MEN OF MARK.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 April 1921, Page 9

MEN OF MARK.

LORD LEVERIHJLME’S >s A WEEK. ROMANCE OF BUSINESS. There are many stories of the earlj lives of “Modern Men of Afark” in Mr, Stuart Menzies’s book which bears that title ; one of the most interesting is that of Lord Leverhulme. Son of a grocer in a Lancashire town, he began work in his father’s shop at sixteen and received in return for his services exactly one shilling a -week. He had to struggle against his father’s lack of enterprise ; all his efforts to get more business were opposed ; but he persevered, got a pound a week and the chance to go out as a “traveller,” and then induced his worried parent to make him a partner with £BOO a year. Next he bought a wholesale business being then 25 and two years married. He made it pay and with the money he made (£27,000) he resolved to start soap-making. “He had been more or less mixed up with that cleansing commodity since he was fifteen,” it appears, “and liked the trade as well as foreseeing its‘great possibilities.” NO CHECK OR LOOK BACK. His father still grumbled and even remonstrated, but the son went ahead, produced the “Sunlight Self-Washer,” and expanded steadily until he founded Port Sunlight. “From the day when the new works were opened there has never been a check or look back for the firm of Lever Brothers ; it has been one continued prosperity, and Mr. Lever’s old father, living to the age of 88, had the pleasure of seeing his son’s great achievement, though even then never a word of congratulation passed his lips.” 6 One Lord Leverhulme has always enjoyed—splendid health. “His tastes are all simple and healthy ; he still sleeps in an unostentatious little iron bed in the open air all year round, except when travelling by train. Sleet, snow, and rain do not trouble him. .He has an awning over the bed, which affords some protection from the elements ; as for rest, what matters?—it is grand.” * SIR RICHARD -BURBIDGE.

Another man of mark, who began in the grocery trade was Sir Richard Burbidge, of Harrods. While he was an a apprentice young Burbidge worked z from seven in the morning to nine or ten at night. This habit of industry he kept up; to it,and to his enterprise in seeing the possibilities of “stores” he attributed his success. In his early days there were no large departmental businesses ; he quickly realised that they were coming and he did a great deal to bring them along. “There were no rest rooms in those days to make shopping pleasant, no refreshment rooms such-like luxuries ; features ol common practice to-day, all of them pioneered by Richard Burbidge, and they have had a considerable bearing on the business turnover of the companies who adopted these measures.” Of Viscount Northcliffe there is a sympathetic and well-informed sketch. CASTLE AS ALMSHOUSE. The late Lord Armstrong’s character is well drawn and his in engineering and shipbuilding faithfully described. How many people recollect, by the way, that he bought a castle on the Northumbrian coasts restored it, and endowed it as “an almhouse for cultured poverty.” ? Of Lord Rhondda it is recorded that his father was also a grocer, “of which fact his son was proud and to which he often referred.”

Lord Dewar’s start in London was rather depressing. “He had a difference of opinion with his first employer at the end of his first week’s engagement, and he packed up his things and went off to London to seek fortune all on his own. taking with him two letters of introduction. He arrived in that city one cold, foggy, depressing night,, and asked a policeman if he could direct him to the houses of the people to whom he had letters of introduction, receiving in reply the damping news that one was dead and the other had gone away, nobody knew where. So all alone he took an office at £1 a week, and has arrived at what we see him to-day.”