MR JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1507, 17 January 1901, Page 10

MR JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN

A Londoner by birth. and_ a member of a Unitarian family of substantial means, who for several generations have held high office in the ancient Cordwainers’ Company, Mr Chamberlain was educated at private schools, and for two years under Dr Key, at the University College School, where, when he left at the age of sixteen, he was <we are tcld in Miss Marris’ bock about the Right Hon Member for Birmingham) the head mathematical scholar of his year, was bracketed first in mechanics, hydrostatios, etc., and also in French (dividing the prize with Jules Benedict, son of the musician), and was distinguished in Latin. Little was done in the way of athletics at University" College School in those days, and in that little Joseph Chamberlain hardly cared to join. He had been found at his first school by no means unwilling to use Nature’s weapons in vindication of his natural right to be President of a Peaoe Society which he liad founded. > An athlete he never became, nor a sportsman, but he enjoyed swimming, and was good at it, and in Birmingham society, in the later “fifties” and early “sixties” his good dancing; was an element in the popularity he enjoyed. For, after two years spent in acquiring the art and mystery of cordwaining, it was to Birmingham he was sent to' develop with his cousin Nettleford a new patent for screw-making. Develop it they did, and the whole business connected with, it, until in 1865, out of one hundred and thirty thousand gross of screws produced weekly in Birmingham, no> fewer than ninety thousand gross were turned out by Nettleford and Chamberlain. And this—old slanders on the subject having long ago withered —they accomplished by perfectly honourable enterprise, marked by just those kinds of resource and adaptability the lack of which has so often stood in the way of the successful competition of British with Continental manufacturers. The result was that at the age of thirty-eight Mr Chamberlain was able to retire from business, and to throw himself entirely, young, fresh, and all hut unworn, into those varied forms of public work in whicn he had for several years taken an increasingly active and prominent part.