Captains of Industry

Captains of Industry, by James
Parton

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Title: Captains of Industry or, Men of Business Who Did Something
Besides Making Money
Author: James Parton
Release Date: December 9, 2006 [EBook #20064]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration:
Very Truly Yours Ichabod Washburn]

CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY
OR
MEN OF BUSINESS WHO DID SOMETHING BESIDES MAKING
MONEY
A BOOK FOR YOUNG AMERICANS
BY
JAMES PARTON
FIFTH THOUSAND
[Illustration]
BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY New York: 11
East Seventeenth Street The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1890

Copyright, 1884, By JAMES PARTON.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

PREFACE.
In this volume are presented examples of men who shed lustre upon
ordinary pursuits, either by the superior manner in which they exercised
them or by the noble use they made of the leisure which success in
them usually gives. Such men are the nobility of republics. The
American people were fortunate in having at an early period an ideal
man of this kind in Benjamin Franklin, who, at the age of forty-two,

just mid-way in his life, deliberately relinquished the most profitable
business of its kind in the colonies for the sole purpose of developing
electrical science. In this, as in other respects, his example has had
great influence with his countrymen.
A distinguished author, who lived some years at Newport, has
expressed the opinion that the men who occupy the villas of that
emerald isle exert very little power compared with that of an orator or a
writer. To be, he adds, at the head of a normal school, or to be a
professor in a college, is to have a sway over the destinies of America
which reduces to nothingness the power of successful men of business.
Being myself a member of the fraternity of writers, I suppose I ought to
yield a joyful assent to such remarks. It is flattering to the self-love of
those who drive along Bellevue Avenue in a shabby hired vehicle to be
told that they are personages of much more consequence than the heavy
capitalist who swings by in a resplendent curricle, drawn by two
matched and matchless steeds, in a six-hundred dollar harness. Perhaps
they are. But I advise young men who aspire to serve their generation
effectively not to undervalue the importance of the gentleman in the
curricle.
One of the individuals who has figured lately in the society of Newport
is the proprietor of an important newspaper. He is not a writer, nor a
teacher in a normal school, but he wields a considerable power in this
country. Fifty men write for the journal which he conducts, some of
whom write to admiration, for they are animated by a humane and
patriotic spirit. The late lamented Ivory Chamberlain was a writer
whose leading editorials were of national value. But, mark: a telegram
of ten words from that young man at Newport, written with perspiring
hand in a pause of the game of polo, determines without appeal the
course of the paper in any crisis of business or politics.
I do not complain of this arrangement of things. I think it is just; I know
it is unalterable.
It is then of the greatest possible importance that the men who control
during their lifetime, and create endowments when they are dead,

should share the best civilization of their age and country. It is also of
the greatest importance that young men whom nature has fitted to be
leaders should, at the beginning of life, take to the steep and thorny
path which leads at length to mastership.
Most of these chapters were published originally in "The Ledger" of
New York, and a few of them in "The Youths' Companion" of Boston,
the largest two circulations in the country. I have occasionally had
reason to think that they were of some service to young readers, and I
may add that they represent more labor and research than would be
naturally supposed from their brevity. Perhaps in this new form they
may reach and influence the minds of future leaders in the great and
growing realm of business. I should pity any young man who could
read the briefest account of what has been done in manufacturing towns
by