Sir Alfred Jones, K.C.M.G.
The late Sir Alfred Jones is another of our great shipowners whose career conveys many striking lessons. Enthusiastic about everything he put his hand to, intense in his application to work, and resourceful in finding out the ways and means to success, he had one fault not uncommon in forceful men—he had not the power of delegation. He would do everything himself, and the strain was more than even his robust nature could stand. On my asking him a few weeks before he died why he did not take a partner, he replied: "I will do so when I can find a man as intense as myself."
As indicating his resourcefulness, when he found bananas were not selling freely in Liverpool, he brought down a number of hawkers from London with their barrows and peddled his fruit about the streets. On my suggesting to him that he would make nothing of Jamaica, on account of the lazy habits of the negro, he replied: "I will change all that. I will send out a lot of Scotchmen."
When he travelled to London he was always accompanied by two clerks, to whom he dictated letters en route. Every moment of his time was filled up, he told me: "My work is done on a time table. A certain hour each day I devote to my steamers, another to my oil-mills, another to my hotels, and so on."
Sir Alfred Jones' name will, however, ever dwell with us as the founder and most active supporter of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which has destroyed the ravages of yellow fever and made the malarial and waste places of the world habitable.