THREE FARM LADS WHO MADE £ 100 000 000

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 275, 14 November 1908, Page 3

THREE FARM LADS WHO MADE £ 100 000 000

The romantic wedding of Mrs. Marshall Field, a millionaire widow, to Mv. Maldwin Driimmond recalls what is, per. haps, tlu; most remarkable of nil the wonderful stories ill the romance of commerce. Less thaTi sixty years ago young .Marshall Field, who had spent his boyhood in farm drudgery, toiling early and laic 1 with plough and hoe, drifted to Chicago in search of the fortune he could not find oil his father's barren acres. In company with Lewis Z. Leiter, another farmer's son, he found a place as clerk in the wholesale drapery house of Coolev, Wadswortli, & Co., and .proved 60 capable and diligent that within a few years he found himself, with his friend Leiter, promoted to a partnership. Meanwhile Mr. Potter Palmer, a third farm-lad, hnd opened a small drapery store in Lake Street, Chicago, and had prospered so exceedingly that he invited his two frieads, Leiter and Field, -.0 join him in his business, and the thr.>e sons of the soil linked their fortnn-s in the firm of Field, Palmer, and Leitev, though, they little, dreamt it, was to become the nursery of three of the most stupendous fortunes ever known in the world's history. Under Mr. Field's direction, for he had amazing genius for business, and with two such capable lieutenants, the firm made giant strides. The first year's sales were -well raider ;C50,0()0; in a few years they had grown to ,11,500,000. During the American Civil War, when other businesses were tottering or bankrupt, Field & Co. made li»lf a. million) pounds clear .profit, a ml by 1807 each partner was a millionaire. In this year Mr. Palmer retired, to add enormiiusly to his riches by speculation in real estate; in 1880 Mr. Leiter follower suit, to make lueuy more millions out of the growth of Chicago; and Mr. Field alone remained, to win fame and fortune as the " Dry-Uoods King " of the West. So rapidly did his riches grow that when he died lie left behind him an estate valued at nearly all of which will go to his three grandchildren, cliildrcn of ill'. Urmunioiel'; bride; while Messrs. Leiter and Palmer have been credited with a combined for-1 tune of C40,Wi11,000. Thus, among them,! the three farm-lads of sixty years ago I have accumulated the amazing sum ofj £100,000,000. |