“Much more so. When I was a boy, there were but very few important positions that a boy could aspire to. Everything had to be made. Now a boy doesn’t need to make the place,—all he has to do is to fit himself to take it.”
“Did you make your high places as you went along?”
“I shouldn’t call them high, and I did not make the earliest ones. In starting new enterprises, of course, I made my place at the head of them. The earliest ones were the poorest kinds of positions, however.”
“Where did you begin life?”
“In Dunfermline, Scotland. That was only my home during my earliest years. The service of my life has all been in this country.”
“In Pittsburg?”
“Largely so. My father settled in Allegheny City, when I was only ten years old, and I began to earn my way in Pittsburg.”
“Do you mind telling me what your first service was?”
“Not at all. I was a bobbin boy in a cotton factory, then an engine-man or boy in the same place, and later still I was a messenger boy for a telegraph company.”