Excerpt from Starting in Life: What Each Calling Offers Ambitious Boys and Young Men Over twenty years ago I originated and established a business-profession, in the practice of which I was brought into direct contact with the methods pursued in the leading trades, businesses, and professions. I was given continuous Opportunity of personally seeing the very heart-workings of their machinery. I was per witted to observe the manner of action, and to view, at close range, the causes which led to success or failure. This information I received at first hand. I acted only in an advisory capacity, and, therefore, I was removed entirely from the prejudice of self-interest. That I might reduce the opportunity for error to the minimum, raise the probability of correctness to the maximum, and guard against the over-use of my personal opinion, I submitted the first draught of the manuscript of each chapter to two or more authoritative representa tivas of the calling treated. These men read it with painstaking care and returned it to me with their sug gestions and criticisms. I then rewrote each chapter, accepting the criticisms or suggestions made in so far as they could be verified and did not represent the purely personal Opinion of the critics. Where the authorities differed materially, others were consulted, until a more unanimous position was reached. To further remove the work from personal opinion, and to make it truly composite, I requested two or more prominent representatives of each calling to give brief outlines of the advantages and disadvantages of their respective trades, businesses, and professions as seen from their individual points of view. At the close of the chapters these expressions are printed as they were written, having been subjected only to proofreaders' corrections. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.