The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-27

MT. w. s. Stratton, the well-known Gold King" was one of the nine children of a struggling boatbuilder. and forty years ago was working at a carpenters bench in Indiana. After six unpalatable months of clerking in an Iowa store. he drifted, with f60--all hls worldly possessions-in his pocket, to Colorado, where he spent nineteen years in a fruitless search for gold, un- til "Stratton's i'll luck" passed into a proverb.
 Equally hopeless were the early years of MT. John w. Mackay, who was destined to make millions in California. Born in Dublin 75 years ago, his parents, despairing of making a living in Ireland emigrated to America when the future Croesus was a boy of 10; and three years later he was helping to support his widowed mother with his poor earnings as shipbuilders apprentice. Mir. Rouss, the blind millionaire" was earning, 60 years ago, a dollar a week and his board in MT. Jacob Senseny's store at Win chester, and 16 years later had made s1 little progress on the road to wealth that he was glad to earn food and shelter by working on his fathers farm in the Snsn- andoah valley. Mir Potter Palmer, who left behind him an enormous fortune few years ago, toiled for many years on his fathers farm on the banks of the Hudson before he made his way. at the age of IS, to Durham, New York stater where he found employment as clerk in a small store: and he had seen 26 years of life when he opened his modest drapery shop in Lake street, Chicago. It Is a curious coincidence that MT. Levi Letter and MT. Marshall Field, who were MT. Palmer's partners, like himself were sons of poor farmers and had been clerks in wholesale drapery houses.
 Mr. Andrew Carnegie, as the world knows, was cradled in a very lowly but and ben in Dunfermline, the son of a poor damask weaver. and the first in- stallment of the many millions that have flowed into his exchequer was his first weeks earnings of five shillings as a. bobbin- boy in Allegheny City. Mir. C. T.
 Yerkes began his brilliant career as a. money maker by working as clerk in flour and grain establishment. receiving
 for his first year labor present of f10.
 MT. Edison's first money was earned by selling newspapers, candy and pea nuts on Grand Trunk railway trains: and he owed the turn in the tide of his fortunes to the accident Of saving railway employees child from being run over by train, the grateful father, by way of reward, initiating the lad into the mysteries of telegraphy. MT.
 IL.
 aire. was of humble birth, and was for some years an ill-paid clerk in a gem eral store: MT. James R. Keene was in
 his early years a goldminer; and, as a boy. Mr. Letson Balliett sold peanuts and popcorn at country fairs before working at the carpenters bench. All multimillionaires, however, have not reached their riches from such humble beginnings MT. Pierpont Nor gan had a millionaire for father and has built his enormous fortune on very substantial basis of inherited
 money. His father, however, began his working days as farm boy. and did not leave his clerks desk in a drapers counting house until he was within two years of 40. MT. Chauncey DepeW is the son of parents who could anof8 to give him a Yale university educs< tion; MT. D. K. Pearson was pract- ing doctor before he turned his l thoughts to millions; MT. Henry Ciews' the banking Croesus, is member or . family of good and old standing Tn England: MT. Edward Hartman, one or
 the railway giants of the world, IS tne son of a New Jersey clergyman, ana
 was himself partly educated for tho
 church MT. W. c. Whitney had com paratively rich parents. and was train ed for the law: while the present gen erations of Vanderbilts, Astors, Have, meyers and Bennetts have, of course, all | been born to millions.
 ! But even in these rare cases one 1 has only to go back, with very leW exceptions, a generation or two to dis cover the very lowly sources from which the colossal fortunes of tooay have sprung.