic organization ever created, at

(02:57:52):
the head of which is a man, quiet, forceful, able,
with the ability of a great general, a master, and
at the same time a frien of men himself won
four whom, in the judgment of his associates, almost any
higher railroad career is possible. Thirty years ago, mister Freeland,
than a lad thirteen years old, was to use his

(02:58:13):
own humorous reminiscent phrase, histing ice on the Hudson River.
One of a gang of eighteen or twenty men and
boys filling the ice carts for retail city delivery. A
picture just brought to light shows him among the force
lined up to be photographed, as a tall, loosely built,
hatchet faced lad in working garb, with a fragment of
a smile on his face, as if he could appreciate

(02:58:35):
the contrast of the boy of that day with the
man of the future. How do these things happen? What
was the divine spark in this boy's brain heart that
should lift him out of the crowd of the commonplace
to the position of responsibility and influence in the world
which he now occupies. If my readers could have been
present at the interview kindly granted by mister Freeland to

(02:58:56):
the writer, and could have heard him recalling his early
life and its many strug and disappointments, with a smile
that was often near a tier, they would have gone
away feeling that nothing is impossible to him who dares,
and above all else who works, and they would have
derived inspiration far greater than can possibly be given in
these written words. I first entered the railroad business in

(02:59:18):
eighteen seventy five, said mister Freeland shoveling gravel on one
of the Long Island Railroad Company's night construction trains. Though
this position was humble enough, it was a great thing
to me then to feel myself a railroad man with
all that that term implied. And when, after a few
months trial, I was given the job of inspecting ties

(02:59:38):
and road bed at a dollar a day, I felt
that I was well on the road to the presidency.
One day the superintendent asked my boss if he could
give him a reliable man to replace a switchman who
had just made a blunder leading to a collision and
had been discharged. The reply was, well, I've got a
man named Vreeland here who will do exactly what you

(02:59:58):
tell him to. They called me up, and after a
few short, sharp questions from the train master, I went
down to the dreary in Desolate Marsh near Bushwick, Long Island,
and took charge of a switch For a few days.
I had to camp out near that switch in any
way that might happen. But finally the officers made up
their minds that they could afford me the luxury of

(03:00:20):
a two by four flag house with a stove in it,
and I settled down for more railroading. The Bushwick station
was not far away, and one of the company's division
headquarters was there. I soon made the acquaintance of all
the officials around that station, and got into their good
graces by offering to help them out in their clerical
work at any and all times when I was off duty.

(03:00:42):
It was a godsend to them and exactly what I wanted,
for I had determined to get into the inside of
the railroad business from bottom to top. Many's the time
I have worked till eleven or twelve o'clock at night
in that little station, figuring out train receipts and expenses,
engine cost and duty, and freight and passage statistics of
all kinds. And as a result of this work, I

(03:01:04):
quickly acquired a grasp of railroad details in all stages
which few managers possess. For in one way and another
I got into and through every branch of the business.
My Bushwick switch was a temporary one, put in for
construction purposes only, and after some month's use was discontinued
and I was discharged. This did not suit me at all,

(03:01:26):
and I went to one of the officials of the
road and told him that I wanted to remain with
the Long Island Railroad Company in any capacity whatsoever, and
would be obliged to him if he would give me
a job. He said at first that he hadn't a
thing for me to do, but finally added, as if
he was ashamed to suggest it, that if I had
a mind to go down on another division and sweep

(03:01:48):
out in dust cars, I might do it. I instantly accepted,
and thereby learned the details of another important railroad department.
Pretty soon they made me brakemen on an early morning
train to Hempstead, and then I found that I was
worth to the world after two years of railroad training
just forty dollars a month, plus a perquisite or two

(03:02:08):
obtained from running a card table department in the smoking cars.
I remembered that I paid eighteen dollars of my munificent
salary for board and lodging, sent twenty dollars home for
the support of my mother and sister, and had two
dollars a month, and the aforesaid perquisites left four luxuries.
It was about this time, thus early in my career,

(03:02:28):
that I first came to be known as President Freeland,
an old cojure upon the railroad. In talking to me
one day, said in a bantering way, well, I suppose
you think your fortune is made now you have become
a brakeman. But let me tell you what will happen.
You will be a brakeman about four or five years,
and then they will make you a conductor at about

(03:02:50):
one hundred dollars a month, and there you'll stick all
your life if you don't get discharged, I responded, rather angrily.
Do you suppose I am going to be satisfied with
remaining a conductor? I mean to be president of a railroad.
Ho ho ho, laughed the man. He told the story
around and many a time thereafter, the boys slyly placed

