small stationary engine each week. He is now the head of
the American Locomotive Company, which manufactures three thousand
locomotives a year, or ten for each working day, and is capitalized at
fifty million dollars. Seven men were employed in the shop where he
learned his trade. He has now control of sixteen thousand men.

Pitkin's father was in poor circumstances, and at twelve years of age the
boy went to live with his grandfather at Granville, Ohio. The grandfather
was a cabinet-maker and wood-turner, and before long he had taught his
grandson many of the secrets of the trade and had developed in the youth
an understanding and appreciation of what machinery could be made to do.

"There is no use using hand tools if you can make a machine do the work,"
said the boy.

Then, from an old spinning-wheel which he found in the attic of the house,
he made a machine that sawed wood and saved labor in the cabinet-shop. He
also constructed other machines out of wood, and the cleverness with which
they were fashioned and adapted to the needs of the little shop enabled
him and his grandfather to turn out an increased amount of work.

At sixteen years of age it became necessary for young Pitkin to choose
some trade, and he selected that of machinist. He was regularly indentured
for three years, and received sixty cents a day for the first year, ninety
cents a day for the second, and one dollar and twenty-five cents a day for
the third. His father was disabled by ill health during this period, and
the greater part of the son's meager earnings went to help support the
family.

Economy and Hard Study.

All this time he was forced to live on a few cents a day, and the only
money he spent besides the cost of his board and clothing was what went
for books on mechanics and material for mechanical drawing. When his
apprenticeship was finished he was not only a thorough machinist, but he
was also a mechanical draftsman.

His next position was in the locomotive repair-shops of the Cleveland,
Akron and Columbus Railroad. The year he spent here was one of hard work
and hard study, for he continued his drawing more assiduously than before.
At the end of the year he obtained a place in the drawing department of
the Baldwin Locomotive Works, having prepared himself for the stiff
examination given there without one bit of outside assistance.

He spent five years with the Baldwin company, worked up from the lowest
position in the drawi