LORD LEVERHULME

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2665, 3 September 1937, Page 5

LORD LEVERHULME

HIS EARLY START IN LIFE WORK IN A GROCER’S SHOP. ' At the age of 16 years a young man named Lever was cutting and wrapping soap in his father’s wholesale grocery business. ' A year or two later he was out on the road as a commercial traveller, getting orders for the business. When he was 21 he was married and was the owner of a soap known as “Lever’s pure honey soap,” which was made specially for him, according to his own ideas, by a soapboiler.

Lever’s father was James Lever, a wholesale grocer, of Bolton, England. He was brought up amid the smell of groceries and soap, and his conviction that his future lay in the selling and manufacture of soap remained with him during his early years. No young man could have worked harder or applied himself with greater industry to bringing about the fulfilment of his ambition.

It so happened that one day he found himself with an hour or two to spare in Wigan, and exploring the place he came to the conclusion that there was a suitable place for a wholesale grocery. The business was established, and from it rose the first of the Lever soap factories. It was opened at Warrington in 1886. Two years Ikter a factory was opened at Port Sunlight. Year after year factories for rhe manufacture of Lever’s soap went up in other countries of the world. The day was,to come when the young man who had cut and wrapped bars of soap with his own hands for 15s a week should become a peer of the realm with the title of Lord Leverhulme.