RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 260, 17 November 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD

Most colourful of the Continent’s millionaires is , Juan March, an almost illiterate hogfarmer, who was brought up in a humble cottage on Majorca Island. Bald, vulture-like in appearance and continually sucking black cigars, Juan March is the man behind the Franco Revolution in Spain. He spent £15,000,000 buying the Moorish chiefs and their ‘followers, then produced General Franco as his trump card. To-day he flits obscurely between Gibraltar and Italy, Salamanca and Lisbon, negotiating with Mussolini, creating and administering Insurgent credits said to total £200,000,000.

A Czechoslovakian moneyspinner, whose name is becoming more and more familiar to Britishers by reason of his chain stores and factories, is J. A. Bata, head of .the great shoe firm since the death of his father in a flying accident. Thomas Bata, the firm’s founder, was the son of a peasant cobbler. At first'Thomas hawked his father’s wares around, but soon decided that the secret of success lay in mass production. BRr-v ;

Continued from Last Issue

At Bata’s Zlin works to-day well over 30,000,000 pairs of shoes are turned out annually; 30,000 men and women are employed and live in a town owned by Bata. At Bata’s restaurants they eat food produced on his farms; at the firm’s cinema they see current films for three farthings a time. J. A. Bata, like Henry Ford, produces as much of his own raw material as possible, tries to eliminate middlemen, and sells largely through' his 5,000 shops all over the world. He refuses to recognise Unions, but pays his workers well and looks after their welfare. Recently the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives has been trying to unionise his Tilbury factories.

Millionaires or men so wealthy that they come Avell within the millionaire class, include Press Lords Rothcrmere (“ Daily Mail” group), brother of the late Lord Northcliffe, who came from a middle-class home with little means; Lord Beaverbrook (“Daily Express” group),. son of a poor Presbyterian minister, who made his first million in a Canadian cement deal; Lord Southwood (Odhams Press, Ltd.), who as a poor boy, searching for work in London in the nineties, used to lunch from a pennyworth of flyblown dates off a coster’s barrow. Another Press romance is that of Berry Brothers, William and Gomer, respectively Lords Cam-' 1 rose and Kemsley, owners of the “ Daily Telegraph,” “ Sunday Times ” and vast Allied neygppapers group. Sons of a Merthyr Tydfil esjate agent, they began . their career by founding the . “Advertising World,” a monthly '{ professional journal, but made real money when they bought, the “ Sunday Times,” wlugL “Bill” Berry personally edited.’' Associated with them in a nuffltL. ber of enterprises is Lord .Ilijfjjf; Chairman publi^hirig ■?» Company wJifi&'/Alfred worth (afterwards Lord Norsfe cliffe) once worked. ■ rjpf Then there are William Rai|g| dolph Hearst, America’s North-#* cliffe, who, however, started. ; with the advantage of a million, dollars of his own; Lord Aston (“ The Observer ”) and his bro-U,"

ther, Major John Jacob Astor (“The Times”), descendants of America’s famous old John Jacob Astor; Lord. Trent (Boots, the Chemists), pioneer of the fiveday week in Britain; Lord Lcverhulme, head of the vast Lever Brothers Group; Henry Ford, the world’s greatest manufacturer of popular cars, Avho, A-vith his Avife and son, Edsel, and one or two veteran partners, OAvns all the stock in his huge concern.

Nor is it possible to leave out Lord Austin, who once sold sheep-shearing machines and pioneered the “baby” car; Lord Melchctt (son of the famous Alfred Mond), ardent Zionist and head of the great Imperial Chemical Industries concern; John D. Rockefeller, Jun., who inherited most of his father’s millions and has millions of his own; Walter P. Chrysler, the one-time village errand boy and railwayman, who pioneered the really modern car; Gordon Selfridge, American-born, now a British citizen, who shocked Oxford Street a-quarter of a century ago with his “ vulgar American displays.” Textile manufacturers, cotton spinners and money-spinners are the Coats, of Paisley, whose family head is Lord Glentanar. The Iveagh family, vastly wealthy on the profits from Guinness, arc called “ The British Peerage.” The Courtaulds draw their, riches from silks and textiles. Coal-mining royalties from their lands are responsible for the well-stocked coffers of the Duke of Hamilton, the Marquess of; Bute, literary-minded Viscount .Tredegar, the travel-loving Duke.y of Northumberland, the J Earl of Dunraven, and the sport- • ingy'Earl of Durham. In a few .months, all these will hand over 'ancestral rights to the in return for cheques totalling £66,450,000. Derby once sold a slice of MModl for £1,000,000. Lady “itfullU-who lent her yacht, the : former King Edward of 1936, owns the her shrewd ScotSic David, Wile... Andrew Mel■lon ro<seaitly left his JieirS&s.ome made fro*m alumin||iS®p|B£banks 'and transport, whole of Japanese commerce and industry is in the hands of two families —the Mit.rsuiC artd::th'e Mitsubishis.

In shattered China, also in India, some of the greatest British interests are held by the Sassoon family concern, E. D. Sassoon and Company, founded in 1812 by a Bagdad merchant, David Sassoon. To-day Sir Philip, art connoisseur, millionaire, and First Commissioner of Works, draws a fortune r from these interests. So also does Sir Victor Sassoon, whose exclusive Cathay Hotel in Shanghai Avas recently Avrecked by bombers.

In oil, the wealthiest Britishborn magnate is Charles Cheers Wakefield, the first Viscount, created 1934. Lord Wakefield is head of C. C. Wakefield Ltd. (Castrol) and his colossal services to the nation and philanthropic services fill a column and a-half of “Who’s Who.” Once Lord Mayor of London, Lord Wakefield is better known as the patriotic champion of British supremacy on land and in the air. He backed Seagrave, Cobham, James Allan Mollison and Amy Johnson, and a host of other record-breakers. Last year he gave a large sum to the British Museum fund for buying the Codex Sinaiticus, rare Bible manuscript. Also a millionaire oil-magnate is Sir Henri Wilhelm August Deterding, Director-General of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company. Now spending a lot of time on the Continent, Sir Henri has likewise given generously. One of his latest philanthropies was a gift of several million gilders to facilitate the purchase of Dutch agricultural produce for Germany. A family which,has made millions from newspapers and niagazines without, however, producing a single publication, is W. H. Smith & Son, Britain’s greatest distributing concern. liead of the .family is Viscount Plambleden (34), whose name is William Henry Smith, and whose initials, W.PI.S., decorate the hundreds of railway bookstalls conducted by his prosperous firm. „ ■ Finally, Britain’s wealthy. §pne Manner b#Waiter;TP resident of the who succeeded, his nonagenarian father, the great shipowner, this year; Lord 1 Bearsted, Chairman of Shell Transport and Trading Company, a wealthy clubman and war-time M.C.; Lord Ploward de Walden, veteran of two wars and writer of plays and operas.