Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/511

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488 FAMOUS LIVING AMEEICANS up and signed a declaration of allegiance to the United States, thereby showing that even an Indian can forget injustices done him, when his rights are restored to him. The Bodman Wanamaker Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian left Philadelphia in Jtme, 1913, to visit each of the one hundred and sixty-nine Indian tribes at the eighty*nine reservations, and to assure them of the good will of the Pre&- dent and of the people of the United States. Each tribe was given an American flag. Thus Mr. Wanamaker, living in the

    • city of brotherly love,'* has gone back to the very foundation

of our country to restore the rights of the first inhabitants and to assure them of the white man's sympathetic interest in all that makes for their welfare. Mr. Wanamaker has a reputation for sound business sense and integrity. The success of his mature years is but the result of adherence to the ideals of his boyhood. Bis ances- tors were sturdy pioneers of the time of William Penn, who came to America from Germany and France for the sake of religious freedom. He received what was for that early pe- riod a good education. His school life was characterized by close application. He did not seek out the easy tasks ; if he had a hard problem in arithmetic to solve, he would remain after school hours until he was satisfied with the result With clear insight he chiseled out a solid foundation of honesty, sobriety and industry ; and he has builded thereon one of the most heroic characters known to the business world. He now stands a prince among merchants, an example of right living among men. His early be^nnings were small. While yet in school he worked in his father's brick yard. Leaving school at the age of fourteen he worked as errand boy for a publish- ing house at one dollar and twenty-five cents per week. Later, in a retail clothing store, his salary was two dollars and a half a week. Next, he was employed at an increase in salary in what was then the largest clothing store of the city. The proprietor, Joseph M. Bennett, said of him: "John was the most ambitious boy I ever saw. I used to take him to lunch with me and he would tell me how he was going to be a great merchant. He was always organizing something. He seemed ^