(03:03:12):
the word president before my name on official instructions and
packages sent to me. A conductor on one of the
regular trains quarreled one morning with the superintendent and was discharged.
I was sent for and told to take out that train.
This was jumping me over the heads of many of
the older brakemen, and as a consequence, all the brakemen

(03:03:33):
on that train quit. Others were secured, however, and I
ran the train regularly for a good many months. Then
came an accident one day, for which the engineer and
I were jointly responsible. We admitted our responsibility and were discharged.
I went again to the superintendent, however, and upon a

(03:03:54):
strong plea to be retained in a service, he sent
me back to the ranks among the brakemen. I had
no complaint to make, but accepted the consequence of my mistake.
Soon after this, the control of the road passed into
other hands. Many were discharged, and I was daily expecting
my own blue envelope. One day I was detailed to

(03:04:16):
act as brakemen on a special which was to convey
the President and directors of the road with invited guests
on a trip over the lines. By that time I
had learned the Long Island Railroad in all its branches
pretty well, and in the course of the trip was
called upon to answer a great many questions. The next
day I received word that the superintendent wanted to see me.

(03:04:39):
My heart sank within me, for summonses of this kind
were ominous in those days. But I duly presented myself
at the office and was asked, are you the good
looking brakeman who was on the special yesterday, who shows
his teeth when he smiles. I modestly replied that I
was certainly on the special yesterday, and I may possibly
have partly confirmed the rest of the identification by a smile.

(03:05:00):
For the superintendent, without further questioning, said the President wants
to see you upstairs. I went up, and in due
time was shown into the presence of the great man,
who I'd meet closely for a minute or two, and
then asked me abruptly what I was doing. I told
him I was breaking number seventeen. He said, take this

(03:05:21):
letter to your superintendent. It contains a request that he
relieve you from duty and put somebody else in your place.
After he has done so, come back here. All this
I did, and on my return to the President, he said,
take this letter at once to Admiral Peronne of the
French fleet then lying in the harbor on a visit

(03:05:42):
of courtesy to this country, and this to General Hancock
on Governor's Island. They contain invitations to each to dine
with me tomorrow night at my home in Garden City
with their staffs. Get their answers, and if they say yes,
return at once to New York Charter esteem call for
them tomorrow afternoon. Land them at Long Island City, arrange

(03:06:04):
for a special train from Long Island City to Garden City,
take them there, and return them after the banquet. I
leave everything in your hands. Good day. I suppose this
might be considered a rather large job for a common brakeman,
but I managed to get through with it without disgracing
myself and apparently to the satisfaction of all concerned. For

(03:06:26):
some time thereafter I was the President's special emissary on
similar matters connected with the general conduct of the business.
And while I did not perhaps learn so very much
about railroading proper, I was put in positions where I
learned to take responsibility and came to have confidence in myself.
The control of the Long Island Railroad again changed hands,

(03:06:47):
and I was again let out, this time for good
so far as that particular road was concerned, except that
within the last two or three years I have renewed
my acquaintance with it through being commissioned by a banking
syndicate in New York City to make an expert examination
of its plant and equipment as a preliminary to reorganization.
This was in eighteen eighty one or about that time,

(03:07:09):
and I soon secured a position as conductor on the
New York and Northern Railroad, a little line running from
one hundred and fifty fifth Street, New York City to Yonkers.
Not to go into tedious detail regarding my experience there,
I may say in brief that in course of time
I practically ran the road. After some years, it changed hands,

(03:07:30):
a thing which railways, particularly small ones, often do, and
always to the great discomposure of the employees and the
new owners, including William C. Whitney, Daniel s Lamont, Captain R.
Somers Hayes and others, went over the road one day
on a special train to visit the property. As I
have said, I was then practically running the road, owing

(03:07:53):
to the fact that the man who held the position
of general manager was not a railroad man and relied
upon me to handle all details. But my actual position
was only that of train master. I accompanied the party, and,
knowing the road thoroughly, not only physically but also statistically,
was able to answer all the questions which they raised.

(03:08:13):
This was the first time I had met mister Whitney,
and I judged that I made a somewhat favorable impression
upon him. For not long after I was created general
manager of the road. A few months later, I received
this telegram, H H. Vreeland, meet me at Broadway and
Seventh Avenue office at two o'clock to day, William C. Whitney.

