How I Became a Millionaire
Peter Hopley
Farm and Fireside: 18 February 1918

I always hesitate to tell the story of how I won my way from poverty to wealth: it sounds so much like boasting.  And yet I believe that every successful man, no matter what his business, owes it to his fellow man to tell how he got ahead in the world.  If telling my story will help others to get along, if it will encourage those who are tempted to give up because of disappointments and reverses, I believe it should be told.

As a matter of fact, I take no undue or unusual credit to myself because I have been able to accumulate a million dollars worth of property by farming and live-stock raising.  I have no doubt that there are many other men who could have done just as well, perhaps even better, if they had had sufficient faith in Mother Nature and had been willing to work and save as I have done.

I have some very positive ideas and convictions, and some men will differ from me.  But my ideas and convictions, like my money are my own -- won by knock down blows.  I have always had an idea that any man with a good physique and plenty of determination could make a success at almost any job, if only he loved the job well enough.  I suppose that this is the biggest factor in the success I have been able to make.  I always loved the farm; I always had a special fondness for live stock.

I am seventy years old, and I have worked hard practically every day of my life, until last year.  If I were twenty-five I could start all over again and, with the aid of my wife, do even better than I have done.  I mean by this that there are greater opportunities today than ever before.  The man who pays $200 an acre for good farm land now, buys it easier than I did when I paid $25.

Energy, ambition, and nerve will make a man succeed so that he never need envy any rich man, no matter what his fortune.  I have no use whatever for a man who sits down and sasses a wealthy man.  I did not start out in life with any preconceived intention of becoming a millionaire myself, although I may say, without undue boasting, that I have always enjoyed a good measure of foresight.  A little example will illustrate what I mean:

I was born in England in 1848, and came to this country when I was eight years old.  My father had secured a piece of land in Lee County, Iowa.  The next year we moved to Cass County, and from there until I was almost twenty-one I worked for my father on the farm.  It was hard work too -- the very hardest possible.  We were pioneers; there were more Indians than white men in the Middle West in those days.  It was a hard life and a rough one, but it developed men, and I have never regretted the hardships I needed to undergo; they made a man of me, and it takes a real man to fight life's battles to success.

My education consists of a winter's term in a pioneer elementary school.  When I was twenty my father sold his farm and moved to Lewis, Iowa, a little struggling pioneer town.  He insisted that I go to school, so I went.  I still talked with a broad English accent.  I was tall, heavy-framed, raw-boned.  Twenty years of age, with a man's deep voice, six feet tall and talking with a Cheshire accent, I went to school with lads half my age.  The first night after school the boys imitated my accent and made fun of me in every way imaginable.  I stood it as long as I could, then I waded in and licked two or three of them.  It wasn't any better the next day.  But when noontime came, I didn't lick any more kids; I simply made up my mind, then and there, that I would make a bigger business success than any of them made.  That time came a good many years ago.

I walked home that second afternoon and lost no time seeking my father.  My time won't be up for some months yet. I said, for you see I was apprenticed to him until I was of age, after the custom, but I want you to let me go.

You must go to school, he replied.

I can't I said  All I ask is my time and leave to go on my own way.

He gave it to me, and that night I started west, bound for the gold fields.  That day and a half was all the schooling I ever had, except the one winter in the country.

That was back in 1867.  The times were hard, the country wild, the men rough.  It was a great schooling for a boy of twenty, but a hard school, too.  Men talk to me today and call me brave for the things I did those days.  Bravery, courage!  It was nothing but the worst kind of foolhardiness.  I wouldn't do those things over again if you would give me a patent to the entire United States.  But then it was all in the day's work.

For fear anyone may think I started out in life with an inheritance or did not make every cent I posses by my own unaided efforts, I will say that the first winter I was in the West I worked for my board.  Even at that point I was saving $9 a week.  I worked out West for five years.  They were five years of the very formative years of my life.  The gold excitement was at its height.  Men were driving daily over the richest soil the sun ever shone on, to seek a rocky soil where they hoped, often against hope, to strike it rich in gold.

They passed up gold mines in the fertile fields of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, to starve and die in the rocky fastness of Colorado and Nevada.  But the rush was on and I joined in with the rest.  I became a freighter.  There is nothing that I haven't driven, from a Concord coach to a pack mule.

After that first winter at working for my board I earned $35 a month, at the hardest kind of hard work.  I freighted from the western end of the Union Pacific, as it was being extended then, on to Denver, then to Kit Carson, and through all of the southeastern Colorado and down into New Mexico.  I hauled railroad ties for the Union Pacific extension from Denver to Kit Carson, 150 miles, and fights with Indians were a matter of almost daily occurrence.

