How They Got On In The World.

Brief Biographies of Successful Men Who Have Passed Through the Crucible of Small Beginnings and Won Out.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

RISE OF A CHORE BOY.

Present Head of Stanford University Had a Hard Row to Hoe in Order to Get an Education.

David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University and the leading authority on fishes in the United States, was a farm boy from Gainsville, New York, when he joined the first class that entered Cornell University. He had little money, but he got along comfortably by waiting on table, husking corn, taking care of lawns, digging ditches and tutoring. It was the proper way to work through college, for he says: "A young man is not worth educating who cannot work through college that way."

He became an instructor in botany while still a junior, and he did so well that he attracted the attention of Andrew D. White, president of the university, who encouraged him and aided him in his work. The rounding of Jordan's education was completed by Louis Agassiz, with whom he studied three months in a shed on Penikese Island in Buzzard's Bay.

A Student of Fishes.

Jordan's attention was early drawn to the study of fishes, and the general ignorance concerning them determined him to make them his special line of work. As a source of food supply, fish stands close to meat, and millions of people depend on the fish supply rather than on meat. Yet concerning the habits, breeding, and geographical distribution of fish, there was little known. In studying his chosen subject Jordan has traveled more than two hundred thousand miles, and to-day he is the accepted authority on fish. Much of the important work accomplished by the United States Fish Commission, of which he has been a member since 1877, has been due to his initiative.

The value of American fisheries averages fifty million dollars annually, but for a long time the business was carried on in a haphazard fashion, and few naturalists thought it worth while to devote any considerable amount of attention to the study of fishes. Jordan did as much to change that state of affairs as any other man.

The breeding of food fish, now extensively carried on by the United States Government, is largely the result of his advice, and he has greatly increased the efficiency of the fishers by placing at their disposal new knowledge concerning the habits and migrations of food fish.

Selecting His Aids.

His work in connection with the fisheries was only part of what he has managed to crowd into a busy life. As professor of zoology at Indiana University he stimulated his pupils to a thorough study of their subject, and his influence in this department was felt even outside the university. It was while he was in Indiana that he was called to the presidency of Leland Stanford University. His first work was to bring together a faculty.

A big trunk full of applications for positions was turned over to him, and he was told he could do what he liked with them. He never opened the trunk. He knew the men he wanted for the various positions, and he drew them from Cornell and Indiana. To this day Jordan does not know even the names of the applicants.

The students who come under the influence of Dr. Jordan do not have a life of scholastic ease and idleness. Their president has said, "The problem of life is not to make life easier, but to make men stronger."

He accepted the presidency of Stanford University with the distinct understanding that he was to do nothing that it was possible to hire another man to do. As a result he has had a free hand, and has devoted himself to the larger affairs of the university's development. The result is that Stanford in a short time has been able to push well to the front as a solid and progressive place of learning.

Dr. Jordan is straightforward in his methods and utterances.

"You can't fasten a five-thousand-dollar education on a fifty-cent boy," he said, and that dictum has been his guide in conducting the university.

FATHER OF GERMAN STEEL.

Ambitious Manufacturer Died Poor, but He Bequeathed His Great Purpose to His Young Son.

Friedrich Krupp, the founder of the Krupp steel industry, died with all the work he had outlined uncompleted, but he died satisfied that all he had wished to do and all he had planned would in the course of time be brought to fulfilment. This first Krupp possessed a little money, and in 1818 he built a tiny furnace at Essen, in Prussia, and started in to manufacture steel. His declared intention was to make the little Prussian town of Essen a greater steel center than Sheffield, England.

In four years he lost all his money and his home. He moved to a small cottage, borrowed a few thousand marks, and again began operations. In four years more his health was shattered, the borrowed money was gone, and he died in absolute poverty.

The heir to his debts and his desire to manufacture steel was Alfred Krupp, a boy fourteen years old. The only thing else the boy had was the dilapidated furnace around which his father worked until it killed him. There was, however, a command from his father that he was resolved to obey.

"You are to make Essen the most famous steel-manufacturing place in the world," the dying Krupp had said. "Your mother will help you do it."

The boy and his mother then began to conduct the business. There were four workmen ready to assist them, and ready to trust them for the future payment of the wages that could not be paid during the first few months of operation.

