DEATH OF LORD MELCHETT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18763, 30 December 1930, Page 9

DEATH OF LORD MELCHETT.

Passing of the Napoleon of Industry. CREATOR OF CHEMICAL COMBINES. British OlTlclal Wireless RUGBY. December 28. A by-election is necessitated by the death of Lord Melchett, as his heir, the Hon. Henry Mond, is Conservative member for the East Toxeth Division of Liverpool. The papers, in recording the death of Lord Melchett yesterday afternoon, printed long tributes. The Sunday “Times” describes him as the Field Marshal of Industry. Lord Melchett, who was only sixtytwo, was an advocate of rationalisation and the architect of a great combine with £76,000,000 capital— Imperial Chemical Industries, of which he was chairman, and a number of other companies. He held nearly thirty directorates altogether. He was a member of Parliament from 1906 to 1928, when he was raised to the peerage and served as Commissioner of Works during the war, and later as Minister of Health. He was president of the World Power Conference in 1928. Lord Melchett was an ardent supporter of the Zionist movement, and for the past ten years had been in close touch with the Zionist executive.

The late Lord Melchett’s father was Dr Ludwig Mond, who settled in England and helped to found the great alkali works of Brunner, Mond and Co., based on the Cheshire salt deposits. Alfred Mond was educated at Cheltenham, St. John’s College, Cambridge and Edinburgh. Called to the bar, he practised for a time in the provinces, but later joined his father’s firm, of which he is a director. He is also chairman of the Mond Nickel Co. and of Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrate, Ltd., and is on the board of many other industrial concerns—anthracite collieries, chemical works and power gas plants. In 1027 the huge £56,000,000 combine, Imperial Chemical Industries, was formed with Lord Melchett as chairman, and in April, 1928, a great world scheme to finance industry in any part of the globe with Mond at its head was announced. The nominal capital of this concern—the Finance Company of Great Britain and America, Ltd—is £2,040,000, but the money behind it is practically unlimited. The chief participants are Imperial Chemical Industries and the Chase Securities Corporation of New York. It is expected to lead to co-operation with financiers in Germany and other European countries. In December 1927, a group of employers led by Lord Melchett suggested a joint conference with the Trades Union Congress on industrial reorganisation and better industrial relations. The idea was adopted and the conferences began in 1928. though some trade unions held aloof. An interview in Rome in which Lord Melchett was said to have pronounced in favour of Fascism led to demands that the T.U.C. should break off the industrial co-operation discussions, but he explained that he did not use the words attributed to him and had not suggested the use of Fascist methods out>side Italy.

During his visit to Palestine in 1928 as chairman of the expert commission for its exploitation he advocated cordial co-operation between the Arabs and the Jews for the development of the country, but urged that the work there should be conducted on business and not on philanthropic lines, if capital was to be attracted. He arranged to put Palestine tobacco on the British market. While in Irak he was thieatened by a mob of 10,000 Arabs who had got the idea that the object of his visit was to introduce Zionist principles there. In 1894 he married Miss Violet Goetz, who was made a Dame of the British Empire for her work on the Council for the Employment of Women and her maintenance of a war-hospital at Melchett Court, the family seat in Hants. One of their daughters is married to Viscount Erleigh, the son and heir of the Marquis of Reading, former Viceroy of India.