FROM FARM TO FAME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19806, 29 November 1927, Page 12

FROM FARM TO FAME.

NEW CANADIAN LEADER. HOPE OF CONSERVATIVES. MR. BENNETT'S ROMANTIC LIFE. [prom our own correspondent.] TORONTO, Oct. 22. Horatio Alger, tireless weaver of pretty romances wherein the poor but honest youth struggles onward to fame and riches, never created a more thrilling narrative than that furnished by the career of Mr. R. B. Bennett, newlyelected Conservative leader in Canada. The barefoot boy, beginning on a remote farm, finds himself to-day the possessor of £2,000,000, and almost in the vory centre of the political limelight. Fifty years ago in Hopewell Cape, New Brunswick, a sleepy forgotten village of some 200 people, perched on the muddy, tide-driven shores of the Bay of Fundy. "Dicky" Bennett told his schoolmates that some day he was going to be Prime Minister of Canada. He is within one rung of his ambition. His choice as leader over five other candidates was as planned by the managers and organisers of tlio convention. He seemed to them to be the human being as leader once in a generation In other words, the allegation is that Mr. Bennett has in him a cold streak, as one might expect from his financial achievements. Mr. Bennett has been solicitor and counsel for the Canadian Pacific Railway for many years. The Montreal interests who were always keenly dissatisfied with the leadership of Mr. Meighan have now a leader more to their liking. At the same time the rank and file of the party finds in the new leader a man of outstanding ability who ought to be a successful Moses. In verbal facility he has no rival in Canada. His appearance makes shorthand reporters writhe in their seats. He lias been "clocked" at 220 words a minute. Lady Nancy Astor onco referred to him as "the windy boy from the West." At one time he bore the nick-name of "Bonfire" Bennett. He has something of the evangelical ferver as befitting his Methodist forbears. His weapon in speech is a bludgeon, not a rapier. Schoolteacher to Barrister. Marked as is his rhetorical ability, some of Mr. Bennett's other qualifications are even more promising. His is a fighter, a man of belligerency rather than compromise. Moreover he is a human dynamo in energy. He should bring new life into the dry bones of the Conservative Party which lias been in eclipse for the last six years. Of interest perhaps to the feminine voters is that like Mr. Mackenzie King. Prime Minister, the new leader of the Conservative Party is a bachelor. He is one of the best dressed men in Canada. Mr. Bennett was born in 1870. He thus comes into party leadership at the age of 57. His recreation is reading and debate. Who's Who says so, and all the evidence supports the statement. He is addicted to no sports. Walking, sometimes a protracted tramp in the country, is his only exercise. He reads as he talks, rapidly, almost furiously, as though life were too short for all there is to be done. ' ! Mr. Bennett began life as a schoolteacher and afterward took to law, in which he has been very successful. He became known as the most eminent lawyer west of the Great Lakes, and got his full share of the big retainer fees. He represented the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Hudson's Bay Company. He was sent to London to argue cases before the Privy Council. His fees kept going into real' estate which at that time was booming. Before fifteen years were up it was said that he was a millionaire twice over. Politics and Legacies. Almost j immediately after Mr. Bennett reached Calgary he was elected a member of the Legislature of what was then the North-West Territories. He also sat in the Legislature of the newly-organised Province of Alberta, and in 1911 lie reached Ottawa as a member of the House of Commons. With brief interruption he has represented Calgary in the House of Commons ever since. He attained Cabinet rank, but much later than Mr. A. Meighan, his contemporary and rival from the West. At Ottawa Mr. Bennett found his boyhood friends, Harry Shirreff and his sister, Jennie Shirreff, now Mrs. Eddy, and presently the legatee of the estate of Mr. E. B. Eddy, millionaire pulp and paper manufacturer, of Hull, Quebec. The friendship was resumed, if indeed it ever had waned. Mrs. Eddy, finding herself faced with great business responsibilities, leaned more and more on the business judgment of her old friend. In 1921, when Mrs. Eddy died, she bequeathed 1007 of the closely-held and enormously valuable shares of the E. B. Eddy Company to her brother Harry, and 500 shares to Mr. Bennett. In May of this year Harry Shirreff also died, and his will was found to bequeath his shares also to Mr. Bennett, thus giving him control of the company. The Bennett holdings in the Eddy Company alone are now said to have a value estimated anywhere at from one to two millions sterling. Mr. Bennett has one sister, Miss .Mildred Bennett. She will play the hostess for the new leader.