Captains of Industry

Captains of Industry

Captains of Industry

In this volume are presented examples of men who shed lustre upon ordinary pursuits, either by the superior
manner in which they exercised them or by the noble use they made of the leisure which success in them
usually gives. Such men are the nobility of republics. The American people were fortunate in having at an
early period an ideal man of this kind in Benjamin Franklin, who, at the age of forty-two, just mid-way in his
life, deliberately relinquished the most profitable business of its kind in the colonies for the sole purpose of
developing electrical science. In this, as in other respects, his example has had great influence with his
countrymen.

James Parton