one day in a train, a nice, farmer-looking gentleman approached me, saying that the conductor had told him I was connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he would like to show me something. He pulled from a small green bag the model of the first sleeping-car. This was Mr. Woodruff, the Inventor.

Its value struck me like a flash. I asked him to come to Altoona the following week, and he did so. Mr. Scott, with his usual quickness, grasped the idea. A contract was made with Mr. Woodruff to put two trial cars on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Before leaving Altoona Mr. Woodruff came and offered me an interest in the venture which I promptly accepted. But how I was to make my payments rather troubled me, for the cars were to be paid for in monthly instalments after delivery, and my first monthly payment was to be two hundred and seventeen dollars and a half.

I had not the money, and I did not see any way of getting it. But I finally decided to visit the local banker and ask him for a loan, pledging myself to repay at the rate of five dollars per month. He promptly granted it. Never shall I forget his putting his arm over my shoulder, saying, "Oh, yes, Andy; you are all right!"

I then and there signed my first note. Proud day this; and surely now no one will dispute that I was becoming a "business man." I had signed my first note, and, most important of all, - for any fellow can sign a note, — I had found a banker willing to take it as "good."

My subsequent payments were made by the receipts from the sleeping cars, and I really made my first considerable sum from this investment in the Woodruff Sleeping-Car Company, which was afterward absorbed by Mr. Pullman a remarkable man whose name is now known over all the world.

Shortly after this I was appointed superintendent of the Pittsburg division, and returned to my dear old home, smoky Pittsburg. Wooden bridges were then used exclusively upon the railways and the Pennsylvania Railroad was experimenting with a bridge built of cast-iron. I saw that wooden bridges would not do for the future, and organized a company in Pittsburg to build iron bridges.

Here again I had recourse to the bank, because my share of the capital was twelve hundred and fifty dollars, and I had not the money; but the bank lent it to me, and we began the Keystone Bridge Works, which proved a great success. The company built the first great bridge over the Ohio River, three hundred feet span, and has built many of the most important structures since.

This was my beginning in manufacturing; and from that start all our other works have grown, the profits of one building the other. My "apprenticeship" as a business man soon ended, for I resigned my position as an officer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to give exclusive attention to business.

I was no longer merely an official working for others upon a salary, but a full-fledged business man working upon my own account.

I never was quite reconciled to working for other people. At the most, the railway officer has to look forward to the enjoyment of a stated salary, and he has a great many people to please; even if he gets to be president, he has sometimes a board of directors who cannot know what is best to be done; and even if this board be satisfied, he has a board of stockholders to criticise him, and as the property is not his own, he cannot manage it as he pleases.

I always liked the idea of being my own master, of manufacturing something and giving employment to many

men. There is only one thing to think of manufacturing if you are a Pittsburger, for Pittsburg even then had asserted her supremacy as the "Iron City," the leading iron- and steel-manufacturing city in America.

So my indispensable and clever partners, who had been my boy companions, I am delighted to say, some of the very boys who had met in the grove to wonder at the ten dollar check, began business, and still continue extending it to meet the ever-growing and ever-changing wants of our most progressive country, year after year.

Always we are hoping that we need expand no farther; yet ever we are finding that to stop expanding would be to fall behind; and even to-day the successive improvements and inventions follow each other so rapidly that we see just as much yet to be done as ever.

When the manufacturer of steel ceases to grow he begins to decay, so we must keep on extending. The result of all these developments is that three pounds of finished steel are now bought in Pittsburg for two cents, which is cheaper than anywhere else on the earth, and that our country has become the greatest producer of iron in the world.

And so ends the story of my apprenticeship and graduation as a business man.

BY H. IRVING HANCOCK

MERSON prefaced his essay on "Compensation" with the remark that he had always wanted to write upon that subject. There

is a true story on compensation from the salary view-point that I have always wanted to write, and now I am going to do it. The two young men to whom the story refers were schoolboy friends of mine. I know the facts in the case of each and can tell the story with exactitude.

These two boys may be called Smith and Brown. They were graduated in the same year from the same high school. They had been chums, more or less, for years, and decided to start in the turmoil of life in the same business house, if possible. Positions were secured in the largest dry-goods store in Boston. More than that, both young men were assigned to work as tyro salesmen behind the lace counter.

"This is n't much of a place," remarked Brown, rather dubiously.

"T is not a bad place," returned Smith, consolingly, "and we're getting five dollars a week to start with. Not very bad pay for boys!"

There were long hours to be served and the work was hard. There were many impatient customers to be waited upon. As both boys lived some twenty minutes' walk from the store they walked home together in the evening.

1 Republished by special permission of the Success Company. Copyright, 1903.

"Pretty slow life, this!" grumbled Brown. "Think of the pay we're getting."

"It's not bad for youngsters," rejoined Smith. "It might be worse.

Neither boy had any living expense to pay, save for noonday luncheon and laundry. Smith brought his luncheon; Brown did not. Smith began a bank account; Brown went to dances as often as he could afford the money. He soon found other pastimes, of evenings, that absorbed all his money and what he could borrow from his father. Naturally the two boys began to drift apart, except for that little evening walk home. Brown began to grumble at what he termed the slowness of promotion. "It will come all right," returned Smith, "if we work for it."

At the end of the first year Brown observed:

"I guess you're right. My pay has been raised a dollar a week. A fine return for hard work, is n't it? Did you get a raise?"

"Yes; I've been raised to seven.

Brown whistled his amazement, looked very thoughtful for a few moments, and then blurted out:

"That's a sample of the favoritism that goes on in the business world. Whom did you get on the right side of?"

"I don't know," answered Smith, and he told the truth. "I'm going to find out about this," grumbled the other boy and he did. The department manager supplied the information. While both boys had done everything of a routine nature that was required of them it had been noticed that Smith was always more anxious to please customers in all the ways possible to a salesman. But the matter rankled in Brown's mind. He was brooding over the thing one day when a woman customer