The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-06-13
FAILURES WHO MADE GOOD.
Men Who Went Down Only to Bob
Up Serenely.
Philadelphia Record)

The number of men who have gone
down and apparently out in the bus
mess world, but who are today deS-
ignated as successful captains of in
dustry, is large enough to be an in
spiration. There is a popular notion
that a man who fails must be a sec
Ond-class business man. Nothing Is
further from the truth The fact is
that failure in modern business is a
mere incident.
There was Ream. He was an able
merchant in an Iowa town, and he
found himself insOlvent. He ran
general store and sold farm nipple
ments, and the concern was an extern
sive one. But when collections be-
came slow he quit paying the cOllec-
tor himself. and so the creditors came
down to look the situation over.
He made them the proposition that
if they would allow him $12 a week for
living expenses he would make the
wreck pay out They accepted the
proposition. and Ream handled the as
sets and paid out. Then he went TO
Chicago. Being familiar with farm
animals he found employment at the
stock yards. Later he turned his at
tention to wheat and made a great
deal of money. When one of the great
biscuit companies was fiOated, there
was difficulty in raising the last 81,
900. 600 of the s., 900, 900 required. After
others had failed. Ream took the
scheme to New York. His assurance
won out, and capitalists subscribed the
needed millions.
AT present he is a director and MEM
Der of the finance committee of the
United States Steel corporation; direc-
tor Of half a dozen railroads; associate
of J. P Morgan. When his name is
mentioned in Wall street, people lis
ten with the utmost respect There is
a general impression that if Ream is
in a scheme IL is ali right. So that the
conditions which had fiOOred him at
the early part of his career really did
rot count.
Sage's case was different, because
the failure had been preceded by un
usual good fortune. one May after
noon, twenty-five years ago, Wall
street was startled by the announce
ment that Russell Sage was broke.
The street already had more sensations
than it knew what to do with. A week
before several banks had failed. The
street held millions of Sage's paper,
and as early as S o'clock the following
morning the stairway to the financiers
office was damned with anxious cred
itOrs. When the door was opened there
was a college rush for the cashier
wicket Payments were made for Il
time-with exceeding elaboration;
then they stopped. The door was shut
i'm the face of the crowd, and when
one excited creditor tried 20 Kick the
door down a squad of police was re-
Ouired TO convince the crowd that
money could not be got out of Sage by
violence. His obligations were sold on
the street for so cents on the dollar
To redeem them meant to face
present loss of $7,000,000. Sage buck
led down and found the money. When
he died this failure left S70,000.00 ana
a reputation for thrift and good judg-
ment second to none.
Ones judgment may be right, and
vet some inscrutable cause may turn
things over disastrously, yet the cor
rect judgment will count. How else
can one explain the case of Theodore
II. Price? In 1900 he said was cotton
was too low But it persisted low, and
his firm failed, with liabilities of $l3.-
O00, COO The failure, however, did not
disturb him, nor didN II change his
opinion that cotton was too low. He
raised some more homeopathy, it is
said. by writing life insurance-and
tried again. Soon after the failure cot
ton was UP to IL cents instead of 912
cents, and Mr.. Price was flcn again
If anybody ever looked more broke
than Charles T. Yerkes when he went
into Chicago some twenty-five years
ago, the pieces must have been too
small to see. He had had some money.
but not more than a fare was left of
it. But he had inestimable capital in
pure nerve, and that was sufficient.
He soon dominated Chicago, and Chi
cagO watched him breathlessly for fiji
teen years. Yerkes induced some rich
Philadelphians to help him TO the mon
ey to buy control of several street
railways, and when he secured the
roads. he came out of the big end of
the horn by having spare money and
the control of the roads both. Later
he went to London and addressed him.
self TO the task of consolidating and
extending Londons underground sys-
TEN. which he largely completed before
his death
Cyrus H Mccormick, inventor of the
reaper and founder of a great fortune,
and admittedly a tip-top business man,
failed early in his career. He had al
ready taken out the patent for the
reaper. a document that was subsa-
quentiy to be worth many millions of
dollars Yet he failed for a SUN so