CROWDED LIFE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27567, 8 December 1950, Page 6

CROWDED LIFE

Some Famous Friends To be still writing books at the age of 81 is no mean feat, but to have 143 books published over those years is still more astonishing. Besides these accomplishments, Mr Herbert N. Casson. who is in Dunedin for a month’s stay, has interviewed five American Presidents during his long life and has numbered among his personal friends Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. Mr Casson has lived a life brimful of experience since he was born in the Canadian backwoods in 1869. That made him three years older than the New Zealand railway system, he jokingly told the Daily Times yesterday. His father was in the Hudson Bay Company and he was brought up "the tough way.” “ I never saw civilisation until I was 16,” he said. “Until then I never saw a policeman and I did not know, anything about taxation. My only education was in reading and any formal education I had was at Toronto University after I was 21. It was not an easy job getting into that university without a school grounding, but I got there.” Journalistic Work Mr Casson said he went to the United States at the age of 24 and became a journalist. He rose to be one of the editors of the New York World and was associated with Arthur Brisbane, “the first American editor to earn 100,000 dollars a year and one of the greatest journalists America ever produced.” During his newspaper career, Mr Casson interviewed five United States Presidents. He knew Woodrow Wilson “very well,” and Grover Cleveland was “a grand old fellow.” From journalism, Mr Casson became, in his own words, “ a sort of business expert,” and he built up a reputation for ability to get to the root of troubles experienced by big business concerns. In turn he was associated with the Bell Telephone Company (as “trouble shooter”) and the Standard Oil Company. He said that as sales consultant for the Standard Company he organised the advertising system when the Government broke up the company’s monopoly into 32 pieces. After founding the McCann Ericson Advertising Company, he left America for England in 1914. Efficiency Movement Mr Casson said he was one of the founders of the efficiency movement in the United States. Apart from the books he has written. Mr Casson has been writing “The Efficiency Magazine ” since 1915, and this magazine, he says, is printed in five different languages. He has many methods of going about his campaigns for better efficiency. He maintains that nearly every business is run by memories and he can soon put his finger on something that is wrong. One of his methods in his younger days was to go to the head of a firm and say: “I’ll bet you sixpence to 40 guineas I can pick the things wrong with your business,” and he seldom lost his wager. “Never talk about anything till you know —find out first,” was his advice. Mr Casson arrived in Auckland on October 8 from London by way of New York. San Francisco, Honolulu and Fiji. He will stay in Dunedin until January and will then go to Christchurch.