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Show C. E. Wilson, a Poor Boy Who Made Good The Horatio Alger "rags to riches' story in America is not just legend it is reality. Every ones in a while something some-thing happens to focus our attention on that reality, and It is n good thing, because be-cause H is all too easy for us to forget : in modern America that this is still ths ! land of opportunity still ths place ' where a boy with ambition aad ability eaa pull himself to ths top by his own efforts alone. . , Such a boy was Charles Edward Wilson, Wil-son, president of the giant General Electric Elec-tric corporation, who today completes 50 years of service with ths organ iza-' iza-' tion hs Joined in 1899 as an office boy. Wilson was s poor boy, born on New York's lower west side, ths son of aa English bookbinder. Wilson's father died when he was three years obL, Ths boy qui school tt ths sgs of 12 to help support his widowed mother, going to work as an office boy for a firm which . later became part of ths General Else-trie Else-trie corporation. But Charles E. Wilson had both ambition and -ability. He wasn't satis-fled satis-fled to remain an office boy. ' Hs went to night school to learn acounting and electrical engineering. On his own merits mer-its hs forged steadily up ths ladder to . become G. JC president m 1939 and ons of this nation's outstanding business . executives. During ths war Wilson was executive vies chairman of the War Production board, and ha did a job in that capacity that won him ths medal of merit from the government and ths nation's wsna-sst wsna-sst praise. Hs has been honored again, and again with college degrees, awards . and medals but ths highest honor of all should be paid not to Charles E. Wilson, but to ths country and ths system sys-tem which mads it all possible. |