The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-07-22
MEN WHO suCCEEn.

Those who fail TO accomplish any,
thing in any field of endeavor are apt
to say that they are unlucky, and to
attribute the success of those who win
fame or wealth or who rise above
their fellows in their respective COM
nunities TO luck. They don't like to
admit that they have loitered by the
wayside, have taken their ease or
have wasted their time and neglected
their opportunities in gratifying their
desire for pleasure while others. who
have surpassed them, have toiled cour-
ageously and steadily for the prizes
of life. Fame and wealth and even a
competence are not won by the lag
CARDS by those who work by fits and
starts and who are constantly yielding
to the allurements of pleasure or have
no settled purpose in view.
John w. Mackay, whose death in
London was announced in our dis
patches yesterday, was a conspicuous
example of the class of men who sue
coed. He set out in life with a de-
termination to win success. Whatever
he undertook he pursued with courage
and with tenacity and perseverance
that made failure almost an impossi
bility. He had won and lost fortune
by the time he was thirty years of
age, although he began life without
dollar he could call his own and with
only such educa tional advantages as
he had received in the public schools
of New York city.
But he was always a worker. When
in the employment of others he never
acted as if he thought he was doing
too much for the money he was re-
ceiving. and when managing his own
affairs he never wasted his time. He
had courage and was self-reliant. In
the rough mining camps of the West,
when toiling as common miner, he
avoided the saloon and the company of
the men who frequented it. He pre-
ferred to be thought unsociable to
wrecking his life by drink or becoming
mixed up in the brawls which dis
graced the mining camps of the West
thirty-five or forty years ago. While
other miners drank and gambled he
toiled and studied. Therefore when
his opportunity came he was ready for
it. And it did not come through luck.
He, with his partners, bought out a
mine that had been abandoned. 1t
was thought to be worthless, and they
were laughed at and jeered by other
miners when they began work upon it.
But Mr.. Mackay did his own thinking.
He had not been studying mining for
years to no purpose. His partners re-
lied upon his knowledge as a miner
and he had the courage to act upon
his own judgment. What his reward
was the world has long known. Out of
that abandoned and despised mine he
and his partners took more than $780,
O0O 900.
But there were weary months of toll
before the rich ore was struck which
made the mine known as the Bonanza.
When Mr.. Mackay was rich beyond
the dreams of avarice, was one of the
very richest men in the world, he did
not abandon business and turn his at
tention to pleasure. He devoted him
self to great undertakings, and at the
time OF his death he was engaged in
an enterprise that involved the spend
ing of many millions of doliars-a
cable line connecting this country with
the Philippines and other parts of the
Far East.
1t is a safe assertion that all of the
men who have made great fortunes in
this country in the last fifty years
worked long hours when young men
and were never afraid of doing too
much, avoided the social glass, studied
to understand things, had an object in
view and continued to work as they
advanced in years. Such man was
Mackay and such men are Carnegie,
j. ]. Hill, j. z. Morgan, Henry Frick,
Charles A. Schwab and others who are
entitled to stand in the same class
with them.