A. T. Stewart

The merchant of the future will not only be an economist and an industrial leader--he will also be a teacher and a humanitarian.

--A. T. Stewart, in a Letter to President Grant

When His Excellency Wu Ting Fang was asked what country he would live in, if he had his choice, his unhesitating answer was, "Ireland!"

The reply brought forth another question, as his secretive and clever Excellency knew it would, namely, "Why?" "Because Ireland is the only country in the world in which the Irish have no influence." Also, it might be stated, although it has nothing to do with the case, that the Jews are very much more influential in New York City than they are in Jerusalem. The Turk is to Palestine what the English are to Ireland.

The human product has to be transplanted in order to get the best results, just as the finest roses of California are slipped near Powers' Four Corners, Rochester, Monroe County, New York, and are then shipped to the West. A new environment means, often, spiritual power before unguessed. The struggle of the man to fit himself into a new condition and thus harmonize with his surroundings, brings out his latent energies and discovers for him untapped reservoirs.

It was Edmund Burke who said, "The Irish are all right, but you must catch them young." When England wants a superbly strong man she has to send to Ireland for him. Note Burke, her greatest orator; Swift, her greatest satirist; Goldsmith, her sweetest poet; Arthur Wellesley, her greatest fighter--not to mention Lord Bobs--all awfully Irish. And to America comes Alexander Turney Stewart, aged twenty, very Irish, shy, pink, blue of eye, with downy whiskers, intending to teach school until he could prepare himself for the "meenistry."

It was the year Eighteen Hundred Twenty; and at that time the stars of the Irish schoolmaster were in the ascendant. For a space of forty years--say from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Forty-five--eighty per cent of all graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, came straight to America and found situations awaiting them.

Young Stewart had been at Trinity College two years, when by the death of his grandfather he found himself without funds. His father died when he was three years old, and his grandparents took him in charge. His mother, it seems, married again, and was busy raising a goodly brood of Callahans, several of whom in after-years came to New York, and were given jobs at the A. T. Stewart button-counter.

Young Stewart could have borrowed money to keep him in college, for he knew that when he was twenty-one he would come into an inheritance from his father's estate. However, on an impulse, he just sold his books, pawned his watch and bought passage for America, the land of promise. The boy had the look of a scholar, and he had dignity, as shy folks often have. Also, he had a Trinity College