Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son is George Horace Lorimer’s witty epistolary classic, presenting the advice of John Graham, a blunt and prosperous Chicago pork-packer known on the exchange as “Old Gorgon Graham,” to his son Pierrepont. Across a series of shrewd, slangy letters, the old merchant dispenses hard-won wisdom about business, character, money, and life.
The letters are full of homespun humour and memorable maxims, mixing tough practical sense with genuine affection for a son who needs occasional bringing down to earth. First serialised in the Saturday Evening Post, which Lorimer edited, the book became a bestseller and an enduring favourite of American popular philosophy. Funny, pungent, and unexpectedly humane, it remains a delightful read on ambition, common sense, and the making of a man.