RICHEST MAN IN CANADA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18689, 21 April 1924, Page 3

RICHEST MAN IN CANADA

HOLT OF MONTREAL POWER. WEALTH WON BY THRIFT. exponent OF individualism. [from our OWN- correspondent.] TORONTO. Mar. 1. Who is the richest man in Canada ? Some say John R. Booth, the 97-year-old king of American lumbermen and the grandfather of the girl who the other day became Princess Eric of Denmark. Others would put forward Sir Clifford Sift on, the forme? Westerner and statesman, or Noah Timinins, president of the Hollinger goldmine. But probability points to a man who is little known outside his own city of Montreal. His name is Sir Herbert Holt. His largest interests are in the Montreal Light, Heat and Power Corporation and the Royal Lank, the second largest bank in Canada. He is also president of a dozen other important financial or manufacturing concerns, and his list or directorships looks like the index of a financial blue bock. Thrift and enterprise are rarely united as in the case of Herbert Holt. Thrift and borrowing are the two great methods of acquiring capital. Both are on oceasion successful, but according to the experience of Canada's richest man thrift is the better.

Fifty years ago Holt and the man who afterwards became Sir William Mackenzie, the railway builder, were working side by side, on the construction of a branch line in Ontario. Each drew the princely wage of £7 a month. Holt lived on £1 and saved £6. When Mackenzie wanted to go info business foe himself he found a fallowworkman who had saved £120 and borrowed that. Bat it was not Holt he borrowed from. Holt wanted his savings to go into business on his own account.

Capitalising Profits. Mackenzie and Holt went on through life on pretty much the same principles they laid down then. Mackenzie to the day of his death, a few weeks ago was scheming big developments and carrying them out with borrowed money. Holt has always saved the money first and then gone ahead with his plans. He carries out that principle even in Montreal power. The company is seldom a borrower through bond issues, but builds new power plants, transmission lines and gas mains out of the money that it has earned and accumulated. Mackenzie had a spectacular career and accumulated & tibstantial fortune, but Holt outstripped Vim. Contracts for All. Holt started his career as an engineer, educated in Ireland, where he was born. But he soon jumped into contracting. He got more and more contracts and sub-let them down to the last possible degree of subdivision. Even individual workers were given contracts for digging so many yards of earth. A day labourer would make a wage of 8s a day, On contract some of them made 40s and 48;;. It is stated thai under Holt even the water-boy had a contract. , Holt was always an individualist; today he is Canada's greatest exponent of the theory that every man should bo emitted to work ont his own plans unampered by paternalism or semi-social-istic legislation. He does not believe in public ownership and has carried his opposition to public ownership further than any other Canadian. Undoubtedly a great deal of his sentiment in this regard was formed in those early days when he was helping to build the Q.P.R., for he learned the value of bringing out everything there is in a man by making it possible for him to be rewarded for everything he accomplishes. . Public Ownership. The nearest that Sir Herbert Holt ever came to getting voluntarily into the limelight with his power enterprises was a few years ago when he offered ,to donate £2000 charity if Montreal rates lor electricity were not lower than Ontario 8 rates under public ownership. The only condition was that Sir Adam Beck, the head of the Ontario Hydro, should back his own rates that he had been talking about for so long with a similar- sum. Sir Adam never accepted the challenge, though that does not necessarily prove that Holt is right. . "When railway contracting became unattractive Holt, now a wealthy man for those days, settled in Montreal. The he found "the city and district tamg «>™d with light by a dozen or more little gas and electric companies, fighting among themselves and producing haphazard results. Holt bought them up and *>nsohdated them gradually, buildmg up the crcat corporation, now known as-Montreal Power. It has a capitalisation of £13,000,000. An original investment ot £20 in Holt's companies now has a market value of £220. Thus has , Holt's policy of thrift been justified. l Throughout he has insisted on paying small dividends end using earnings to build up the properties to add new power dams, canals, and generating equipment; new transmission lines, additions to the distribution system in the city, and new buildings. Every dollar taken from earnings to put in new equipment has begun at once to earn a good percentage for the company, and these earnings in turn have been invested in additional revenue-producing equipI ment.

Service to tlie Public*. The company, despite enormous profits, has been able to retain the confidence of the public it serves, chiefly because there has never been anything of the public be damned" policy iii the Holt enterprises. Not that Sir Herbert Holt has diligently worked to carry the publio along with him, Indeed, he has been widely criticised* for declining to make any attempt to win public support by frank, open discussion of the company's relations with the public. It is a question if he would have succeeded so well outside the Province of Quebec, where there are deep-rooted prejudices of conservatism and respect for property rights. In Ontario Mackenzie tried to accomplish in power what Holt did in Quebec. But Mackenzie encountered hostility that eventually was fatal to his plans. To-day Ontario owns its own power plant, and Quebec has the richest individual in Canada. And both are content.