Success came slowly. Every foot of the way had to be fought. Prussian-made steel was mistrusted, for at that time England was supreme in the art of steel-working. But the elder Krupp had been on the right track, and would have won if his strength had held out. Alfred Krupp, though a boy, was not afraid to do a man's work in the foundry during the day, and at night he attended to the business end of affairs. His mother assisted him in everything, working in the office, soliciting orders, performing the work of an overseer in the foundry, and attending to the household. By the time young Krupp was twenty-one the business had begun to move, and he was employing a score of workmen.

When the business was on such a solid basis that the future was assured, Alfred Krupp was urged to marry. He steadfastly refused. His father had left to him the task of looking after his mother, as well as that of building up the business of steel-making, and it was not until after Mrs. Krupp died in 1852 that her son took a wife.

Even when the business had begun to prosper, all was not easy for him. The Prussian government placed obstacles in his way, and it was not until 1859 that he received a government order for cannon. The "Cannon King" had at last been recognized, and it was he who thereafter armed the Prussian soldiers, and he made the batteries that wrought such havoc in the French forces in the war of 1870.

When he died in 1887 he left a plant in which twenty thousand men were employed. In Essen alone, at the present time, fifty thousand men find work, and at the Krupp shipyards, where the German battleships are constructed, and in the subsidiary Krupp industries, fifty thousand more are employed.

FRIGHTENED JAY GOULD.

Man Destined to Revolutionize Street Railway Traffic Unwittingly Caused Prospective "Angel" to Flee.

Frank J. Sprague, formerly president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, founder of the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company, and builder of the Richmond trolley line, was, in 1883, a lieutenant in the American navy. A future with a moderate amount of success was assured, and fame was possible. He was determined, however, to devote his attention to the study of electricity as a motive power. At that time there did not exist a single mile of trolley-line.

His friends vainly tried to dissuade him. He went to work with Edison to increase the knowledge of motors he had already acquired in the navy. He remained a year at Menlo Park and then organized the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company. It was capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars with nothing paid in. He was vice-president, electrician, treasurer, and man of all work, and was to get fifty dollars a week whenever the condition of the company warranted it.

One small room was both business office and laboratory. He earned a little money by building motors, and this enabled him, in 1886, to begin a series of experiments with motors of twelve horse-power. Officials from the Manhattan Elevated were interested in the trials, and one day Jay Gould came to see the new motors that could drive a truck along sixty feet of track.

The day Gould visited him, Sprague resolved to test the motor to the utmost. In suddenly reversing the current, an excess blew out the safety-catch, causing a big noise and a blinding flash of light. Gould gazed a moment, then hurried from the room and never came back.

Sprague was somewhat discouraged, but his confidence came back when Superintendent Chinnock, of the Pearl Street Edison station, offered him thirty thousand dollars for a one-sixth interest in the company. The offer was refused, though at the time Sprague did not have money enough to pay a month's board.

"Well," said the surprised Chinnock, "you're a fool!"

A few days later a successful trial was made before Cyrus W. Field, and Chinnock came back with an offer of twenty-five thousand dollars for a one-twelfth share. This was accepted, and later another twelfth was sold for a slightly higher price. The motors used in these experiments were the forerunners of the thousands now used on the trolley systems all over the world.

The first big public exhibition was given in August, 1887, and the New York Sun said next day:

They tried an electric car on Fourth Avenue yesterday. It created an amount of surprise and consternation from Thirty-Second Street to One Hundred and Seventeenth Street that was something like that caused by the first steamboat on the Hudson. Small boys yelled "Dynamite!" and "Rats!" and similar appreciative remarks until they were hoarse. Newly appointed policemen debated arresting it, but went no further. The car horses which were met on the other track kicked, without exception, as was natural, over an invention which threatens to relegate them to the sausage factory.

All that happened only nineteen years ago. To-day the trolley-lines of the country employ more than seventy thousand men.

The same year Sprague's company got the contract for the building of the Union Passenger Railroad at Richmond, Virginia. The methods were still primitive, but the success was unequivocal. The hills of Richmond, up which the mule, dragging a little car, had hitherto toiled, were now easily surmounted by smoothly running cars that could attain fair speed, and which operated with almost perfect precision.

The utility of the trolley road had been demonstrated on a large scale, and the old horse-car lines were equipped as speedily as possible for electric traction; new roads, embodying the new principle, were built, and hundreds of other roads were projected.

The stock of the Sprague concern, which went begging in 1885 and a twelfth of which could be bought for twenty-five thousand dollars two years later, went soaring, and the question of capital for the carrying out of experiments or for equipping projected lines, could now be had for the asking.

