Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 33, Number 225, 27 September 1908 — Page 9

THE RICHMOND PALLADIUM AND SUN-TELEGRAM, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 190S. PAGE NINE.

BUILDING FOR LAW MAKERS BEAUTIFUL New $4,000,000 Structure at Washington Is Well Equipped. MOVING DAY" SOON. MANY OF OLDER SENATORS ARE LOATH TO LEAVE THOSE APARTMENTS IN CAPITOL SO

LONG OCCUPIED. Washington. Sept. 26. The completion of a 14,000,000 office building and the furnishing of it In magnificent style for occupants who are to have quarters within It free of all cost, ordinarily would be hailed with delight by those for whose convenience it was constructed.' Such, however, does not appear to be the mood in which tie United States senators look forward to their removal from the capitol to the new office building, which will be ready for them upon the convening of the next session of congress Especially is this true of those senators whose long years of service have put them la possession of the most desirable committee rooms, in the capi tol, to which they may retire when the proceedings of the sday; become irksome. The capitol building long since failed to meet the demands of An expanding country and the "growth of a legislative body that originally found room and to spare within the great building that sits on the ton of the hill where the laws of our country are made. To meet the situation and to make It possible for each one of the 386 members of the house of representatives to conveniently perform his share of the public duties, congress four years ago appropriated several millions for a house office building that was completed and occupied last session. In slower measure the senate too, has grown numerically, and .iot to be outdone by the house, a similar appropriation was made and the magnificent structure facing the capitol on the Bid of the capitol reservation opposite the house building is the result But the old senators are loth to give up their familiar quarters. Building Beautiful. The building is a chasteiy wu-ucture designed on classical lines to corres pond with the other public buildings of the city, the material used being granite and marble. There is every evidence of grandeur and solidity but nothing indicative of gaudiness or extravigance. Each senator will have a reception room and a private office for himself and his secretary. Bath rooms, retiring rooms, etc., go to make the apartments perfect in their purpose to provide for the comfort and convenience of the occupants. The furniture will be of solid mahog any. The show places will be elabor ate. In the retundas, audience rooms and more important committee rooms there will be an abundance of marble and mahogany, paintings and cut glass chandeliers, pleasing to the eyes of the visitors to the national capitol. Despite all this comfort and ele gance the veterans of the senate would much prefer to remain where they are but they will be compelled to give way to the demand for more room in the old structnro in which to accommodate the moro important committees that control the chief matters of public business. After the senate meets there will be a special committee appointed to allot the new quarters. A few veterans of the old school, whose years give them prestage, will be permitted to choose their apartments but the assignments of the rest will be determined by lot, and there will be a general removal from the capitol which for fifty years has housed the members of the senate. Connected With Capitol. The new building is connected with the capitol by a subway in which it is the intention ultimately to install an electric railway so senators can ride the short distance between their Offices and the senate chamber. This subway is paved, well ventilated and lighted and senators can easily walk to and from their offices without being exposed to the weather. Then, too, : the new arrangement will make then) less accessible to those whose Visits they do not desire. The duties of a senator are being performed now under vastly more comfortable conditions than formerly, but when he gets .Into his new quarters he will.be surrounded by every convenience the ingenuity of man can suggest WANTED We will buy all the sugar corn and tomatoes brought to our cannery at $8.00 per ton, n. C ButHerdick & Son 629 South Filth St. t Have your Carpets, t and Riias Cleaned bv Vacuum Process Either at your boose or at tny plant. We call and get tbera and return. No extra charge.. - Richmond House Cleanina Co. i Phone 1316 J . C. O. TOOKEH, Prop.

Early training responsible for present wealth.

