HOW MR CHAMBERLAIN MADE HIS FORTUNE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 9017, 17 March 1908, Page 2

HOW MR CHAMBERLAIN MADE HIS FORTUNE.

It was somewhere in the fifties that t_e manufacture of screws by machinery was patented in America, Mr Chamberlain is a good business man and he at once conceived the idea of monopolising for his firm—l\ .ttleford aud Chamberlain—the control of the uew system of manufacture iv Britain, France, and Germany. The two chief linns that had'adopted the process under the patent he bought oufe filter protracted negotiations, or.lv . firms hebougut np, aud smaller makers who still ran the oiu process had to succumb; he contractor. With thy American patentees for sole rights?, and at once laid the foundation of a "* large fortune for himself aud his partners. It may be considered singular, but it is nevertheless a fact, that in this business the Birmingham man beat the Yanks. The American patentees would seem to have made up provision in their contract agaiMiPtheir own markets being supplrw with screws from Birmingham, tiie cousequeuce being that thousands of grosses of N. and C. screws were poured in to the markets at a cheaper rate than they could manufacture them at. Now it became a question of making a pacifying contract with the British manufacturer under their own patent, and for years the American patentees paid the Arm of Messrs N. and C. £4000 a year to cease shipments, quarterly cheques, each for £1000, arriving as regularly as clockwork. But this was only a small, and a very small part of the profit. Mr Chamberlain quickly became not only a successful manufacturer, but a maii with a large command of capital, aud, as an investor, he has been no. only y shrewd, but extremely fortunate.

Iv investing his profits the Colonial Secretary seems always to have beeu able to put his money "on the right horse."