Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/243

 Colonel Albert A. Pope.

��219

��they had not gone. They offered him seven dollars a week to go to work for them, which, inasmuch as he had led a regiment in battle and commanded a regiment of artillery, seemed to be rather a come down. He finally went back at the solicitation of one of the firm, and stayed there a few weeks. When he left the firm were liberal enough to pay him ten dollars a week. Having left the old firm he went into business for himself with a capital of nine hundred dollars which he had saved and the first year, notwith- standing his old employers said he would not earn his salt, he made nine thousand six hundred dollars. Every year since then his business has been constantly increasing. It was but a very few years before he did a very much larger business and made a great deal more money than the firm of his old employers. The watchword of his regiment, "promptly, " became a busi- ness motto with him.

Soon after entering business for him- self he began to take on extra personal expenses in helping his father's family. He assumed the care and expense of his brothers and sisters, one after an- other, educating his two sisters for the medical profession, later on his brother for the ministry, and within a ver}' short time assummg the entire expense of the household, which consisted of his fa- ther and mother, three sisters and two brothers, and his older brother's two children, who fell to his care at his brother's death. His business grew and prospered each year until the Bos- ton fire, when, like many others, his losses were large, — more than sixty thousand dollars, — yet this did not in- terfere or cripple him in his business, for he paid everything he owed to every- body within two weeks after the Boston

��fire. A dozen years of successful com- petition in the commercial world gave him the experience needed to inaugurate and conduct a great business enterprise in the manufacture and sale of bicycles, an undertaking which required great foresight, good judgment, the executive ability of a commanding general, the skill of an engineer, the courage and pluck of a brave soldier, and financial genius. These qualities were happily combined in Colonel Pope ; he seized the command ; the public recognized the justice of his claim to lead, and have never asked for his removal from power.

In 1863 Pierre Lallement, a work- man from a velocipede factory in Paris, conceived the idea of applying cranks to the forward wheel for propulsion, made one on this principle and rode it in the streets of New Haven to the as- tonishment of the public, and took out a patent in November, 1866, in con- nection with an enterprising na- tive of New England. In 1868 the manufacture of velocipedes was com- menced in a small way in this country. The following year there was a craze on the subject, rinks and riding schools springing up in every city and large town while the fever lasted. The spring and summer of 1870 demonstra- ted in every quarter that the machines were not adapted for use on the high- ways and therefore practically useless except as toys at rinks. The velocipede for men was completely abandoned in this country as a total failure, but the English mechanics would not give up the idea and worked away at it until they developed the modern bicycle, using to advantage the inventions of American mechanics. The most important changes introduced were the round rub- ber tire, the suspension wheel with its

�� �