Fame and Fortune Weekly No. 2: Born to Good Luck; or The Boy Who Succeeded

Dick Armstrong is seventeen years old and trapped in the kind of hard labor that chews up boys and spits them out. But Dick has something the system doesn't account for: a sharp mind and an honest nature. Through sheer determination and clever business sense, he not only escapes his circumstances but builds an empire before he can vote. Frank Tousey's 1908 dime novel captures the raw, hungry optimism of an era when a boy with guts and grundicity could reinvent himself. The "good luck" in the title is really code for what this generation believed: that virtue and vigilance create their own fortune. Part of the massive "Fame and Fortune Weekly" series that millions of working-class boys devoured, this is a time capsule of American ambition - a story where youth conquers circumstance and honesty isn't just moral, it's profitable.