epted
the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine
and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all
that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and
misery.

But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the
working-class--especially if he is handicapped by the possession of
ideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and was hard put
to find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate of
interest on invested money, and worried my child's brain into an
understanding of the virtues and excellences of that remarkable invention
of man, compound interest. Further, I ascertained the current rates of
wages for workers of all ages, and the cost of living. From all this
data I concluded that if I began immediately and worked and saved until I
was fifty years of age, I could then stop working and enter into
participation in a fair portion of the delights and goodnesses that would
then be open to me higher up in society. Of course, I resolutely
determined not to marry, while I quite forgot to consider at all that
great rock of disaster in the working-class world--sickness.

But the life that was in me demanded more than a meagre existence of
scraping and scrimping. Also, at ten years of age, I became a newsboy on
the streets of a city, and found myself with a changed uplook. All about
me were still the same sordidness and wretchedness, and up above me was
still the same paradise waiting to be gained; but the ladder whereby to
climb was a different one. It was now the ladder of business. Why save
my earnings and invest in government bonds, when, by buying two
newspapers for five cents, with a turn of the wrist I could sell them for
ten cents and double my capital? The business ladder was the ladder for
me, and I had a vision of myself becoming a bald-headed and successful
merchant prince.

Alas for visions! When I was sixteen I had already earned the title of
"prince." But this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats and
thieves, by whom I was called "The Prince of the Oyster Pirates." And at
that time I had climbed the first rung of the business ladder. I was a
capitalist. I owned a boat and a complete oyster-pirating outfit. I had
begun to exploit my fellow-creatures. I had a crew of one man. As
captain and owner I took two-thirds of the spoils, and gave the crew
one-third, though the crew worked