REMINISCENCES OF BERT DRAGE 



see I never had any desire for great wealth. I had 

 made and saved all the money I wanted. In 

 making this change I felt it would relieve me of a 

 lot of the responsibility, and that it would sort of 

 buck them up, but I found I had made a mistake. 

 You see the success of the business was, and had 

 been for 50 years, my chief ambition. 



I made a big financial mistake once. My brother 

 Frank, through his wife's relations, owned a fair- 

 sized coalfield not far from Kansas City. Money 

 was needed to develop it, and my brother finally 

 persuaded me, much against my will, to let him 

 have a very considerable sum of money. I think 

 it was about ;£ 10,000. I told him I thought it was 

 very foolish and that I would promise to help him 

 with a sufficient income to enable him to live 

 comfortably, but if he had this money that he asked 

 for to work the coalfield I should feel I had done 

 all he could expect of me. They built some 

 miners' cottages and got it working, but it ended in 

 a failure. I have been very lucky in recent years, 

 as my niece married Sir Hardman Earle, a stock- 

 broker whose sound advice has done me very 

 well. 



My dear old mother died about 18 years ago. 

 I was terribly cut up. She was beloved by every- 

 one. My sister saw what trouble I was in, and 

 after the funeral took me back with her to London 

 for a week. 



I attend church every Sunday morning. I am, 



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