Still ROOM at the TOP.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17982, 29 March 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

Still ROOM at the TOP.

N O one who has achieved fame or riches in commerce, art, or science is anything else hut self-made, whether born rich or poor. All success has to be paid for in energy and patience, and the spirit that overcomes disgust and desolation. In every walk of life you will And such wrestlers with circumstance —from 'the late Lord Leverhulme, who boiled soap and sold it over the counter in his little grocery shop to Sir Landon Ronald, the great orchestral conductor, who began his musical life by playing the piano with a theatrical touring company. How shall one pick names from the numberless records of success—records that to-morrow or the next day may be enlarged by the sudden appearance of a newly-risen giant? There isLord Ashfleld, for instance, who worked s<wen days a week in the offices of a tramway company, earning—earning is the right word—2ls for his pains. Now he is Head of the Great Traffio Combine controlling nearly the wiiole of London's public transport services. Or take Lord Inverforth, who began as an apprentice in a'bank at the striking salary of £5 a year. Again, take a writer —Arnold Bennett —famous as novelist, as publicist, and as critic. He spent his young days working as a lawyer’s clerk, but made up his mind to become a writer—and not only a writer, but a writer of the front-rank. It was a tight, but he won it. In science you have Sir Oliver Lodge, world-known to-day as mathematician, as electrical scientist, and as scholar. He worked in the Potteries, and laid the bases of his vast skill and knowedge by attending night classes after his hard day’s work was over. We may even mentim Shakespeare (though it is moving back a year or so), who, it is written, worked as a butcher’s assistant. Mr Bernard Shaw, who continues to expend his still brilliant energies in being characteristic, was once a telephone operator, and during his early Fleet Street days came as N&ar to Being Uncomfortably Hungry as anv struggling genius who ever lived. In politics we have Mr Ramsay MacDonald, who was born in a Scottish ilshing village, and began to earn his living as a farm hand when he was iz. At i 9 he was in London, making a living by addressing envelopes—without even the aid of a typewriter. In 1900 he was appointed secretary to the Labour Representation Committee, and to-day he is Prime Minister —for the second time. Lord Reading, whose achievements have included the Lord Chief Justiceship of England, and the Viceroyship of India, has been a ship’s boy; while H. G. Wells, that impassioned dreamer of ’a world made At for scientists to live in, began his career as a counter-jumper to a small draper. Back again, in the industry we have Sir W. r. Morris. As a young man making bicycles and mending cars in a suburb of Oxford he learned the secrets of what does and does not constitute a good motor car, and he further learned that the motor car for better or for worse was the car of destiny, so far as modern transport and pleasure were concerned. And so he wrote off his bicycle-making and car-repairing as a failure, and started to Build the Enormous Industry that bears his name to-day. He, if anyone, does deserve the title of self-made man, for it was directly due to his vision and mechanical skill that he was able to create a revolution in the 'British motor car marYet another romance of merchanting is that of Sir Thomas Lipton. Everyone knows that be began life in a Glasgow shop at two-and-six a week, but it is a less familiar story that he asked his employer for a rise, and told at once, and without courtesy, that two-and-six was all that he

Poor Boys Who Became Famous.

(From an Exchange.)

was worth, and probably more than he was worth. Thus heartily discouraged, the young Thomas registered his first failure, and proceeded to build up for himself one of the most phenomenal of modern business successes. “It was the Arst great blow of my life,” Sir Thomas has said, speaking of his employer’ unpleasant candour but it was a blow that was evidently more of a stimulus than a knockout. There is also what may be called the great Cockney romance of Sir James Joynton Smith, now famous as an Australian millionaire, though he is in origin a Londoner. He -was born in 'the Hackney road at a little ironmonger’s shop kept by his father, and having run errands and done odd jobs about the place, suddenly distinguished himself by Ashing in Victoria Park, and being Aned 5s in the Police Court for doing it. Following this promising beginning, he received 10s from his father, £1 from an uncle, and with that capital worked his way to Australia. After being everything from a Steward to a Bar Tender, he found himself with £IO,OOO, and a little way yet to go before he was 28. Feeling pleased, he came back to England,—and lost nearly every penny of his fortune on a- betting “system." He found that he could pay his fare back to Australia and retain £SO as capital; so back he went and began again. And so ”... going from one thing to another, I became a racecourse owner, then Lord Mayor of Sydney, and a newspaper owner—which was the last thing.” If you search among'the artists, you will come across the name of Sir John Lavery, who as a youth faced a future which, so far as “prospects” went, was a complete vacuum. He tried to enlist, but then saw ar: advertisement for “a smart lad with a knowledge of drawing - .” He got the job, which turned out to be that of junior assistant to a photographer. And'while he was retouching photographs he somehow found time to study painting, with what result the world knows to its admiration. Among dramatists, Nothing Is More Dramatic than the rise of Sean O’Casey. He was born in a Dublin tenement, and worked as an errand boy, a builder’s labourer, a navvy, and a railway porter. He lived that life for 15 years before writing his Arst play. Now we know him as 'the author of two such masterpieces as “Juno and the Paycock and “The Plough and the Stars.” And there is R. C. Sherriff, the author of “Journey’s End,” which has now been running close upon a year in London, to say nothing of its enormous success in _ Germany and America. Sherriff worked in an insurance office and originally wrote bis olav for an amateur dramatic society, today his income from that play is to be measured’in terms of four figures weekly-

But there are some men .whose very misfortunes have goaded them to the Aght for riches. Of such was the late Henry Folland, who became the head of one of the largest tinplate manufacturers in Europe, besides having great coal and steel interests. Mr Folland, a Welshman, lost an arm in boyhood, and it seemed that his Chances In Life Were Practically Nil. But friends found him some small job in a tinplate works, and there his determination and business ability won him successive promotions until, when still only in the twenties, he became manager of the Raven Tinplate Works. He is said to have amassed a fortune of £1,250,000. One might go on indefinitely with such names. Indeed, I suggest to some enterprising publisher that he should compile a “Who’s Who of Self-made Men,” by way of simplifying the problem of doing justice to the leaders of modern England. And it would also be an encouraging book to dip into when you feel that a successful career is the one thing that you cannot achieve. The old tag about there being always room at the top is perfectly true —that is why it has grown old.