Product Synopsis

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1921. Excerpt: ... WILLIAM WRIGLEY, JR. THE CHEWING-GUM KING ABOY bubbling over with energy, enthusiasm and mischief was William Wrigley, Jr., now one of the world's most successful men, and the world's greatest manufacturer of chewing-gum. William's father was a Philadelphia soap manufacturer, and William was the eldest of nine children, and as strong and healthy a boy as ever was born. His tremendous energy, restless disposition, and mischievousness when a boy got him into trouble many times, and he had great difficulty getting any education. Over and over again, some youthful prank led his school-teacher to expel him from the school, and often it was all his father could do to get his boy reinstated. But with all his love of mischief, he was not really bad, or incorrigible. He was simply so full of animal spirits--of irrepressible good humor and ginger--that he couldn't help it. And some of these very traits, that made William so different from most boys, later on in life were the basis of his stupendous success. By the time he was ten years old Wrigley's restless disposition and craving for adventure led him to take a serious step. He ran away from home to New York. What he expected to do in the great city he didn't know, and he probably had no idea of making a fortune. He was too young to dream of money-making, beyond getting a living, and this he had to do at once, for when he got off the train, crossed the Hudson on the ferry-boat and found himself close to newspaperdom and Wall Street, he had less than a dollar in his pocket, and nowhere to sleep when night came. The idea of selling papers, of becoming a "newBie," seemed to him the best thing to do in order to get an immediate income, and he was soon flying around the vicinity of the World and Herald buildings with his bundle into which he had...