(By Dorothy Richardson.) Of New York Herald. "Success you ask me to tell you the story of my success ?" Slowly Daniel G. Reid repeated the question put to him. Keen of face, dark of eye, debonnalre, this man who has made the making of tin plate one of America' great industries does not look his fifty years. He does look, however, every inch the millionaire and captain of finance that be is, and it may be said right here that he stands six feet in his stockings at that. His is a figure you would unconsciously single out anywhere in an assemblage of men, and of that figure you would unhesitatingly declare that it belonged to r a man who had done things and was doing things, a man with, nerves of steel and will of iron, a man as only America could have produced. And, yet withal a man of sentiment, rich-4ft the humanities and generous to a fault. : : :,' We wersltUng in one of the great twin loggias of his country house at Irvington on Hudson. The place was thronged 'with a week-end house party, the young friends of Miss' Rhea Reid, the daughter and only child of Mr. Reid, - a beautiful girl of, twenty-two The stately stone pile, a faithful replica of an, ancient English abbey; liveried-servant moving across the terrace bearing tea trays laden with priceless china, of which Mr., Reid is a "great connisseur; other liveried servants following with other trays laden with rare old decanters and tall thin glasses worth a king's ransom; the echo of young girls laughter from the tennis court on the other side of the formal garden; the cry of a pair of prize spaniels rebellious against the firm, but gentle hand of . a groom car rying them to regions beyond the con- f servatories; a strain of Chopin waited from the long, cool, Louis Qulnze mu-J sic room; the perfume of flowers every sight, every sound bore testimony to what money combined with exquisite taste may buy for a man in the way of all that Is sybaritic and fair and beautiful, all that which, in the popular mind, makes life worth the living. And the man himself, the man who by reason of better brains and steadier i nerves and greater courage than bis J fellows has been able to acquire the; wherewithal by which to command this princely luxury this man looked, or so fancied, Just the least bit weary of it all. But the weary look was only momentary, for Dan Reid Is too healthy a man to remain Introspective for long. Gradually his keen face softened into a smile and. taking his cigar from between his teeth, the tinplate magnate laughed s men laugh only when they are thinking of absurdly happy things. His First Start. "I was Just thinking what a good time I did have anyway in those days back in Richmond, Indiana, when I first started out to make my fortune in the pig market. My father's farm was Just outside the town. In addition to running the farm, father also conducted a grocery store down in Richmond. "Now, there was no foolish pride about being in trade in Richmond. On the contrary, it was in my boyish estimation a distinction. Indeed, my first ambition was to grow up and wear a seersucker coat and weigh out sugar and tea for the good people of Richmond and the surrounding country. I often wonder if there was ever a boy who did not at some time or other come through the period of wishing to run a grocery store? "In spite of my father's double means of earning a livelihood money was always pretty scarce around the Reid homestead. There was a large family. My father and mother had both been married twice an I had five half brothers. Of spending money we boys .had little .or none. Now, it was the ambition of my boyhood to own a bull's-eye watch. Down in the Jewelry store in the town there was a beauty marked $3.50. My father suggested that il I were to save up my pennies I might some day have enough to buy such a watch, and by way of encouraging me he gave me one of those small toy banks in which you drop coins through a slot in the roof. I was now eight years old, and for the first time in my life began a conscious effort to accomplish a definite purpose. "This effort lasted three years. I ran errands. I sold all the old iron on the place and all I could induce the other boys to sell me for a cash discount. I went into the rag business and scoured the neighborhood for miles around In search of cast-off gum shoes and other Junk, which I speedily converted into cash. When I was eleven years old I had saved up $3.50 and you may be sure I lost no time in cracking open my little iron bank and running with its contents to the Jeweller's. "For a week or so afterward I lived in the clouds. I had now a real watch and a chain, too. I must not forget about the chain. It was made of brown hair, curiously twisted and braided. Hair chains were all the rage in Richmond then, and this one had been presented to me by a little girl schoolmate, who, knowing I had been saving-my money for a watch, had -in the meanwhile to this end learned to make hair chains. On the end of this chain I fastened, a charm, one of those golden hearts made of two pieces of glass laid is-a-vis over a layer of gilt paper, which I had acquired through a shrewd trade with a neighbor boy. 'I was Tery happy In the pride of these gewgaws; that is, for a week or so, and then somehow, they did not

"PERSEVERING EFFORT WILL CONQUER THE WORLD."