(03:08:36):
I had to take a special engine to do this,
but arrived at two o'clock at the office of the
Houston Street, West Street and Pavonia Ferry Railroad Company, which
I then knew, in an indistinct sort of way, owned
a small horse railway in the heart of New York.
After finding that mister Whitney was out at lunch, I
kicked my heels for a few minutes outside the gate

(03:08:58):
and then inquired of a man who was seated inside
in an exceedingly comfortable chair when mister Whitney and his
party were expected, saying also that my name was Freeland
and I had an appointment at two. He replied, oh
are you, mister Freeland. Well, here is a letter for you.
Mister Whitney expected to be here at two o'clock, but

(03:09:19):
is a little late. I took my letter and sat
down again outside, thinking that it might possibly contain an
appointment for another hour. It was, however, an appointment of
quite a different character. It read as follows, mister H. H. Vreeland,
Dear Sir, At a meeting of the stockholders of the

(03:09:40):
Houston Street, West Street and Pavonia Ferry Railroad Company held
this day, you were unanimously elected a director of the company.
At a subsequent meeting of the directors, you were unanimously
elected President and general Manager. Your duties to commence immediately.
Yours truly, c e the Warren Secretary. By the time

(03:10:03):
I had recovered from my surprise at learning that I
was no longer a steam railroad but a street railroad man,
mister Whitney and other directors came in, and after spending
about five minutes in introductions, they took up their hats
and left, saying simply, well, Freeland, you are president. Now
run the road. I then set out to learn what

(03:10:24):
kind of a toy railway it was that had come
into my charge here. Mister Vreeland's narrative stops for the
rest of the history is well known to the people
of New York and to experts in street railroading throughout
the country. The Whitney Syndicate, so called, was then in
possession of a few only out of some twenty or
more street railway properties in New York City, the Broadway Line, however,

(03:10:47):
being one of these and by far the most valuable.
With the immense financial resources of Messrs Whitney, Widner, Elkins
and their associates, nearly all the other properties were added
to the original one uns owned by the syndicate, and
with the magnificent organizing and executive ability of mister Freeland,
there has been built up in New York a street

(03:11:07):
railway system which, while including less than two hundred and
fifty miles of track, is actually carrying more than one
half as many passengers each year as are being carried
by all the steam railroads of the United States together.
Mister Freeland's first work on coming to New York was
naturally to familiarize himself with the transportation conditions in New

(03:11:29):
York City and to learn how to handle the peculiarly
complex problems involved in street railroading. He first had to
gain also the confidence of his men, but this is
never hard for anyone who is sincerely solicitous for their
welfare and in such sympathy with their work in hardships,
as a man like himself must have been, with his
own past history in mind, with his hand firmly on

(03:11:52):
the tiller, and with his scheme of organization perfected, he
was soon able to take up the larger questions of administration.
To mister Freeland is due the credit of initiating rapidly
extending a general free transfer system in New York, by
which the public is able to ride from almost any
part of the largest city in the country to any
other part for a single five cent fare, whereas before

(03:12:15):
the consolidation, two, three and sometimes for fares would have
to be paid for the same ride. It was upon
mister Freeland's recommendation, also backed by that of F. S. Pearson,
the well known consulting engineer of the Whitney Syndicate, that
the latter determined to adopt the underground conduit electric system
in the reconstruction of the lines. At that time, this

(03:12:37):
decision involved the greatest financial and technical courage, since there
was but one other road of this kind in existence,
and that a small tramway in an Austrian city. While
previous American experience with this system had been uniformly unsuccessful
not only in street railroading proper, but also in steam railroading,
automobile work, and the electric lighting field, mister Freeland possess,

(03:13:00):
as is the absolute confidence of his associates, who rely
implicitly upon his judgment, intelligence, and business acumen. The recent
gift already referred to is one only of several which
he has received from men who feel that they have
made millions through his ability. Although he is not to
day a wealthy man, as men are counted wealthy in

(03:13:20):
New York City, he is certainly well along on the
road to millionaire dom. Best of all, however, and what
has probably satisfied him most in his life has been
the host of genuine friendships which he has made, and
the stronghold which he has upon the working man. A
strike of the employees of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company
is absolutely impossible so long as he remains at the

(03:13:43):
head of the company's affairs. For the men know well
that there will be in that position a man who
is always fair and even generous with them, bearing in
mind ever his duty to his stockholders. And they know
too that no injustice will be committed by any of
the department heads. Any one of his fours more or
five thousand employees can meet him personally on a question