We lost many a man in those brushes with the reds, for we took desperate chances -- chances I would not think of taking today, but we thought little of it then.

The wages were small but I saved all I earned.  That has been my practice all my life.  We paid twice as much for things in those days as we do nowadays, but I needed and bought little.  The result was that when I quit the freighting business after five years.  I owned 18 yoke of oxen, six wagons and a saddle horse.  That was my first property.  I was not yet twenty-five, but I had learned the worth of money through having to work hard for what I got.  Hard work, coupled with energy, will bring success.  Nothing else will.

I came back to Iowa after that Western experience, stouter of body and of heart than ever.  I had not struck any gold, but I had learned to strike out for myself.  And let me say right now, in passing I would not work for another man a minute more than I actually had to were I to live my life over again.  I would strike out for myself the very first opportunity.

The man who works for another, if he is to succeed in giving his employer value received, never has the time to study the things he wants and needs to know for himself.  He must study the things his employer wants him to know.  Far better, I say, to work for yourself and then have the time to study the things you need to know for yourself.  No man has any business working for another if he can make a day's wages for himself.  There have been times when I might easily have envied a mechanic or a man with a trade who was apparently earning more than I was.  But I could see farther ahead than they.

When I came back from the West I had a little money, every cent earned by myself.  What I have today is the increase of that money.  Men will tell you that the first thousand dollars is the hardest to earn.  I can't say so: they were all hard to earn.  I never worked as hard in my life as I worked after I had my first $50,000.

Back again in Iowa, I returned to farming without delay.  My father had been thorough in his teaching.  I knew farming and stock raising from A to Z.  I invested my Colorado savings in a little piece of land in Cass County -- eighty acres -- for which I paid $25 an acre.  I still own that land today; I would not sell it for $250 an acre.  Yet the price asked for land does not determine its productiveness or our ability to get ahead on that land.  To illustrate:

Why Land at $1.25 Went Begging

My father bought his first land -- a quarter section -- from the Government for $1.25 an acre.  He could not make the payments, even at that price, so the land reverted to the United States.  They might as well have asked $100 or $200; if you cannot pay it or earn it the price is immaterial.  Four years ago I bought land without even a fence around it for $150 an acre, that I had seen the owner buy for $10 an acre.  Of course that had been 40 years before.  But I am earning more off that land at $150 an acre than he did when it was $10.

Prices are merely relative; earnings are what count.  But $150 is as high as I have ever paid for farm land, and I cannot bring myself to go above that figure.  I think it is because I have been in England so much.  You see, not only was I born there, but for years I went back and saw great, fine farms, 300 to 500 acres or so in extent, as good land as the sun shone on, with splendid improvements which could be bought easily for $100 an acre.

Then to come back to America, out here to the Middle West, and find land selling for $150 and $200 an acre, with only poor improvements -- well, I couldn't bring mind around to seeing it that way, so since land has gone so high I have quit buying.

I still contend, however, that the man who pays $200 an acre is getting it cheaper than my father did at $1.25, and I at $25.  Not only are crops greater and worth more, but money is plentiful nowadays.  Back in the old days xxxx had little of it.  My father had farmed in order that his family might eat.  He knew nothing about markets or grain prices and worried less about farm values.  What he did know was that wheat or corn could be ground at the mill to make bread for the family.

Occasionally a traveler passed through our part of the country and bought some corn.  But such occasions were rare.  When we put in a crop in those early days, we had no idea what it would bring -- in fact, raising to sell was scarcely thought of, and we never had an established market for corn or live stock until the railroad whistles disturbed the quietness of the prairies and the word was passed around that there was a man at the station building an elevator.  We soon learned that an elevator was a place where grain was bought, that the elevator man paid actual money for the grain we raised.  This was indeed a bonanza for the farmer who had been hauling corn or wheat 50 miles to Council Bluffs, who had not the slightest idea, what it was worth, and who, furthermore, was usually paid in provisions rather than cash.

When $3,000 Mark Was Reached

When I had accumulated $3,000 – a lot of money in those days – my brother and I went into partnership handling cattle. We were among the pioneer cattle operators. By going in together we not only had a double capital, but we also had a double credit, and that is fully as important as the other. After this partnership had been going on three years I pulled out, and have been by myself ever since, except for my first venture in the horse importing business.

Another man and I bought two horses imported from Canada. He was a horse enthusiast, and I also had a strong leaning that way. I sold out my interest to him in a short time and took up importing myself. It was comparatively new in this country, and there were great possibilities for the man with the nerve and capital who was not afraid to work.

