INDIAN NIZAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 October 1938, Page 6

INDIAN NIZAN

WORLD’S WEALTHIEST MAN SIMPLE TASTES. MILLIONAIRES OF TODAY. So far from living lavishly, the Nizam of Hyderabad, wealthiest man in the world, is said be very careful with his pennies. He lives in unpretentious fashion. He wears simple clothes, eats only the plainest food, and would as soon live in a tent as any of his 30 palaces. As careful in matters of State as he is personally, the Nizam has evolved a system of three-year Budgets, which were balanced even during the depression without raising Hyderabad’s taxes. Much of his time is taken up with projects of State irrigation and soil conservation. He neither rides, shoots nor plays any game. In fact, his sole form of amusement is writing verses in Urdu, a form of Hindustani. Compared with the Nizam, the Maharajah of Patiali is poverty-stricken with only £1,000.000 a year. The Maharajah of Mysore, however, has a collection of jewels kept in heavily guarded steel vaults and valued at more than £3,000,000. The Maharajah of Boroda rules over a comparatively small State, but nevertheless gets £6,000,000 a year. Only just behind him is the Maharajah of Kathiawar wi’th £5,000,000 yearly. An Indian prince, who is worth millions, though he rules over no State is H.H. the Aga Khan. He is.spiritual head of millions of Indian and African Moslems and from these he receives tributes which make him one of the world’s wealthiest men.

Britain has no millianaire quite so strange as the Nizam of Hyderabad, and certainly not one whose wealth approaches such vast figures. Yet one who may reasonably be compared with the richest men in the world is Sir John Ellerman, a tall, dark ascetic-looking young man of 29, who inherited from his father, the first Sir John, some £50,000,000, of which the State claimed £25,000,000.

He pays £1,000,000 a year in income tax, but receives £500,000 from his properties. He lives on a mere £2,000 of this sum. Sometimes he plays with a collection of tortoise, rabbits, and small rodents, and at other times tinkers with a small inexpensive car.

Bracketed with Sir John in point of wealth are the thrice-married Duke of Westminster, and Lord Nuffield, Britain’s philanthropic car magnate.

The Duke, worth approximately £20,000,000, says: “I am not quite sure of the sum,” and owes his millions to an Elizabethan ancestoi - who married an heiress to the Belgravia estate, at that time worth four shillings a .year. In Cheshire and Flintshire, he owns 30,000 acres, and also has 600 acres in London.

Lord Nuffield has given .away about £12,000,000, yet he has left a fortune of £20,000,000 and an income of £BOO,OOO a year ago. Only 30 years ago he was plain poor Bill Morries, of Oxford, tinkering with cycle repairs. In 1910 he conceived the idea of making cars and spent two years on the design of his first model before producing it. Despite his riches he lives in simple fashion and makes no secret of his utter disdain for social life. “OLD JOE” RANK. Another British millionaire who “does good by stealth” is “Old Joe” Rank who is worth between £20,000,000 and £25,000.000, and at 84 remains the active chairman of the famous flour-milling firm. He has given between £4,000,000 and £5,000,000 to the Wesleyan Church. His name has never been mentioned in connection with the donations. He lives modestly. Sir Abe Baily, who is now. legless, was in his day a gold prospector, a bare-back circus rider, a boxer, an early Johannesburg sanitary inspector. He went through the Jamieson Raid, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and served only a few weeks, fought in the Boer War, and set up as a sharebroker with a capital of one shilling. He made his fortune speculating in gold mines in South Africa. SIR GILBERT WILLS. Lord Dulverton, the former Sir Gilbert Wills, gets his fortune from cigarettes. Outside business, cattle are his chief interest. He has given enormous sums to charity. The world’s richest women are the woolworth heiress, known as Barbara Hutton and wife of Count HaugwitzReventlow, from whom she is just separated, and Mrs Andrew Carnegie. America’s most colourful millionaire banker is J. Pierpont Morgan whose father, the last “J.P.” left £16,000,000/ He is fond of England and has a Scottish estate. Most colourful of Europe’s millionaires is Juan March, an almost illiterate pig farmer, who was brought up in a humble cottage on Majorca Island. Bald, vulture-like in appearance, and continually sucking black cigars, Juan March is the man behind the Franco revolution in Spain. Then there is J. A. Bata, the head of a Czechoslovakian shoe manufactory whose products are to be found all over the civilised world. He employs 40,000 workers, turning out 30,000,000 pairs of shoes annually. He refuses to recognise unions, but pays his workers well and looks after their welfare. PRESS MILLIONAIRES. Well-known millionaires whose publications are seen in all English-speak-ing countries are Lord Rothermere, Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Southwood, Lord Camrose and Lord Astor. Then there is William Randolph Hearst in America, another Press magnate. Nor is it possible to leave out of account Lord Trent (Boots the chemists), pioneer of the five-day week in Britain; Lord Leverhulme of Port Sunlight and soap fame; Lord Austin, who once sold sheep shearing machines and now builds cars; Lord Melchett of Imperial Chemical Industries and a stalwart of Zionism; John D. Rockefeller, jun; Walter P. Chrysler, the one-time errand boy and railwayman, who also builds motor cars today; Gordon Selfridge, American-born, but now a British citizen. These do not by an means exhaust the list of millionaires whose names are known all over the world. To them could be added Lord Glentanar, head of the Coates of Paisley, the Iveagh family with the well-known family name of Guinness, the Sassoons with their great interests in the Far East, Lord Wakefield, the oil magnate.