MILLIONS FROM SOUP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20722, 15 November 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

MILLIONS FROM SOUP.

WEALTHY CANNER'S WILL. FORTUNE OF £30,000,000. No longer should that proverbial phrase, " In the soup," carry a sinister meaning, for Mr. John T. Dorrance, who in 1899 first put canned soup on the market, has died, leaving a fortune of £30,000,000. Mr. Dorranco's son, John, aged 11, inherits the princely income of £4OOO a month, and the late manufacturer's widow and other children enjoy the remainder of the vast fortune. The widow receives an immediate cash payment of £20,000, and £12,000 is set. aside for a family mausoleum. The will, filed at Mount Holly, New Jersey, is a document of 35 pages, containing 10,000 words. The story of Mr. Dorrance's success is another romance'of modern industry. Ihe founder of the Campbell Soup Company, by means of which he made his money, he began life as a chemist in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, afterwards going to Gottingen University, in Germany". Three universities offered turn professorial work which, if ho had accepted, would have meant a life of comparative poverty. Mr Dorrance, seized with the possibilities in "canned soup," an idea already floating in his mind, joined Ins uncle's business at a salary of 28s a week. Canned soup first appeared on the market in 1899, and in a few years the company was earning enormous profits. Mrs Dorrance receives three country homes' and her four daughters each get C2OOO a month, half the income inherited bv their brother. Nothing is left to charity.