The Boy Broker; Or, Among the Kings of Wall Street

It's 1887, and sixteen-year-old Herbert Randolph steps off a train into the roaring heart of American capitalism with nothing but a suitcase and boundless ambition. The Vermont boy dreams of joining the "Kings of Wall Street," but New York City has other lessons in store. Through encounters with streetwise newsboys, slick speculators, and the grinding machinery of commerce, Herbert discovers that the road to success is paved with slang he doesn't understand, doors that won't open, and competitors who will crush a naive newcomer without a second thought. Frank Andrew Munsey, himself a publishing empire builder, captures the Gilded Age in all its glittering brutality: a world where fortunes are made and lost before lunch, where a boy's innocence is either sharpened into wisdom or simply broken. This is a time capsule wrapped in a survival story, offering readers both the thrill of a young man carving his path and a fascinating window into an America obsessed with the promise of self-made men.