ROMANTIC STORIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, 8 May 1925, Page 12

ROMANTIC STORIES.

OF BRITAIN’S RICH MEN

SCALING THE LADDER OF WEALTH

POOR HOUSE TO MILLIONS Although Great Britain has no stones or sensational rises to stupendous fortunes such as America can boast, sho is by no means witnout her romances of money-making. Many of her millionaires have scalea the ladder of wealth from its lowest rung; in tne climbing they have exhibited tne same inflexible courage, persistence and financial gomus, and, if they have not climbed to such dizzy heights, it has been rather from Jack or the same opportunities than through any failure in ambition or in effort. Even tho United States can show nothing better than the gallant stiuggie which has made a multi-mil-lionaire and a peer of the. realm ot Lord Lerorhuime. He began his climb of tho ladder of riches behind the counter of his father’s shop as a boy of 16, toiling early and late for a shilling a week.

“In those early days,” he ' says, ‘‘my horizon was limited to cutting and wrapping up soap; but I soon made up my ntind to do what lay beyond it. I determined to master every detail of the business, and in spite of my father’s opposition and lack of enterprise, I persuaded him to let iruo go out as a traveller on £1 a week. ' ‘J. was so successful in'my new venture that, by the time I was 20 my father mado me a partner with 4000 dollars a year, and front that day I never looked back. At 25 I bought a wholesale business - ! and with the money I made in it (135,000 dollars) T resolved to start soap-making—with .what results 1 think the world' knows. - ’ BORN IN A POOR HOUSE Sir Richard Burbidge, the maker of Harrcd's Stores, London’s greatest emporium, began ins brilliant career unuei- even Jess favourable circumstances, lor he was born in a poor home to a boyhood of struggle. ‘T owe my success in fife almost entirely to tho training and example of tho best of mothers,'’ he says. •’She was one of the old school, who did her own baking, bacon-curing, cheese and butter-making,, us well'as the washing for the whoie'family. She- taught me lessons in hard work, thrift ana phlck which have been invaluable to mo ‘‘While J. was an apprentice I worked fourteen and fifteen Hours a day, a.ud revolled ill it; and even in those early years I d'reamt of the day when 1 should- bo the head of a great departmental store such as was then unknown, and such as I have: been able to realise in Harrod’s. As a boy I saw my goal clearly, and with hard work, concentration and pertinacity, I Whs able to reach it.

Mr Gordon Self ridge, who, if not British by birth, has made his fortune in England, says of the beginning of liis wonderful career: “I started as a boy at Marshall Field’s great store in Chicago, and worked my way up step by, step to be manager of a aepariment. I saw losses, friction# waste on every hand. This was due to want of organisation.

‘‘l thought out a central organisation —all til© departments built up, so to speak, storey on storey, culminating in a single head. I worked it all out; and as 1 got more and more power at Marshall Field’s, 1 brought it into being there, and at length they made me a partner.” * . ,

i''or twelve years lie was a director of the world’s greatest store, before he crossed the Atlantic to found the business in London, which is known the world over. ■ The late Lord Pirrie, the millionaire shipping .magnate, left a very humble hnne in the village of, Clandeboye, in County Down, to sit on a stool in the office of Messrs Harland and Wolff, who had 1 recently started a very modest shipbuilding establishing in Delfast. Such were his zeal and industry, that within six years, he had becomo head draughtsman to the firm, and by the time he was 27, he had blossomed into a partner.

How the firm progressed by leaps and bounds under the stimulus of his clever brain and his enthusiasm the world knows; and before he died the boy who was cradled in an Irish cottage controlled companies with a capital of 150,000,000 dollars, and had under 'him an army of scores of thousands of men, writes J. Barr Linney in the “Edinburgh Evening Dispatch.” More than seventy years have gone since Sir Thomas Lip ton made his very modest debut on the world’s stago in Glasgow, where his parents were barely able to keep a roof over their heads out of the profits of a microscopic grocer’s shop. Such was their poverty that, when “Tom” was but nine years old, he was perforce sent out to add a weekly half-crown to the poor family purse as an errand boy, a humble part which he played for six years. Tlier. came a stirring of boyish restlessness and ambition. The errand boy hoard' wonderful tales of fortunes quickly made on the goldfields of the New "World, and, taking a brave heart with him, he fared forth to America, a steerage passenger in an ocean tramp. From New York lie drifted to Carolina, where he toiled for a pittance on a plantation, only to return to New York to hardships the full story of which has never been told.

But, in .spite of every handicap, the youth managed to scrape together GOO dollars; and with this lie proudly returned to his native Glasgow to open a small provision store, the nursery of the gigantic business which has made bis name known wherever the sun shines.