them all I do not know one who could sell it."
The late Governor Morgan of New York had this talent in a singular
degree even as a boy. His uncle sent him to New York, to buy, among
other things, two or three hundred bushels of corn. He bought two
cargoes, and sold them to advantage in Hartford on his way from the
stage office to his uncle's store, and he kept on doing similar things
all his life. He knew by a sort of intuition when it was safe to buy
twenty thousand bags of coffee, or all the coffee there was for sale in
New York, and he was very rarely mistaken; he had a genius for buying
and selling.
I have seen car-boys and news-boys who had this gift. There are boys who
will go through a train and hardly ever fail to sell a book or two. They
improve every chance. If there is a passenger who wants a book, or can
be made to think he wants one, the boy will find him out.
Now James Lackington was a boy of that kind. In the preface to the
Memoirs which he wrote of his career he described himself as a person
"who, a few years since, began business with five pounds, and now sells
one hundred thousand volumes annually." But in fact he did not begin
business with five pounds, but with nothing at all.
He was the son of a drunken shoemaker who lived in an English country
town, and he had no schooling except a few weeks at a dame's school, at
twopence a week. He had scarcely learned his letters at that school when
his mother was obliged to take him away to help her in tending his
little brothers and sisters. He spent most of his childhood in doing
that, and, as he remarks, "in running about the streets getting into
mischief." When he was ten years old he felt the stirring of an inborn
genius for successful traffic.
He noticed, and no doubt with the hungry eyes of a growing boy, an old
pie-man, who sold his pies about the streets in a careless, inefficient
way, and the thought occurred to him that, if he had pies to sell, he
could sell more of them than the ancient pie-man. He went to a baker and
acquainted him with his thoughts on pie-selling, and the baker soon sent
him out with a tray full of pies. He showed his genius at once. The
spirited way in which he cried his pies, and his activity in going about
with them, made him a favorite with the pie-buyers of the town; so that
the old pie-man in a few weeks lost all his business, and shut up his
shop. The boy served his baker more than a year, and sold so many pies
and cakes for him as to save him from impending bankruptcy. In the
winter time he sold almanacs with such success that the other dealers
threatened to do him bodily mischief.
But this kind of business would not do to depend on for a lifetime, and
therefore he was bound apprentice to a shoemaker at the age of fourteen
years, during which a desire for more knowledge arose within him. He
learned to read and write, but was still so ashamed of his ignorance
that he did not dare to go into a bookstore because he did not know the
name of a single book to ask for. One of his friends bought for him a
little volume containing a translation from the Greek philosopher
Epictetus, a work full of wise maxims about life and duty. Then he
bought other ancient authors, Plato, Plutarch, Epicurus, and others. He
became a sort of Methodist philosopher, for he heard the Methodist
preachers diligently on Sundays, and read his Greek philosophy in the
evenings. He tells us that the account of Epicurus living in his garden
upon a halfpenny a day, and considering a little cheese on his bread as
a great treat, filled him with admiration, and he began forthwith to
live on bread and tea alone, in order to get money for his books. After
ending his apprenticeship and working for a short time as a journeyman,
he married a buxom dairymaid, with whom he had been in love for seven
years. It was a bold enterprise, for when they went to their lodgings
after the wedding they searched their pockets carefully to discover the
state of their finances, and found that they had one halfpenny to begin
the world with. They had laid in provisions for a day or two, and they
had work by which to procure more, so they began their married life by
sitting down to work at shoemaking and singing together the following
stanza:
"Our portion is not large indeed,
But then how little do we need!
For nature's wants are few.
In this the art of living lies,
To want no more than may suffice,
And make that little do."
They were as happy as the day was long. Twenty times, reports this jolly
shoemaker, he and his wife sang an ode by Samuel Wesley, beginning:--
"No glory I covet, no riches I want,
Ambition is nothing to me;
The one thing I beg of kind Heaven to grant
Is a mind independent and free."
