Untitled

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13380, 1 April 1912, Page 6

Mr. John Smith, a Sheffield man who lived in a cottage at a rental of about 2s 6d a week, and wJio had.never been in receipt of more than .£l2O a year, has died at the age of seventy-seven, leaving a fortune of £80,000, At the age of fourteen he.began to work for Messrs Naylor, Vickers and Co., tho enterprise that led to the great firm of Vickers, of Barrow, and earned a few shillings a week by treading the clay that was made into crucible pots. He was transferred to tho warehouse, and remained in the service of tho firm for forty-five years, retiring about eighteen years ago The beginning of his fortune was! the investment of £200, saved in pennies, in Vickers' shares. These shares advanced in value so rapidly that in fifteen years the £200 investment was worth £15,000. Smith's next investj ment of £200, in Spanish securities^ was lost, but after that he never looked back, and his speculations were remarkably successful.

Incredible though it may seem, there is at present in New York ji composer earning an income of £15,000 a year, although ho cannot write or read a note of music. Two years ago this composer, Irving Berlin, was a waiter in a Chinatown restaurant, and it was his custom to pick out on the piano his own tunes for the ■entertainment of the customers. Somebody suggested that he should get a friend to put them into music for him, and one of these tunes, known as "Alexander's Rag-time Band," which is now being whistled and sung all over America, looks like beating all music publishers' records, for in a few months over a million copies of the song had been sold. After the famous Marathon race in London, which resulted in the disqualification of Dovando, Mr. Berlin wrote a song named after tho little Italian, and played it for the first time in his restaurant, where it made a big hit. Ho sold it for £5, and the publisher made £4000 out of it. He now obtains better prices for his work, and is said to b"c" getting an income .of £15,000 a year.