ONCE A MILLIONAIRE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 339, 21 January 1937, Page 8

ONCE A MILLIONAIRE

M otor-Cy de Inventor Gravely 11l HIS RISE AND FALL) LONDON, November 1. William Douglas, inventor of the famous motor-cycle of that name, onetime millionaire, who sacrificed £300,000 and £lO,OOO a year to keep his men employed during years of depression, is gravely ill. Me lies in a grey stone mansion at Bristol. He is seventy-six years of age. His wife is dead. His factory has gone. Yet his life has been one of the romances of industry. Descended from Scottish earls, William Douglas was born in Newcastle-on-Tynp and brought up near Glasgow. His father brought him to Bristol, where he had a small workshop, at an parly age When his father died he was still in his “teens,” with a mother force, a vice, and a grindstone. With this equipment the Douglas Works was founded. H e worked eighteen hours a day. Bit by bit he earned a reputation; in three and family of small brothers and sisters to support.

At the age of nineteen he was working at a boot factory. Next year he married. Sixty years ago Mr Douglas found himself unemployed. A friend suggested moving to Kingswood, then a small industrial village two or three miles out af Bristol. He had no capital, but he had courage and skill. He went to a friend and asked him to lend him £lO. “Ten pounds to start an engineering works with?” his friend laughed. '‘Ridiculous!” But he lent the mony. The young man took a house and shed at an annual rental of £l6. Besides the tools he had, he bought a portable months he was able to repay the £lO loan The years went by, and one of the mighty industrial centres of modern Britain sprang up in Bristol, with the Douglas works as a great part of it. At the dawn of the present century a man called joe Barter was experimenting in Bristol with motor-bicycles. William Dougins used to ride an old “ penny-farthing. ” with a big wheel in front and a tiny one behind. He thought it would be interesting to make a motor-cvcle. They got together, and in 1907 they 'put on the road the first two-cylinder motor-cycle. The outbreak of war found the Douglas motor-cycle already in the front rank. Mr Dougins was summoned to the War Office and told to supply eighty machines within a week. He wag aghast. There wasn’t a finished machine in the whole factory. He was told he must do it. Within a week those machines were ready and delivered. Bv 1915 two hundred machines a week was the output, quite apart from other products—gun-mountings, air plane parts, and so on. Sixty thousand Do'in-|f.cnc! <saw active service. Tn 1927 n great fire destroyed the factory just before the season began. Rut the now white-haired engineer rebuilt the factory and on a larger scale thr-.n ever, turning it into one of the most up-to-date plants in the whole country. Tn February 1929 the greatest blow of all fell. Mrs Douglas died. “T never took any decision.” he said at the lime, “without asking her opinion first. And T never knew her to be wrong.” Without her he was lost. Business was bad. Never had he needed her more. The economic crisis came, and fnr years the firm lost heavilv. The ” guv’nor,” as every one called him, refused to give in, to close down and throw his men out of work. He poured his own money into the company. But WHliam Douglas missed his wife. Hp 81. His youngest son died. The nld snirit went. His surviving son and daii"h+er pleaded with him to retire. At last he agreed. The factory was sold to a limited company, and it is now one of » s Hematic airplane works. Then the old man withdrew from the world.