Instead, he had a meteoric rise? If this simile was ever appropriate. At twenty-one, he was an operator on the Boston "Street." At twenty-four, he was a man of great wealth, and sat around green tables with millionaires as a director in his corporations. At thirty, he had become a man to be watched by the big financial interests, for he was "a speculative factor in importance."
Meantime, he had turned out a large number of successful mechanical inventions. When hardly more than a boy to put on the market, a substitute for playing cards, which had quite a run to slice. He also wrote, printed, and published a booklet on baseball, of which he is an enthusiastic devotee.
He took a prominent part in the presidential campaign of 1888. In thirty-five days, he compiled a campaign history of political parties with facsimile reproductions of many letters from Republican party leaders expressing their views. Of this about 350,000 copies were distributed by Republican campaign committees. 