INTRODUCTION.
 

This encyclopedia of biographies of "America's Successful Men of
Affairs" is the only work of its class ever published. Thoroughly national,
covering every part of the United States, it presents sketches of the lives
of the most conspicuous of those who have been active in business since
the Civil War and have attained the most marked success. While nearly
all of the men, whose biographies appear in these volumes are or have
been persons of large possessions, they have not been included solely be¬
cause of their wealth. Works of American biography have so far dealt
mainly with the lives of government officials, clergymen, poets, teachers,
soldiers, editors, authors, explorers, and other members of professions, who
while accomplishing a great work and exercising a useful influence, have
done comparatively little directly for the material welfare of their fellow
men or the actual development of their country. It is a singular fact that
these works have, with a single exception, almost absolutely ignored the
business men of the country, whether living or dead.

It would seem, however, as if the lives of the great pioneers, merchants,
manufacturers, railroad builders and other practical men of a nation like
America, constituted as important a part of the country's history as those
of any other class. In the field of purely material effort, it is these men
who have brought the wild lands under cultivation, developed the mines,
forests and farms, built the railroads, steamboat lines and canals, set afloat
and managed the shipping, organized the corporations, and introduced the
new processes in science and mechanics, which have so greatly reduced the
cost and promoted the comfort of living while contributing to the power
and prestige of the nation itself. They have dotted the surface of nearly
every State with manufactories and provided employment, wages and
homes for millions of their countrymen. The great cities are largely their
creation. In the realm of education, science and art, these men are the
pillars upon which the whole structure rests. It is by them that the col¬
leges, schools, churches and philanthropic institutions are built and main¬
tained. They found the great museums, provide the means for monu¬
ments, statues, libraries, reading rooms and researches in science, publish
the books, buy the paintings, pay the larger part of the taxes, sustain the
political campaigns, and in general provide the subsistence and a stage for
the activities of the whole aggregation of other men, to whose lives exist¬
ing works of biography are generally devoted.