WORK WAS TOO EASY.

That Was Why the Man Who Was to Build the Subway Resigned His Position as a Municipal Clerk.

John B. McDonald, the builder of the New York City Subway, began work in the New York office of the Registry of Deeds. The work was easy and the pay was fairly good. On the whole, it was just such a place as thousands would look upon as highly desirable. McDonald thought otherwise, and during his spare time he studied hard at scientific subjects. He had been in the place a year when he came home one night with the announcement:

"I've thrown up my job."

"Why?"

"I want real work, and I'm going to have it."

He got it as timekeeper at the building of Boyd's Dam, part of the Croton water system. The work was just what he wanted, and it was not long before he became a foreman. Here his real ability showed itself, and he made such progress that when he was twenty-three he was inspector of masonry on the New York Central tunnel. Here he made his first bid for a sub-contract, and it was accepted. The first work he ever did as a builder was the big arch at Ninety-Sixth Street. He got other big contracts on the Boston and Hoosac Tunnel, the building of the Lackawanna road from Binghamton to Buffalo, the Georgian Bay branch of the Canadian Pacific, and a dozen other roads in various parts of the country.

All this was easy for him, and it was not until he began the tunnel under Baltimore for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that he got the real work he wanted. It was a tunnel through mud and quicksands, a tunnel that subterranean streams threatened constantly to destroy. Every day, in rubber coat and hip-boots, for five years, he worked at it, surmounting one obstacle after another, and finished a winner, having carried through one of the hardest underground jobs ever attempted.

While he was doing this he built the Jerome Park Reservoir—so as to keep himself busy, he said.

When he put in a bid five million dollars lower than his next competitor for the building of the New York Subway there was at first some hitch over the seven-million-dollar security demanded, and his rival was asked if he expected to get the contract by default.

"No," he said, "McDonald has that contract and he'll keep it. He never lets go."

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

Interesting Story of a Young Tenderfoot Who Won Fortune, Fame, and Political Honors in the West.

Edward O. Wolcott, the late Senator from Colorado, was one of the young Eastern men who set out, shortly after the Civil War, to explore the resources of the West.

For a time the struggle to make a living was a difficult one; but, quick to realize the low value that the pioneers placed upon Puritan ancestry and a collegiate education, he became successively a bank clerk, ticket seller for a theatrical company, and railroad employee, until he drifted to the small mining town of Georgetown, in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. There, at last, the reputation of "having an education" proved useful. The position of schoolmaster was offered to Mr. Wolcott and was accepted.

Gradually the city of Denver began to hear of the schoolmaster of Georgetown. His name was encountered frequently in the records as the possessor of various mining interests—oftentimes deeded to him for legal services in lieu of money consideration. Everything he touched seemed to pan out rich; and this brought him followers as adventurous as himself and ready to back his judgment with cash.

Finally, in 1890, two prospectors having exhausted their grubstake were returning wearily over the hills of Creede, when during a brief halt one of their burros wandered off to prospect for himself. After a long search, one of the prospectors found the animal standing in front of a large boulder. In telling the story afterward, the prospector never could tell whether the seemingly hypnotized gaze of the burro or something peculiar in the appearance of the outcrop attracted his attention; but he recalled with little difficulty that, after chipping off a few chunks from the ledge with a hammer and minutely examining them, he set rough stakes in short order.

The following day, provided with assay certificates showing very rich results, the miners sought the schoolmaster and offered to sell him a large interest in their discovery for a small amount of development money.

Always a man quick to clinch his opportunities, Wolcott put the money up on the spot. In six months' time "The Last Chance Silver Mine" repaid its outlay, and later yielded to him a couple of millions more.

HOW GARFIELD ROSE.

Future President May Have Sought Employment on Canal Because of His Fondness for Sea Stories.

James A. Garfield was reared in the forests of Ohio. When he was not engaged at work on the farm, he was reading all the books that he could get hold of, especially those pertaining to the sea, for which he had a passion. Supposedly, it was this that influenced him to obtain one of his first jobs—the driving of mules which towed the canal-boat between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. After a severe attack of illness, contracted after a plunge into the canal, he began to educate himself.

He entered Geauga Seminary, then went to Williams College, and afterward to Hiram. It was at this time that he suffered the worst poverty of his career, for frequently he was obliged to stay in bed while his landlady darned his clothes. Seeing the young man's discouragement, she told him to cheer up, and that he would forget all about it when he became President.

