BUSINESS LIFE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXiX, Issue 7727, 22 February 1909, Page 4

BUSINESS LIFE.

CONFESSIONS OF SOME WELLKNOWN MEN.

It is not many years since Mr Joseph Lyons, one of the most successful business men of our day was contemplating a career in art, and with very fair prospect of making more than bread and butter out of it. Four of his pictures had been hung at the Royal Institution, in iUbernarle Street, and had quickly found a purchaser. MR LYONS'S STORY. " That success," he says, " was encouraging, but I became convinced that by continuing as an artist I should take many years to climb the ladder of fame. So I relinquished art as a calling. Mr first busings success followed. I conceived the idea of establishing shops for supplying light refreshments in all parts of London, which would be different to any then in existence. This brought my first business success. I commenced with Mr Montague Glnckstein, a great organiser. Our small shops immediately became popular, and as they grew in popularity so we increased their number." To what enormous and profitable proportions this enterprise has now grown every Londoner knows. HOW MR GAMAGE GOT ON. It was a chance visit to a barber's shop that started Mr A. vf. Gamage on the road to wealth. "I was looking out for something that would go." he says. "The barber had various barber isPcHPvvobigs things that were good for tho hair, and he brought to my notice a new wire brush, sold at 2s. I thought I saw business in that brush, and 1 considered that if it were sold at Is 9d there would bo a fair profit. My partner agreed. I. bought half a gross from the manufacturers, and offered them to the public at the reduced price. The liUlo brush shop in Holborn created quite a sensation, and that idea proved tho foundation of our business." GREAT SHIPPING VENTURES. Sir Donald Currie, the great shipowner, who has done more than any other man to make South Africa,,.began his strenuous life on a stool in a Greenock shipping office, and saved the small capital on which he himself started as an owner of ships while working for the newly-formed Cunard Company. Mr Ismay, the founder of the great White Star line, spent his earliest working years as an apprentice to a firm of Liverpool shipowners, and proved so energetic and thrifty that at 25 he was able to start in, business. FROM BLACKSMITH TO KNIGHTHOOD. Sir William Arrol, the famous engineer and builder of tbe Tay and Forth bridges, was working in a cotton mill at nine, and spent many years of drudgery as blacksmith, mechanic, and jobbing " boilermaker, before fortune condescended to smile on his industry. And he was already in sight of his 30th birthday when he was able to set up in business on his own account on savings amounting to £85, £43 of which he spent on an engine and boiler. At 15 Sir Alfred Jones, the "man who made Jamaica," and the millionaire owner of a vast fleet of steamships, was working early and late in the office of Messrs Laird, Fletcher and Co., who managed the African Steamship Company. "Small pay and plenty of work were my lot," he says, " but I continued to study in the evenings at the Liverpool College." ERRAND-BOY TO YACHTSMAN. Sir Thomas Lipton begaii his climb of the ladder of riches from the very lowest rung. As a boy of nine he was adding half-a-crown a weelc to the cannty family purse as errand boy, a j lowly part which ho played for half a dozen years. Then came that adventurous trip to America in search of fortune, with its tale of hardship and disillusion, and the homeward return with £100 iji his pocket, with which the embryo Tea King opened his small provision store in Glasgow. Mr Ernest Cassel, millionaire and philanthropist, spent the first three years of his working life in the office of | a Liverpool grain merchant before migrating to London to spend a few | more years as clerk in a financial house. j Here his great financial talent started j him on the road to fortune, and while he was still in the thirties he was neI gotiating important foreign loans, and was accounted one of the most astute and successful financiers, and successful financiers in Europe. j THE TANGYE FORTUNE. At fourteen the late Sir Richard j Fangye was learning the art of teaching, rising at five o'clock every morning and working until late at night for ;i salary of less than 2s a month, indueling his board and lodging; and j four years later lie was " passing rich " oil £50 a year as clerk to a "firm of Birmingham engineers^. The turn of the tide cam-* when, in partnership with his brothers, lie rented a manufacturer's packing room at 4s a week, vvith steam power thrown in, and the firm of Tangye Brothers, engineers, winch was to be come one of the most famous in the world, was obscurely cradled