The Czech community of Chicago can justly boast of a goodly number of men who have become prosperous businessmen, though they had to start with small means.....There are, however, some among them who deserve special mention.

Emanuel J. Petru, merchant, is known all over the United States for he has thousands of customers, Czechs and of other nationalities, who send in their orders for coffee, tea, and spices. This success explains itself by Mr. Petru's conscientiousness which, our fellow-countrymen have good naturedly agreed upon, almost borders on over-punctiliousness. Our readers may, therefore, be eager to learn about his life.

Dlouha Lhota, a small forlorn village near Tabor, southern Bohemia, is the place of his birth. His father was a schoolteacher, and, therefore, struggled to make both ends meet. But it was not finances which compelled the elder Petru to emigrate. Political conditions and the craving for freedom induced him to come to America.

This was in the year 1875. He settled in Chicago in the community of his fellow-countrymen. Emanuel J. Petru was a little boy then. He went through the public schools, and being attracted to business, he became active in it at the early age of fourteen. He started in a dry goods store of our fellow-countryman, Mr. Zavadil on West Twelfth Street, without pay. He stayed there for two months, then changed to work for a grocery store where he drew the "princely" wages of one dollar per week. Naturally, eager for more, he quit to finally find work which paid the highest wages obtainable for a boy of his age at that time.

Mr. Petru was not more than eighteen years of age when he entered business for himself. He sold coffee, and after meeting with success, he opened a store, subsequently extending his activity gradually into the general grocery business. His ambition was not limited to stop at this grade of progress. He sold out, and became a salesman for a wholesale house, only to go into the wholesale business for himself. He was only twenty-two years old when he took this important step of his career. The next one was the establishment of connections with a Czech concern of the old homeland, for which he sold fig chicory in wholesale lots through his newly founded firm named the "Petru American Importing 3Company." The years went on, and Mr. Petru's enterprise scored again. The Java Coffee Mills, the first Czech wholesale grocery concern in the United States, a firm of transoceanic dimensions, was founded by him with headquarters at 1708 South Racine Avenue.

Mr. Petru's private life is quiet. He is married and is the father of three children. Though he came to this country when only a child, he always hails the Czechs as of his kind.