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How Michael Pupin Succeeded
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how to drive mules. While 1 moodily specu
( lated on my difficulties, a farmer approached
, me and offered me a job driving mules. 1
accepted and once more left for the country."
',' But the farm was hot, the opportunities to
learn English or a new trade negligible, so once
rnore Pupin took up his wanderings. From
the farm in southern Maryland, he journeyed
to Baltimore and thence to New York. In
those days before the Pennsylvania tunnel,
'trains deposited their passengers at Jersey
'City and a ferry took them over from there to
New York. Along with the rest of the crowd,
^Pupin was landed in lower New York in the
heart of the shipping district.
As he walked uncertainly through the unfamiliar neighborhood, he saw a small hotel 'AJvith a German name. It was an oasis in a Vegion of strange sights and sounds. The proprietor had a son about Pupin's own age and the two became friends immediately.
Pupin's funds were so limited that the two boys decided their first consideration must be •to get him a job. This, however, was no easy "matter. During the previous year the entire country had suffered from the great panic of /i 873. This was the summer of 1874, but the
country was not yet settled again. There was widespread unemployment. No matter how early the two boys went in response to advertisements for labor, they were sure to find long lines ahead of them. In those gloomy days men were so desperate they waited all night at the newspaper offices so that they could read the "help wanted" inserts in the first editions and stand all night in line to apply for work the next morning.
Pupin and Christian, the son of the hotel keeper, soon discovered that the erstwhile farmhand would never get a job in this way. More drastic methods were necessary in a neighborhood so close to the shipping center. The opportunity finally presented itself. During a strike of longshoremen, Christian,! wjio acted as Pupin's business manager, signed up his client as a scab.
"My job was to help the sailors paint the ship," Professor Pupin remembers. " Partly as a means of protecting us from the strikers and partly as a means of getting the work done quickly, we substitute workers were out in. the bay. Of course, 1 knew nothing about pa.inting but bitter need for employment will give us ability to do almost anything. At the end
CASTLE GARDEN, NEW YORK
Where Pupin landed from the German immigrant ship in 1874. Castle Garden has since been converted into the Aquarium and immigrants no longer land there, hut down the Bay at Ellis Island.