Daniel G. Reid, Millionaire

Richmond Man Who Has Done Things in World of Finance

V DANIEL seem to be such wonderful things after all. I began to suffer from ennui, and it did seem for a while as if I should never again see anything upon which I could center my vaunting ambition as I had upon that bull's eye watch, which, alasj had lost Its charm for me." Here Mr. Reid's shrewd, dark ScotchIrish eyes twinkled with merry memories. He is not a man given to analytical discussions upon the subject of human nature, for he is a man of ae tion, not a dry student; but I. doubt whether Henry James himself is as good a psychologist of real men and women ,and above all of real boys, as is this man whose name spells tin plate. Trades Watch For Pigs. "But fortunately I did not suffer long from this reaction," he continued, laughing. '"About this time I went visiting with my father and "mother to to farm of some relatives living in the other end of the county. These relations had a fine stock of pigs, full blooded Berkshires, and if there was one thing which took my fancy" as a small boy, it was pigs. "There were three tiny little fellows I particularly admired and coveted, and, seeing the way the land lay, my cousin, to whom they belonged, offered them to me, the three, in exchange for my fine watch and chain and charm. I jumped at the bargain, and that afternoon, when we left for home in the wagon, I was minus my chronometer and plus three infant porkers. Now, it never occurred to me until we were driving past the farm where the girl lived who had woven me the chain that it might not have been either strictly ethical or good .form to part with it in such an unsentimental manner, and above all for so unpoetlcal an equivalent. But a boy of eleven, I have since discovered, is a poor sentimentalist. "The next morning my father tackled me. 'Where do you expect to get the food to feed those hogs on'? he asked in a very unsympathetic tone. Kind and indulgent as he was to his family, father was nevertheless a man with hard and fast ideas about teaching children early in life the value of money, the sense of responsibility and, above all else, the necessity of their being self-reliant. Then i made him a proposition: I woulc give him one of the little pigs if he would agree to fatten the remaining two for me. This father thought was a square deal, and we clinched the bargain. "And how those pigs grew! They were a fine strain, and soon became the talk of half the county. People came miles to look at them, and I had a lot of fun watching them grow. They were lots more fun than a million bulls-eye watches until until the man with the gun came to our house. Such a wonderful gun as that was; it's upstairs in my gun room now. Indeed, it was and is the nucleus of the collection I have been making ever since. "Made of Damascus steel, with German silver inlay, It looked a thousand times more magnificent to my unsophisticated eyes than any of my tiger or elephant guns for which I have paid twenty times ts much. The man. who stayed all night with us, allowed me to lift the precious weapon and to click the hammer. He said he would take $20 for it as he needed the money, but that it was worth much more. That night I got up three times, lighted a candle and went down to the sitting room and looked at that gun. The next morning my father, who had seen the Impression It made cn me, offered to buy the gun for me if I would give him one of my two remaining pigs, an offer which I snatched at. That night

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ROMANTIC RISE

. ... . . ;. . a -; . . . G. REID. I took the gun to bed with me. I tlept well. Once a Messenger. "The remaining pig I kept until hog killing time in the fall, when I sold him for $33.75, every penny my own. I was now. eleven, and having thus early tasted of the joys of moneymakIng I decided that I must immediately embark Upon a career. School again! Not much! I went down to the Second National Bank of Richmond and got a job at $12.50 a month, as messenger boy. No billionaire ever felt so Important as I did when at the end of the first nionth I laid that $12.50 on my mother's kitchen table. "I was now a man. and how I did enjoy the independence which the status of a wage earner insured for me in our family circle! Clad in blue seersucker coat and pants we said pants without apology in Richmond in those days I walked into town every morning from the farm, my luncheon under my arm. And such luncheons as my mother did know how to put up! home made bread, spread thick with yellow butter from our own dairy and golden honey from our own bees; headcheese and great slices of ham fried to a. red-brown and huge wedges of pie made of the huckleberries and blackberries that grew in the swamp, and doughnuts what doughnuts! Well, I was what you might call a little gourmet, but, after all, I think it was a good thing I was. Little Mary is an important factor In human success, you know." This reference to Barrie's whimsical personification of the digestive apparatus and Mr. Reid's application of it to himself prompted the interviewer to distress upon the subject. He listened gravely, his eyes wandering far off and resting upon first one and then another of the turreted hilltops on the other side of the Hudson, now lighted up with the afterglow of the July day drawing to its close; below us a graceful yacht rode at anchor In the river; from the leafy high road came the faint honk of a motor car rending the twilight in a mad flight toward Tarrytown. An expression of sentiment bad crept over the keen features of a man in the chair before me, an expression which every friend of Dan Reid recognizes as one of his strongest and most lovable characteristics. Now I had often heard that Dan Reid's was a nature full of surprises, one abounding in strange antitheses and whimsical paradoxes, so I was prepared for almost anything save that which he actually did, and that was to draw forth from his .waistcoat pocket a newspaper clipping and read aloud: I've had a good time. Life came with rosy cheeks and tend er song Across the morning fields to play with me, And, oh, how glad we, were, and romped along And laughed and kissed each other by the sea. I've had a good time. Love came and met me half way down the road: Love went away, but there remained with me A little dream to help me bear my load, ' - A something more to watch for by the sea, I've had a good time. Death came and took a rosebud from my yard; Bat after that I think there walked with me, , To prove me how the thins was cot so hardr-

