Not everybody is
like young Koppen--he attached a van to his name on reaching his
seventy-fifth million--who, possessed at that time of barely three
dollars in the world and not even the shadow of a moustache, had both
the wit to realize the hygienic importance of a certain type of goods
and the pertinacity to insist on cheapening their price, in the
interest of public health, to such an extent that--to quote from
subsequent advertisements--they should be "within reach of the humblest
home." It is not everybody--no, not every American--who, after
revolutionizing the technique of manufacture and shattering the Paris
monopoly, dares boldly to advertise the improved article across the
length and breadth of the land, and to thrust his commodity upon a
reluctant market in the teeth of popular prejudice and commercial
rivalry. Van Koppen had done all this. And it was noted that he had
done it without ever for a moment losing sight of his dual
aim--mercantile and philanthropic; for if he was a humanitarian by
natural disposition, he became what he called "a tradesman by force of
circumstance"--and not a bad tradesman, either.
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