In after life he said: "Poverty is uncomfortable, I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself." And on another occasion: "I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than for a man; and I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat."

At the close of Garfield's college life he went into a law office in Cleveland; from there to the Ohio Senate, and then to the Civil War, after which he was elected to the House of Representatives.

TURNED OVER BRICKS.

The Boy Who Was Paid Seven Cents for the Job Is Turning Over Many Millions Now.

John Wanamaker once received seven copper cents for turning over bricks to dry in the sun. This was the first sum of money that the successful merchant can remember having earned; but his first regular position, which paid him a dollar and a quarter per week, was in a bookstore in Philadelphia.

At that time it was the boy's intention to become a clergyman, and partly in preparation for such a calling, he became a member of the Young Men's Christian Association. A remark made by one of its members was responsible for the change in his intentions, for he intimated to young Wanamaker that if he worked as hard for himself as he did for the association he would become a rich man. Acting on this advice, the boy obtained a situation as stock clerk in a large clothing establishment.

After passing successively through the various grades of clerks and salesmen, he finally formed a partnership with his brother-in-law to go into the clothing trade. Their joint capital was thirty-five hundred dollars. On the first day the firm did a business of twenty-four dollars and sixty-seven cents, and for the year, twenty-four thousand dollars. But although year after year the business increased, Wanamaker never lost interest in religious gatherings. Among other things, he founded a Sabbath-school, which, commencing with only twenty-seven pupils, has grown into the Bethany of to-day, with its several thousand members.

Always abstemious in his way of living and credited with many acts of generosity, it is related that one day, on being requested for the story of his life, Mr. Wanamaker replied:

"Thinking, trying, toiling, and trusting—in those four words you have all of my biography."

AN OIL KING'S START.

Massachusetts Newsboy Gets an Attack of Wanderlust and Finds Fortune in Pennsylvania Wells.

H.H. Rogers, future master builder of industrial organizations, did odd chores for the neighbors, in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, when a boy, and earned on the average fifty cents a week. His first step in real business was when he established a news route of forty-seven subscribers for the New Bedford Standard. In one week he doubled the number and struck for seventy-five cents more a week than the seventy-five cents he was receiving. This was granted and he also got an increased commission on new subscribers. A few months in a grocery store completed his Fairhaven business experience, and then, with Charles Ellis, a schoolfellow, he went to the Pennsylvania oil fields to make his fortune. Each had about two hundred dollars and they started in the refining business. It did not go the way Rogers wished, so he said to Ellis:

"Look here, I am going to learn the oil business. You run the office."

Rogers put on overalls and went to work at the pumps and stills. He was there early and late, working at everything, investigating, getting a grip on every detail, learning how the business could be run on the most economical basis and at the same time give the best quality of product. When he returned to office work the organization of the Standard Oil was under way. It was the knowledge he had gained at the stills that enabled him to figure down the cost of production to the fraction of a cent. It was he, also, who was the leading factor in the elimination of competition.

CAME BACK FOR MORE.

Financier Who Retired from Business at Forty Assumes Direction of Great Railroad at Fifty-Seven.

Alexander Johnston Cassatt retired independently wealthy at the age of forty, and seventeen years later he returned to dominate one of the largest railroads in the country. He was born in Pittsburgh. Though poor, his parents gave him a good education. He became a civil engineer, and the first work he got to do was on a road being built in Georgia. He remained in the South two years, but on the breaking out of the Civil War he returned North, and entered the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Cassatt's ability won rapid promotion. In nine years he built new roads, reorganized the company's shops, and improved the construction of cars and locomotives. Then, when he was thirty-one years old, the position of general manager was created for him.

One of the first things he did in this position was to introduce the air-brake, which at that time received scant encouragement from railroad men. Cassatt was told that it was useless. His experiments cost thousands of dollars, but they established the practicability of the air-brake.

It was Cassatt also who developed the idea of combining individual roads into one great system. In 1872 he executed a grand coup and purchased for the Pennsylvania the controlling stock of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Road, a line the Baltimore and Ohio people had tried to obtain. It took Cassatt one night to engineer the deal, and in payment for the stock a check for $14,549,052.20 was drawn—up to that time the largest on record.

Cassatt was first vice-president of the road when he withdrew in 1882, and for seventeen years he remained out of railroad affairs. When he returned it was as president of the Pennsylvania system, a position he still holds.