OF

An angel here of evenings by the sea. I've had a good .time. A good, good time. Nobody knows how good a time but me. With nights and days of revel and of rhyme. And tears and love and longing by - the sea. "I beg your pardon," he said hastily, as he folded up the clipping and returned It to the pocket, "but you see you have started me on a train of thought I like to . indulge in to talk about those old days in Richmond. For I did have such a good time there, and somehow or other that poem which I cut out of the newspaper yesterday expresses my feelings better than I could ever dream of doing myself. They say it's a sign a man is growing old when he begins to show those reminiscent symptoms. But that can hardly be so; because I still feel as if I were fifteen instead of half a century. "But to return to the discussion of Little Mary and the food question, I will say right here that I wouldn't give a continental for any body who wasn't a little glutton. The - right kind of boy is always hungry, and the right sort of discipline for that boy is to feed him and feed him mighty well. I agree with a lot of the modern scientists in my belief that the food we eat when we are young children has much to do with our success later on In life. I believe that if everybody could be well fed for a few successive generations crime and disease, moral, mental and physical, would practically be eliminated from mankind." "But you do not attribute your suc cess wholly to alimentation. You will perhaps concede that heredity, that education, that your early moral and religious training may have had something to do with It." At the word "religious," Daniel G. Reid shot a glance at the Interlocutor which was half amusement, half suspicion. "Say!" he laughed, "If you are going to lead up to asking me what my religion is, I shall have to xnswer as Benjamin Disraeli did to a similar question. 'What is your religion. Mr. Disraeli?' somebody asked. 'My religion,' retorted Disraeli, 'Is tho religion of every wise man.' 'And what may that religion be?' his inquisitor persisted. 'No wise man ever tells,' retorted the great statesman. . 8tern Religious Training. "Now I shan't be so rude. I will say that I did have a very stern religious training, how stern you may realize when I say that my father and mother were very straitlrccd United Presbyterians and that I joined the same church at an early age and am indeed still a member of it, although not a very straltlaced member, I will confess. And I will say too that my religious training has been, no doubt, indirectly of course, a tremendous factor in whatever success I have had. It does In everybody's. A training that is truly religious, religious, that is, in the highest and best sense, cannot fail to be a splendid thing in the character building of the young. "The harm comes only when the religion so called is a cloik for hypocrisy. There is an old saying, you know, that mass and meat hurt no man, and it's perfectly true; only I should add, 'plenty of meat.' I sometimes think, however, that we had too much religious training. I think it ought to be evenly scattered out over one's life, instead of getting it in heroic doses when we are too young and helpless to defend ourselves. I think I'd be a more religious man today if I had got a little less catechism on those long, dismal Sundays of my boyhood years. And sjill it is better to have received too much religion than not to have received any at all. "For I doubt whether anything else save just such a training as I received could have given me the same strong sense of duty which I felt when I went to work In the bank. With me duty was a religion, and it must be so with anybody who would succeed in anything. I worked from eight till six. and I worked hard. For two years I remained a messenger and general utility boy at the same wage. "The third year I was promoted to the janitorshlp, which I executed In addition to my regular work as messenger. For the joint job I got $200 a year. The fourth year I added to my work as messenger and Janitor that o? night watchman, and for the triplicate job I got $25 a month. The fifth year I became teller of the bank. Latr I became assistant cashier, and ceased to wear seersucker clothes or to carry my lunch. And then still later they made me the vice president, which job I have continued to hold to this very day. So you see I can truthfully say that I have never lost my job." At this Juncture Mr. Reid's face grew strangely soft and mobile, his voice vibrant with suppressed emotion. The World Was His. "Meanwhile," he continued, taking the unlighted cigar out of his mouth, and laying it carefully aside. "Meanwhile something very important happened to me, the most Important thing that can happen to an ambitious young fellow; I fell In love. I fell heels over head in love, and, having done so, I showed what good sense a boy of twenty-two . sometimes does have, by marrying Miss Ella Dunn just as quickly as I could. "I was then making a thousand a year, and married to the girl of my choice; the world was mine. We immediately went to .housekeeping. No apartment hotel or flat life for us. We went to live In a real bouse. It'iad

