He went to school a little, not much, and he assisted his mother in the house a great deal. His father died when John was fourteen, and this changed the whole course of his life. He abandoned the brickyard and secured a place in a bookstore owned by Barclay Lippincott, on Market Street, Philadelphia, at a salary of one dollar and twenty-five cents a week.
It was a four-mile walk from his home to his place of business. Cheerfully he trudged this distance morning and night; purchasing an apple or a roll each noon for luncheon, and giving his mother all the money that he saved. He used to deny himself every comfort, and the only other money that he ever spent was on books for his mother. This seems to have been the boy’s chief source of pleasure at that period. Even to-day, he says of his mother: “Her smile was a bit of heaven, and it never faded out of her face till her dying day.” Mrs. Wanamaker lived to see her son famous and wealthy.
HIS CAPITAL AT FOURTEEN
John Wanamaker, the boy, had no single thing in all his surroundings to give him an advantage over any one of hundreds of other boys in the city of Philadelphia. Indeed, there were hundreds and hundreds of other boys of his own age for whom anyone would have felt safe in prophesying a more notable career. His capital was not in money. Very few boys in all that great city had less money than John Wanamaker, and comparatively few families of average position but were better off in the way of worldly goods. John Wanamaker’s capital, that stood him in such good stead in after life, comprised good health, good habits, a clean mind, thrift in money matters, and tireless devotion to whatever he thought to be duty.
People who were well acquainted with John Wanamaker when he was a book publisher’s boy, say that he was exceptionally promising as a boy; that he was studious as well as attentive to business. He did not take kindly to rough play, or do much playing of any kind. He was earnest in his work, unusually earnest for a boy. And he was saving of his money.
When, a little later, he went to a Market street clothing house and asked for a place, he had no difficulty in getting it, nor had he any trouble in holding it, and here he could earn twenty-five cents a week more wages.
TOWER HALL CLOTHING STORE
Men who worked with him in the Tower Hall Clothing Store say that he was always bright, willing, accommodating, and very seldom out of temper. His effort was to be first at the store in the morning, and he was very likely to be one of the last, if not the last, at the store in the evening. If there was an errand, he was always prompt and glad to do it. And so the store people liked him, and the proprietor liked him, and, when he began to sell clothing, the customers liked him. He was considerate of their interests. He did not try to force undesirable goods upon them. He treated them so that when they came again they would be apt to ask, “Where is John?”
HIS AMBITION AND POWER AS AN ORGANIZER AT SIXTEEN
Colonel Bennett, the proprietor of Tower Hall, said of him at this time:—