The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-01-07

! the war and, what is more, acquirlhg | them within 2 Comparatively feW oays 2A | each other, in one case two m Weeh, ,sti ] The first of these was the great Brltish
 business of A Wulfing & Co.,, the man
 ufacturers of "Sanatogenv and "Forma- mint" What Lord Rhondda gave TOT is was not made public, but, coupe or | days afterwards. it was announced, that, ! a5 head of a syndicate, he had poush' | the Anglo-Continental Guano company | formerly German concern, for Sl,i0o'VVo' 1 And, since then, Lord Rhondda, in asso- 1 citation with London firm of stockbrok- CTS, has acquired the great business H l John Brinsmead & Sons, Limited, the famous British piano makers | Lord Rhondda has been member or l Parliament for two Welsh constituencies and is popularly known by his initials 1 ''D. A" One of the South Wales news papers recorded his escape from drown ing in the following poster: "Lusitania
 Sunk. Great Disaster D. A saved. It
 was just as well that 'D. A." had 1 sense of humor.
 | Lord Davenport who, as Britain's food controller, is likely to be soon the most
 unpopular man in these islands, has 1 probably unrivaled practical experience Of 1 the distribution of food products through out the United Kingdom to aid him Tn l the administration of his thankless new post. As Hudson Kearley he covered the | country with a network of retail stores which trade as the International Tea
 company, and he probably has made as
 much money out of the cup that cheers
 and other groceries as Lipton himself.
 He is one of the Iivest wires in Great
 Britain, probably a millionaire, and the possessor of immense will power, all of which he Is likely to need as the British
 Batocki. First given a knighthood, he
 was made a peer in 1910, and chose as
 his title the name of the shipping town
 which he represented for IS years in the l House of Commons.
 Incidentally, he is the man at the head of what has been termed the greatest business in the world. In oth- | CT words. he Is chairman of the port | of London authority which has con
 trolled absolutely the vast London
 docks ever since in 1905 those docks
 became the property of the public
 And as such he withstood successfully
 one of the most menacing strikes In
 British history and proved himself | real strong man."
 Not that everybody agreed in this estimate of him, least of all the l strikers. On the contrary he was de- nounced as ian imitation Pharaoh, q | Nero Caesar" Ben Tillett, the la
 Dor leader, haranguing his followers
 on Tower Hill, declared, eff the work | CTS of the country realized their duty l Lord Davenport would not be allowed | to live" Victor Grayson declared: | "The strikers should go to the House | of Commons and say that all business must be suspended till Lord Davenport ! had been emigrated. If he were not emigrated he should be Kidnapped" And l this gigantic strike of the transport 1 workers. which reduced thousands to
 the verge of starvation, started through l the refusal of one man to become q
 member of the laborers' federation. 1 Furthermore, as the result of arbi l tration a year previously the whole | question of hours and wages at the
 docks had been settled in fairly sat-
 isfactory fashion, an arrangement by
 which the workers had agreed to | abide.
 Lord Davenport stood firm. Tilletts threat to take gun and shoot him. failed of any %saca His house in | Grosvenor Square As well as his per | son was guarded by police right and | day. but this was not by his wish and l no doubt he S7inhed the men in blue l in Jericho. Or nAt ministers, bishops,
 the prime mi Ter (who had made
 Kearley). intere ded with him and
 asked if he didn't think he might yield a point or two, but the man of | granite gave them all the icy "No"
 that the strikers had received from
 him, or one closely resembling it. And 1 the strike crumbled and collapsed. l Baron Davenport, the first of his | line, is self-made Ee owns about 1900 acres and is P. aTAJ. F., and a
 lot of other thing of D highly dig nified kind He was born in the coun- 1 try, in Surrey. Il sch9ol he was a reso1ute pIodder rather than a poten- tia1 genius. At 15 rather against the | wishes of his parents. who as quiet country folk had dark suspicious of 1 the city of London, he took job that
 offered itself in a tea snerchs nts of-
 flee there. Being supposed to be learn l ing the business he got no salary,
 which naturally went against the
 grain. Accordingly when. at the nd of 1 his first year, he was offered l sit | uation in another fir,a at a salary of 1 $500 a year. he took it like a. shot 1 This gave him his first introduction to the docks, as a large psrt of his l work consisted in Clearing sa
 In short time his emp' rs rec | ognizing his business apt s;e, pro-
 noted him to the ssaleroaa without requiring him to pay the usual pre-
 mium of $500 to $2000 There the | whole business of the tea trade passed before his eyes and he soon mastered 1 all it's details When. therefore, he was 1 barely 20 years of age he decided to | start in business for himself and now he began to demonstrate that indom- l itableness that carried him to success l He started one-man concern. He was | his own buyer blender and traveller 1 But he soon began to make headway l and in a little while he engaged clerk. then a second and a third, with 1 the result that in four years he had l several men in his employ and a bus- 1 ness that was yielding profit of s10,- l 900 to $15;000 a year. That business ] now employs fully 400O men, has buy | ing establishments in Calcutta and Co., | lombo as we'll as in America, and does
 a trade which runs into millions ot 1 pounds sterling a year.
 i Then politics began to claim his at l tention and though Davenport had been for years a conservative seat he l set to work to win for the liberals 1 with the same obstinacy with which
 he later refused the dock strikers de- | mands. His obstinacy was rewarded He won Davenport and held it from l 1892 till 1910 as a cumulative radical
 and at the same time as one of the | best friends the men of the navy ever had in Parliament Eventually he be-
 came parliamentary secretary to the 1 board of trade, under Lloyd George 1 and as such piloted the bill establish 1 ing the port of London authority through Parliament. Being obviously fitted in every way for the position he was appointed chairman, with salary of s200o0 year. He took the
 post but declined the pay. preferring to give his services for nothing!
 Of the labor men in the new ca binet