WEALTHY MILLER

Evening Star, Issue 21619, 15 January 1934, Page 2

WEALTHY MILLER

HIS ENORMOUS CHARITIES GIFTS TO THE CHURCH Most self-made men have had a lading passion. • Mr Joseph .Rank, the multi-nnlliouaire Yorkslnreman, who, at eighty-one, still, works a full office day and is now turning his great group of flourmills (the biggest in the country) into a public company, has had two (says the ‘ Mews-Chronicle ’). . He has worked passionately hard ail his life, and for fifty years has given the fruits of his. hard work to the church he belonged to as a boy. Nobody knows how much Mr Joseph Rank has given to the Methodist Church. “if he knows himself,’' said Dr Robert Bond, secretary of the Methodist Conference, “ he is the only person who does. He has given us enormous sums from time to time in his own name, but he has also given extensively and insisted that the gifts should remain anonymous. “ Even those of us who are ‘on the inside ' of the church’s finance can only guess. ...” Asked if Mr Bank’s gifts to the church would perhaps amount to £1,000,000, Dr Bond hesitated. “ JL’ossibly,” he said, “ but we cannot estimate it exactly, for the reason 1 have explained. However, we know of more than one gift from Mr Rank of £100,01)0—and it doesn’t take many of those to make a million, does it? “ For instance, some time ago he asked to see the balance-sheet for our aged ministers’ fund, and when he found it was—well, in considerable need - he wrote out a cheque for ~■O,OOO there and then.”

Fifty-eight years ago Mr Rank'was a poor boy in Hull, working his way up to' be a miller. He went to the Methodist Sunday School and to church every Sunday. When his genius for business began to draw in riches like u magnet he came south, went to Jive in Tooting, and became Sunday school superintendent. “He always came regularly every Sunday afternoon,” said Dr Bond, “ m time for the class, and after that lie had his simple tea there and waited for the evening service. He is a very plain, honest-speaking man, and the children loved him.''

Wealth did not rob the miller from Hull of either his Yorkshire accent or iiis love of the poorer people. He gave enormously to the Methodist Central Missions—building mission halls in industrial towns and in the East End. He went on living in Tooting long after he became a millionaire, and even now, when he is probably the richest man in England, his house at Rcigate is of an unpretentious, suburban kind. “• He is a magnificent character,” said Dr Bond. “We admire him so tremendously, because, with his success (which one cannot help admiring —it is the result of genius and sheer hard work) he has not lost anything of his simplicity. “He still plays golf regularly, though he is over eighty, and still has complete control of his business. He never gives irresponsibly, either. He always believes that charity helps most where it encourages people to help themselves, and his money has always been given to help really creative work.

“ Like many Yorkshire men, he is too honest and outspoken to make friends easily, but when once he trusts you he trusts you completely, and never throws your mistakes up at you.” Mr rianK has three sons—two of them directors of their father's business and one of them a miller on his own. Whether his diligently amassed fortune tremendous in spite of Ins endless generosity—will he left to them or go to enrich the church he - has served so long is another of those financial secrets that only Joseph Hank knows.