Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
George Horace Lorimer · 1902
5.0 · 4 ratings
About the book
A Chicago pork baron writes his son through Harvard and up the ladder of the family firm — twenty letters of horse sense, stockyard proverbs and affectionate needling. The funniest business book of its era, and the shrewdest by a comfortable margin.
Try the short course
Part 1 · A Sound Ham Under the Pickle. The first six slides, free.
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Pierrepont's mother has just left him at Harvard with a warning not to over-study. His father's first letter opens with the opposite worry: be sure not to under-study.
That sets the tone. John Graham, who never had his son's advantages, is not a self-made man sneering at college. He is paying for it, and when the education is passed around he wants the boy to reach right out and take a big helping.
His reason is pure merchant's logic. Education, he writes, is the only thing lying around loose in this world, the one thing a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away. "Everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost."
Inside the course
12 parts- Pierrepont goes to Harvard, on a budgetFree above
- The expense account draws fire
- Post-graduate study, declined
- The grand tour, declined harder
Questions
Is Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son free to read in Astra Trainer?
Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, German, French, Portuguese, and Russian.
What is the short course?
12 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.
Where do I get the app?
Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son is waiting in the app’s library.
