Why did I become a business man!
I am sure that I should never have selected a business career if I had been permitted to choose.
The eldest son of parents who were themselves poor, I had, fortunately, to begin to perform some useful work in the world while still very young
in order to earn an honest livelihood,
and was thus shown even in early boyhood that my duty was to assist my parents and,
like them, become, as soon as possible, a bread-winner in the family.
What I could get to do, not what I desired, was the question.