of commerce waiting in the apple blossoms along the road, but it takes
the busy "worker" bee to get it. The capable salesman may achieve
great success, not only on the road, but in any kind of activity. "The
road" is a great training school. The chairman of the Transportation
Committee in the Chicago city council, only a few years ago was a
traveling man. He studied law daily and went into politics while he
yet drew the largest salary of any man in his house. Marshall Field
was once a traveling man; John W. Gates sold barbed wire before he
became a steel king. These three men are merely types of successful
traveling men.

Nineteen years ago, a boy of 15, I quit picking worms off of tobacco
plants and began to work in a wholesale house, in St. Louis, at $5 per
week--and I had an even start with nearly every man ever connected
with the firm. The president of the firm today, now also a bank
president and worth a million dollars, was formerly a traveling man;
the old vice-president of the house, who is now the head of another
firm in the same line, used to be a traveling man; the present vice-
president and the president's son-in-law was a traveling man when I
went with the firm; one of the directors, who went with the house
since I did, is a traveling man. Another who traveled for this firm is
today a vice-president of a large wholesale dry goods house; one more
saved enough to go recently into the wholesale business for himself.
Out of the lot six married daughters of wealthy parents, and thirty or
more, who keep on traveling, earn by six months or less of road work,
from $1200 to $6000 each year. One has done, during his period of
rest, what every one of his fellow salesmen had the chance to do--take
a degree from a great university, obtain a license (which he cannot
afford to use) to practice law, to learn to read, write and speak with
ease two foreign languages and get a smattering of three others, and