rk measured that man quick, and he
pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them
across the counter and turned away to his books. You should have seen
that specimen of humanity when the paper and envelopes came across the
counter--he whose wants had always been anticipated by servants. He
adjusted his unseeing eye-glass and he yelled after that clerk: "Come
back here, thir, come right back here. Now, thir, will you order a
thervant to take that papah and thothe envelopes and carry them to
yondah dethk." Oh, the poor miserable, contemptible American monkey! He
couldn't carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could not
get his arms down. I have no pity for such travesties of human nature.
If you have no capital, I am glad of it. You don't need capital; you
need common sense, not copper cents.

A.T. Stewart, the great princely merchant of New York, the richest man
in America in his time, was a poor boy; he had a dollar and a half and
went into the mercantile business. But he lost eighty-seven and a half
cents of his first dollar and a half because he bought some needles and
thread and buttons to sell, which people didn't want.

Are you poor? It is because you are not wanted and are left on your own
hands. There was the great lesson. Apply it whichever way you will it
comes to every single person's life, young or old. He did not know what
people needed, and consequently bought something they didn't want and
had the goods left on his hands a dead loss. A.T. Stewart learned there
the great lesson of his mercantile life and said, "I will never buy
anything more until I first learn what the people want; then I'll make
the purchase." He went around to the doors and asked them what they did
want, and when he found out what they wanted, he invested his sixty-two
and a half cents and began to supply "a known demand." I care not what
your profession or occupation in life may be; I care not whether you are
a lawyer, a doctor, a housekeeper, teacher or whatever else, the
principle is precisely the same. We must know what the world needs first
and then invest ourselves to supply that need, and success is almost
certain. A.T. Stewart went on until he was worth forty millions. "Well,"
you will say, "a man can do that in New York, but cannot do it here in
Philadelphia." The statistics very carefully gathered in New York in
1889 showed one hundred and seven millionaires in the city worth over
ten millions