GREAT CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1919, Page 12

GREAT CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY.

STORY OF LORD LEVERHULME'S START IN HIS GIGANTIC BUSINESS. A FAIRY TALE OF COMMERCIAL LIFE. The remarkable personal story of Lord Leverhulme is vivaciously told in the Strand Magazine by Mr. Harc.d Begbie. "I believe him to be one of the truest men that ever breathed English air—that is to say, a man rigorously and scrupulously honest, faithful to the last letter of his given word, and a staunch champion in the hour of his friend's adversity," says Mr. Begbie. "In addition to this, I know him to be infinitely the most creative mind of all the notable men I have ever met in all parts of the world. His life is a passion.—the passion of creation. "Let the reader keep in mind these two assurances from one who knows the man very well. Lord Leverhulme is true English in every drop of his blood and every fibre of his being; he is also supreme in the creative power of his mind."

HIS FATHER'S LACK OF PRAISE. Mr. Begbie tried to get Lord Leverhulme to say from which of his parents did he derive his creative faculties: " 'I don't remember a single occasion on which my father gave me either one word of encouragement or even a glance of praise. His influence came from silence and watchfulness. He never said, "Well done"; certainly he never dreamed of saying, "Go ahead"—nty goodness, no! But one knew that he was watching, and, because he was a good man, that knowledge was boHp r ?han praise. I got more stimulus f rr r my father, who said nothing, that fvoia my mother, who praised too much.' "'ln neither of them can you see the germs of forcefulness ?' "'Well, now, I've got to think about that. My mother was sweet and gentle —a beautiful, a very beautiful character; but I shouldn't say she had it in her to set the Thames on fire. You know the origin of that phrase, of course. The Thames was ' «' And your father?'

HIS NINE CHILDREN. '"Now my father might have had the wish and the energy to do big thinga; I can't say; I don't know; he never spoke about it. But, looking back, I can see that he felt it hia bounden buty before anything else to provide for his children. That makes for conservatism. He had nine children, and seven were daughters. Those seven daughters seemed to tie his hinds and fetter his feet. He daren't venture, because in venturing he was putting the happiness of those seven daughters to a risk. Who can tell? But for the duty he felt himself to owe to those seven daughters he might have been a bold and successful venturer. As it was, he lived to be 88 years old, and died in the knowledge that he had done his duty. He* was a man profoundly religious, and no doubt the knowledge that he had left his daughters provided for must have made his end easy. Perhapa he reckoned that renown enough. You know the anecdote, of course, of Irishman who '

NO PRAISE. "'But do you mean to say that you never got a word of praise from his lips for Port Sunlight?' " "Not a word!' '"The little grocer of Bolton lived to see the gigantic prosperity of his soapmanufacuring son at Port Sunlight, and never once said, "Well, you're ft credit to your father"?' " 'Never once. It was through my mother I first learned that he took any deep interest in my ventures. She said to me one day, "I think your father feels hurt because you have not asked him to put any money into your business." He himself never told me that. My mother told me. That was in 1866, and referred to my grocery business. I was a wholesale grocer in those days. I started work at fifteen, coming straight from Bolton Church Institute School, which haß given three High Sheriffs to Lancashire; and I never think of the headmaster, W. T. Mason, without gratitude. Yes. I came straight from school, where all the prizes I won were for mathematics, to my father's grocery business, and earned a shilling a week.'

TO" WIGAN. "One day, when he was 25, and a married man of three years' experience, he found himself at a place called Hindley with his work finished and the hands of the clock at three. This was two hours quicker than usual. What should he do with those two hours? On one hand lay the road to his home in Bolton j oh the other the road leading to the unvisited and undiscovered kingdom of Wigan. He decided to explore Wigan. "This decision opened a door to a most amazing future. The young venturer entered Wigan with his eyes wide open, took a fancy to the exterior of a wholesale grocery establishment, entered, discovered the business was for sale, made further inquiries, and eventually bought it. In 1874 he had made a small soap tablet, and now, as a wholesale grocer in 1885, he decided to extend this business. His capital, his own money, was four thousand pounds. He ventured it against firms with capitals amounting to millions.

'£50,000 A YEAiI. "In the year ISOI lie was making an income of £50,000; and he was living in Palmyra Square, Warrington, paying £35 pounds a year for his house. Every farthing he could scrape together out of his huge income went back into the business. He hated to borrow money. He felt he could not justly ask his friends to invest in his hazardous undertakinghazardous because of the power, jealousy, and wealth of the big firms. And so he went to his bankers, and they promised him with overdrafts, and these overdrafts preyed .on his peace of mind, and worried him to such an extent that he almost thought of selling out and trying what he could do with the leisure of retirement. THE OFFER. "Then came an offer from a company promoter. He was told that his business could' be floated with a capital of £600,000. The sum staggered him. Was , it just, was it right, to ask the public for £OOO,OOO, when at nay moment his j little business might be knocked on the I head by the'giants? This objection met the following answer, 'What the devil ' does it matter to you what happens

afterwards, so long as you get the money ?' "That decided our Lancashire man. He would trust to himself. He would fight his own battle. Win or lose, his hands should be clean at the end of the struggle. "And so came fortune. Great was the reward, but not greater than the courage, self-reliance, and sterling honesty of the man deserved. In 1594 his anxietieg were over. The firm, able to hold its own against the competition of the whole world, became a limited liability company; and at this day it has a capital of many millions.

HIS BIG PURCHASE. "He bought Sutherland House, which Queen Victoria called a palace, and which certainly hn3 one of the most beautiful and envious situations in London, and gave it to the nation, just as another man might give £5 to a hospital. He lias given Port Sunlight some of the most I'omous of modern pictures, and equipped it with a museum which would be the pride of many a great city. He has bought the island of Lewis with no thought of playing the king there, or of adding to his fortune; but with great joy in his heart because it provides him with difficult opportunities of exercising his creative faculties and improving the conditions of human life. THE ROAD MAKER. ! "'I love making roads,' he once said ito me. 'The roiut-makcr is the best anonymous servant, .of humanity. He drives a great broad thoroughfare from town to town, and for generations men travel over the road, with all their hopes and fears, with all their eares and joys, never onee asking who it was that made their way easier for them. A roadmaker's life is full of a rich solitude and invisible rewards.'" ,