New Britain herald., 1930-08-25
FRIENDSHIP MADE
 BENNETT AFFLUENT
Canadian Prime Minister Left
 Large Sum
By NEA Service.

by N NEA Stl ICts
 Ottawa, Aug. 25 - Friendships mean much to Richard B. Bennett, newly elected prime minister of Canada, and the wealthiest man who has ever held that position.
 Bennett owns S600O,000 worth of stock in one of the worlds largest lumber companies. but he never paid for share of if. The stock was given him by boyhood friends through a peculiar chain of circum- stances.
 Behind the gift of this vast for tune to the eminent lawyer and lead ing politician lies a story of unique friendships begun in the eighties when Bennett was a high school student at Chatham. New Brunswick. There he came in contact with the family whose acquaintance was to mean so much to him.
 Met Girl at Debates
 Premier Bennett is probably the most brilliant orator in the Canadian parliament. The foundation for this achievement was laid in those early days when he led high school de bates on political subjects. culled from newspapers.
 The young man taught Sunday school and became an advocate of temperance. There were many de bates held in the Temperance hall in Chatham in which he took part.
 Among his closest associates in those debates were Jennie and John T. (Harry) Shirreff, children of the high sheriff of Northumberland county. Bennett had formed few friendships at school because he spent most of his time at his studies. But he came to know the Shirreffs we'll and often was seen at their home He was too busy to have q sweetheart, which probably explains why, at 60, he has never married. High school days over, Bennett en- , tered college at Halifax and then re- turned to Chatham to practice law. Jennie Shirrefi went to Brookline. Mass, to train as a nurse. She be- came the companion of the daugh- ter of Ezra Butler Eddy, pioneer [
 ! lumberman. owner of vast Quebec timberalnds, and even then a mil 1 lionaire. Mrs. Eddy had died year before. Jennie Shirreff became the second Mrs. Eddy in 1894 and her 1 brother became manager of the Ed dy companys big plant at Halifax. Meanwhile, Bennett vas making 9 name for himself politically as we'll as in the legal profession. In the | late nineties, he went west 10 grow 1 up with the country. He landed at i Calgary and in the growing province | of Alberta he was soon noted as an | orator. Before he was 30 he was member of the legislature of the northwest territories.
 | As the years went by Bennett grew l in prominence. Often he visited his old friends in the east He gave valuable legal advice 10 the old | lumberman and his young wife and her brother, but refused to accept | remuneration.
 In 1906 Ezra Eddy died, leaving | the bulk of his fortune to his wife, who had proved herself an astute i business woman.
 Bennett Inherits Fortune When Mrs. Eddy became ill in 1921, she drew up a will leaving her brother 1,007 of the 5000 shares of the Eddy stock, and my friend Of the last 30 years, Richard Bedford Bennett, barrister," 500 shares. Be- sides that. she left more than a mil lion dollars to charities and churches.
 Her brother, then vice president of the lumber concern. bought him. self one more share of the stock, which was valued at $1 1000 a share. He and Bennett were 10 come into their stock five years after the death of Mrs. Eddy. But Harry Shirreff did not live that long. He died a few months before the period was up, in May, 1926. His will trans ferred 10 Bennett his 1,0OS shares of paid-up stock, giving the man who was shortly after to become leader of Canadas powerful con- servative party the controlling inter est in one of the largest pulp and paper and match industries in the world.
 The company's plant at Hull, which Prime Minister Bennett can see from the windows of his office in the parliament building on Parlia- ment Hill, Ottawa, is roughly valued at s4,O0O.OOO, and the company is rated at being worth more than three times that amount.
 Bennett also has accumulated other wealth.
 A three-year study to determine