“When I was ten, I had been put in a factory to learn shoemaking,
but a few months afterward was apprenticed to a man in my father’s
trade,—that of a cigarmaker. I went to school at night, but it was a
very meagre foundation for an education that I got this way, and I have
been trying ever since to make up for it by reading and study. My lack
of early opportunity to learn and develop normally, with schooling and
much recreation, as a boy should, has always been a great drawback to
me, but it has made me zealous in the cause of keeping the children
of the workers out of the workshops and giving them a fair education.
College training is not necessary for success in any but scholastic
pursuits, but boys must certainly know the rudiments.”