FORTUNE AT FORTY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 136, 30 August 1927, Page 12

FORTUNE AT FORTY

AUSTRALIAN CONTRACTOR'S SUCCESS HARD WORK AND THRIFT Nineteen years ago Mr. Edward Car roll, found himself in Melbourne with a wife, a family and two shillings. He concluded that the position was unsatisfactory, and set to work to rectify it, a task which he accomplished so satisfactorily that recently he was able to purchase a fine station property on the Murray for £140,000. Mr. Carroll is perfectly willing to explain the secret of how two shillings was converted into a fortune. According to him the explanation is simple, and is based on the old-fashioned virtues of hard, very hard work, thrift, very hard thrift, and thinking, very hard thinking. “It’s the first £IOO that is difficult to collect,” he told a Melbourne “Age" 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 he is one of the 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. He is just finishing his last and greatest contract, the Maroondah Dam. He has been seven years on that job, and reckons he has saved the taxpayer £27,000 on the original estimate. The actual cost is about £546.000. "We had no troubles at all throughout the seven years,” he said to-day. ‘Strike?’’ We never had an argument with the men working on the job.” He is no believer in day labour, which lie considers is the cause of several large works in the State dragging on year after year, greatly in excess of the estimates both of time and money. “Hundreds of thousands of pounds are being lost on these works,” he said recently, “simply because they are being carried out by Government departments by day labour. “It is a very different proposition when a big job is carried through bv a contractor. His tender ’is necessarily cut to the bone in competition: his own fortunes are at stake; every day he can save is in his favour. “That is why on the Maroondah job we were often content with 16 hours sleep in the week, why we worked with and alongside the 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 44-hour week, added to day labour, will make the present costly schemes even more extravagant.” Mr. Carroll at the age of 40 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 finds himself constantly wondering at the interminable opportunities which he sees around him. „ “Opportunity doesn’t knock once, he said: “not in Australia. There a continual rat-a-tat-tat on iverman’s door.”