A Messenger Boy’s Zeal Lifts Him to the Head of the World’s Greatest
Telegraph System.
WHEN romance can be added to hard facts in telling the life-story of
a man, such a narrative becomes more pointed and interesting than the
rarest dreams of a fictionist; therefore, the true story of a man who
has made himself cannot fail to be instructive as well as interesting.
No other man in the United States, to-day, can look back on a more
remarkable career than that of Colonel Robert C. Clowry, president of
the Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. Clowry was delivering messages
for that company in 1852, with but one object in view,—to hold his
position. He is the busiest man, perhaps, in America to-day, and has
little time to spend with an interviewer. He dislikes the notoriety
that the world gives to men who fight and win, but the story of such
a man is of more than passing interest. It is an important, valuable,
uplifting factor in the great compound that makes America. It belongs
to the people. It is for their use to profit by, and, with this one
condition impressed on Mr. Clowry, he agreed to tell what he knows
about himself.
“I began my telegraph career on April 4, 1852,” he said. “I shall never
forget the day. I walked into the office of Judge Caton’s old Illinois
and Mississippi Telegraph Company, at Joliet, Illinois, and told the
operator that I had come to learn the business. I can see the rickety
building now, and the surprised expression on the operator’s face when
he looked at me.