New on Fourmilab today (so new, in fact, it isn’t yet linked to the home or index pages) is a Web edition of Peter B. Kyne’s 1921 novelette (11,000 words, 62 print pages with reasonably large type) The Go-Getter. Subtitled “A Story That Tells You How to be One” (capitalisation thus in the original), an inspiring and motivating tale of a person who approached any task he undertook with a spirit of “whatever it takes.”
This work is in the public domain and available in text form from Project Gutenberg. As with all of the books I make available on my site, a number of typographical and formatting errors have been corrected, and the typography has been updated to contemporary Web standards to be easier on the eye. If you spot any errors in the text, please note them in the comments, but bear in mind that this work was published in 1921, and spelling of some words has changed: for example, “to-day” and “to-night” have lost their hyphens and “’phone” is no longer written with apostrophe indicating it is an abbreviation. I am using the Henry Holt facsimile edition of the 1921 first edition as a reference for this text.
For reference, US$2000 in 1921 is equivalent to around US$27,500 today, and 10,000 gold-backed dollars converts to 138,000 funny-FRNs.
Thanks, John. I loved the PT Barnum book. You forgot to tell Mike LaRoche about the cheerleader pictures.
I enjoyed Kyne’s novelette but a bona fide “go-getter” is born, not often developed; the ability to push for the best, to demand the best, and to rock the delivery of the message to the public is often an innate ability. I use my crazy, slightly bipolar hero Steve Jobs as the perfect example.
This is one of my favorite Jobs stories:
He decided he needed the obsolete ‘gorilla glass’ for the original iPhone and called the young and equally brilliant CEO Wendell Weeks of Corning glassware who responded, “We haven’t manufactured that type of glass in years and we simply don’t have the factory capabilities to produce it any longer.”
Jobs unusually quiet response: “Don’t be afraid.”
You can guess the end of this story; the glass was produced in six months and Corning made tens of millions of dollars.
Weeks has a printed e-mail from Jobs prominently displayed on his office wall, “We couldn’t have done it without you.”
Great story! Reads like a play with all the dialog. Always a pleasant surprise when humorous characters reach across the decades and still tickle a funny bone; Cappy’s a wonderful rounded-out character, as are Peck & Skinner. I like how Cappy’s challenge with its tight restrictions forces such inventiveness on Peck’s part. Thought he was going to lose it at the end, but he escaped with only an unrecorded swear word, good soldier!
Fun story.
This story is about 100 years old. It brought up old images of pay phones that would take a nickel, trains, cables, rags to riches stories, and the American Go-Getter spirit.
It brought up timeless themes also. The older generation engaging with the younger. People who are disabled overcoming. Seniority favored over ability. Hiring a son-in-law.
In the modern world this story would end in a court room with emotional damages awarded.
This is the best ad vase you will get anywhere.
Do you say it Vaise? or Vaize? or Vozz? Probably if you’re a go-getter you call it a flower pot.
Pencil, don’t give me a Cohn job. We call it “flower bottle” here.