The placing of young men in positions of extreme responsibility seems to be peculiar to this country. Abroad such positions are usually held by persons of mature or advanced years. That the commercial world of America does not suffer from its departure from European customs in the respect cited is evidenced by its commercial and mercantile progress. Clement Acton Griscom, Jr., manager of the great American line of steamers is a case in point. He was born in 1868 and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1887. His father is Clement Acton Griscom, Sr., president of the line. Griscom, the manager, entered the service of the company the day following his last examination at college and two weeks before he received his diploma. He first worked as office boy in the freight department at a salary of $3.00 per week, and, as the story goes, although a college graduate and the son of the president, the other employes treated him exactly as they did the other boys. His business progress then was something in this order: junior clerk at $5.00 per week; junior clerk in the passenger department, $7.00 per week; clerk in the ticket department, dock clerk from 7 a. m. until 6 p. m., assistant to the manager of the Chicago office, assistant to the general manager in New York, supervisor at the head of the purchasing board steward departments, and finally manager. It will be seen that young Griscom had to “hoe his own row” completely, and, although at the time he, like the ordinary boy, objected to so doing, he now recognizes the wisdom of his father in compelling him to learn all there was to be learned. Under Mr. Griscom’s management, the American Line flourishes. He is also president of the James Riley repair and supply company, a director of the Maritime Exchange and is interested in a number of other enterprises. He married the daughter of General William Ludlow, and his friends say that his home life has had a determining influence on his career in general.
James J. Hill.
Intimates of James J. Hill, the transportation giant of the northwest, say that the ambition of his life is to encircle the world with a system of railroads and steamships, all of which shall be under his guiding hand. He has nearly attained it. He owns the Great Northern railway, which stretches from Seattle, Washington, to St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota. He is proprietor of the line of steamers which ply between Duluth and Buffalo. He is largely interested in the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, which covers the territory between Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. He is organizing, in Europe, a steamship company whose vessels shall have for their terminal ports Seattle, Washington, on the one side, and Vladivostok, Yokohama and Hong Kong on the other. He is now reaching out across the Pacific to Seattle, intending to connect his Great Northern road with the Trans-Siberian road, and the man who controls all these huge enterprises earned them from humble beginnings, and asserts that the principle that has enabled him to reach power and affluence is simply that of economy. When he earned five dollars a week he saved; now that he is the owner of an income the size of which he can hardly pass upon, he saves, not in miserly fashion, but he detests unnecessary expenditure. Mr. Hill was born near Guelph, Upper Canada, September 16, 1838. He was educated at Rockwood academy and started life in a steamboat office in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hard and continuous work brought its reward in the shape of his being made agent for the Northwestern Packet company in 1865. Then he branched out for himself, establishing a fuel and transportation business on his own account. From that time on his rise was rapid. He founded the Red River Transportation company, 1875; organized the syndicate which secured control of the St. Paul and Pacific railroad, became the president of the organized road and finally merged it with other lines into the Great Northern system of which he is now president. Mr. Hill is married and has several sons, all of whom are following the railroad business.
Melville Ezra Ingalls.
One of the many railroad presidents who began life on a farm is Melville Ezra Ingalls. He was born at Harrison, Maine, September 6, 1842. Brought up on his father’s farm, he had his full share of hard work during boyhood. He was first educated at Burlington academy, later at Bowdoin college, and graduated from the Harvard law school in 1863. Establishing himself in practice in Gray, Maine, he soon found that the village was too small for his hopes and ambitions, so he removed to Boston. There he became identified with political affairs and was elected a member of the Massachusetts senate in 1867. In 1870 he was made the president of the Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Lafayette railroad, which was then in a bankrupt condition. A year later he was made receiver for the road. Then it was that Mr. Ingalls’ genius for railroading began to show itself. With the aid of the organization in 1873 and 1880, he put the successor of the road, which was the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago, on a sound footing, subsequently consolidating it with other roads under its final title of the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis railroad, now known as the “Big Four” system. Mr. Ingalls is president of the road, and up to February, 1900, was also president of the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad. Mr. Ingalls’ successes have left him the same charitable, genial and approachable individual that he was when a struggling lawyer in a little village in Maine.
INVENTORS.
Alexander Graham Bell.
Alexander Graham Bell, whose name is so clearly associated with the invention and the development of the telephone, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3, 1847. He was educated at the Edinburgh and London universities, and on graduating went to Canada in 1870, in which country he spent two years endeavoring to decide on a vocation. Later he located in Boston, where he became professor of vocal physiology at the Boston university. It was during this period that he became interested in and made an exhaustive series of experiments culminating in an application for a patent which was granted February 14, 1876. The history of the invention, which is second in importance only to the electric telegraph, is well known to the public. Without going into details, it is only necessary to say that Mr. Bell, like all other successful inventors, had to face and overcome the popular prejudices, and had to protect his rights in the courts through interminable law suits. The place that the telephone fills in the social and commercial economy of the world to-day is also too well known to need emphasis. Professor Bell is also the inventor of the photophone, and is interested in the current scientific efforts of the American association to promote the teaching of the deaf and dumb. Scientific honors have been showered upon him in connection with his inventions. In 1881 the French government awarded him the Volta prize, and he is the founder of the Volta bureau. He is also the author of many scientific and educational monographs.