If you should ask Edward E. Higgins, the publisher of Success, what
are the characteristics which have given him his present position in
the publishing world, he would doubtless reply, “Courage, persistence
and patience.” He has had an unusually varied training and experience.
He was born on April 4, 1864, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and, after
a preliminary education in the local grammar and high schools,
which were then considered among the best in the state, he entered
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was graduated as an
electrical engineer in 1886. He obtained there the mathematical
training which has remained with him ever since, and which has
contributed not a little to his acknowledged power of distinguishing
between the possible and the impossible in both engineering and
business matters. Foreseeing the great future of the electric street
railroad, he became associated, in its earliest development, with the
Sprague and Edison companies, and it was largely through his efforts
that electricity was first introduced into Buffalo and other cities
of New York state. Acquiring a large fund of information on street
railroad matters at home and abroad, Mr. Higgins became, in 1893, the
editor of the Street Railway Journal, and has won an international
reputation as a statistical, engineering and financial expert on street
railway matters. In 1899 he perceived an opportunity to develop a
large and important home publication from what was then a small and
struggling periodical—Success—and acquired an interest, intending that
it should be merely a side issue. But the phenomenally rapid growth of
Success soon called for Mr. Higgins’ entire time, and the result is
seen in the fact that Success, with its circulation of over 300,000,
now, after only four years’ time, is one of the first half-dozen
American magazines in circulation, prestige and general standing, and
no paper is more useful or valuable in the home.