develop within themselves the noble conception of Americanism that was
later to become for them a flaming gospel. Andrew Carnegie, the canny
Scotch lad who began as a cotton weaver's assistant, became a steel
magnate and an eminent constructive philanthropist. Jacob Riis, the
ambitious Dane, told in _The Making of an American_ the story of his
rise to prominence as a social and civic worker in New York. Mary
Antin, who was brought from a Russian ghetto at the age of thirteen,
gave us in _The Promised Land_ a most impressive interpretation of
America's significance to the foreign-born. The very title of her book
was a flash of inspiration.

To this group of notable autobiographies belongs _The Americanization
of Edward Bok_, which received, from Columbia University, the Joseph
Pulitzer Prize of one thousand dollars as "the best American biography
teaching patriotic and unselfish service to the Nation and at the same
time illustrating an eminent example." The judges who framed that
decision could not have stated more aptly the scope and value of the
book. It is the story of an unusual education, a conspicuous
achievement, and an ideal now in course of realization.

At the age of six Edward Bok was brought to America by his parents, who
had met with financial reverses in their native country of the
Netherlands. He spent six years in the public schools of Brooklyn, but
even while getting the rudiments of a formal education he had to work
during his spare hours to bring home a few more dollars to aid his
needy family. His first job was cleaning the show-window of a small
bakery for fifty cents a week. At twelve he became an office boy in
the Western Union Telegraph Company; at nineteen he was a stenographer;
at twenty-six he became editor of _The Ladies' Home Journal_, which
during the thirty years of his supervision achieved the remarkable