SIR ALBERT STANLEY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 283, 26 August 1919, Page 6

SIR ALBERT STANLEY

iIOOO A YEAH WHEN HE WAS . TWENTY. There never has been- a life more full of business romance than that of Sir Albert Stanley, M.P., whose resignation, owing to ill-health, as President of the Board of Trade, says tho "Daily Express," lias been officially announced. Ife began his adventures at 14 years of age, when he rati away from school and -obtained a post as messenger in' tho offico of tho tramway company in Detroit, in the United States. He earned then five dollars a week, and kept himself well on it, fiuding enough money to pay for class fees at a technical institute in his spare time. Electric traction was-then at its birth, and'promising rapid development. The boy learnt all ho possibly could about cleotricity and tramways at his night class. At 17 he was made superintendent of tho tramway company, with a salary of a year, and 'command over 2000 men. That, however, was not good enough for this boy with ambitions. Ho felt lie did not know enough about his work, and so ho threw up his job nnd went as a labourer in the shops and yards to loam everything there was to know about the mechanics side, of electric trams.

Ho got his reward. He was appointed general superintendent of the undertaking and earned £1000 a year when still a lad of 20. The development of the traction system around Detroit -under his care was extraordiarily successful. The next change took him to. New Jer. sey, at tho ago of 23 with the positiou of general manager over nearly 1000 miles of electrical railroad, at a salary of iCSOOO, and control of over 20,000 employees. Then he went back to England, tho piacp of his birth, his object being to Icaru only more, this time about the electric traction ol London. He stayed in tho city to become at ill general manager of the "Underground."

Tho first holiday Sir Albert took in his life was just before tiiie war. He had never' Until Mien been two consecutive days away from his office. On August 1, 19W, lie was in Baden. A German officer whom he met in the morning warned him to get out and away for home that same afternoon. Sir Albert tried the railway, but was not permitted to travel. He went at once with a friend and bought two motor-cars, costing JCISOO, and they started away by road. They wore stopped, however, at Preyburg, nnd the cars confiscated. It looked- hopeless. Sir Albert mnnaged to got himself and hi? friend smuggled into a luggage train tilied with soldiers. They reached Holland eventually, and were home in London on tho night of August 3, just before war was declared.

Sir Albert Stanley says himself that he made one big mistako in his life, which was thinking that, because he loved it, he could keep at work without a holiday. Tho keenest disappointment ho has suffered is having to give up the Board of Trade. Tho man who was railway manager at 28, and a Minister of England at 42, gives this definition,of his whole life:

"Work alii the time, with a big element of luck."