Tin Plate King.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 9, 26 August 1908, Page 60

Tin Plate King.

The tin-plate king has just died. This was Mr. Leeds, known popularly as tho “Tin-Plate King.” His career was singularly like the tens of thousands of other Americans. He started life at the very lowest rung of the ladder; as a boy he was employed by a railway company, •working fiercely hard—as is the custom in America—for a few shillings a day. He saved' a little; then, with that extraordinary initiative which characterises the true American, he started in a small way, then in a bigger way : until in the end he became the chief figure in the manufacture of tin plate. When the big steel trust was formed by Mr. Pierpont Morgan, he sold out: and he got—it is said—eight millions sterling for his property. If he had been a European he would have retired with his eight millions—at 4 per cent., it brings in an income of £320,000 a year—which ought to be enough for any man; but instead of doing this. Mr. Leeds went on working, put all the money into a big railway scheme, and in time became as great a power in the railway world as he had been in the world of tin plate. Then he - like so many other millionaires—thought of a new wife: and got rid of the old one by the huge bribe of £200,000; aind now with all his millions he is dead, leaving behind the younger woman he married instead of his first wife, and one young child. I don't know (says T. P. O’Connor, in “M.A.P.”) what was the age of Mr. Leeds, but I should be surprised to find that he was an old man; niiUioaiaires in America usually have worn themselves out before they reach much more than respectable middle age. I have met a great many of them in my time, and I have known few of them who were healthy, and fewer still wlio were happy. Grim, silent, absent-minded, joyless creatures, that is my usual experience of what they are. It is largely due to the fact that most of them have had to begin the work of making money very younc—just, in fact, after they have left the common school, as the public elementary school in America is called—and that means that they have not acquired yet the art of living, and especially that portion of it which consists in taking an Interest idi intellectual things.