I
I cannot remember the time when I was not absolutely certain that I
would be a millionaire. And I had not been a week in the big wholesale
dry-goods house in Worth Street in which I made my New York start,
before I looked round and said to myself: “I shall be sole proprietor
here some day.”
Probably clerks dream the same thing every day in every establishment
on earth--but I didn’t dream; I _knew_. From earliest boyhood I had
seen that the millionaire was the only citizen universally envied,
honoured, and looked up to. I wanted to be in the first class, and I
knew I had only to stick to my ambition and to think of nothing else
and to let nothing stand in the way of it. There are so few men capable
of forming a definite, serious purpose, and of persisting in it, that
those who are find the road almost empty before they have gone far.
By the time I was thirty-three years old I had arrived at the place
where the crowd is pretty well thinned out. I was what is called a
successful man. I was general manager of the dry-goods house at ten
thousand a year--a huge salary for those days. I had nearly sixty
thousand dollars put by in gilt-edged securities. I had built a
valuable reputation for knowing my business and keeping my word. I
owned a twenty-five-foot brownstone house in a side street not far from
Madison Avenue, and in it I had a comfortable, happy, old-fashioned
home. At thirty-two I had gone back to my native town to marry a girl
there, one of those women who have ambition beyond gadding all the time
and spending every cent their husbands earn, and who know how to make
home attractive to husband and children.
I couldn’t exaggerate the value of my family, especially my wife, to
me in those early days. True, I should have gone just as far without
them, but they made my life cheerful and comfortable; and, now that
sentiment of that narrow kind is all in the past, it’s most agreeable
occasionally to look back on those days and sentimentalise a little.
That I worked intelligently, as well as hard, is shown by the fact
that I was made junior partner at thirty-eight. My partner--there
were only two of us--was then an elderly man and the head of the old
and prominent New York family of Judson--that is not the real name,
of course. Ours was the typical old-fashioned firm, doing business on
principles of politeness rather than of strict business. One of its
iron-clad customs was that the senior partner should retire at sixty.
Mr. Judson’s intention was to retire in about five years, I to become
the head of the firm, though with the smaller interest, and one of
his grandsons to become the larger partner, though with the lesser
control--at least, for a term of years.
It was called evidence of great friendship and confidence that Mr.
Judson thus “favoured” me. Probably this notion would have been
stronger had it been known on what moderate terms and at what an
easy price he let me have the fourth interest. No doubt Mr. Judson
himself thought he was most generous. But I knew better. There was no
sentimentality about my ideas of business, and my experience has been
that there isn’t about any one’s when you cut through surface courtesy
and cant and get down to the real facts. I knew I had earned every
step of my promotion from a clerk; and, while Mr. Judson might have
selected some one else as a partner, he wouldn’t have done so, because
he needed me. I had seen to that in my sixteen years of service there.
Judson wasn’t a self-made man, as I was. He had inherited his share in
the business, and a considerable fortune, besides. The reason he was so
anxious to have me as a partner was that for six years I had carried
all his business cares, even his private affairs. Yes, he needed
me--though, no doubt, in a sense, he was my friend. Who wouldn’t have
been my friend under the circumstances? But, having looked out for his
own interest and comfort in selecting me, why should he have expected
that I wouldn’t look out for mine? The only kind of loyalty a man who
wishes to do something in the world should give or expect is the mutual
loyalty of common interest.
I confess I never liked Judson. To be quite frank, from the first day
I came into that house, I envied him. I used to think it was contempt;
but, since my own position has changed, I know it was envy. I remember
that the first time I saw him I noted his handsome, carefully dressed
figure, so out of place among the sweat and shirt sleeves and the
litter of goods and packing cases, and I asked one of my fellow-clerks:
“Who’s that fop?” When he told me it was the son of the proprietor, and
my prospective chief boss, I said to myself: “It won’t be hard to get
_you_ out of the way;” for I had brought from the country the prejudice
that fine clothes and fine manners proclaim the noddle-pate.
I envied my friend--for, in a master-and-servant way, that was highly,
though, of course, secretly distasteful to me, we became friends. I
envied him his education, his inherited wealth, his manners, his
aristocratic appearance, and, finally, his social position. It seemed
to me that none of these things that he had and I hadn’t belonged of
right to him, because he hadn’t earned them. It seemed to me that his
having them was an outrageous injustice to me.
I think I must have hated him. Yes, I did hate him. How is it possible
for a man who feels that he is born to rule not to hate those whom
blind fate has put as obstacles in his way? To get what you want in
this world you must be a good hater. The best haters make the best
grabbers, and this is a world of grab, not of “By your leave,” or “If
you’ll permit me, sir.” You can’t get what you want away from the
man who’s got it unless you hate him. Gentle feelings paralyse the
conquering arm.
So, at thirty-eight, it seemed to be settled that I was to be a
respectable Worth Street merchant, in active life until I should
be sixty, always under the shadow of the great Judson family, and
thereafter a respectable retired merchant and substantial citizen with
five hundred thousand dollars or thereabouts. But it never entered
my head to submit to that sort of decree of destiny, dooming me to
respectable obscurity. Nature intended me for larger things.
The key to my true destiny, as I had seen for several years, was the
possession of a large sum of money--a million dollars. Without it, I
must work on at my past intolerably slow pace. With it, I could leap
at once into my kingdom. But, how get it? In the regular course of any
business conducted on proper lines, such a sum, even to-day, rewards
the successful man starting from nothing only when the vigour of youth
is gone and the habits of conservatism and routine are fixed. I knew
I must get my million not in driblets, not after years of toil, but at
once, in a lump sum. I must get it even at some temporary sacrifice of
principle, if necessary.
If I had not seen the opportunity to get it through Judson and
Company, I should have retired from that house years before I got the
partnership. But I did see it there, saw it coming even before I was
general manager, saw it the first time I got a peep into the private
affairs of Mr. Judson.
Judson and Company, like all old-established houses, was honeycombed
with carelessness and wastefulness. To begin with, it treated its
employees on a basis of mixed business and benevolence, and that is
always bad unless the benevolence is merely an ingenious pretext for
getting out of your people work that you don’t pay for. But Mr.
Judson, having a good deal of the highfaluting _grand seigneur_ about
him, made the benevolence genuine. Then, the theory was that the
Judsons were born merchants, and knew all there was to be known, and
did not need to attend to business. Mr. Judson, being firmly convinced
of his greatness, and being much engaged socially and in posing as a
great merchant at luncheons and receptions to distinguished strangers
and the like, put me in full control as soon as he made me general
manager. He interfered in the business only occasionally, and then
merely to show how large and generous he was--to raise salaries, to
extend unwise credits, to bolster up decaying mills that had long sold
goods to the house, to indorse for his friends. Friends! Who that can
and will lend and indorse has not hosts of friends? What I have waited
to see before selecting my friends is the friendship that survives the
death of its hope of favours--and I’m still waiting.
As soon as I became partner I confirmed in detail the suspicion, or,
rather, the instinctive knowledge, which had kept me from looking
elsewhere for my opportunity.