News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1889-05-09
MEN WITH ONE IDEA.
HOW STICKING TO A SINGLE
THING BROUGHT WEALTH.
A Fortune in Clothes Pins and Mil
lions in Other Queer Things
ical Men and Engineers with Prof
liable Specialties.

"A l. VI CuhS III NlOJnoS rms anu u1ll-
lions in other Queer Things-Med-
ical Men and Engineers with Prof
liable Specialties.
That this is the age of specialists,
when any man who can do one thing
better than any other person, or even
better than most persons, reaps the
reward, is proven in thousand ways, in
small matters as well as in those under
takings that leave their impress upon an
age.
There is an old fellow down on Mas
sau street who has grown richer than
half the big merchants around his hum
be store, and all that he sells is insect
powder. So great did the fame of the
vermln destroyer become that dozen
imitatOrs sprang up i'll various parts of
the city, yet without injuring the pros
perity of the original
Goodyear was one-idea man, and
he haunted capitalists with his gum
shoes until they began to call him
crank, but he carved out for himself
fame and fortune enough to fit out a
dozen average men.
Governor Ames, of Massachusetts,,
acknowledges that the colossal fortune
OF his family was founded upon shoyels.
His firm made shoyels and shovels, and
at last the Ames shovel led the world,
wheh, presto! Ames was rich.
| One chap made a fortune out of
clothes pins that shut up with a spring,
| but the funny point in his success is
! that the people never found out that his
pins were intended for the security of
the weekly wash, but misappropriated
them for paper clips and made a run on
him.
A YANKEES began the manufacture of
padlocks to fasten dog-collars. He
made no other padlocks, but got rich all
the same. Another man, who hit out
the idea of the return ball, and stuck to
that and nothing else, amassed COM
petence.
But, perhaps, the most singular single
idea worked in the mercantile line was
that OF the fly trap man, who had place
of business on William street He sold
nothing but fly traps, and had them of
all varieties aud various styles of archi-
lecture each one better than the other.
He had crowds of customers, and got
rich just in time, for the poor fellow to
whom he sold out was ruined by the
combined efforts of the single idea fly
paper man, and the equally solitary-idea
window-screen man. Both these worth
les declared revolution against the
house-fy, were victorious, and retired
upon ample fortunes.
There is famous down town drug
store, whose proprietor is convert to
the one idea, aud that one idea soda
water. He doles out oceans of the
foaming temperance beverage to thirsty
thousands, and it is safe to say that his
enormous profits are made up, fully 80
per cent, from the sales at the fixing
fountain.
Among the professions the scope of
the specialist is more pronounced than
among the commercial branches of
human industry. The neurologist, who
studies the nervous diseases, and who
would consider himself insulted if asked
to prescribe for a case of measles; the
ocullst, who charges you an outrageous
fee for looking into the iris of your eye
with a microscope, and who chiefly looks
wise and talks mysteriously; the aurist,
and half score of other medical and
surgical specialists, reap the big rewards
OF their profession, and get most of the
glory. The dream of the newly-hedged
medico is to blossom out into a consult
ing specialist, sit in his Office and take
fat fees, and refuse to go out of his
Office save to see old Money Bags, who
is willing to pay handsomely to cheat
the gentleman who is bound to get him
sooner or later.
Among engineers specialties pay
enormously. One engineer puts all his
time into studying railroad bridges, and
railroad corporations huve been known
to pay him sS25, 900 for supervising and
passing upon plans. One celebrated
~, T.tTlTGath
builders but hardly known outside Oh
that branch of industry--was asked 10y
the constructors of Western road what
he would charge for building a bridge
of considerable length, and presenting
some specially intricate engineering
problems.
twenty-five thousand dollars down,
all my expenses, and carte blanche
authority to employ any engineers. if
find any, who know more about certain
portions of bridge building than l do,
was the answer, and although the rail
road people took time to consider The
proposition, they acceeded to his terms.
81 have been all my life trying to learn
how to build a bridge, p" said he, ''but l
am Only generalizer as yet, and have
to avail myself of the services of men
who have confined themselves to certain
specialties of the art. )" This from the
greatest bridge builder in the country.
1t is curious to note what odd special
ties will make men famous. Bradlaugh,
the English Radical, may be great
man, but his single idea, which he de-
veloped into a perennial kick against the
Parliamentary oath, made him famous,
very much as Boquet Johnnie's eccen-
tricity makes that harmless lunatic a
notable. Berry Wall, the quandam
monarch of the dudes, is now a success
full man in a commercial line, owing
solely to his single idea in the line of
dress, which made him famous. Henry
Labouchere, the Worlds London special
correspondent, achieved his worldwide
celebrity as much through the use of
the first personal pronoun in the editor
ial columns of Truth. which idea he
pursued until he popularized it
wherever the English language is read,
as through the matter they contained,
for, of all the writing in that journal
credited to the great politician and
journalist, but a small percentage ema-
mates from his penn. Y. World.