At the age of twenty Joseph had earned a thousand dollars and saved five hundred, and though his employers tried to persuade him to stay, and even offered him a partnership, he left them to begin the study of law. The trial of a slander suit he attended aroused in him a resistless ambition to become a lawyer. The privations he must undergo to realize his ambition were patiently endured. He took his five hundred dollars and went to Terre Haute, where he entered the office of John P. Usher.
Office work for two years, supplemented by six months’ study in a Cincinnati law school, fitted him for practise. Before he went to Cincinnati he had never been in a large city, had never seen a theater, and had heard but little music. The city broadened him, for there he heard Moncure D. Conway and Horace Mann, and received a newer and truer idea of the world. Practise in a large city was alluring, and for a time he thought of settling in Cincinnati. Then he turned from it and located at Tuscola, Illinois.
The first year he did not earn enough to pay his board bill. He could not afford to keep a horse to ride the circuit as most of the other lawyers did, so he tramped it over the prairies, picking up a little business that gave him much work and scarcely any money. Farm truck, grocery orders, and on one occasion a couple of cured hams, on another a side of veal, on still another a pair of trousers much too large for him, constituted some of his fees. Shortly after he started practise he had an appointment with a prospective client. He waited until late in the evening and the man did not come. Then, in desperation, he started after him.
“Why didn’t you come to see me?” asked Cannon when he had found him.
“Oh,” said the man easily, “I forgot to tell you. I find I can pay more than I expected, so I have hired another lawyer.”
The struggle Cannon underwent was a grim, hard one that called into play all the sturdy qualities of his nature. Instead of souring him as it has many other men, it increased in him a desire to help others who have the same fight to make, and many a young man battling for a practise, or facing the work of Congress for the first time, has received the benefit of it.
“Uncle Joe really knows how to help a fellow,” said one of the young lawyers to whom he had given a helping hand. “He’s been up against it himself.”
The hardships of the first year of practise gave way in the second year to better things, and Cannon was able to make a scant living and pay off his debts. He went into politics, too, and stumped the county, getting directly at the people, winning fame among them as well as winning the regard of his party managers. He had a fairly good practise when he decided to marry, and he built a four-room cottage at Tuscola.
His wife was an Ohio woman, and before going to their new home the two went to Chicago to buy furniture for it. They selected Potter Palmer’s department store as the best place, and were highly pleased with the intelligence and skill of the young clerk who waited on them. His name was Marshall Field. After spending part of the three hundred dollars Cannon had with him, he proudly brought his wife home to the little cottage.
“There, Mary,” he said as he walked her from one room to another, “I don’t think a young couple could ask for a better start in life.”