Character Sketch. 



249 



Lord Pirrie thus was directly concerned with the 

 affairs of 207 steamships, including scores of vessels 

 of 2,000 to 5,000 tons and the great White Star Hners 

 of 25.000 tons. As chairman of Messrs. Harland and 

 Wolff's, the great Belfast shipbuilding firm, in which 

 he has been a partner for thirty-eight years, he con- 

 trolled the fortunes of 10,000 hands, and in some 

 degree of Belfast itself. The London and South 

 Western Railway, the London City and Midland Bank, 

 and the Scottish Widows Assurance Fund claim him 

 as a director. 



But still he was not satisfied. The other day he 

 negotiated the purchase through Sir Owen Pounds 

 of the Royal Pacific Mail Company and the Union 

 Ciistle Line. 



A LAST WORD. 



The ke\-notes of Lord Pirrie's character are the 

 cheerful optimism and enthusiastic zeal he evinces in 

 evcrvthing. Foresight, optimism, incessant industry. 



the selection of able lieutenants (a sure mark of superior 

 ability), the constant introduction of new and improved 

 devices, world-wide travel and observation — every 

 possible combination of mind and body, land and 

 ocean, theory and practice, science and matter, have 

 been brought into requisition, united with unique 

 powers of organisation, to build up the greatest busi- 

 ness of the kind that has existed in the world since 

 men first began to go down to the sea in ships. 



This is not a biography but a character sketch, and 

 it would be a mistake to overload it with the long roll 

 of his directorships on railways and steamship com- 

 panies, of banks and telegraph companies, of trustee 

 and insurance companies, of oil mills and I know not 

 what. Let it suffice in this connection merely to print 

 the string of letters that appear after his name in the 

 Directory : — 



The Right Honourable Lord Pirrie, P.C, K.P., 

 LL.D., D.Sc, D.L., J. P., M.I.C.E., M.Inst.M.E., 

 M.I.N.A. 



P^tografh hy\ \l.uj.iytttt, UHllin. 



An Earlier Portrait of Loid Pirrie. 



