MR CHAMBERLAIN'S LIFE STORY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 274, 18 November 1899, Page 5 (Supplement)

MR CHAMBERLAIN'S LIFE STORY.

In ah illustrated life story of Mr Chamberlain in "The Young Man," for October, we are reminded that it was at 3, Grove Hill Terrace, Camberwell. almost within sound of Bow Bells, that Mr Chamberlain first saw the light, on July 8, 1836. His father eondxicted a shoe business in the.city, which had Ijeen carried on under the same name and on the. same spot for over a hundred years. His mother was the daughter of a provision merchant, and Joseph was her first-born, the eldest of a family of nine. Camberwell was the scene of the boy's early schooldays. Later he was sent to the London University School, which has the names of .Mr John Morley and the Speaker on its rolls. He. was at this school until he reached.sixteen when his education ceased. Mr Chamberlain was only eighteen.-when he began, as we shotild say if he had been a poor boy, "to earn his own. living." • He entered his father's, shoe business, in which he worked for two yeaiva. and so remarkable .was his grasp of business that he was. then; entrusted with the sole care of his father's, interests in a Birmingtram firm of screwmakers. .

A FORTUNE OUT OF SCREWS IN TWENTY YEARS. . . . The business was not prospering when the young man from London took it up on behalf of his father. It. had been going- the wrong way for several years. Mr Chamberlain, turned it i*ound and made the screw trade •a royal road to fortune-vfor Nettleford und Chamberlain. Though lie devoted [lumiself to business with., such, zeal that in twenty years he made his fortune, yet he did not allow commerqe to swallow up his interest in the public affairs of Birmingham. He had, become familiar with, many depart-., ments of local life. ■ ■ A SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHJ2R. ;

At the Church of the.. Messiah lie was a teacher in the Sunday school,with four of his brothers. ' He taught for a time in the night school, and. took part in the "penny reading" en-, tertainments. He was president, too, of the Mutual Improvement Society in connection with his Sunday school, and was altogether an active worker in many jocal causes of a religious and social character. WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR BIRMINGHAM.

The story of his career as a Town Councillor is practically the modern history of Birmingham. I'fTsix years —practically in three—he raised Birmingham from the position of a badly governed third-rate town to the position of one of the first towns in tho kingdom. The Birmingham^ of his Town Council days had a population of 180,000, and a rateable value of less^ than one-third what it is . to-day. There were, to quote from one of Mr Qhamberlain's own speeches, no parks, no free libraries, no baths,, no art Sfallery .or art museum, mo Board schools, no School of Art, no Midland Institute, no Mason College, no Corporation Street. The streets were' badly paved, imperfectly lighted, and only partially drained. Gas was about 5s per 1000 cubic feet; water was supplied on three days a week, On other days carts went round - supplying water at 10s the 1000 gallons. The death rate was 30 in the' 10(J0. There were whole streets from which fever .was never absent. Thousands of courts were not paved nor drained, and were covered with pools of stagnant filth. It was thus Mr Chamberlain found Birmingham. ' He left, it as we all know it to-day—one of the best governed towns yi the world: