Little Visits with Great Americans, Vol. 2 (of 2): Or Success, Ideals and How to Attain Them
History
Little Visits with Great Americans, Vol. 2 (of 2): Or Success, Ideals and How to Attain Them
Success; United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- 19th century -- Biography
Senator Cox attributes much of his success to the fact that he is a
good judge of human nature. He has long made a point of surrounding
himself with clever young men who are able to develop and zealously
put into operation the hints which he freely gives them. Senator Cox’s
personality is of a kind which inspires enthusiasm on the part of those
who are working with and for him. He is genial and never stands on
formality in his contact with the young men whom he has around him. In
this respect he more closely resembles Andrew Carnegie than any other
captain of industry. Senator Cox lives in modest style in Toronto. He
is quiet in his tastes, and greatly dislikes anything suggestive of
display or self-aggrandizement. He is a close personal friend of most
of the political leaders in the Canadian Liberal Party, and of many
of the financial powers in the United States. The Earl of Aberdeen
appointed him to the Senate of Canada in 1896. He is a prominent member
of the Methodist Church, and has long interested himself in the welfare
of Victoria University in Toronto.
TIMOTHY EATON.
The most important retail merchant in Canada is Timothy Eaton. He began
his career as an apprentice in a small shop in a village in Ireland,
and now has an establishment which employs the services of six thousand
persons, and which is by far the largest and best equipped retail store
in the Dominion.
It was in a shop in the town of Port Gleone, in the north of Ireland,
that Mr. Eaton obtained his first experience as a storekeeper. Here
he served an apprenticeship of five years, receiving no pay until the
end of his term of service, when he was given the sum of one hundred
pounds. To convey an idea of the long hours that he used to devote to
the services of his employer in Ireland, Mr. Eaton likes to tell about
how he used to watch the donkey carts passing through the village
streets to the market-town of Ballymena at five o’clock every morning,
when he was taking down the shutters. While he had very little time in
those days to devote to anything but his regular work, he was fond of
books, and read _Chambers’s Journal_, an unusual literary selection
for a lad of his education and position. In this publication he read
one day an article on the then almost unknown process of manufacturing
artificial gas. This so interested him that with the help of a
companion he made with his own hands a small gas plant, and by means
of it succeeded in lighting the store. Before that there had been no
gas light in that section of Ireland. The innovation of the young
apprentice aroused great interest and curiosity on the part of the
people of the countryside. They flocked to the shop to view the miracle
of the new light. This proved to be a valuable advertisement for the
establishment, and it lifted young Eaton into a position of prominence
in the community.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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