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5S0 ILLUSTRATED WORLD
advantage of. And seldom
was it that he won.
"And all this time, unknown
to myself, a curious
idea was growing in
my head. It was that the
way to get on in life was,
first of all, to work; second,
to save, and never to
put a dollar where it
wasn't sure to come back.
"When sixteen years of
age, I entered the world
of industry. Money had
to me the chief
in the world. It
I Decided to Sit in the Center become
In my mind's eye, the man on the right of the picture was the speculator who had 1 .
been successful. The wreck on the left was my father. I thought the risk of the tiling
latter greater than the added reward of the former, so I decided to be conservative. .,
perience in handling money. He scrambled
around and got short time loans
from unscrupulous money lenders at
usurious rates. Such desperate measures,
was more important than
education, than play, than pleasure. In
fact, I found my chief pleasure in holding
on to every penny I possibly could
and putting it into the bank.
however, were more than the business "By the time I was twenty-one, I had
could stand. Eventually the inevitable accumulated about three hundred dollars.
came and he was forced to the wall. He I had found myself at the age of twenty
was now worse off than ever. For he an orphan, due to a fire that wiped out,
was not only penniless but, for a poor in the early morning hours, the part of
man, heavily in debt.
the block in which we lived. My brother
"He now turned to stocks—not, how­ and I were away from home at the time.
ever, the kind that net but five or six per From that time I faced the world alone.
cent and are regarded as good invest­ I worked hard and was very economical.
ments. He had not the money to pur­ The bitter lesson of frustrated ambition
chase these, nor the patience to wait for that had embittered the lives of my par­
the slow accumulation of the dividends. ents ever presented itself to me. Poverty,
He went in for wildcat mining stock, the I felt, was the most terrible fate that
kind that you can buy for next to nothing could befall anyone.
a share, and on time. For a couple of "That was the curious thing about my
years or even longer this form of financial outlook on life. Whereas my father, be­
dissipation seemed to partly satisfy his fore misfortune confronted him, was
craving for wealth. Whenever he got possessed of an inordinate desire for
five dollars he put it into stocks. At wealth, I, on the other hand, was seized
night he used to take out his bundles of with an unreasoning fear of poverty.
certificates and, with financial reports in The reason for this was, of course, the
hand, eagerly go over the market situ­ deep impression the vicissitudes of my
ation. Eventually my mother saw the father's checkered career had made upon
folly of all this and firmly set her will me. All my life, almost from infancy,
and voice against further sacrifice of my I had heard preached the gospel of
father's hard-earned dollars.
wealth, but I had never seen the fruits of
"But, nevertheless, things went from this gospel realized. Poverty, hardship,
bad to worse. My father became an even want, had been our portion. At
habitual bettor. Horse races, lotteries, maturity I understood that our misfor­
elections, anything that offered an opportunes had been a corollary to my father's
tunity for him to wager money was taken imprudent pursuit of gold. Happiness, I