THEIR FIRST £l00.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1775, 12 January 1918, Page 4

THEIR FIRST £loo.

HOW THE WORLD’S RICHEST

MEN SAVED IT.

“The proudest moment in my life.” Mr Russell Sage, the multimillionaire, cnee said, “was when I first hrd five hundred dollars to call' nx, - -. ■! saved from my small earnings as assistant in my brother's grocery store. Since that day I made a million dollars between breakfast and supper; but never since have I felt anything like the pride and elation I felt then.” Mr J. D. Rockefeller, who to-day counts his millions of pounds to a hundred, was a Cleveland office-boy when a few lucky deals in poles put him in possession of his first hundred pounds, and started him on his amazing career to riches such as no other man has ever owned.

Mr W. A. Clark, the fabulously rich “Copper King,” who has an income of two million pounds a year, saved his first hundred as the result of several months’ toil with pick and spade on a Montana gold-field, • Mr James J. Hill, the “Railroad King,” had spent laborious years as a farm labourer and wharf porter, before with his savings he made his first modest bid for riches as a vendor of coal at St. Paul’s, Minnesota.

FORTUNE FROM GOLD PROSPECTING.

Mr P. D. Armour, the great Chicago millionaire, when he left a plough in New York State to woo Fortune in the Far West, took with him the little hoard of a few hundred dollars which was to prove the nucleus of many millions.

Mr W. S. Stratton had toiled for twenty long years as a carpenter, clerk and gold-prospector before at last he found the road to riches at Cripple Creek. One day he struck a rich vein of gold which yielded over one thousand pounds within the first few hours; and within a few years “Fortune’s Fool,” as he baa been dubbed, was counted among the world’s richest men.

Mr Andrew Carnegie made Ids first investment of one hundred pounds in in the Adams 7

press Company, out of his sa 1 as messenger and operator in the service of the Pennsylvania Railway Company. “My first live hundred dollars,” says Mr J. C. Fargo, the millionaire president of the great American Express Company, “were made as errand boy and clerk in the Company of which I am now president and director.”

Mr John Wanamaker, the millionaire “Store King,” has confessed that he saved his first one hundred pounds out of his wages' as errandboy and assistant in a Philadelphia book-store.

It was in America—by hard work on a Carolina plantation—and in New York, that Sir Thomas Lipton was aide to hoard the one hundred ■pounds with which he opened his first small provision shop in his native Glasgow, where Ids large fortune of later days was cradled. Sir Alfred Jones, “the man who made Jamaica,” reached the same goal as clerk in the office of Messrs Laird, Fletcher and Co.

Sir Richard Tahgye, head of the great engineering firm known the world over as Tangye’s, had worked for four years as a pupil teacher for a salary of one pound a year with board and lodging, before his earning- as a cjerk in Birmingham enabled him to reach his first one hundred pound-milestone.