Quaker City son tells life story at home on Hudson.

six rooms and a nice porch, and a front yard, and what's more it was our house. We bought it. bought it on payments, of course; but what are payments to a new married couple. After much figuring we decided that we could alford the services of a certain Dutch girl whom we could get for $2 a week, and that we could likewise afford to spend $10 a week on our little household. "Now It was always a mystery to me then, and it has 60 remained a mystery to this day, how Mrs. Reid ever managed to make $10 go so far. We wanted absolutely for no comfort, in fact, for no luxury, as luxuries went in Kicnmond. ind., and all on $10 a week. Imagine my surprise, then, when at the end of three years and the last payment on our house was due, my wife divulged the fact that she had saved up $250 out of that $10 a week I had been giving her. Isn't that just like a woman? "They certainly do manage these things wonderfully the right kind of women do. And after all they are the only real and great financiers these faithful, gentle, loving women, whose last motive in the world for marrying a chap would be a mercenary one. Ah. it is a great thing for a young man to marry the woman , he loves, but it Is still a greater thing when that woman happens to be just the right woman for him." Here Mr. Reid interrupted himself long enough to conduct me through the great hall of his house and up the broad staircase to the library to show me some of the mementos of those early days. There was, for Instance, a photograph of the little old fash ioned United Presbyterian church he used to go to as a boy, the church which, as Its richest member, he some years replaced with the gift of a hand some stone structure with a splendid rgan and a beautiful chime of bells. There was also a photograph of the little house to which he had taken his girlish bride, the same little house where, as he explained in a hushed voice, he had looked upon the face of his first born, the little daughter Rhea, and where a year or bo later was also born the little boy who died when he was seven. And no better commentary upon the sort of man Daniel G. Reid is can be offered than the statement that to this day no money could buy that little house in Richmond, any more than money could have bought the horse and the dog the little boy had loved in life. When eventually Mr. Reid's Increasing business obliged him to leave Richmond to go to Chicago to live, he left the old dog and the old horse behind in charge of a trusted keeper, who kept watch and ward over them, supplying them with every comfort and luxury a sybaritic equine or canine could desire, until they died, the horse at thirty-one years of age and the dog at sixteen. And last, and evidently most sacred of all these tender souvenirs, he brought forth a pair of old fashioned jardinieres which had been painted by "Rhea's mother," as Mr. Reid seems to love best to designate the wife of his youth, who was destined to die before she could fsee the full fruition of her husband's career, in which she had. had bo much to do in its initial stages. And the softness with which he now pronounced those words, "Rhea's mother," could leave no doubt In any one's mind that there was no treasure of all the wonderful treasures of art and craftsmanship in that beautiful house which In its master's estimation was so precious as that pair of jardlneres wrought by the hands of the girlish wife who had been Indeed helpmate. After dinner, seated in the same broad loggia, .now flooded with the light of the full midsummer moon Mr. Reid continued the romance of his success. Buys Tinplate Plant. "After I paid off the mortgage on the house, I managed, with Mrs. Reid's help, to save enough money to buy some stock in the bank, thus making myself eligible for a directorship, Shortly afterward I became interested in a little tin plate mill at El wood. about sixty-five miles from Richmond. This mill had never been made to pay and was something of a white elephant on our hands. At this time eveverybody Bave a few of us scouted the idea that tin plate was a poseibill ty for this country. Everybody thought it could be made successfully only In Wales. "I thought differently; so did a few others. We believed that if we could succeed in building the right sort of plant and installing the right process we could make of tin plate a great American Industry. In 1801 we organized a company and built and equipped what we in our infinite ignorance supposed to be a tin plate milL But It wasn't. It was only a pile of junk, as we discovered two years later. Our machinery was too light, everything was too something or other that It ought not to hare been. The stockholders were disgusted. Something bad to be done, and then we secured a man in Pittsburg, William Banfield, who knew a lot about mill construction. He was a Cornishman, and for generations his ancestors had made tin plate in Cornwall and Wales. We sent for William Banfield. He came and built ua a mill that was a real mill, not a Junk heap. Pretty soon our little four mill plant was making money for us, and making it fast By this time I was giving practically all of my time to the tin mill, going back and forward to Elwood . every day a bard, unpleasant trip those sixty-five miles each way In tho local train. Growth of Industry. "At last I decided to leave the bank

