Excerpt from Successful Business-Men: Short Accounts of the Rise of Famous Firms The field is so wide - new firms every day pushing to the front, sometimes to the disadvantage of the old and long-standing, and in a manner which V1vidly illustrates the push and restless eagerness of the present century - that it has been found very difficult to select. Two ideas have, however, been, as we may say, guiding ones: First - to present various instances of success in different and contrasted industries; and, next, in no case to present alongside each other businesses which could in the most remote way be regarded as competing ones. If the wideness of the field has been felt to be Oppressive, in the sense of the limited View that in one such volume as the present can be taken of it, this compensatory reflection arises that if the public give the necessary encouragement, there is still an ample store to draw on for materials for further volumes. With regard to the illustrations in the volume, it may be well to explain that the original intention was to present portraits of the founders of the firms, the rise and progress of which have been traced; but it was found impossible to carry out this idea completely, owing to the fact that portraits of some of them were not in existence. 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.