Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1901 — THE RISE OF LIPTON [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE RISE OF LIPTON

• Kvtilxtloii of the Shamrock's - | Oxvuer From Farmhand * . to Merchant Prince. *

BY C. T. BAXTER.

. Sir Thomas Lipton. who is over here with the amiable Intention of carrying back to England the America’s cup, is a man who begun life us a farm laborer and has become a merchant prince. Naturally his life story is a romance of facts. The evolution of a poor boy Into a multimillionaire is a fascinating thing to contemplate, even In the prosiest of biographies. When Sir Thomas recently arrived in New York on one of the palncellke liners, attended by a troop of servants j and accompanied by a cartload of lugI gage, he made a very different enI trance from that of Ills first lauding at that port. On that initial occasion he was kicked down the gangplank by an irate second mate. The mate was angry because the 17-year-old boy was a stowaway and hud stolen his passage from Charleston up the coast. There are many other vivid contrasts between the circumstances of the Sir Thomas Lipton of today and the half starved Irish lad of 30 years ago. Born of Scotch-Irish parents in Glasgow, who were poor as poverty, he struggled up to boyhood somehow. At last his heap of hoarded pennies had growu to be enough to pay for a steerage passage to America, and he ran away. He was a bov of 15 years then and small for his age, but there was that within him that kept him going when grown men would have given up In despair. He landed In Charleston. He got a Job as a harvest hand on a rice plantation, and for two years he was a farm laborer, fighting with the newly freed negroes for a chance at the hardest work In the world. But as he worked In the fields It dawned on the lad that not here, where

the whole population was hunting riches, but In the old grooved life of his native city, lay his best chance of wealth. He would apply American methods to business in Glasgow and see if In the combination there was not something for Tom Lipton. He walked to Charleston and begged a steamer captain to let him work bis way to New York. He met with a blunt refusal. Consequently when the steamboat sailed she carried Tom Lipton hidden amid the merchandise in her hold. Again Lipton found himself In New York, this time with a purpose and a plan in his mind. He washed himself of his grime In a park fountain, earned a breakfast and began his search for work. The strong young boy, his thews steeled by the hard training In the riceflelds, found little difficulty in getting work. Of course he thrived. He did not know any luxury and but little rest, but he put by money. Before the year was out he had saved enough for a steerage passage and was back in Glasgow.

Presently the staid Scottish city was astonished to see two monster hogs, groomed until their bristles glistened, decked with ribbons and led through the streets behind a banner labeled “Llpton’s Orphuns.” ' A crowd gathered and followed the huge swine to -a little shop with the name of Lipton above the door. The Xpung iellow was proprietor, cleric, salesman, bookkeeper and porter all In one. He lunched in the shop and dined not at all at first. The venture succeeded. He got a clerk, and presently In another quarter of the city there was another Lipton shop, an exact duplicate of the first. Today there are 420 Lipton shops scattered through Great Britain, (50 of them being in London. They are all alike, all gayly colored and Illuminated, so that they stand out like lighthouses on a dark night. Llptou’s tea conies from his own plantations in Ceylon, but a score of other food products also bear his label and swell his fortune. In the United States lie owns a butchering plant that kills 3.000 hogs dally, ami lie has 600 refrigerator cars to carry the meat to the markets. His fortune Is estimated at $.">0,000,000, and he Ir not f>o years old. Kor his charities he was knighted a year ago, and It Is Sir Thomas Lipton who has come over here to sail his yacht, tne Shamrock, to race for* the America’s cup—Sir Thomas Lipton, who shoveled coal to pay for his stolen passage on the Charleston steamer.

SIR THOMAS LIPTON IN UNIFORM.