When the papers announced the passing of James Oliver some of them stated that he was "probably the richest man in Indiana." This fact, of itself, would not make him worthy of the world's special attention. There are two things we want to know about a very rich man: First, how did he get his wealth? Second, what is he doing with it? But the fact that wealth was not the end or aim of this man, that riches came to him merely as an incident of human service, and that his wealth was used in giving employment to a vast army of workmen, makes the name of Oliver one that merits our remembrance.
James Oliver worked for one thing and got another. We lose that for which we clutch. The hot attempt to secure a thing sets in motion an opposition which defeats us. All the beautiful rewards of life come by indirection, and are the incidental results of simply doing our work up to our highest and best. The striker, with a lust for more money and shorter hours, the party who wears the face off the clock, and the man with a continual eye on the pay-envelope, all have their reward—and it is mighty small. Nemesis with her barrel-stave lies in wait for them around the corner. They get what is coming to them.
The Oliver fortune is founded on reciprocity. James Oliver was a farmer—in fact, it was the joke of his friends to say that he took as much pride in his farming as in his manufacturing. Mr. Oliver considered himself a farmer, and regarded every farmer as a brother or partner to himself. "I am a partner of the farmer, and the farmer is a partner of Nature," he used to say. He always looked forward to the time when he would go back to the farm and earn his living by tilling the soil.
He studied the wants of the farmer, knew the value of good roads, of fertilizers and drainage, and would argue long and vigorously as to the saving in plowing with three horses instead of two, or on the use of mules versus horses. He had positive views as to the value of Clydesdales compared with Percherons.
So did he love the Clydes that for many years he drove a half-breed, shaggy-legged and flat-tailed plow-horse to a buggy, and used to declare that all a good Clyde really needed was patience in training to make him a racehorse. He used to declare the horse he drove could trot very fast—"if I would let him out." Unhappily he never let him out, but the suspicion was that the speed-limit of the honest nag was about six miles an hour, with the driver working his passage.
Ayrshire cattle always caught his eye, and he would stop farmers in the field and interrogate them as to their success in cattle-breeding. When told that his love for Ayrshire cattle was only a prejudice on account of his love for Robert Burns, who was born at Ayr, he would say, "A mon's a mon for a' that."
He declared that great men and great animals always came from the same soil, and where you could produce good horses and cattle you could grow great men.
Mr. Oliver loved trees, and liked to plant them himself and encouraged boys to plant them.
For music he cared little, yet during the Seventies and the Eighties he had a way of buying "Mason and Hamlin" organs, and sending them as Christmas presents to some of his farmer friends where there were growing girls. "A sewing-machine, a Mason and Hamlin organ, and an Oliver Plow form a trinity of necessities for a farmer," he once said.