280 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
by the father, William Wangansky. The elder Weitling had re
cently read an article on Chinese socialism in Chamber's Journal.
His interest in Chinese revolutionary currents had always been
great, and he gave due credit to the Christian missionaries for
raising the level of civilization in China. Weitling believed that
the Chinese Wanganski had advocated reforms more like his own
system than any other reformer he knew. Determined that his
first-born son should not forget his father's doctrines nor those of
the Chinese leader whom he admired, he gave the boy this curious
and cumbersome Oriental name. At home the lad was known as
"Wangan," but as he grew to manhood he solved his problem
simply by reducing the name to the initial W.
The boy grew to be a man of whom the family could well be
proud. He went to work at fourteen as office boy for Poppen¬
hausen and Koenig, after the father had secured the job for him by
answering a newspaper advertisement. He remained with the firm
for the rest of his life, becoming its vice-president and chairman
of the American Hard Rubber Company, the name of the larger
firm into which it developed. In addition, he was president of a
bank, vice-president of the Pequanco Rubber Company, and
president of the Poppenhausen Institute of Learning, a school for
adult education to whose endowment he contributed. Like his
father, he had little formal education and a great interest in
astronomy, although he could not accept his father's astronomical
theories. He published several articles in this field and one on the
atom in 1921. As the son prospered, he contributed faithfully and
generously to the support of his widowed mother and Aunt
Johanna.
At the time of the birth of his first child, Weitling started the
notebook which fortunately was preserved and which throws
light on many phases of his later career. He wanted first of all to
record for his son an interesting account of significant happenings,
but before long he recorded a miscellany of items, trivial details
from his daily experiences and some which "may be of great in
terest to others." In this little book he recorded the exact time of