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In his Introduction to Ragged Dick, Alan Trachtenberg makes the claim that “at the heart of the story sits the graven mystery of money: how it reproduces itself, remakes identities, transforms Ragged Dick into Richard Hunter” (p. xix). After reading the novel, though, the reader is left to wonder whether or not Trachtenberg’s assertion is correct or not. While it is certainly true that Ragged Dick is a story of a young man who overcomes incredible odds to make something of himself, it is not necessarily evident that money is solely responsible for his unlikely ascent. It seems rather clear to me that Dick, or Richard Hunter as he has come to be known, possessed many qualities that would allow for his upward mobility. Among the most important are Dick’s willingness to work hard, his honesty, his natural intelligence, and his charisma. It does not seem so much that Ragged Dick’s rising status came as a result of his having money, but rather the opposite. It seems that through his own hard work, and a little bit or good fortune, that Dick was able to slowly but surely climb the social latter, and as a result of this he made more and more money. It would be unfair to Dick’s good character to say that money alone was