Making Money
By Owen Johnson
Four young men, college chums, come to New York, each with his eyes fixed on a career. The ambition of each is the same: to make money. They differ only in their ideas of the best way to “make it.” The particular one of the quartet fixed on a hero, Thomas Beauchamp Crocker, familiarly known as Bojo, goes into Wall Street.
He is turned from speculation not by failure but by success. He makes a quarter of a million, and how it is won, and the resulting suicide of one of the men he has helped ruin sickens him. He leaves the path of easy money, determined to begin at the bottom and work up. His love affairs and those of another group member are introduced to enliven the story.
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Owen Johnson
Owen McMahon Johnson (August 27, 1878 – January 27, 1952) was an American writer best remembered for his stories and novels, which catalogue the educational and personal growth of the fictional character Dink Stover.
Biography
The “Lawrenceville Stories” (The Prodigious Hickey, The Tennessee Shad, The Varmint, Skippy Bedelle, The Hummingbird), set in the well-known prep school, invite comparison with Kipling’s Stalky & Co. A 1950 film, The Happy Years, and a 1987 PBS mini-series, The Lawrenceville Stories, were based on them. He was born in New York City, the son of Robert Underwood Johnson and his wife Katharine, née McMahon. He attended Lawrenceville School, founding and editing the Lawrenceville Literary Magazine, known as The Lit. He attended Yale University as a member of the Class of 1900, graduating in 1901, marrying Mary Galt Stockly, and moving to Paris, where he did his initial writing.
He was a New York Times and Collier’s war correspondent during World War I. His first wife died in 1910. He married his second wife, Esther Ellen Cobb (better known as Cobina Wright Sr.), in 1912 and divorced in 1917. His third wife was Cecile Denise de la Garde, who died in 1918. His fourth wife was Catherine Sayre Burton, who died in 1923. His fifth wife was Gertrude Bovee Le Boutillier. He was the father of five children. Johnson worked and resided in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, from 1923 to 1948, writing about marriage, divorce, and golf. After 1931, his writing activities became less intense, and he became interested in politics, running (unsuccessfully) for the House of Representatives in 1936 and 1938. He died at his home in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, where he had lived for five years.
Owen Johnson
