A ROMANCE OF BUSINESS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8101, 22 March 1906, Page 3

A ROMANCE OF BUSINESS.

The business career of the late Lord Masham, whose death was announced some weeks ago, has been described as the most romantic of the nineteenth century. The younger son of a country family, he went into partnership with a brother in some woollen mills at the age of twenty-one, and a few years later turned his attention to producing a perfect wool-combing machine, a work which bad been the ruin and despair of many earlier inventors. For a machine which he felt sure contained the germ of the right idea he paid £II,OOO, and in 1843 produced at iManniagham THE FIRST WOOL KVEK r COMBED * by machinery. Next year he received an order for fifty machines, and a fortune came to him. But be was by no means aonteut with this success. In 1848 he invented an improved combing machine, and in the same year actually patented tbe atmospheric railway brake with which Westinghouse made a fortune twenty years later. But he needed all the money he made by his wooloombing nlachines. One day he discovered, on a chance visit to a Loudon warehouse, A HEAP OF SILK WASTE lying in a corner, an apparently valueless mass of rope ends, decayed leaves, dead silk-worms, and all* kinds of refuse. This was deemed to be quite useless, and was sold for rubbish. Mr Lister—as Lord Masbam then was—Knew nothing about I the manufacture of silk, but thought T there mi«ht be something in this fe waste, and gave the owner a halfpenny a pound for it. In 1864 he calculated that HIS ATTEMPT TO UTILISE THIS "WASTE" had cost him £360,000, but in an- , other twenty-five years he had capitalised the business which grew out of this "failure" at nearly two millions sterling. The invention of a special comb had worked the change. JBy his improvement of the plush loom he estalished 'a new industry, and made a new fortune, For fifty years inventors had been busy with the problem of weaving a pile cloth face to face, and cutting with a knife to produce two even surfaces. "The chief difficulty," said Lord Masham in after years, "was to keep the knife sharp so as to out the pile regularly and evenly. This wag overcome in a very curious manner. 1 was looking cut ot the offioe window one day, when I noticed a I*' soissor-grinder in the street who f was running a .VERY SMALL BHAKPENINU WHEEL at a high rate of velocity. It occurred to me that by making this sharpening wheel etill smaller and fitting it to one end of the loom, we could sharpen the knife easily and keep it sharp." The experiment was made, and proved successful. He ; left a fortune estimated at several millioLg. In politics he was a Fair Trader, and in 19U3, with the burden of ninety years upon him', he challenged all Free Traders iu the country, under a forfeit of £I,OOO, to prove that Protection would not give the most employment and the moat wages.