I crossed the ocean for my first lot of horses in 1884. It was a big venture. I bought 25 head of Clydesdales. It took pretty nearly every cent of ready money I had. I tell you, there was a lot wrapped up in that old steamship, taking two weeks to get my animals over to this shore. From that time until 1914 I crossed the Atlantic Ocean every year, sometimes twice a year. I was over there when the war broke out.

I became one of the big horse importers in the country. Yet if I were to live my life over again I would not take up this branch of business. I would go in more for speculative live-stock farming – feeding for the market, and so on. Blood lines are all very fine, but the opportunities for the man who buys land at a low price, makes it produce and sells it for more, who feeds cattle and sheep and hogs for the market, are almost unlimited.

Today I own 1,825 acres of fine Iowa farm land, all in one piece. I own a half section of Nebraska land as well. We usually have several thousand head of livestock of various kinds. I also own town property. Men say that Peter Hopley is successful, yet I have not done anything more than any other man could have done, nor more than I could do over again were I young.

Folks often say to me: Hopley, you had exceptional opportunities. You came here when the country was young and land cheap. You got in on the ground floor. Of course you worked hard, but you were lucky. What could you do nowadays? What would you do if you were a young man, poor and without your present experience? You couldn't make it.

They make me tired. If I were a young man again – twenty-five or thirty – and had my wife here with me, I'd make good again; and here is how I would do it: I would hire out to a farmer as a farmhand. I would get $50 a month, for that is the wages of our hands and they are not as good men as I was. But that is not all. I would get a house to live in and fuel. I would get a garden, chickens, and a cow. At the end of the year I would have earned $600, and I would have every cent of that $600. I would have fed the family and kept ourselves on the products of the garden, the chickens, and the cow. I would work another year. By that time I would have earned $1,200. I will allow $200 for unforeseen and unavoidable expenses. I would have $1,000 left. But that is only half the story. By that time I would have a credit of $1,000 to $1,500, because the banker would know me, would know I was a hard worker and a good saver. He would see me coming in every month with my pay check. He would look at my account and see that I was not drawing out any money. Believe me, the banker soon gets to know who deserves to get ahead, who is worthy of credit.

Well, at the end of two years I would have $1,000 in cash and credit, we'll say of $1,500 more. I would buy two good cows and about three teams of horses – good horses, but cheap, and out of which I could get hard work. I would go around to some sales and buy good second-hand machinery, for you can pick up bargains that way, just as good as new and for half the price. I would buy a flock of sheep and a few sows. Then I would rent a farm, and my wife and I would start in for ourselves. We'd raise all our own food; we'd be up with the sun and we'd work all day.

After a while I'd go to the banker again and say: Mr. Banker, I've got so much ready money; I have so much stock; I owe so much. I want to go over to Omaha and buy some feeders; there's good money in it. And Mr. Banker would be glad to lend me the money to buy those cattle, too. He'd know I was paying my store bills, that my wife wasn't wasting money, that we were working and saving, and deserved to succeed. In ten years I'd have a good stake. That's how I'd start again.

Saved First $30,000 in Ten Years

Let me tell you one thing: the first ten years of our married life my wife and I worked hard, as hard as human beings ever worked. Corn was worth practically nothing. I have sold as good hogs as ever went to market for two cents a pound. We raised a large family. In ten years, with the low prevailing prices, we accumulated $30,000 over and above all our expenses. I could do it again, too, and do it better still.

When you come right down to it, hard work and frugality are the only secrets of success.  There is no other way under the sun.  It doesn't matter what you do, hard work, connected with an ability to run your business, will succeed.

The average hired man of today is a conundrum to me.  I can't understand him.  Farm labor is the highest priced unskilled labor in the world.  I figure that a man who is paid $50 a month on our place is getting $100, counting rent, fuel, chickens, and so on.  Almost everything that he eats is raised on the place and costs him nothing.  The average man in town earns $2.50 or $3 a day, and doesn't have work every day.  He must pay for every bit of food he eats.  How much better off, therefore, the farmhand is!

What we need is a revival of the good, old-fashioned ideas that a man must work and save, that energy, ambition, and nerve are what make men rich, and nothing else.  Work and save -- that's the endless chain that takes you to success.

As I said in the beginning, I'm a man of strong convictions.  I mean every word I have written.  If I can bring any man around to the path that trod and send him onward to success, I shall be glad I told my story.  Mrs. Hopley and I have reared a family of nine children and given them all a good education.  For several years given them most of the money we have made, as well as part of our fortune.  A man my age doesn't need much, neither does my wife.  We believe it is better to give the children money from time to time instead of waiting until we are gone.

I am interested in all young folks.  Take my advice, cut out the extravagances, work for yourself, put enthusiasm and energy into your work, study all you can, save the big portion of what you earn, then you will not have to envy the man who started as you did and passed you early in the race.