“Yes, indeed; in my opinion the chances of success in commercial business, for the right sort of young men, have never before been so good as they are at the present time, provided that the young men are well educated, honest, industrious, and faithful, and not handicapped by mental or physical defects.” “But you had only a common-school education, Colonel Clowry.” “Yes, and that is quite sufficient in business if it is supplemented by some technical training. I have always thought that a full university course has a tendency to unfit young men for the rough struggles incident to the small beginnings of a commercial business career. It is advisable for boys to enter business early in life, so that they may be moulded to their work, and be in line for promotion when opportunities present themselves. Boys have an idea nowadays that they can leave college and immediately fill important positions in business life. There was never a greater mistake. Although I was in charge of an office six months after beginning work, it has taken fifty years to reach my present position.” XIII Enthusiasm for Railroading Makes a Section Hand Head of the Metropolitan System. SOME time ago New York learned with interest and some astonishment that the head of its greatest transportation system, Herbert H. Vreeland, had received from several of his associates, as individuals, a “valentine” present of $100,000, in recognition of his superb management of their properties. Many New Yorkers then learned, for the first time, what railroad experts throughout the country had long known, that the transportation of a million people a day in New York’s busy streets, without serious friction or public annoyance, is not a matter of chance, but is the result of perhaps the most perfect traffic organization ever created, at the head of which is a man, quiet, forceful, able, with the ability of a great general,—a master, and, at the same time a friend of men,—himself one for whom, in the judgment of his associates, almost any career is possible. Thirty years ago Mr. Vreeland, then a lad thirteen years old, was, to use his own humorous, reminiscent phrase, “h’isting ice” on the Hudson River, one of a gang of eighteen or twenty men and boys filling the ice carts for retail city delivery. A picture just brought to light shows him among the force lined up to be photographed, as a tall, loosely built, hatchet-faced lad in working garb, with a fragment of a smile on his face, as if he could appreciate the contrast of the boy of that day with the man of the future.