They needed their cheerful philosophy, for all they had to spend on food
and drink for a week was a sum about equal to one of our dollars. Even
this small revenue grew smaller, owing to the hard times, and poor James
Lackington saw his young wife pining away under insufficient food and
sedentary employment. His courage again saved him. After enduring
extreme poverty for three years, he got together all the money he could
raise, gave most of it to his wife, and set out for London, where he
arrived in August, 1774, with two and sixpence in his pocket.
It was a fortunate move for our brave shoemaker. He obtained work and
good wages at once, soon sent for his wife, and their united earnings
more than supplied their wants. A timely legacy of ten pounds from his
grandfather gave them a little furniture, and he became again a
frequenter of second-hand bookstores. He could scarcely resist the
temptation of a book that he wanted. One Christmas Eve he went out with
money to buy their Christmas dinner, but spent the whole sum for a copy
of Young's "Night Thoughts." His wife did not relish this style of
Christmas repast.
"I think," said he to his disappointed spouse, "that I have acted
wisely; for had I bought a dinner we should have eaten it to-morrow, and
the pleasure would have been soon over; but should we live fifty years
longer we shall have the 'Night Thoughts' to feast upon."
It was his love of books that gave him abundant Christmas dinners for
the rest of his life. Having hired a little shop in which to sell the
shoes made by himself and his wife, it occurred to him that he could
employ the spare room in selling old books, his chief motive being to
have a chance to read the books before he sold them. Beginning with a
stock of half a hundred volumes, chiefly of divinity, he invested all
his earnings in this new branch, and in six months he found his stock of
books had increased fivefold. He abandoned his shoemaking, moved into
larger premises, and was soon a thriving bookseller. He was scrupulous
not to sell any book which he thought calculated to injure its readers,
although about this time he found the Methodist Society somewhat too
strict for him. He makes a curious remark on this subject:--
"I well remember," he says, "that some years before, Mr. Wesley told his
society at Bristol, in my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller
six months in his flock."
His trade increased with astonishing rapidity, and the reason was that
he knew how to buy and sell. He abandoned many of the old usages and
traditions of the book trade. He gave no credit, which was itself a
startling innovation; but his master-stroke was selling every book at
the lowest price he could afford, thus giving his customers a fair
portion of the benefit of his knowledge and activity. He appears to have
begun the system by which books have now become a part of the furniture
of every house. He bought with extraordinary boldness, spending
sometimes as much as sixty thousand dollars in an afternoon's sale.
As soon as he began to live with some liberality kind friends foretold
his speedy ruin. Or, as he says:--
"When by the advice of that eminent physician, Dr. Lettsom, I purchased
a horse, and saved my life by the exercise it afforded me, the old
adage, 'Set a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to the devil,' was
deemed fully verified."
But his one horse became two horses, and his chaise a chariot with
liveried servants, in which vehicle, one summer, he made the round of
the places in which he had lived as a shoemaker, called upon his old
employers, and distributed liberal sums of money among his poor
relations. So far from being ashamed of his business, he caused to be
engraved on all his carriage doors the motto which he considered the
secret of his success:--
SMALL PROFITS DO GREAT THINGS.
In his old age he rejoined his old friends the Methodists, and he
declares in his last edition that, if he had never heard the Methodists
preach, in all probability he should have remained through life "a poor,
ragged, dirty cobbler."
HORACE GREELEY'S START.
I have seldom been more interested than in hearing Horace Greeley tell
the story of his coming to New York in 1831, and gradually working his
way into business there.
He was living at the age of twenty years with his parents in a small
log-cabin in a new clearing of Western Pennsylvania, about twenty miles
from Erie. His father, a Yankee by birth, had recently moved to that
region and was trying to raise sheep there, as he had been accustomed to
do in Vermont. The wolves were too numerous there.
It was part of the business of Horace and his brother to watch the flock
of sheep, and sometimes they camped out all night, sleeping with their
feet to the fire, Indian fashion. He told me that occasionally a pack of
wolves would come so near that he could see their eyeballs glare in the
darkness and hear them pant. Even as he lay in the loft of his father's
cabin he could hear them howling in the fields. In spite of all their
care, the wolves killed in one season a hundred of his father's sheep,
and then he gave up the attempt.
