SIR ALBERT STANLEY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 150, 14 March 1918, Page 10

SIR ALBERT STANLEY

■ « A GREAT ADMINISTRATOR MAKING OVER THE BOARD OF TRADE . The head of the British .Board of Trnde ] at the present time is Sir Albert Stanley, under whose direction big things* aro being done. Sir Albert Stanley is a business man; not <i politician, and he had proceeded to strengthen the Board of Trade for business purposes. Ho had n leading part in the making of the new Department of Commercial Intelligence, which is going to be world-wide in its operations. ''From a hall bedroom in Detroit to ft place in the British Cabinet as President of the Board is an example of the proverbial far cry that fictionists like to write about, writes an American correspondent. "But this ia the span m the Stanley life so jar. Born in Eugland, he was brought to America by his parents when he was .eleven, and educated in American schools. At sixteen he was an office boy with the Detroit United Railways; at twentytwo he was superintendent of the properties; nt twenty-eight he was jenoial manager of the Public Service Railways of Now Jersey; and a few years later he was general manager of the Underground Railways of london. Like Geddes, he was always ready for tho job ahead. "One day, when he was temporarily in charge of tho Detroit properties, liaht'uing destroyed tw6\thirds of the d\namos of the'eompany. It was an absolutely unprecedented accident. Ali his superiors were out of town, so Stanley single-handed, tackled the job of making one-third of the cars go nri far as all had gone. 'He hired every available local electrician, wired to Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Toledo Cleveland and other near-by cities for more, and brought them to Detroit on special trains and engines. Though impaired, tho service was not interrupted, and withma week it was normal again. " i iiis is the type of man called to Lonuon, first to. speed np the traction lines and later to stimulate one of tho great Government machines. It was Stanley who made London "stop lively." When he took up hie work in tho motropolis he faced a traffic congeston almost as bad as that on the New York subways. Shouts in Now York h&d one advantage over Stanley in London, in that an Amcricau crowd will move fast if told to do so, while u British assemblage is. constitutionally opposed to hurry in any form. Stanley trained conductors to speed up traffic to tho point where schedules moved like clockwork and, congestion was a thing of the past. "It was Stanley who merged all the transportation lines in London until practically all traffic by omnibus, tramhay, and tube was under his cortrol. Here he utilised the lesson that he had learned in America, because each one of these lines became a feeder of the others. He had just got this whole mechanism well tuned up. when the war broke out. Lloyd George at once .snapped him up for his Ministry of Munitions, where he became DirectorGoueral of Mechanical Transport. Thousands of his London omnibuses were hauling troops in Francs. Hi» experience therefore was highly useful. "When the Asquith Government fell' under the iNorthcliifo hammering for a real business administration, and Lloyd George took over the reins, Stanley was the logical and inevitable choice for President of the Board of Trade, lie did precisely for this august organisation what Geddes did to the French railioads and to the Admiralty. He became the great transformer. "To understand fully the revolution that Stanley was wrought in administrative methods you must first know that the British Board of Trade is tho biggest business in the World; On the one hand it grips nil British industry, and on the other supervises al! transport on land and sea. , Tho whole domain of British trade at home and abroad acknowledges it as chief. . . . Stanley brushed away Vm cobwebs, and blew in the breath of a live and up-to-date business system. He converted tho Board of Trade into ■■ real Ministry of Commerce. Where once its chief task was to he the historian of business, the Board of Trade now became a business getter. In other words, . it made lather than chronicled business. "Stanley charted the ' board with pyramids and made it hum with action, lie realised at once that the successful conduct of the war meant the control of war materials. Take coal, which in war is life. Ho saw millions of tons being wasted on non-essential industries and in the generation and distribution of useless electrical power. He established a rigid control that saved an immense quantity in six months. Coiil became the_ precedent for the control of timber, paper, 'matches, gtißolinc, cotton, rubber, and tin. Gradunlly the whole British world of ran materials came under his supervision; in fact, the only important items outside his jurisdiction are iron and steel, which aro controlled by the Ministry of Munitions; and wool, which is under the domination oFEiie War Department. Thus Stanley :s the steward of the supplies that are preservative of industrial life. ... "Two distinct innovation!! inaugurated by Stanley will sorvo to indicato the scope and method of his reorganisation of the Board of Trade. One is the daily conforenco that he holds at eleven o'clock with the heads of hn Departments. Here he finds out what every branch is doing. In tho old days this procedure would have been littlo short of heresy. Every man.in th" Board of Trade was a cog who worked lived and died in his little groove. The other is, tho system by which Sir Albert Stanley keeps the board in co>fltant touoh with the march of trade events. Formerly most of the news of British trade filtered in through consuls or agents in dry-as-diist reports. ■Stanley organised a force of travelling scouts who prowl about the Empire finding out what is going-on in tho business world. They stimulate backward industries and encourage ntw ones. In a word, the Board of Trad? has become tho Promotion Department of tho British Empire, Unlimited."