(03:14:03):
of grievance, and is sure of being treated as a
reasonable fellow man. Time and again have labor leaders sought
to form an organization of the Metropolitan Employees, And as
often the men have said in reply, not while Freeland
is here. We know he will treat us fairly. In
a recent address, mister Freeland said, no artificial condition can, ever,

(03:14:25):
in my judgment, keep down a man who has health,
capacity and honesty. You can temporarily interfere with him, or
make the road to the object of his ambition more difficult,
but you cannot stop him. That tyranny is forever dead,
and since its death there has come a great enlightenment
to the possessors of power and wealth. Instead of preventing

(03:14:46):
a man from rising, there is not a concern the
wide world over that is not today eagerly seeking for
capable people. The great hunger of the time is for
good men, strong men, men capable of assuming responsibility, and
there is sharp competition for those who are available. How
they succeeded Life stories of successful men told by themselves

(03:15:08):
by Orison Sweat Martin Chapter twenty two. How James Whitcomb
Riley came to be Master of the Hoosier Dialect. It
t is doubtful if there is in the literary world
to day a personage whose boyhood and young manhood can
approach in romance and unusual circumstances, that of the author
of the Old Swimen. Whole all tradition was against his

(03:15:30):
accomplishing anything in the world. How indeed, said the good
folks of the little town of Greenfield, Indiana, could anything
be expected of a boy who cared nothing for school
and deserted it at the first opportunity to take up
a wandering life frone on his own resources. The boy's
father wanted the boy to follow in his footsteps in

(03:15:51):
the legal profession, and he held out alluring hopes of
the possibility of scaling even greater heights than any to
which he had yet attained. Better still, from the standpoint
of the restless James, he took the youngster with him
as he made his circuit from court to court. These excursions,
for they were indeed such to the boy, so deep
in his heart the seed of a determination to become

(03:16:13):
a nomad. And it was not long until he started
out as a strolling sign painter, determined upon the realization
of his ideals. Oftentimes business was worse than dull, and
on one occasion hunger drove him for recourse to his wits,
and lo he blossomed forth as a blind sign painter,
led from place to place by a little boy, and

(03:16:34):
showered with sympathy and trade in such abundance that he
could hardly bear the thought of the relinquishment of a
pretense so ingenious and successful, entered on at first as
a joke. Then came another epoch. The young man fell
in with a patent medicine man, with whom he joined fortunes.
And here the young Indianian, who had been scribbling more
or less poetry, found a new use for his talent.

(03:16:57):
For his duties in the partnership were to beguile them
people with joke and song, while his co worker plied
the sales of his cule. There were many times when,
but for his fancy, the young poet might have seen
his audience dwindle rapidly away. It was while thus engaged
that he had the opportunities which enabled him to master
thoroughly the Hoosier dialect. When the glamor of the patent

(03:17:20):
medicine career had faded somewhat, the nomadic Riley joined a
band of strolling Thespians, and in this brief portion of
his life, after the wont of players of his class
played many parts at length, he began to give a
little more attention to his literary work, and later obtained
a place on an Indianapolis paper where he published his

(03:17:40):
first poems, and they won their author almost instant success.
Why he longed to be a baker? When I drew
mister Riley out to talk still further of those interesting
days and the strange experiences which came to him therein
the conversation finally turned on the subject of his youthful ambition.
I think my earliest remembered one, he said, was an

(03:18:03):
insatiate longing to become a baker. I don't know what
prompted it, unless it were the visions of the mountains
of alluring goodies, which, as they are arranged in the
windows of the pastry shops, appeared doubly tempting to the
youth whose mother not only counsel's moderation but enforces it. Next,
I imagined that I would like to become a showman
of some sort. Then my shifting fancy conjured up visions

(03:18:27):
of how grand it would be to work as a
painter and decorate houses and fences in glowing colors. Finally,
as I grew a little older, there returned my old
longing to become an actor. When, however, my dreams were
realized and I became a member of a traveling theatrical company,
I found that the life was full of hardships, with

(03:18:47):
very little chance of rising in the world. I never
had any literary ambition whatever, so far as I can remember,
I wrote primarily simply because I desired to have something
to reach and could not find selections that exactly suited me.
Gradually I found a demand for my little efforts springing up,
and so my brother, who could write legibly transcribe them persistence.

