PRATT
When I was in grade school; and high school it was not at all uncommon for boys , and some girls, to drop out of school for various reasons. In the mid-twenties, I suppose, it must have been that school officials tightened up a bit on truants and drop outs.
I can remember feeling sorry for those who had to drop out so they could go to work and help their family exist.
Some were just indolent and didn't want to be in school from the start, and, in most cases, we were better off without such trouble makers an misfits.
Some looked and who was born in North Middleborough, Mass. in 1808 viewed it in that manner, and quit school at age fifteen in his eagerness to get started on a business career which he confidently would make him wealthy and admired.
He moved his meager belongings to Boston, first, and then, to Baltimore, where he studied “merchandising”. He did in so by investing in a wheelbarrow which he filled with salable items and worked the streets selling them. Some must have thought him to be a peddler and little more, but he prospered and went on to bigger and better things. During the Civil War he found selling horseshoes to the military to be as worthy occupational sideline and thereafter the “peddler” became a “banker” He dropped out of the peddler scene entirely and became a true businessman with many interests.
Soon we was named to be President of the Wilmington and Baltimore Railway, President of Baltimore Clearing House, and of the Maryland Bankers Association and he gained control of the Maryland Steamboat Company in 1872 and he was also a Director of the Susquehanna Channel for over twenty five years. He invested heavily in fire insurance companies.
Enoch Pratt was a rich man. He had earned the fortune he dreamed about as a high school drop out, but something was amiss – and this, I think echo from his decision to leave school as a youth. He was every bit of the successful businessman he dreamed about becoming, but he realized the people thought of him as a stand-offish loner who's only thought was profit!
In spite of leaving school, he was still a student of living, and he looked about to see what was wrong with his life and why he was so misjudged. He saw an example of what he wanted to be in a contemporary of his - George Peabody. Enoch Pratt re-arranged his life – quite “school“, we might think, and, once more, went totally against logic and became one of the three greatest philanthropists he City of Baltimore has known -...George Peabody, Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt.
Enoch Pratt used his wealth to build the Baltimore Free Library, an institution which has prospered and now has twenty-five branches serving millions. He stipulated that the library must “always be free to all” . He opposed slavery. He build a free school and library in his home town of Middleborough, Mass. and donated funds to increase the capacity of the hospital to over one hundred patients.
My reading concerning Enoch Pratt has been rather limited, I agree, but I find it of special interest that, at no point, have I chanced upon a hint of his social life. How he conducted himself? If he married and had children? I wonder how he got along with others, and I hope you will join with me in searching out additional details of his life. We should study this go-getter of a man and his accomplishments.
There is a modern day parallel in progress ,too. We listen rather intently most evenings to a half dozen or so personalities bringing us the day's news. One of them was a high school drop-out.
Now, you can wonder which one it might have been.
A.L.M. April 16, 2003 [c1005wds]
