The Oregon daily journal., October 18, 1908, Page 33, Image 33

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PORTLATJD, OREGON, SUNDAY HORNING, OCTOBER ,18, .1908'
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"5 day of opportunity
America?
The question is one which is being
asked by millions of young Americans, who
have the examples of the famous leaders
of industry, trade and finance, in earlier
generations, to emulate, while they think
they perceive, in the aggregations of cap
ital today, only so many insurmountable
obstacles to every form of individual en
terprise. This question, sv momentous to every
class of the population, has been 'answer
ed recently by a number of the very men
whose existence has been supposed to debar
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a ofnrrj row the chancy to rise and it
has been answered, somephat earlier, by
those men in the actions that speak more
loudly than any words can possibly be
uttered.
The answer is unanimously that this is
not only the day, but the age of opportu
nities greater than the country ever knew
before.
Conditions which the man aiming at a
career must encounter now have changed
only in one respect. The country at Idrge
is holding out more ladders than ever up
which the young man can climb to the
top.
It is, in fact, the age of the young
man, the era in which every factor is being
combined to equip the energies of youth
with the knowledge which, formerly, came
only with years.
HE3f WHO HAVE CLINCHED SUCCESS
' Jme J. Hill. 'the great railroad man of tht
Northwest, was in early me a laporer on iu.
docks at St. Paul.
John Mitchell, the world-famous leader et
mine workers, began lire as a mine Doy.
Theodore P. Bhonts, president of the Inter
borough lines of New York city, was a water
boy on a construction train in iowb.
W. H TrueadaJe, president of the Dela.ware,
Lackawanna and Western Railroad, beg-a.n by
.i.rlrln.- in a vMlm frfilflrht house.
William C. Brown, senior vice president of
the Vanderbilt system, was a section nana on
the Chicago, Milwaukee and St Paul Railroad.
Oscar O. Murray, president of the Baltimore
and Ohio, was a ticket agent on the Galveston,
Houston and Henderson Railroad, In Texas.
Frederick J. Delano, who won a reputation
as president of the Wabash, was a journeyman
machinist on the Chicago, Burlington and
Qulncy Railroad.
ftoorge B. Harris, who rose to be president
ef the Chicago. Burllnrton and Qulncy road, was
a clerk to a paymaster on the Hannibal and St.
Joseph road.
United States 8enator A. J. Beverldge, of la
fllaaa. was a farm boy and "lumber jack."
Speaker Joseph O. Cannon was clerk Id
grocery store. ....
Governor John A. Johnson, of Minnesota,
clerked in a grocery store and also delivered
laundry from his mother's weshtub.
George EL Co rt el you. secretary of the treas.
ory, began his career as a stenographer at the
age of 2t; and be t only 4 now.
THERE Is, according to these men, whose
names have become household words in .
America some from coast to coast, and
others among rat t divisions of the na
tion, cither in sections bounded by local fams '
or in classes combined into some great industry
ne difference whatever between" the qualities
demanded todsy of .jht rising an wd thos th
A
world asked of his father.
. ) The conditions, unaltered, call for the men
unchanged cave for this one difference : The
bias- then, was for men advanced in years to
occupy all. positions of responsibility; the ten
dency, now is, in favor of the youngest whose
judgment cad possibly be deemed ripe enough
for' the offices to be ailed.
The country has come to appreciate the
value of energy of plain, unalloyed hustle and
push. There is so much more, to be accom
plished, on a scale so much more extensive, that
vitality is at a premium, where, formerly, it
was a thing to be judiciously repressed.
There are very few young men, in or out of
work today, who would not consider themselves
pretty well fixed if they could secure the job of
senior vice president of the New York Central
Railroad and of all the other roads that go to
make up the great Vanderbilt system.
There are a good many thousand men on
those very roads into whoso heads the idea never
enters that they, or any of their kind, could ever
land such a job in a thousand years.
Well, W. C. Brown, the young-looking man
you would meet if you had business with the
senior vice, up in the Grand Central offices,
landed it within twenty-eight years from the
time when he held a minor post as train dis
patcher in the West.
A long time to wait twenty-eight years;
but then, he was making, all the while, a better
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position for himself, and was earning a better
and better income. Ilia start was as low as that
of cny man who ever worked on a railroad, ex
cept, possibly that of Edison, who began a
newsboy. r j
Back in the seventies the came of W. C.
Brown was entered on the payroll of the Chi
cago, Milwaukee and St. Paul road, aa that of
a section hand, whose job was a good deal
tougher than that of the section hand nowadays.
Those were the years when the United States
had wood to burn, and burned it, until now it Is
hard up for matchsticks.
Section Uand Brown, very proud of his
Tating because everybody knew he was a mere
kid of 16, made good with the strongest of
them, wooding the engines; and if any boy of
16, or any man of 26, for that matter, thinks it
is an easy thing to heave cordwood for looomo-,
tives, let him hunt out some stray "jerkwater",
road and try it.
The kid, Brown, had a chance now and then
to give the station agent a lift in his spare time. I
The station agent was a human sort of a man,1
as most men are. He was willing to reciprocate.'
If the obliging kid wanted to loaf about tha
office at night after his wood-heaving was done'
and practice on the telegraph instrument, the:
agent had no objection So Brown grew' to
be a telegraph operator, as plenty of other boysi
have grown, somehow or other.
Within half a dozen years he was holding
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down a job as train dispatcher on the Chicago.
Burlington and Quincy road. On Sunday night,
xa. the winter of 1877-78, there was a peculiarly :
fierce snowstorm, one that fairly overwhelmed
Jerry Hosford, the superintendent of the road's
stockyards at East Burlington, because Hosford
had between 300 and 400 carloads of stock on his
hands, and the cattle stood a fair chance of being
dead before morning. Dispatcher Brown was
doing his regular trick, from 4 in the after
noon until midnight.
The head of the Burlington system was T. J.
Potter, who had lain awake half the night worry
ing over the chaos in which his road would be in
the morning. He was up early Monday and out
to see how things had gone. He encountered ''
Hosford, on his way home, looking as though he
had been carrying around the burden of the
United States since midnight, and waving a
weary hand in farewell to a young fellow who
looked as tired as he. . '
HIS HARD WORK REWARDED
"Things bad over at the yards T' "asked Pot
ter, prepared for the worst.
"They would have been," was the superin
tendent's reply, "if it wasn't for that young fel ,
low who just left me. There was the biggest
raft of stock you ever saw, with the snow simply
burying them alive. 4J
"We were about swamped,' after midnight, '
when he came tfver from the dispatcher's office
and said his trick was done; wanted to know
whether I could use him. Said he used to be
a section hand, and kntw how it was. lie must
have been three or four, section hands, from the
way he turned in and rustled those steers. We've
Eot every blamed one of them in the sheds and
e didn't quit until I did. We came over to
gether." "What's his name!" Potter inquired. "X
man like that is worth watching."
"He sure is. His name's W. C. Brown." '
Kow, if that same W. J. Brvwn had been
studious reader of articles on "How to Climb to
the Top," and had bec laying for such a
chance for a grandstand play from the hour
- when be first began to wood engines, he wcu! J
have missd-it. because none of thoee studios
grandstand players ever, by any chance. sty
out of bed wben it is snowing ! lira rds at ruij-
- night and they hart been working eibt hours
that day.
He wasn't He was one ef tho at-" tit
whom the studious grandstaadem stwir. lie
wofied bean be wanted ' work t s in-''
himself, pwlielj as all fiher yccrj ft. ' 1
work, more or leM ambitiously. Tut I t l i,
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