"Let me try it anyhow. The men won't cost you any more than the others and if I don't make good it's easy enough to go back to the old way." It's queer how stubbornly business men cling to routine. They get stuck in a system and hate to change. He finally gave me permission to see the men. I was then to turn them over to the regular paymaster who would engage them. This was all I wanted and with my note book I started out. It was no easy job for me and for a week I had to cut out my night school and give all my time to it. Many of the men had moved and others had gone into other work but I kept at it night after night trotting from one end of the city to the other until I rounded up about thirty of them. This seemed to me enough to form a core. I could pick up others from time to time as I found them. The men remembered me and when I told them something of my plan they all agreed with a grin to report for work as soon as they were free. And this was how Carleton's gang happened to be formed. It took me about three months to put all my fifty men into good working order and it wasn't for a year that I had my machine where I wanted it. But it was a success from the start. At the end of a year I learned that even the contractor himself began to speak with some pride of Carleton's gang. And he used it. He used it hard. In fact he made something of a special feature of it. It began to bring him emergency business. Wherever speed was a big essential, he secured the contract through my gang. He used us altogether for foundation work and his business increased so rapidly that we were never idle. I became proud of my men and my reputation. But of course this success--this proof that my idea was a good one--only whetted my appetite for the big goal still ahead of me. I was eager for the day when this group of men should really be Carleton's gang. It was hard in a way to see the result of my own thought and work turning out big profits for another when all I needed was a little capital to make it my own. Still I knew I must be patient. There were many things yet that I must learn before I should be competent to undertake contracts for myself. In the meanwhile I could satisfy my ambition by constantly strengthening and perfecting the machine.