SIR THOMAS UPTON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1075, 13 March 1913, Page 4

SIR THOMAS UPTON.

A ROMANTIC CAREER.

The career of Sir Thomas Lipton (who is again challenging for the America Cup) is one of the most romantic in the annals of commerce. Born in County Tyrone 62 years ago, he went to the United States at the age of fifteen. Even as he landed he gave evidence of his natural shrewdness, for, by taking forty ot his fellow steerage passengers to the nearest hotel, he obtained for himself free board and lodging for a month as a commission on their patronage. And on the strength of that stroke of business he wrote to his workman father in Glasgow telling him that he had run away to make his fortune.

It was, however, a woman who really gave him his start —Mrs Newhall, on whose farm at Dunellen, an hour or two’s ride from New York, he worked for five months, and he then returned to his home in Scotland with 150 dollars in his pocket, after having paid his passage. He invested his “fortune” in a provision shop, where, by hard work and careful advertising, he soon began to make money, and commenced to open branches up and down the country. Steadily and persistently pursuing the policy, the name and fame of Lipton eventually became known to the uttermost ends of the earth.

Sir Thomas’ “mustard seed” has grown into a wonderful business organisation, of which he is still the brain and controlling force. In spite of the fact that he has assumed a great fortune, he is not a money-grabber, and he really looks upon business as a scientific game—and a game that he has made his hobby. He is emphatically a Napoleon of trade seemingly having the happy knack of bringing on any little thing he projects. For instance, it is said that his first and greatest ambition was to be able to see his mother riding in her own carriage, and not only did he realise this ambition, but he built her a fine house into the bargain.

Sir Thomas is a. member of that famous band of eminent men who have so far scorned the bonds of matrimony, although he has many times and oft been affianced—by Rumour, which has always proved herself, as far as the monarch of tea is concerned, to be an untruthful jade. And so, having no family ties, he divides his time between the control of bis mammoth business and bis yacht. It may be, indeed, that his endeavours to capture the America Cup have made him more popular and famous than even his huge success as a merchant. And the expenditure involved in trying to win the race would frighten, and no doubt has frightened off, many wealthy men from the attempt. It has been estimated that the last essay of Sir Thomas to "lift’' the cup took the complexion off a quarter of a million pounds.