BEST-HATED WOMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 23

BEST-HATED WOMAN.

FLIGHT FROM ANGRY MOB. MILLIONAIRESS IN DISGUISE. Said to be the richest and best hated woman in the world, Mme. Yone Suzuki, the mystery merchant queen of the Orient, has been brought into the limelight by the report that her vast concerns are in difficulties. A romance of a pretty girl's immersion in business and her ambitioin for her two sons lies behind her rise to fortune. Twenty years ago she was an efficient little Japanese housewife—pretty and clever—but unnoticed by any but her neighbours. To-day she is a veritable queen of commerce, and is reputed to be worth something like £30,000,000. | Her steamers ply the world's trade troutes; her factories are scattered over Japan, China, Australia, America, and the Malay States. She has offices in London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, Calcutta, and Vladivostock.

Though she is more or less a mystery woman to the great business interests she controls, she is nevertheless the power behind the scenes.

Married at the age of 13 to a sugar refiner, the turn in her fortunes came when her husband died, and she was left to look after her own interests in the business, Squatting Japanese fashion on a mat before a little desk all day, she began to lay the foundations of her vast fortune.

Her investments were lucky. Nothing she touched seemed to go wrong. Before long she had amassed over a million. With success and wealth came the ambition for power, and with astonishing rapidity she obtained control of scores of different commercial undertakings. To-day she virtually controls the steel industry of Japan, she has a world monopoly of crude camphor, and dominates the sugar market in the East. In addition she has estates in Korea, Japan, and the West Indies. In Flight. Lead, zinc, and copper mines, huge foundries and smelteries, flour mills, breweries, dockyards, and insurance companies all come under her control. She has banks of her own, and directs something like a million tons of shipping. But though fabulous success has attended her every venture, it is known that her heart hides a tragedy. She is not popular. She has done everything to win the love of her people—improved the status of her work people, given collossal sums of money to the poor— yet she is the best-hated woman in the East. '■ Towards the end of the war she was blamed by the populace of Kobe for causing rice to rise in price, so that thousands starved. It waa alleged that her firm had speculated heavily, and Bent the price soaring upwards. This was untrue, but the most stormed her palatial offices and burned them down,; and Mme. Suzuki had to fly for her life. Eventually she had to resort to a smaj, village where she lived in disguise wcil the storm blew over.