The family were so poor that it was a matter of doubt sometimes whether
they could get food enough to live through the long winter; and so
Horace, who had learned the printer's trade in Vermont, started out on
foot in search of work in a village printing-office. He walked from
village to village, and from town to town, until at last he went to
Erie, the largest place in the vicinity.
There he was taken for a runaway apprentice, and certainly his
appearance justified suspicion. Tall and gawky as he was in person, with
tow-colored hair, and a scanty suit of shabbiest homespun, his
appearance excited astonishment or ridicule wherever he went. He had
never worn a good suit of clothes in his life. He had a singularly fair,
white complexion, a piping, whining voice, and these peculiarities gave
the effect of his being wanting in intellect. It was not until people
conversed with him that they discovered his worth and intelligence. He
had been an ardent reader from his childhood up, and had taken of late
years the most intense interest in politics and held very positive
opinions, which he defended in conversation with great earnestness and
ability.
A second application at Erie procured him employment for a few months in
the office of the Erie "Gazette," and he won his way, not only to the
respect, but to the affection, of his companions and his employer. That
employer was Judge J. M. Sterrett, and from him I heard many curious
particulars of Horace Greeley's residence in Erie. As he was only
working in the office as a substitute, the return of the absentee
deprived him of his place, and he was obliged to seek work elsewhere.
His employer said to him one day:--
"Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money coming to you; don't go
about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give you an
order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace."
The young man looked down at his clothes as though he had never seen
them before, and then said, by way of apology:--
"You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new place, and I want to help
him all I can."
In fact, upon the settlement of his account at the end of his seven
months' labor, he had drawn for his personal expenses six dollars only.
Of the rest of his wages he retained fifteen dollars for himself, and
gave all the rest, amounting to about a hundred and twenty dollars, to
his father, who, I am afraid, did not make the very best use of all of
it.
With the great sum of fifteen dollars in his pocket, Horace now resolved
upon a bold movement. After spending a few days at home, he tied up his
spare clothes in a bundle, not very large, and took the shortest road
through the woods that led to the Erie Canal. He was going to New York,
and he was going cheap!
A walk of sixty miles or so, much of it through the primeval forest,
brought him to Buffalo, where he took passage on the Erie Canal, and
after various detentions, he reached Albany on a Thursday morning just
in time to see the regular steamboat of the day move out into the
stream. At ten o'clock on the same morning he embarked on board of a
tow-boat, which required nearly twenty-four hours to descend the river,
and thus afforded him ample time to enjoy the beauty of its shores.
On the 18th of August, 1831, about sunrise, he set foot in the city of
New York, then containing about two hundred thousand inhabitants, one
sixth of its present population. He had managed his affairs with such
strict economy that his journey of six hundred miles had cost him little
more than five dollars, and he had ten left with which to begin life in
the metropolis. This sum of money and the knowledge of the printer's
trade made up his capital. There was not a person in all New York, so
far as he knew, who had ever seen him before.
His appearance, too, was much against him, for although he had a really
fine face, a noble forehead, and the most benign expression I ever saw
upon a human countenance, yet his clothes and bearing quite spoiled him.
His round jacket made him look like a tall boy who had grown too fast
for his strength; he stooped a little and walked in a loose-jointed
manner. He was very bashful, and totally destitute of the power of
pushing his way, or arguing with a man who said "No" to him. He had
brought no letters of recommendation, and had no kind of evidence to
show that he had even learned his trade.
The first business was, of course, to find an extremely cheap
boarding-house, as he had made up his mind only to try New York as an
experiment, and, if he did not succeed in finding work, to start
homeward while he still had a portion of his money. After walking awhile
he went into what looked to him like a low-priced tavern, at the corner
of Wall and Broad Streets.
"How much do you charge for board?" he asked the bar-keeper, who was
wiping his decanters and putting his bar in trim for the business of the
day.