(03:19:13):
At this point I asked mister Riley his idea of
the prime requisites for success in the field of letters.
The most essential factor, he replied, is persistence, the determination
never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened
by the discouragement that must inevitably come. I believe that
he is richer for the battle with the world in

(03:19:34):
any vocation who has great determination and little talent, rather
than his seemingly more fortunate brother with great talent. Perhaps
but little determination. As for the field of literature, I
cannot but express my conviction that meteoric flights such as
have been taken of recent years by some young writers
with whose names almost everybody is familiar, cannot fail to

(03:19:56):
be detrimental unless the man to whom success comes thus
early in suddenly is an exceptionally evenly balanced and sensible person.
Many persons have spoken to me about Kipling's work and
remarked how wonderful a thing is the fact that such
achievements could have been possible for a man comparatively so young.
I say, not at all. What do we find when

(03:20:17):
we investigate simply that Kipling began working on a newspaper
when he was only thirteen years of age, and he
has been toiling ever since. So you see, even that
case confirms my theory that every man must be tried
in the fire, as it were. He may begin early
or late, and in some cases the fight is longer

(03:20:38):
than in others. But of one thing, I feel sure
that there is no short cut to permanent, self satisfying
success in literature or anything else. Twenty years of rejected manuscripts,
mister Riley, I asked, would you mind saying something about
the obstacles over which you climb to success. I am
afraid it would not be a very pleasant story, he replied.

(03:21:01):
A friend came to me once, completely heartbroken, saying that
his manuscripts were constantly returned and that he was the
most miserable wretch alive. I asked him how long he
had been trying. Three years, he said, My dear man,
I answered, laughing, go on, keep on trying till you
have spent as many years at it as I did.

(03:21:23):
As many as you did, he exclaimed, Yes, as long
as I did what you struggled for years. Yes, sir,
through years, through sleepless nights, through almost hopeless days. For
twenty years I tried to get into one magazine. Back
came my manuscripts eternally. I kept on. In the twentieth

(03:21:46):
year that magazine accepted one of my articles. I was
not a believer in the theory that one man does
a thing much easier than any other man. Continuous, unflagging effort,
persistence and determination will win. Let not the man be discouraged.
Who has these What would you advise one to do
with his constantly rejected manuscript? I asked, Put it away

(03:22:11):
a while, then remodel it. Young writers, make the mistake
I made? What mistake? I asked, hurrying a manuscript off
before it was dry from my pen as if the
world were just waiting for that article and must have
it now. It can hardly be drawn from me with
a pair of tweezers. Yes, lay it aside a while reread.

(03:22:36):
There is a rotten spot somewhere. Perhaps it is full
of hackneyed phrases or lax in sparkle and originality. Search, examine, rewrite, simplify,
make it lucid. I am glad now that my manuscripts
did come back presently I would discover this defect, then

(03:22:56):
that perhaps three or four sleepless nights, which show my
failure to be in an unsymmetrical arrangement of the verses.
See these books, he said, wrapping upon the bookcase with
the back of his hand. Classics. But of what do
they tell of the things of their own day? Let
us write the things of our day. Literary fields exhausted nonsense.

(03:23:23):
If we write well enough, ours will be the classics
of tomorrow. Our young Americans have write at hand the
richest material any country ever offered. Let them be brave
and work in earnest a college education. Answering other questions,
the poet said, a college education for the aspirant for

(03:23:43):
literary success is, of course an advantage, provided he does
not let education foster a false culture that will lead
him away from the ideals he ought to cling to.
There is another thing that the young man in any
artistic pursuit must have a care for, and that is
to be practical. This is a practical world, and it
is always ready to take advantage of this sort of people,

(03:24:06):
so that one must try to cultivate a practical business
sense as well as an artistic sense. We have only
a few men, like Rudyard Kipling and f. Hopkinson Smith,
who seem to combine these diverse elements of character in
just the right proportions. But I believe that it is
unfortunate for the happiness and peace of mind of our
authors and artists and musicians that we have not more

(03:24:27):
of them. Riley's popularity. Riley's poetry is popular because it
goes right to the feelings of the people. He could
not have written as he does but for the schooling
of that wandering life, which gave him an insight into
the struggle for existence among the great, unnumbered multitude of
his fellow men. He learned, in his travels and journeys,

(03:24:49):
in his hard experience as a strolling sign painter and
patent medicine peddler, the freemasonry of poverty. His poems are natural.
They are those of a man who feels, as he writes,
as thorough painted nature in the woods and streams and lakes.
So Wriley depicts the incidents of every day life, and
brightens each familiar lineament with that touch that makes all

(03:25:10):
the world akin

All Episodes

HOW THEY SUCCEEDED 2: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves - Orison Swett Marden (1901)

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}HOW THEY SUCCEEDED 2: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves - Orison Swett Marden (1901)