English Dictionary

It is to Andrew Carnegie that the expression is attributed in America, There are only two generations between shirt sleeves and shirt sleeves, The remark is certainly not original with the genial Scot, who is playing such a successful star engagement before the American people, nevertheless, it is a most satisfactory sentence. If the wealth which springs from the efforts made in shirt sleeves by one generation, is enjoyed in broad-cloth only by the next two, and that, in the fourth remove, shirt sleeves again become ascendant, so much the better for the country.