Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-06

| with the news OF the battle which Mayor
| John Weaver Of Philadelphia has been
waging In the name of reform upon the
regular republican organization. Well. he
! Is another boy who started in without
pull" and is winning out
Less than thirty years ago he came TO
| this country from England. a stowaway,
and a runaway from his fathers humble
| home He nearly starved while seeking
, work In New York. Then he went to Phila-
delphia, where he became a clerk in dry
goods store at 81 week. He wanted to
raise in the world. so he studied stenog-
raphy, and became a court reporter Next
he read law in spare moments, and was ad-
m1tted to the bar. He was soon making
more than comfortable living as a COM
merclal lawyer when the republican lead
ers. looking about for a respectable candi-
date for district attorney. took him up and
elected him to the office. Before he had
got fairly started in the work he was NOM
mated for mayor and elected, and today 1t
Is safe guess to make that the men who
offered him to the people of Philadelphia
as thoroughly respectable candidate are
wishing heartily that they had left him
alone to continue winning out in the field
of commercial law. and not given him the
opportunity to win out, also, as a reformer.
Luther Burbank. the Californian who has
won worldwide fame within the last year
or two because of his wonderful creative
work in horticulture, began earning his liv-
ing in piow works. Boy though he was,
he soon invented valuable addition to
some machinery used in the shop. causing
his wages to be multiplied twenty-five
tines
While he was working early and late in
the factory, his thoughts We're on
flowers and plants, for which his fondness
dated back to babyhood. So. despite
tempting offers, he quit the factory and
since them has devoted himself to his
chosen field More than once he has faced
starvation in a land of plenty. as a life
long friend has truly said. Until within
recent years he was object of scorn
even among his relatives, and his friends
ptied him to man, But he had faith;
failure and the hard knocks of the world
won out and today those who once derided
and called him crazy now lead in the ap-
plause.
The name of John w. Gates is rolled so
frequently on many tongues these days
that people generally have come to forget
that only within the last half dozen years
or so has he been prominent in any large
degree.
A little over thirty years ago he was
married boy of eighteen and the proprietor
of picayune hardwarde business in a
country town a short distance from Chica-
go. Here he struggled along trying to
make both ends meet until Isaac L. ELL
wood, the man who first manufactured
barbed wire in this country, hired him as
salesman, with the cattle country as his
field.
Gates put a spool of the wire in his
trunk and carried 1t baggage to Texas
He arrived at San Antonio lad of twenty
three, obtained a permit of the mayor to
erect a corral in the plaZa-the first barbed
wire fence put up in TeXas-hired twenty
five steers. and was ready for business.
People came from miles around to see
the show. They were to be convinced
against their wills that the slight barbed
wire barriers could avail against Texas
steers. Cowboys drove the cattle in every
direction except through the priclly wire.
They had come to jeer and remained to
buy.
Gates sold more wire at Is cents a pound
in a day than Ellwood could manufacture
in month. So successful was his trip
that he then and there decided, to use his
own words there was more money in man
ufacturing barbed wire than in selling it
a salary of 800 a month He IN
duced st. Louis friend to embark in bust
ness with him. and with 5000 capital and
two machines the boy salesman began his
career IN industry. finance and speculation
that has won him the attention of two
continents
John c. Osgood formerly president of
the famous Colorado Fuel and Iron Com
pany, and who, president, fought and
won a battle with John w. Gates for the
control of the company, was compelled to
become an Office boy at the age of fourteen
in a cotton mill in Rhode Island. His
willingness to work soon won him promo