and devote myself entirely to th mill.

This the president of the bank, a conservative man who had grown wealthy for that part of the country, advised me not to do. He said if I would stay on I had a good chance of succeeding to his job and of growing rich, too. The position-would bave been a specially good one for me, as I knew 20.000 out of' the 35,000 inhabitants of the county knew them well enough to call them by name and they in turn knew me well enough to warrant them hailing me as 'Danny. "But I told him I bad hopes of mak ing more money than the bank would ever be able to make for me if I Rave my undivided attention to the tin milL And so I left the bank, and from that day for years I thought of nothing but tin plate. We prospered, and by 1S9? we had thirty-one mills instead of th original four. We then moved our offices to Chicago and I went there with my family to live. "Meanwhile other tin mills,' follow ing our good example, bad sprung up all over the country. Competition was keen. The question of consolidation ' came up. Gentlemen's agreements bad proved worthless, and in 1S98 all the tin mills in the country. 270 in number, were merged, into one organ, izatlon. which was named after the original company in Elwood, the American Tin Plate company. Then, la order to guarantee our steel supply, we organized.. In connection with W. A. & J. H, Moore,' the National Steel company. StJU later the Americas Steel and Hoop company and the Amerlcan Sheet Steel company were organized by the same people. When the United States Steel corporation was organized, some time afterward, all these four properties went Into the consolidation and are today a part ot what. Is commonly - known as the Steel Corporation." . Wealth Unknown. Here Mr. Reid stopped to light still another cigar, and I took occasion to ask him bluntly. In LI Hung Chan; fashion, how much he Is worth today. He parried the question, for, like most Americans who have grown wealthy, Mr. Reid Is a modest man when It comes to openly acknowledge the extent of -his riches, and he leaves to others their approximation. I learned later that Mr. Reid never In any cir cumstances discusses his wealth. Aa a matter of fact nobody knows the exact dimensions of the fortune today of this man who began thirty-nine years ago as a messenger boy at $12.50 a month. Indeed. Mr. Reid la quoted as frequently saying to his In timates that for a while It made him absolutely dixiy the way the wealth poured In upon him for a period of a year or two, a statement which can be readily believed when we consider the system of modern finance under which he and his associates have con. celved and carried through to successful Issue project after project the Tin Plate Trust twice reorganized and merged with the Steel Corporation, the Rock Island and Railroad system reorganized and made to grow from a few thousand to more than seventeen thousand miles In a few years; either one of which projects would hare net ted a vast fortune to a financier of the inner circle, and combining them, as Daniel G. Reid has done, it can readily be conceived that the profits accruing would necessarily total a vast sum. Fall Styles GIVE US A CALL. : SUITS 815.00 - $18.00 Krone the Tailor 12 North 9th St. High Grade Furnituro at the Lowest Pricoo . Call and see Gilbert T. Dunham 627-629 Main St. ..Custom Shirts Guaranteed to fit and wear " Made in Richmond " By experienced shirt .cutters , and makers. Pajamas and night robes, Monograms and Greek Letter Designs. The- Orod Shirt Co. N. E. Cor. 9th and Main ' 9 SPECIALS HOMEMADE BREAD BAKED HAM . BRICK CHEESE HADLEY BROS. .