Some Successful Americans (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Some Successful Americans<br><br>As superintendent of schools I frequently talked with boys who were in doubt as to what they should do in life, and who felt that there were very few opportunities in the business world of to-day for those without money and influence. Of course there never was a time when the demand for capable, industrious, energetic, and honest young men so far outran the supply as at present. A personal talk with a boy would generally convince him of this; but for one boy who would come and talk with me about it there were probably several others who were also thinking, but who would not come to me, and many more who were not even thinking. This led me to do something in school in the way of a study of the lives of men and women who had made a success in life in the face of what are called adverse circumstances.<br><br>When I began institute work I urged upon teachers the importance of taking up this matter, and was met with the statement that unless one had access to a fair library the work could not be done, as there was no one book that could be used to advantage; that while there were many excellent biographies and works of collective biography, there was none which dealt with both men and women, with those working in very different fields of labor, and which dealt only with those who had had to make their own way in life.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.