A country has but one ruler, be he king, emperor or president ; there is but one man at the head in military and political circles, but the field of business is limitless and its opportunities many. There are so many avenues of activity and such demand for efficient service that any individual may steadily work his way upward if he has energy and determination and counts honesty among his salient qualities. Pete E. Shugart is numbered among those who have not feared to venture where favoring opportunity has led the way. Proving his worth in the business world, prosperity has crowned his efforts, and he is today one of the extensive railroad contractors of Iowa. He makes his home in Nevada but was born on the east side of the Mississippi, his birth having occurred in Princeton, Illinois, January 8, 1865. His parents were Dr. G. W. and Catherine (Huffman) Shugart, natives of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, respectively. Their last days, however, were spent in Nevada, where the father died in 1907, after devoting his life to the practice of veterinary surgery. The family came to this city in 1872 from Princeton, Illinois.

Pete E. Shugart is the sixth in order of birth in a family of eight children, the record being as follows: John A., a resident of Ames; Frances, the wife of John Prior, of Nevada; Philip, also living in Ames; Libbie, the wife of Douglas Brunson, of Des Moines; Pete E.; Charles, who was killed on the railroad at the age of twenty-one years; Mollie, who became the wife of Robert Corcilious and died in Central City, Nebraska ; and William, of Sturgis, South Dakota.

Pete E. Shugart was a lad of seven years at the time of the removal to Iowa, residing with his father upon a farm five miles southwest of Nevada until eighteen years of age, during which period he acquired his education in the country schools. He then took up his abode at the county seat and gave his attention to railroading in the summer months and to teaming in the winter seasons. He worked as a day laborer on the railroad at first but gradually won promotion and eventually became a railroad contractor, to which business he has devoted his energies for about eighteen