WORKING JOINER'S RISE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 115, 18 May 1931, Page 11

WORKING JOINER'S RISE

SALARY OF £2OOO A YEAR

WONDERFUL ORGANISER EXPERT IN BUILDINGS. A man in London, who is the greatest living tribute to the sterling qualities of the British working man, is Mr \V. T. Watson, who has the reputation of erecting buildings faster than anybody else in the world, says a writer in the Sunday Express. Seventeen years ago this extraordinary man was a working joiner earning 30s a week. Now his salary is more* than £2OOO a year, and he is manager 1 to Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons, contractors. Ho was recently completing the new Dorchester Hotel, in Park! Lane, London, in three months less than the actual contract time. Mr. Watson also built Carreras’ new cigarette factory in three months under time, and in all the jobs he has done he has never been a day later than he promised. Carreras made him a gift ot £lOOO because they were unexpectedlyenabled to use their new factory for the Christmas rush. Now he is to receive another £lOOO from the Dorchester Hotel authorities. When the writer met Mr. Watson he was sitting in a bare wooden shed beside tho palatial hotel he has built, “it is just organisation, hard work—and the British working man,” he said. “British workmen are as good to-day as they have ever been. If I can build quicker than other people it is because 1 know that you cannot browbeat men. You must lead them. I choose my foremen for their leadership. “The contract time for the Dorchester Hotel was sixteen months. If I had to tackle the job again I could get right down to it and do it in nine. We | have been putting on a floor a week here. Next time I could do a floor in five days.” That was all Mr. Watson would say about himself. It was his employers who related how, the son of poor Clydeside parents, ho had been barge-breaker on the Clyde before the war, how he had drifted into almost every branch of the building trade, how ho frould tell of his experiences as an undertaker, and was often hard put to save his family from hunger. It was in 1914 that Sir Robert McAlpine noticed Mr. Watson’s rapid work as a joiner employed on Army huts at Folkestone, and started him on his gradual upward career. “ ’Wully’ Watson has the personality that leads men and persuades them to do a little bit extra,” they said. There is no building process that he docs not know first-hand. You can hardly ever catch him in his office. He is always out looking on the job. His system is perfect, and he can tell in a minute if a man is working the wrong way. “Oh, yes, he's a great character. Why, the other day he turned up in the afternoon wearing his best suit, and when avc chaffed him about it he explained. that he had been to lunch with a wealthy Mayfair woman living near by who wanted to thank him for build in g the ho tel with so little noi s e. ”