Identifier: greatamericanboo01mabi (find matches)
Title: The great American book of biography
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 1846-1916 Garnett, William, 1850- (from old catalog) Thomas, Allen Clapp, 1846- (from old catalog) Ellis, Edward Sylvester, 1840- (from old catalog) Birdsall, William Wilfred. (from old catalog) Johnson, Willis Fletcher, 1857-1931 Willard, Frances E. (Frances Elizabeth), 1839-1898 International publishing company, Philadelphia. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: Philadelphia and Chicago, International publishing company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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especially successful in reducing the cost and improving the qualityof these primitive time-keepers. In 1837, Mr. Jerome brought out the machine-made brass clock, which revolutionized the business of clock-making and sent atimepiece into every house. In 1841 he sent a cargo of Connecticut clocks toEngland, billed at so low a figure that the customs officers seized them for under-valuation, paying him his price plus ten per cent., as the law directed. Thesecond cargo, much to his delight, met with the same reception. With the third,the tardily-enlightened Government allowed him to seek a less convenient cus-tomer. The metal movements were stamped from sheet-brass so rapidly thatthree men with one machine could cut out the works of five hundred clocks aday, reducing the cost of a clock-movement to fifty cents. At this rate the salewas enormous. The metal clocks, unlike the wooden clocks, could stand anyclimate, and this, with their astonishing cheapness, gave them world-wideacceptance.
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JOHN JACOB ASTOR, our pioneer business ivian and kirst m:illionaire. NEVER were greater extremes of poverty andwealth connected in the life of one person thanwere touched by John Jacob Astor, the founderof one of the first and greatest of the enormousfortunes that have been amassed in America.The life of a poor German peasant in the latterpart of the eighteenth century reached a depthof poverty which can now hardly be conceived.John Jacob Astor was born in Waldorf, a littlevillage of Baden, in 1763, — the year of thetreaty which secured to England all the fur-bearing country of North America, from whichAstor was destined to make such a splendidfortune. His father was a butcher, a shiftless,stupid, quarrelsome good-for-nothing; and theson, bent upon making something of himself,resolved, when about nineteen, to seek hisfortune in the new land of America, thenbrought into prominence by the Revolution. In March, 1784, he landed at Baltimore.On the voyage he met a German, older thanhimse

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