Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: Being the Letters Written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, Familiarly Known on 'change as "old Gorgon Graham," to His Son, Pierrepont, Facetiously Known to His Intimates as "piggy.
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: Being the Letters Written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, Familiarly Known on 'change as "old Gorgon Graham," to His Son, Pierrepont, Facetiously Known to His Intimates as "piggy.
At the turn of the 20th century, a Chicago pork-packer known on the trading floor as "Old Gorgon Graham" writes to his son at Harvard. What begins as practical advice on avoiding bad influences and managing money evolves into something richer: a portrait of a self-made man grappling with the distance between his rough world and his son's refined one. John Graham has no patience for soft academics or false gentility. He wants his "piggy" to learn real work, common sense, and the value of a dollar earned. But beneath the bluster and the beef metaphors lies a father who simply wants his boy to become a man he can respect. The letters crackle with personality. Graham is proud, irascible, and often hilariously wrong-headed. He complains about Harvard professors, extols the virtues of bacon over books, and delivers advice that ranges from shrewd to absurd. Yet there's genuine wisdom here too, accumulated in packinghouses and on 'change, about integrity, perseverance, and the difference between knowing and doing. More than a period piece, this is a love story told in sideways: a father who can't quite say "I'm proud of you" directly, so he says it through insistence that his son not waste his opportunities. For anyone who has ever received advice they didn't ask for, or given it anyway.
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“I want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.””
— George Horace Lorimer
“Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.””
— George Horace Lorimer
“Some salesmen think that selling is like eating”
— George Horace Lorimer
“What we're really sending you to Harvard for is to get a little of the educations that's so good and plenty there. When it's passed around you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You;ll find that education's about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it's about the only things a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away.””
— George Horace Lorimer
“Poverty never spoils a good man, but prosperity often does. It’s easy to stand hard times, because that’s the only thing you can do, but in good times the fool-killer has to do night work.””
— George Horace Lorimer
“Some men learn all they know from books; others from life; both kinds are narrow. The first are all theory; the second are all practice. It’s the fellow who knows enough about practice to test his theories for blow-holes that gives the world a shove ahead, and finds a fair margin of profit in shoving it.””
— George Horace Lorimer
“Worrying is the one game in which, if you guess right, you don’t get any satisfaction out of your smartness. A busy man has no time to bother with it.””
— George Horace Lorimer
“If there’s one piece of knowledge that is of less use to a fellow than knowing when he’s beat, it’s knowing when he’s done just enough work to keep from being fired.””
— George Horace Lorimer
“There’s no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish. And the only way to show a fellow that he’s chosen the wrong business is to let him try it.””
— George Horace Lorimer
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Lorimer, George Horace. Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: Being the Letters Written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, Familiarly Known on 'change as "old Gorgon Graham," to His Son, Pierrepont, Facetiously Known to His Intimates as "piggy.. Lex, lex-books.com/book/letters-from-a-self-made-merchant-to-his-son-being-the-letters-written-by-john-g-a7d75441-d71a-4df4-a00b-03e31a56ea5f.Lorimer, G. H. (n.d.). Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: Being the Letters Written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, Familiarly Known on 'change as "old Gorgon Graham," to His Son, Pierrepont, Facetiously Known to His Intimates as "piggy.. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/letters-from-a-self-made-merchant-to-his-son-being-the-letters-written-by-john-g-a7d75441-d71a-4df4-a00b-03e31a56ea5fLorimer, George Horace. Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: Being the Letters Written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, Familiarly Known on 'change as "old Gorgon Graham," to His Son, Pierrepont, Facetiously Known to His Intimates as "piggy.. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/letters-from-a-self-made-merchant-to-his-son-being-the-letters-written-by-john-g-a7d75441-d71a-4df4-a00b-03e31a56ea5f.
