SPENT MILLIONS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20541, 16 February 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

SPENT MILLIONS.

Worth £40,000,000 But Cleaned Own Shoes. ROCKEFELLER'S RIVAL. NEW YORK, January 2. ME RICA’S multi-millionaire straphanger, Mr John Emery Andrus, has died at Yonkers, New York, aged 93. Although he was one of the world’s richest men, Mr Andrus polished his own shoes, travelled until quite recently on New York’s crowded five-cent subway, and considered golf clubs and diamond studs as reckless extravagances. Yet he was anything but miserly, lavishing untold millions on orphans’ homes and other charities. The death of Mr Andrus- leaves Mr John D. Rockefeller as sole survivor of that multi-millionaire group of midVictorians who built up the structure of modern American capitalism. The Andrus fortune was based on oil, timber, land and chemicals. Its precise extent is uncertain, estimates ranging from £20,000,000 to £60,000,000. According to some sources he was worth almost £160,000,000 on the eve of the Stock Exchange crash of 1929, but the collapse in share values must have cut this severely. His philosophy of success was summed up in these phrases: “y ou must have opportunity and the eye to see it, and then the brain capable of crystallising both the opportunity and your vision of it. Work on lines of least resistance. Take work that’s congenial and profitable. “ Play the game straight. “ Save’ for your old age.”