Seward daily gateway., 1926-02-04
WILLIAM M. WOOD COMMITSSUICIDE
 DAYTONABEACH
FORMER PRESIDENT AMERICAN WOOLLEN COMPANY BLOWS
 OUT SCRAMBLED BRAINS
ILL HEALTH GIVEN AS CAUSE
Had Been a Guest of Hotel Ormand on the Beach for Past Month,
 Accompanied by His Wife

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla, Feb. 2 (F). William Madison Wood, 6S, million aire and former president of the Amer ican Woollen Company, of Andover, Mass, who for the past month with his wife had been a guest of the Ho- tel Ormand, committed suicide today in a lonely spot, by placing pistol in his mouth and firing it. III health is given as the cause.
 The romance of the poor boy who rose to wealth and commanding posi- tion was strikingly exemplified in the life of William Madison Wood. The son of humble immigrant parents, he became, as president of the American Woolen Company, a dominating fig ure in the woolen and worsted man. ufacturing industry of the country. It was through his aptitude and am- bition shown as a boy in mill of flee and as a youth in various de- partments of mill work that he won the opportunity to serve as su- perintendent of a large mill, and eventually to head the largest woolen manufacturing corporation in the world.
 Woods father, a native of Santa Maria in the Azores, came to this country as cooks assistant on a whaling vessel His name was Jac- intho, but not along after his arriv- al he took the name of Wood. A little later he married a young wo- man who had come from Flores, an- other island of the Azores group. They established their home in Ed gartown on the island of Marthas Vinegar off the southern Massachu- sets coast. There William M. Wood was born April 5, 1858.
 The father became steward of a little steamer plying between Edgar town and New Bedford, and the fam lily soon moved to the latter place. Wood attended the grammar school and had entered high school when his father died. The mother and two sisters needed support, and Wood got job in the office of the Wam- sutta Mills in New Bedford. He show ed such promise that Andrew G. Pierce, head of the corporation, took a personal interest in the boy. Af ter three years in the office he spent three years at the machines ara then was advanced to the agents of flee.
 He had gone ahead rapidly when he accepted a chance to enter a banking house, but after brief ex- perience there he returned to mill work. Six years of increasingly im- portant duties in Fall River led to ms choice as superintendent of the Washington Mills in Lawrence, which had been taken over for debts by Frederick Aver of Lowell.
 The poor boy already had risen far. He was made welcome in MT Ayers home and after a brief court ship he was married to the manufac- turers daughter
 In 1900 merger of many of the wooden mills in the East was consum- mated and MT. Aver became president of the resulting American Woolen Company, while Wood was made treasurer. Within a short time he succeeded to the presidency. Other mills were taken into the combination from time to time until the company had approximately 10000 employees in New England and New York.
 Wood built in Lawrence, where the company had 15,OOO workers, the Wood Worsted Mill, the largest of it's kind in the world. Later he built in the neighboring town of Andover a settlement of model homes for mill workers, known as Shawsheen Village. Here he gave employees of the corporation the opportunity to purchase their own homes on sys- tenn of monthly payments and provid ed bowling green, soccer grounds and other opportunities for recreation.
 While emphasizing at all times his desire for friendly relations with the corporations employees, he could not prevent the Lawrence workers from joining with those of other mills in that city in the great strike of