After spending his boyhood in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he was born in 1856, he became a student at the Edinburgh University, and there distinguished himself. He won the Greek travelling fellowship, and continued his classical study at the University of Göttingen. Returning to Scotland, he was elected to the Mackenzie scholarship in the University of Edinburgh and went to Oxford University, where he added to his scholastic laurels. He became assistant Professor of Humanity in Edinburgh University, and in 1882 was appointed Professor of Classical and Ancient History and head of the faculty in University College, Dundee. Here he remained until 1885, when he was chosen to succeed Sir J. W. Dawson as Principal of McGill University, Montreal. He has received honorary degrees from St. Andrews and Princeton universities, and is regarded not only as a scholar of unusual attainments, but as a man possessing in marked degree the executive ability necessary to successfully conduct the affairs of a great university.
George A. Cox.
Perhaps the most important financier in Canada is Senator George A. Cox of Toronto, who is regarded as the Dominion’s closest parallel, in financial activity, to J. Pierpont Morgan of New York. His interests are extensive and widely varied. He is the president of the Canadian Life Assurance Company, president of two fire insurance companies, president of the Central Canadian Loan and Savings Company, and is one of the ruling spirits in the great project to build the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. He has a very considerable amount of capital invested in the United States.
Senator Cox was born sixty-four years ago in the village of Colborne. His father was a shoemaker in humble circumstances. The ability of Senator Cox, as a boy, attracted the attention of a neighbor, who educated him. When he became a young man he went to the town of Peterboro and embarked in the photographic business. He afterwards became an express agent, and also occupied himself with soliciting insurance for the Canadian Life Assurance Company. He engaged in politics, and for seven years was mayor of Peterboro. When the Midland Railway became involved in financial difficulties, he was one of the Canadians asked to reorganize the road. He at once became the dominating factor in this work and in 1878 was made president of the Midland line. The vigor and ability which he brought to his task soon put the decrepit railway company on its feet again. It afterward became the Midland Division of the Grand Trunk Railway. Besides his insurance and railway affiliations Senator Cox is largely interested in Canadian banks and lands.
Senator Cox attributes much of his success to the fact that he is a good judge of human nature. He has long made a point of surrounding himself with clever young men who are able to develop and zealously put into operation the hints which he freely gives them. Senator Cox’s personality is of a kind which inspires enthusiasm on the part of those who are working with and for him. He is genial and never stands on formality in his contact with the young men whom he has around him. In this respect he more closely resembles Andrew Carnegie than any other captain of industry. Senator Cox lives in modest style in Toronto. He is quiet in his tastes, and greatly dislikes anything suggestive of display or self-aggrandizement. He is a close personal friend of most of the political leaders in the Canadian Liberal Party, and of many of the financial powers in the United States. The Earl of Aberdeen appointed him to the Senate of Canada in 1896. He is a prominent member of the Methodist Church, and has long interested himself in the welfare of Victoria University in Toronto.
Timothy Eaton.
The most important retail merchant in Canada is Timothy Eaton. He began his career as an apprentice in a small shop in a village in Ireland, and now has an establishment which employs the services of six thousand persons, and which is by far the largest and best equipped retail store in the Dominion.
It was in a shop in the town of Port Gleone, in the north of Ireland, that Mr. Eaton obtained his first experience as a storekeeper. Here he served an apprenticeship of five years, receiving no pay until the end of his term of service, when he was given the sum of one hundred pounds. To convey an idea of the long hours that he used to devote to the services of his employer in Ireland, Mr. Eaton likes to tell about how he used to watch the donkey carts passing through the village streets to the market-town of Ballymena at five o’clock every morning, when he was taking down the shutters. While he had very little time in those days to devote to anything but his regular work, he was fond of books, and read Chambers’s Journal, an unusual literary selection for a lad of his education and position. In this publication he read one day an article on the then almost unknown process of manufacturing artificial gas. This so interested him that with the help of a companion he made with his own hands a small gas plant, and by means of it succeeded in lighting the store. Before that there had been no gas light in that section of Ireland. The innovation of the young apprentice aroused great interest and curiosity on the part of the people of the countryside. They flocked to the shop to view the miracle of the new light. This proved to be a valuable advertisement for the establishment, and it lifted young Eaton into a position of prominence in the community.
He felt, however, that there were no chances in Ireland for the degree of success of which he dreamed. The potato famine and other misfortunes had laid the country prostrate. Everybody was talking about the golden prospects in America, and great numbers were emigrating to the promised land. One of Timothy Eaton’s elder brothers decided to join the exodus, and Timothy himself lost no time in making up his mind to go with him.
After crossing the Atlantic they made their way to the town of St. Marys, in Ontario, and there started a very small store, being glad to accept produce in payment for their goods. Another brother came to St. Marys. One of these remained there permanently, while Timothy Eaton, not satisfied with the possibilities in St. Marys of the mercantile expansion which he had in mind, went to Toronto, and started a modest store on one of the lower streets. This was in 1869. In 1883 he had a larger establishment. In 1887 he had added to his general store equipment a small factory for the purpose of eliminating the charges of middlemen and thus conserving the interests of his customers by reduced prices. The factory was an unqualified success. By means of it, and through Mr. Eaton’s general methods, the establishment steadily grew until, at the present time, he has a store which from a comparative point of view may be regarded, perhaps, as the most successful in the world. Mr. Eaton’s pay roll includes nearly six thousand names, while the largest retail store on earth, which is located in Chicago, where the population is many times greater than that which can be reached by Mr. Eaton, employs only about twenty-five hundred more persons. It will be seen that this Chicago establishment is only one-half larger than the Eaton store. Indeed, the factories of the latter are larger than those of any establishment which deals directly with retail buyers.