AT the time of the Civil war Tom L. Johnson was just old enough to begin to realize the significance of events; he could remember his family’s former affluence, and this memory served as a spur to urge him to the rehabilitation of broken fortunes. At the outbreak of the conflict his father, A. W. Johnson, had joined the Confederate army as a colonel, removing his wife and children, from the Kentucky homestead near Georgetown, to the south, and finally to Staunton, Virginia, for greater safety. There the boy Tom, who was born in 1854, spent four of the most impressionable years of his life, and there he earned his first dollar.
HIS FIRST SPECULATION.
“I am glad I was old enough to remember my home before the war,” he said, in speaking of his early life. “Rightly or wrongly, I attach great importance to this fact as a constant incentive in my career. The thought of regaining the position which we had previously held was always with me.”
The five weeks immediately following Lee’s surrender were a golden time to Tom financially; in that period, he earned eighty-eight dollars, enough to carry the family (which consisted of his parents and two younger brothers), back to Kentucky. This was the way he did it: There was, of course, great thirst for news in Staunton, as all over the country, but only once a day was Staunton in railway communication with the outside world.
The boy saw his chance for a monopoly in newspapers and periodicals, and he straightway cornered the market. This he was enabled to do through the friendship of the conductor of Staunton’s unique train, who refused to furnish papers to anyone else. For five weeks he held his monopoly, selling dailies at fifteen cents and illustrated periodicals at twenty-five cents each.
When Johnson ceased to enjoy these exclusive privileges, he was already a small capitalist, besides having learned a lesson that was not without profit in after life. He had eighty-eight dollars in silver.
“I tell you, that seemed like a lot of sure ’nough money,” he said, with a smile, “to us who had been paying one hundred dollars in Confederate notes for a hat.”
AT WORK IN A ROLLING MILL.
Three years after he went to work in Louisville as clerk in an iron rolling mill, on a very small salary. In the same office with him was another lad, Arthur Moxham, who later became his business partner. For economical reasons, the managers of the mill decided that the services of one of the boys could be dispensed with, and it then came to a choice between them. Moxham was the one retained, and Johnson was turned out to commence over again. At the time, this looked like a misfortune, but it was really the best thing that could have happened. Before long, an opening with Louisville’s ramshackle, broken-down-old-mule street railway presented itself, and the discharged mill clerk started on the career which was to lead to fortune.