RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD.

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 257, 10 November 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD.

(Continued from Page 2).

When Johannesburg was flowing with tinned milk and honey, • Abe Bailey took a room and started his reckless but brilliant speculations, finally acquiring the Transvaal Goldmining estates. A year ago Sir Abe declared he was suffering from rheumatism, arthritis, phlebitis, heart trouble and old age. But this year he had a leg amputated and is now in the best of health. Be believes that “Courage is the surest wisdom” and once remarked, “Why is it that old Bailey, who speculated in sheep, cattle, goats and wool, gambled in cards and on the racecourse, on the Stock Exchange and all kinds of shares, is not in the workhouse ?” “Well, I always keep in mind what Barney Barnato said to me, ‘Always remember if you give a fool long enough time to think, he’ll think like you’.” Millionaires whose products are so well known that they have almost passed into the language include: Lord Dulverton (W. D. & 11. 0. Wills). One hundred and five years ago a bomb flung from the Turkish lines shattered the tobacco pipes of Egyptian gunners. Emptying the gun-powder out of the thin paper cartridges used for firing the cannon, they replaced it with tobacco. Thus started the cigarette smoking habit which brought fame and fortune to the hitherto obscure Bristol tobacco concern of W. 1). & H. O. Wills, then known as Wills. Ditchett and Wills. Lord Dulverton, the former Sir Gilbert Wills, is broad, goodlooking and fair. He lives at Batsford in the Cotswokls, surrounded by rare shrubs and evergreens. Outside business, cattle are his chief interest, and he has a curious collection of old horsedrawn vehicles which, according to Leo S. Condon, in the “Sunday Referee,” may some day be handed over to a national museum. Lord Dulverton has given enormous sums to charity, especially to the churches in and around Bristol. The Wills’s family lives quietly, and when Sir George A. Wills, the company’s former chairman, died in 1928 leaving £10,000,000, people learned for the first time [that he had four daughters. One ■ is. .M/er.i Thy Miss Violet Wills, who gives a lot of money towards the building of churches. . i The name of Countess Barbara Haugwitz-Reventlow is synonymous with Woolworth’s, from which chain store concern she inherited .some £10,000,000. The former Babs Hutton’s grandfather, Frank W. Woolworth, started as a poor clerk, but had settled millions on his tiny

; Evicgand her mother wtere now at the-’ old vicarage so that thSy could nurse the'Captain. Evie had warned' Dick not to mention the attack or to ask who had done it. The matter, however, was the chief topic of conversation in the little town, and no one was more interested than Dick. The expression of anger and hatred on the faces of the four men in the car had aroused Dick’s curiosity before he had even found the dog, Togo, lying in the passage. Richards had made no allusion to the matter himself, so Dick had to be content to wait. A room was to be prepared for him, and it was arranged that Evie and her mother should take advantage of the doctor’s visit to run Dick home and make the necessary arrangements with his guardians. A little later the green car was again racing along the dusty road —this time in the competent hands of Mrs. Bell. As they passed the hotel at the cross-roads Dick saw a brown, wizened-face looking out of a window. All the rest of the journey that face puzzled him. That he had seen it be fare he was cer-tain-—but where? ‘ The news of Dick’s job was a great surprise to the old people with whom he lived. At the thought of his leaving them they both shed tears, and only brightened when Evie’s mother promised that Dick should see them every week-end. It was only as the green car was disappearing round the last corner of the road visible from their farm that Dick remembered where he had seen the face looking out of the hotel before. With dreadful certainty he recalled the car that had dashed out of the vicarage gate two weeks ago. The man he had just seen was the driver of that car.

(To l)c Continued)

grand-daughter before even she had learned to walk. Barbara Hutton was first married to Prince Alfexis Mdivani, one of the Russian “marrying Mdivani brothers.” James Watson Gerard, America’s former Ambassador to Germany, called her “an expressionless youngwoman who rushes about gathering titles, good and bad, with the speed of an antelope and spends her money abroad, doing her country no good.” Now married to the Danish Count Court Haugwitz-Revent-' low, she has a ba'by son and is having built for her in London an immense steel-shuttered fortress to guard against possible kidnappers from her own country. the world’s richest women include America’s Doris Duke Cromwell, the tobacco heiress, Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, the widow of the steel king, Mrs. Matthew As tor Wilkes, who inherited her dollars from Hetty Green and her brother, Edward Howland Green. Others are Mrs. Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, jun., wife of the United States Ambassador to Poland, and her mother, Mrs. William Boyce Thompson, wliq halved a fortune of £16,000,000 when Mr. Boyce Thompson, the copper mining engineer, died in 1930—but the Thompson fortunes increased a good deal in value since then. Another is Mrs. Cornelius Dresselhuys, who inherited a goodly portion of a fortune made from asbestos. Ihe world’s most colourful banker is Millionaire J. Pierpont Morgan, whose father, the elder J. P., left £16,000,000. £4,000,000 of which was in liquid assets. When he moved into the toppartner’s chair in the family firm, J. P., who likes his friends to call him “Jack,” decided to withdraw from most outside directorates, but war conditions later forced hi pi to take the Chairmanship of the mighty United States Steel Corporation, and in 1915 he lent the Allies £100,000,000. Since then the Morgans have handled transactions involving more than two milliards in stocks, bonds and other securities. “Jack” Morgan is fond of England, has a Scottish estate, and. is welcome at Buckingham Palace.

(To be Continued),