Barnum was so impressed by this extraordinary object, that he bought her for a thousand dollars, putting his last cent into the venture and borrowing what he lacked. He proceeded to advertise her with characteristic energy, and great crowds thronged to see her, so that his receipts sometimes ran as high as $1,500 a week. However, the old woman died within a year, and a post-mortem examination showed that she was really only about eighty years old.
But Barnum had found his vocation, that of showman, and after a few unsuccessful ventures, bought Scudder's American Museum, in New York City, and started out on a brilliant career. It is interesting to note that the museum which Barnum purchased consisted in part of the curios collected years before by Charles and Rembrandt Peale. Barnum added to it, was indefatigable in securing curiosities, really created the art of modern advertising, and it was his proudest boast that no one ever left the museum without having got his money's worth. He was one of the first to realize that the best possible advertisement is a pleased customer, and he tried honestly to keep his museum supplied with every novelty. The public soon came to appreciate this, and perhaps his greatest asset was public confidence in his promises. People came to believe that when Barnum advertised a thing, he really had it. But the most fortunate day in all his life was that November day of 1842, when he discovered at Bridgeport, Connecticut, the midget whose real name was Charles S. Stratton, but who was to become world-famous as General Tom Thumb.
The story of Tom Thumb's success reads like a romance. He was quite young when Barnum got him, and the showman took great pains with his education and training, for he wanted the midget to appear a finished man of the world. He became a great public favorite, toured America and Europe, was introduced to kings and princes and made a great fortune for himself and his exhibitor. Barnum struck the apogee of his fortunes when he discovered another midget, Lavinia Warren, who achieved a success scarcely less than Tom Thumb's. Indeed, she and the General fell in love with each other and were married at Grace Church, and as General and Mrs. Tom Thumb were perhaps the greatest drawing cards in the world. Another triumph of his career was his engagement of Jenny Lind for a series of one hundred concerts, at a salary of a thousand dollars a night, the receipts of the tour being over seven hundred thousand dollars.
Barnum had many ups and downs, which he met with an invincible optimism. His museum burned down and he rebuilt it, but it soon burned down again. It was then that the idea occurred to him to establish a travelling museum, exhibiting under a tent, and it was this idea which developed into "The Greatest Show on Earth." It really was the greatest and its owner never spared money in his endeavor to keep it so. Large-hearted, benevolent, a true entertainer, he will always occupy a bright place in the memory of the American public.
Perhaps no name in the history of America was ever more closely connected in the public mind with money-making for its own sake than that of Russell Sage. It will be surprising news to many, who knew him only as a money-lender on a large scale, that he started out on a public career, as alderman, county treasurer, and finally as member of congress for two terms, from 1853 to 1857. He was the first person to advocate, on the floor of congress, the purchase of Mount Vernon by the government. His career on Wall street began shortly after that, at first in a small way; but before his death, he had developed into the greatest individual money-lender in the world.
That was his whole life. He took no part in any political or charitable movement; he had no interest in art, and he lived in the simplest manner. He used his wealth, not to procure enjoyment for himself or other people, but to procure more wealth. He was saving to the point of miserliness; he got the utmost he could out of his money; he never took a vacation—and dying, at the age of ninety, left a fortune of many millions. He had no children and the whole fortune went to his wife. She at once proceeded to bestow it in carefully-considered benevolences, so that the Sage millions are to benefit humanity, after all. In fact, it is doubtful if any other fortune, amassed by a single man, will, in the end, do so much good in the world as will this of Russell Sage, for Mrs. Sage is devoting it to what may be called scientific charity, which has for its object the universal betterment of mankind.
Mrs. Sage, who thus becomes one of the world's great philanthropists, was Margaret Olivia Slocum, of Syracuse, New York, and was married to Mr. Sage in 1869. She was of a family in only moderate circumstances, and was a school teacher previous to her marriage. The turn of the wheel made her the wealthiest woman in the world, and she proceeded without delay to the carrying out of the immense benevolent enterprises which she had doubtless long meditated.
The name of Cyrus West Field is so closely associated with his supreme achievement, the laying of the first Atlantic cable, that we are apt to forget that he was in the beginning a manufacturer and had amassed a considerable fortune before his attention was called to the possibility of linking Europe to America by a telegraph line laid on the bottom of the Atlantic. It was under A. T. Stewart that Field received his mercantile training, having gone to New York in 1834, at the age of fifteen, from his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and entering Stewart's employ as a clerk.
He was an apt pupil, and before he was of age, owned an establishment of his own for the manufacture and sale of paper. In this business, in the course of a dozen years, he had amassed a fortune so considerable that he was able to retire from active charge of it, and to spend his time in travel. It was in 1853 that the project of carrying a telegraph line across the Atlantic ocean suggested itself to him during a conversation with his brother, who was interested in building a line across Newfoundland. The more he considered and investigated the project, the more feasible it seemed, and he proceeded to organize the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, himself taking one fourth of the capital stock, and interesting such other capitalists as Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Chandler White and Marshall Roberts.