s if she did not care if all the world
did gaze on her, then he studied her bonnet, and by the time it was out
of sight he knew the shape of the frame, the color of the trimmings, and
the crinklings in the feather. I sometimes try to describe a bonnet, but
not always. I would not try to describe a modern bonnet. Where is the
man that could describe one? This aggregation of all sorts of driftwood
stuck on the back of the head, or the side of the neck, like a rooster
with only one tail feather left. But in John Jacob Astor's day there
was some art about the millinery business, and he went to the
millinery-store and said to them: "Now put into the show-window just
such a bonnet as I describe to you, because I have already seen a lady
who likes such a bonnet. Don't make up any more until I come back."
Then he went out and sat down again, and another lady passed him of
a different form, of different complexion, with a different shape and
color of bonnet. "Now," said he, "put such a bonnet as that in the show
window." He did not fill his show-window up town with a lot of hats and
bonnets to drive people away, and then sit on the back stairs and bawl
because people went to Wanamaker's to trade. He did not have a hat or a
bonnet in that show-window but what some lady liked before it was made
up. The tide of custom began immediately to turn in, and that has been
the foundation of the greatest store in New York in that line, and still
exists as one of three stores. Its fortune was made by John Jacob Astor
after they had failed in business, not by giving them any more money,
but by finding out what the ladies liked for bonnets before they wasted
any material in making them up. I tell you if a man could foresee the
millinery business he could foresee anything under heaven!

Suppose I were to go through this audience to-night and ask you in this
great manufacturing city if there are not opportunities to get rich in
manufacturing. "Oh yes," some young man says, "there are opportunities
here still if you build with some trust and if you have two or three
millions of dollars to begin with as capital." Young man, the history of
the breaking up of the trusts by that attack upon "big business" is only
illustrating what is now the opportunity of the smaller man. The time
never came in the history of the world when you could get rich so
quickly manufacturing without capital as you can now.

But you will say, "You cannot do anything of the k