fe-work? If they had, they would now probably be working on
comparatively small salaries for other people. It was not salary, but
opportunity, that each wanted,--a chance to show what was in him, to
absorb the secrets of the business. They were satisfied with a dollar
or two apiece a week, hardly enough to live on, while they were
learning the lessons that made them what they are to-day. No, the boys
who rise in the world are not those who, at the start, split hairs
about salaries.

Often we see bright boys who have worked, perhaps for years, on small
salaries, suddenly jumping, as if by magic, into high and responsible
positions. Why? Simply because, while their employers were paying
them but a few dollars a week, they were paying themselves vastly more
in the fine quality of their work, in the enthusiasm, determination,
and high purpose they brought to their tasks, and in increased insight
into business methods.

Colonel Robert C. Clowry, president of the Western Union Telegraph
Company, worked without pay as a messenger boy for months for
experience, which he regarded as worth infinitely more than salary--and
scores of our most successful men have cheerfully done the same thing.

A millionaire merchant of New York told me the story of his rise. "I
walked from my home in New England to New York," he said, "where I
secured a place to sweep out a store for three dollars and a half a
week. At the end of a year, I accepted an offer from the firm to
remain for five years at a salary of seven dollars and a half a week.
Long before this time had expired, however, I had a proposition from
another large concern in New York to act as its foreign representative
at a salary of three thousand dollars a year. I told the manager that
I was then under contract, but that, when my time should be completed,
I should be glad to talk with him in regard to his proposition." When
his contract was nearly up, he was called into the office of the head
of the house, and a new contract with him for a term of years at three
thousand dollars a year was proposed. The young man told his employers
that the manager of another house had offered him that amount a year or
more before, but that he did not accept it because he wouldn't break
his contract. They told him they would think the matter over and see
what they could do for him. Incredible as it may seem, they notified
him, a little later, that they were prepared to enter into a ten-