John Wanamaker, the boy, had no single thing in all his surroundings
to give him an advantage over any one of hundreds of other boys in the
city of Philadelphia. Indeed, there were hundreds of other boys of his
own age for whom anyone would have felt safe in prophesying a more
notable career. But young Wanamaker had an inheritance beyond that of
almost any of the others. It was not money; very few boys in all that
great city had less money than John Wanamaker, and comparatively few
families of average position but were better off in the way of worldly
goods. John Wanamaker’s inheritance, that stood him in such good stead
in after life, was good health, good habits, a clean mind, thrift in
money matters, and tireless devotion to whatever he thought to be duty.
He went to school some, not very much; he assisted his mother in the
house a great deal, and around his father’s brickyard he was very
helpful so far as a boy could be helpful in such hard work. But he had
ambition beyond such things, and in 1852, when in his fifteenth year,
he found work with a publishing house at $1.50 a week.
I know a number of people who were well acquainted with John Wanamaker
when he was a book publisher’s boy. Most of them say that he was an
exceptionally promising boy; that he was studious as well as attentive
to business. Some of them declare that he used to buy a book or some
such gift for his mother regularly with part of his savings. This may
be partly romance,—the exaggerated remembrance that most people have of
a boy who, as a man, cuts a notable figure in the world. Very likely he
did buy some books, but the best that I can get is that, after all, he
was very much like other boys, except that he did not take kindly to
rough play, or do much playing of any kind, and that he was saving of
his money. He was earnest in his work, unusually earnest for a boy, and
so when, a little later, he went to a Market street clothing house and
asked for a place, he had no difficulty in getting it, nor had he any
trouble in holding it.