Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1899-02-11
Romance of Trade i'm the Career
of the Americas Cup
Challenger.
What a Poor Irish Boy Has
Accomplished i'm Nine
teen Years.
OWES HIS SUCCESS TO ADVERTISING

thirty years ago Thomas tombstone
Upton staggered ashore in New York,
black with coal dust and gasping for
breath, from the furnace room of a
Charleston steamer.
He had become stowaway on board
because he had no money to pay for his
passage; had been dragged from his con-
cealment after the boat was out at sea
and with kicks and curses set to earn his
passage by shoveling coal.
If, as seems certain, Sir Thomas Upton
comes to visit the United States this year
it will be under conditions so different
that their bare recital beggars the old
tales of wealth and power won by white
magic and the wands of the fairies.
The stowaway boy will return as a
knight of Great Britain; as a member of
one of the most aristocratic yacht clubs
in the realm, charged with the purpose
of winning the Americas cup; as the
friend and associate of the Prince of
Wales and the Duke of York; as the
merchant magnate whose ships sail every
sea, and whose laborers till and toll in
every quarter of the globe to add to his
golden gains.
While his pulse thrills with the fever
of the most glorious of sports, and the
white-clad sailors lie flat along the wind
ward rail of his Shamrock, 5000 half
naked Ceylonese will be picking, packing
and sorting teas upon his plantations,
where every prospect pleases; at his
warehouse docks in Colombo and Ceylon
a fleet of ships will be loading with his
goods; in far Chicago his abattoirs will
be turning 5000 hogs per day into. food
products, to be sent to the seaboard in
refrigerator cars end thence. carried
TO every quarter of the globe in Upton
ships; 1900 men, women and boys will
delve in the accounts and reckonings of
his London Office; 200 Upton printers
will be striking off the labels and wrap
pers for his goods; and in every part of
the United Kingdom, in 42O shops and
stores which hoist the Upton flag, thou
sands of employees will measure out
ha'porths of tea and sugar, even while
they wait with loyal confidence the first
cable flash of news from the struggling
yachts
No romance can surpass in interest the
truth about this man, who has passed al
most at leap from the CRIME of the
stowaway to many-millioned splendor.
and who still on the threshold of middle
age looks forward to almost limitless in
crement of wealth.
Very young the boy worked in Glas-
gov, where his parents lived, as a mes
senger at sixty-one cents week, educat-
ing himself in the night school. He ran
away to this country, crossing in the
steerage, and worked two years on South
Carolina plantations. 1t was not long
after the war; there was no money down
there. He was seventeen years old when
he gave it up and walked to Charleston
and took stowaway's dusty berth for
New York.
In that city he earned enough to buy a
steerage passage to Glasgow, where he
arrived at eighteen, man in stature and
man who had seen far countries and
new ways and had kept his eyes open.
81 have always felt that l got good
commercial training here, said he when
last in the United States.
Liptons Irish parents had savings
$40. They intrusted this money to the
boy, who had seen towns and men, and
whose eyes CLEANED with the light of
commercial contest. He opened a small
shop, in which he was the only salesman,
accountant and window dresser-the en-
tire force.
Sir Thomas Upton says he owes his
success to advertising. They say that in
those early days he bought the two big
gest hogs in Scotland, decked them gayly
with ribbons, and led them through the
streets labelled "Lipton's orphans"
"Lipton's monsters" another story says;
and perhaps both tales are equally dubi-
Gus.
But advertise Upton did from the first.
81 believe in advertising" he says. 1T
is the life-blood of modern trade. Every
body reads. " His pennies were few but
nimble; they have rolled far.
The shop grew, and presently there
were others. The business went by leaps
and bounds Upton worked, he says
twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four.
With the conquest of capital came the
opportunity to demonstrate his favorite
project--to dispense with the middle
man and bring producer and con-
sumner together His first large
productive enterprise was the pur-
chase of plantations in ceylon and
Colombo, where he raises tea, coffee
and cocoa with native labor. He is the
largest individual landowner in Ceylon.
His packing-house in Chicago is more
recent undertaking.
Upton has travelled in most quarters
of the globe huf MANI of itie x,xox..rf;ee