He still had those stirrings of altruism, a ready sympathy, an instinct to help.  Only he saw very clearly that he could not be of any benefit to even a limited circle of his fellow men when at every turn of his hand economic pressure bore so hard upon him as an individual.  He began to see that getting on in the world called for complete concentration of his efforts upon his own well-being.  A pauper cannot be a philanthropist.  One cannot take nothing from nothing and make something.  To be of use to others he must first grasp what he required for himself.

Once he was settled and familiar enough with San Francisco to get from the Ferry Building to the Mission and from the Marina to China Basin without the use of a map he began to cast about for an opening.  To make an apprentice beginning in any of the professions required education.  He had that, he considered.  It did not occur to him by what devious routes men arrived at distinction in the professions.  He thought of studying for the law until the reception he got in various offices where he went seeking for information discouraged him in that field.  Law students were a drug on the market.

“My dear young man,” one kindly, gray-haired attorney told him, “you’d be wasting your time.  The law means a tremendous amount of intellectual drudgery, and a slim chance of any great success unless you are gifted with a special aptitude for certain branches of it.  All the great opportunities for a young man nowadays lie in business and salesmanship.”

Business and salesmanship being two things of which Thompson knew himself to be profoundly ignorant, he made little headway.  A successful business operation, so far as he could observe, called for capital which he did not possess.  Salesmanship, when he delved into the method of getting his foot on that rung of the ladder, required special training, knowledge of a technical sort.  That is, really successful salesmanship.  The other kind consisted of selling goods over a counter for ten dollars per—­with an excellent chance of continuing in that unenviable situation until old age overtook him.  This was an age of specialists—­and he had no specialty.  Moreover, every avenue that he investigated seemed to be jammed full of young men clamoring for a chance.  The skilled trades had their unions, their fixed hours of labor, fixed rates of pay.  The big men, the industrial managers, the men who stood out in the professions, they had their own orbit into which he could not come until he had made good.  There were the two forces, the top and the bottom of the workaday world.  And he was in between, like a fish out of water.