JAMES COATS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 22 June 1912, Page 10

JAMES COATS.

ANOTHER ANDREW CAENEGIE

Sir James Coats, a director of the celebrated cotton-thread manufacturing firm, who died recently, gave large suras 0* money to the institutions of bcotiana generally, and to those of Paisley in particular, but that of itself would not nave made him remarkably, for the philanthrophy of Paisley, and especially of the Coatses, has become almost com-mon-place. What was remarkable about James Coats was that for many years back he would seem to have shut himself up in Ferguslie House with a large Ordnance Survey Map of Scotland, and spent his days picking out upon it the names or obscure little communities to which he could send the means of solace and recreation for the long winter nights. THE OUTER ISLES. A few of those places on the coast he had doubtless visited in his yachting days, but the great majority of them, inland, and in isles unvisited, could never be anything more to him than names on the map. He sent them iiuaries. The (Joats libraries are to be tound in all the townships of the Hebridies, from Ness in Lewis down to Islay; in the Shetlands, the Orkneys, in scores of villages in all the countries north of the Roman Wall, and in * many of the Lowland Western shires. They are in Highland barracks and police stations: they are to be found in the outmost lighthouses. In the past dozen years he probably spent more in this fashion than all the Highland landlords spent in any fashion of philanthrophy for the past century. GAELIC BOOKS AND SPECTACLES. Nor was he content to send what books should be most accessible to his bookseller. Finding a certain dearth of popular Gaelic literature, he commissioned the writing of books in Gaelic, published them at his own expense, and included them in his libraries. It occurred to him, then, that books were of only a qualified value to old people whose eyesight was defective, and he practically ruined the sale of window-glass cut into the shape of lenses and peddled round the country as spectacles, for he despatched skilled opticians through the country who prescribed and distributed free Coats spectacles to such as needed them. BOOTS FOR PAISLEY POOR. Out of his yachts, Mr Coats was a recluse by temperament, and in recent years was even more so on account of failing health. Even Paisley did not know him, though he spent sometimes £1500 a year on boots for its poor children. He made a hobby of his literary schemes; he presented pianolas, scientific instruments, and curling-stones in all sorts of unexpecting and astonished quarters. MUSIC—SOUTH POLE. Tired himself of playing automatic instruments, he started to study instrumental music of a more ambitious kind at the age of. nearly seventy, and for a period was under the tuition of a well-known Glasgow bandmaster. Almost his last appearance in public was in connection with the departure and return of the South Antarctic Expedition, to which he contributed £15,000, and his name is now on maps, for Dr Bruce called a plateau of the Southern Pole "Coats Land."