Burned Bridges

He had no misgivings about making a living. He could always fall back

on common labor. But a common laborer is socially of little worth,

financially of still less value. Thompson had to make money--using the

phrase in its commonly accepted sense. He subscribed to that doctrine,

because he was beginning to see that in a world where purchasing power

is the prime requisite a man without money is the slave of every

untoward circumstance. Money loomed before Thompson as the key to

freedom, decent surroundings, a chance to pursue knowledge, to so shape

his life that he could lend a hand or a dollar to the less fortunate.

He still had those stirrings of altruism, a ready sympathy, an instinct

to help. Only he saw very clearly that he could not be of any benefit to

even a limited circle of his fellow men when at every turn of his hand

economic pressure bore so hard upon him as an individual. He began to

see that getting on in the world called for complete concentration of

his efforts upon his own well-being. A pauper cannot be a

philanthropist. One cannot take nothing from nothing and make something.

To be of use to others he must first grasp what he required for himself.

Once he was settled and familiar enough with San Francisco to get from

the Ferry Building to the Mission and from the Marina to China Basin

without the use of a map he began to cast about for an opening. To make

an apprentice beginning in any of the professions required education. He

had that, he considered. It did not occur to him by what devious routes

men arrived at distinction in the professions. He thought of studying

for the law until the reception he got in various offices where he went

seeking for information discouraged him in that field. Law students were

a drug on the market.

"My dear young man," one kindly, gray-haired attorney told him, "you'd

be wasting your time. The law means a tremendous amount of intellectual

drudgery, and a slim chance of any great success unless you are gifted

with a special aptitude for certain branches of it. All the great

opportunities for a young man nowadays lie in business and

salesmanship."

Business and salesmanship being two things of which Thompson knew

himself to be profoundly ignorant, he made little headway. A successful

business operation, so far as he could observe, called for capital which

he did not possess. Salesmanship, when he delved into the method of

getting his foot on that rung of the ladder, required special training,

knowledge of a technical sort. That is, really successful salesmanship.

The other kind consisted of selling goods over a counter for ten dollars

per--with an excellent chance of continuing in that unenviable situation

until old age overtook him. This was an age of specialists--and he had

no specialty. Moreover, every avenue that he investigated seemed to be

jammed full of young men clamoring for a chance. The skilled trades had

their unions, their fixed hours of labor, fixed rates of pay. The big

men, the industrial managers, the men who stood out in the professions,

they had their own orbit into which he could not come until he had made

good. There were the two forces, the top and the bottom of the workaday

world. And he was in between, like a fish out of water.