Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1901 — W. B. AUSTIN [ARTICLE]

W. B. AUSTIN

Attorney At Law and oroker. A business aggregating in volume one million of dollars a year, carried on by one man and within a city the size of Rensselaer as the seat of transactions, is not usually to be chronicled. Yet of such can Rensselaer boast, for Mr. William B. Austin’s operations for the past twelve months will pass the million dollar mark. Mr. Austin occupies a commodious suit of office rooms in the Forsythe block at the corner of Washington and Van Rensselaer streets, where he does a general brokerage business and where in 1899 he made 81 of the loans made in Rensselaer as against 87 made by all the other loan agents of the city. Mr. Austin’s business was established in 1883 and has been continuously in operation since. In the past 18 years he has bought and sold countless numbers of farms and. much city property, making a business of both buying and selling real estate. In his office loans are made without the long delays incident to the borrowing of eastern or foreign money-lenders, and all loans negotiated with Mr. Austin are closed up with secrecy and in a speedy manner. That his business has grown to great proportions is due to his personal .attention and to the fact that he carries out all promises he makes to the letter. Mr. Austin is one of the products of Jasper county of whom her citizens are proud, and his success is a stimulus to other young men, who are thrown upon the world with only their own resources, for it shows them plainly that a young man may make his mark in the world by following the advice of Abraham Lincoln who once said he knew a man in Illinois who paid attention to his own affairs and got rich. William B. Austin's success is due to the careful attention he has given his own affairs.