FORTUNE AT FORTY

Evening Star, Issue 19659, 12 September 1927, Page 5

FORTUNE AT FORTY

AUSTRALIAN CONTRACTOR'S SUCCESS HARD WORK AND THRIFT. Nineteen years ago Mr Edward Carroll found himself in Melbourne with awife, a family, and two shillings. He concluded that the position was unsatisfactory, and set to work to rectify it ; a task which ho accomplished so satisfactorily that recently ho was able to purchase a line station property on the Murray for £140,000. Mr Carroll is perfectly willing to explain tho secret of how two shillings was converted into a fortune. According to him tho explanation is simple, and is based on tho old-fashioned virtues of hard (very hard) work, thrift (very hard thrift), and thinking (very hard thinking). “ It’s the lirst £IOO that is difficult to collect,” he told a Melbourne ‘ Ago ’ reporter. “ After that the road to success is, or ought to be, particularly in Australia, fairly easy.” Mr Carroll began as a contractor in a very small way. To-day ho is one or tho biggest contractors in Australia, CONTRACTS—SMALL AND BIG. When he began no contract was too small; to-day none is too large, or too small either. .... , Ho is just finishing his hist and greatest contract, tho Maroondah dam. He has been seven years on that job, and reckons ho has saved the taxpayer £27.000 on the original estimate. The actual cost is about £540,000. “ Wc had no troubles at all throughout the seven years,” ho said to-day. “Strike?” We never had an argument with tho men working on tho He is no believer in day labor, which he considers is the cause of several largo works in the State dragging on year after year, greatly in excess ot the estimates, both of time and money. “Hundreds of thousands of pounds arc being lost on these works,” he said recently, “ simply because they arc being carried out by Government departments by day labor. “It is a very different proposition when a big job is carried through bv a contractor. His tender is necessarily cut to tho bone in competition; Ins own fortunes are at stake; every day he can save is in his favor, “That is why on the Maroondah job we were often content with sixteen hours’ sleep in the week, why wc worked with and alongside tho men. and why the completion date was a matter of urgent and vital importance to us. TIME IS MONEY. “Time is money on a big engineering job, and a forty-four-hour week, added to day labor, will make tho present costly schemes even more extravagant.” Mr Carroll at the age of forty has acquired a handsome competence, a fine property on the Murray, and an earnest craving for more work. He thinks work is a man’s salvation, and he iinds himself constantly wondering at the interminable opportunities winch he secs around him. “ Opportunity doesn’t knock onco,” he said; “not in Australia. There is a continual rat-a-tat on every man’s door!”