The bar-keeper gave the stranger a look-over and said to him:--
"I guess we're too high for you."
"Well how much do you charge?"
"Six dollars."
"Yes, that's more than I can afford."
He walked on until he descried on the North River, near Washington
Market, a boarding-house so very mean and squalid that he was tempted to
go in and inquire the price of board there. The price was two dollars
and a half a week.
"Ah!" said Horace, "that sounds more like it."
In ten minutes more he was taking his breakfast at the landlord's table.
Mr. Greeley gratefully remembered this landlord, who was a friendly
Irishman by the name of McGorlick. Breakfast done, the new-comer
sallied forth in quest of work, and began by expending nearly half of
his capital in improving his wardrobe. It was a wise action. He that
goes courting should dress in his best, particularly if he courts so
capricious a jade as Fortune.
Then he began the weary round of the printing-offices, seeking for work
and finding none, all day long. He would enter an office and ask in his
whining note:--
"Do you want a hand?"
"No," was the invariable reply; upon receiving which he left without a
word. Mr. Greeley chuckled as he told the reception given him at the
office of the "Journal of Commerce," a newspaper he was destined to
contend with for many a year in the columns of the "Tribune."
"Do you want a hand?" he said to David Hale, one of the owners of the
paper.
Mr. Hale looked at him from head to foot, and then said:--
"My opinion is, young man, that you're a runaway apprentice, and you'd
better go home to your master."
The applicant tried to explain, but the busy proprietor merely
replied:--
"Be off about your business, and don't bother us."
The young man laughed good-humoredly and resumed his walk. He went to
bed Saturday night thoroughly tired and a little discouraged. On Sunday
he walked three miles to attend a church, and remembered to the end of
his days the delight he had, for the first time in his life, in hearing
a sermon that he entirely agreed with. In the mean time he had gained
the good will of his landlord and the boarders, and to that circumstance
he owed his first chance in the city. His landlord mentioned his
fruitless search for work to an acquaintance who happened to call that
Sunday afternoon. That acquaintance, who was a shoemaker, had
accidentally heard that printers were wanted at No. 85 Chatham Street.
At half-past five on Monday morning Horace Greeley stood before the
designated house, and discovered the sign, "West's Printing-Office,"
over the second story; the ground floor being occupied as a bookstore.
Not a soul was stirring up stairs or down. The doors were locked, and
Horace sat down on the steps to wait. Thousands of workmen passed by;
but it was nearly seven before the first of Mr. West's printers arrived,
and he, too, finding the door locked, sat down by the side of the
stranger, and entered into conversation with him.
"I saw," said this printer to me many years after, "that he was an
honest, good young man, and, being a Vermonter myself, I determined to
help him if I could."
Thus, a second time in New York already, _the native quality of the man_
gained him, at the critical moment the advantage that decided his
destiny. His new friend did help him, and it was very much through his
urgent recommendation that the foreman of the printing-office gave him a
chance. The foreman did not in the least believe that the green-looking
young fellow before him could set in type one page of the polyglot
Testament for which help was needed.
"Fix up a case for him," said he, "and we'll see if he _can_ do
anything."
Horace worked all day with silent intensity, and when he showed to the
foreman at night a printer's proof of his day's work, it was found to be
the best day's work that had yet been done on that most difficult job.
It was greater in quantity and much more correct. The battle was won. He
worked on the Testament for several months, making long hours and
earning only moderate wages, saving all his surplus money, and sending
the greater part of it to his father, who was still in debt for his farm
and not sure of being able to keep it.
Ten years passed. Horace Greeley from journeyman printer made his way
slowly to partnership in a small printing-office. He founded the "New
Yorker," a weekly paper, the best periodical of its class in the United
States. It brought him great credit and no profit.
In 1840, when General Harrison was nominated for the presidency against
Martin Van Buren, his feelings as a politician were deeply stirred, and
he started a little campaign paper called "The Log-Cabin," which was
incomparably the most spirited thing of the kind ever published in the
United States. It had a circulation of unprecedented extent, beginning
with forty-eight thousand, and rising week after week until it reached
ninety thousand. The price, however, was so low that its great sale
proved rather an embarrassment than a benefit to the proprietors, and
when the campaign ended, the firm of Horace Greeley & Co. was rather
more in debt than it was when the first number of "The Log-Cabin" was
published.
The little paper had given the editor two things which go far towards
making a success in business,--great reputation and some confidence in
himself. The first penny paper had been started. The New York "Herald"
was making a great stir. The "Sun" was already a profitable sheet. And
now the idea occurred to Horace Greeley to start a daily paper which
should have the merits of cheapness and abundant news, without some of
the qualities possessed by the others. He wished to found a cheap daily
paper that should be good and salutary, as well as interesting. The last
number of "The Log-Cabin" announced the forthcoming "Tribune," price one
cent.
The editor was probably not solvent when he conceived the scheme, and he
borrowed a thousand dollars of his old friend, James Coggeshall, with
which to buy the indispensable material. He began with six hundred
subscribers, printed five thousand of the first number, and found it
difficult to give them all away. The "Tribune" appeared on the day set
apart in New York for the funeral procession in commemoration of
President Harrison, who died a month after his inauguration.
It was a chilly, dismal day in April, and all the town was absorbed in
the imposing pageant. The receipts during the first week were ninety-two
dollars; the expenses five hundred and twenty-five. But the little paper
soon caught public attention, and the circulation increased for three
weeks at the rate of about three hundred a day. It began its fourth week
with six thousand; its seventh week, with eleven thousand. The first
number contained four columns of advertisements; the twelfth, nine
columns; the hundredth, thirteen columns.
In a word, the success of the paper was immediate and very great. It
grew a little faster than the machinery for producing it could be
provided. Its success was due chiefly to the fact that the original idea
of the editor was actually carried out. He aimed to produce a paper
which should morally benefit the public. It was not always right, but it
always meant to be.
JAMES GORDON BENNETT,
AND HOW HE FOUNDED HIS HERALD.
A cellar in Nassau Street was the first office of the "Herald." It was a
real cellar, not a basement, lighted only from the street, and
consequently very dark except near its stone steps. The first furniture
of this office,--as I was told by the late Mr. Gowans, who kept a
bookstore near by,--consisted of the following articles:--
Item, one wooden chair. Item, two empty flour barrels with a wide, dirty
pine board laid upon them, to serve as desk and table. End of the
inventory.
The two barrels stood about four feet apart, and one end of the board
was pretty close to the steps, so that passers-by could see the pile of
"Heralds" which were placed upon it every morning for sale. Scissors,
pens, inkstand, and pencil were at the other end, leaving space in the
middle for an editorial desk.
This was in the summer of 1835, when General Jackson was President of
the United States, and Martin Van Buren the favorite candidate for the
succession. If the reader had been in New York then, and had wished to
buy a copy of the saucy little paper, which every morning amused and
offended the decorous people of that day, he would have gone down into
this underground office, and there he would have found its single chair
occupied by a tall and vigorous-looking man about forty years of age,
with a slight defect in one of his eyes, dressed in a clean, but
inexpensive suit of summer clothes.
This was James Gordon Bennett, proprietor, editor, reporter,
book-keeper, clerk, office-boy, and everything else there was
appertaining to the control and management of the New York "Herald,"
price one cent. The reader would perhaps have said to him, "I want
to-day's 'Herald.'" Bennett would have looked up from his writing, and
pointed, without speaking, to the pile of papers at the end of the
board. The visitor would have taken one and added a cent to the pile of
copper coin adjacent. If he had lingered a few minutes, the busy writer
would not have regarded him, and he could have watched the subsequent
proceedings without disturbing him. In a few moments a woman might have
come down the steps into the subterranean office, who answered the
editor's inquiring look by telling him that she wanted a place as cook,
and wished him to write an advertisement for her. This Would have been
entirely a matter of course, for in the prospectus of the paper it was
expressly stated that persons could have their advertisements written
for them at the office.