The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1913-02-21
Noted Men Who
Have Won Fame
By Hard Work

Although only forty-six years old
to-day Otto Hermann Kahn has risen
to leadership in one of the six great
est banking concerns of the world.
Born at Mannheim, Germany, he won
his financial spurs in New York, and
his operations now extend to every
country of the globe. The young
Jewish wizard of high finance was
educated in German college, served
a year in the army of the fatherland,
and learned banking in the hard
school of experience His early am
bition was to become a great must
clan, but the sound business sense of
his race told him that more was to be
gained in other lines. A brother yield
ed to the musical impulse, and became
a professor of music in a German
university, but Otto successfully re-
sisted the lure of the arts, although
he has since become a great patron
of music. His father was a banker.
and, after apprenticeship under
the parental eye, Otto was given a po-
sition in the London branch of the
Deutsche Bank. He remained there
five years. and in 1893 went to New
York as the American manager of
the London banking house of Speyer
& Company. In the twenty years Of
his American residence he has be-
come a colossus of Wall Street, and
the head of the great banking house
of Kahn, Loeb &c Company. This
firm was closely allied with the rail-
road activities of the late E. H. Har-
rinan, and Mr.. Kahn had a. hand in
all the big deals engineered by that
captain Of industry. Mr.. Kahn spends
much of his time in Europe, and only
recently returned from vacation in
England. Besides being a liberal
patron of music and other arts and
contributor to several scientific insti-
tutions, Mr.. Kahn is greatly interested
in aviation. Not long ago he was
quoted as predicting that the passage
of the Atlantic by hydro-aeroplane will
become an accomplished fact in the
near future.
To assist the farmers of America in
purchasing agricultural implements is
the purpose of a dollar
corporation recently organized, in
which one of the prime movers is Al
bert Henry Wiggin, president of the
Chase National Bank of New York.
Mr.. Wiggin. who will celebrate his
forty-1fth birthday to-day, is the son
of Massachusetts clergyman, and at
the age of seventeen started life as
a clerk in a Boston bank. Since
then he has held about every position
a bank has to offer, and is now the
head of one of the largest financial
institutions of the American metropo-
lis and a director in a number of
trust companies and other corpora
lions. In company with OCnor prom
inent bankers of New York, Chicago,
MINI eapo1is and other cities, he has
now engaged in the launching of a big
corporation which will buy farmers
notes from implement manufacturers.
By this system, it is alleged, the man
ufacturers will be able to extend bet
ter credit to the farmers. Inciden-
tally, the scheme is also expected to
pay a.. good profit to the bankers in
terested.
Prof. Brander Matthews, spelling
reformer and dramatic literature
prof" at Columbia University, was
born in New Orleans sixty-one years
ago to-day. Mr.. Matthews has long
been an earnest advocate of a, reform
ed photography, and was the first
chairman of the Simplided Spelling
Board. He has the courage of his
convictions, up to a certain point, and
always writes ''tho" for though, and
likewise altho and thro. He dislikes
the ttph'' examinations, and spells it
para graf Also, he would like to
know why the same sound should be
represented by t'ie'' in believe, and
s'ei'' in perceive. And will somebody
please tell Prof. Matthews why phan-
tom is spelled with phi, and why
'tough'' should have so many different |
sounds, as in cough, hiccough, plough |
rouph through and though?