MR. MACSLIMUN
Clydeside Cameos
The town of Glenusquebagh is not an attractive place in itself, but Nature has given it a magnificent bay, one of those which the guide-book writers love to describe as large enough for the whole British Navy to anchor in. Formerly it was famous only for its whisky and its herrings. Now it has gained an additional fame from what I am going to relate.
Somewhere about sixty years ago there was in that small malodorous town a small polyodorous grocer's shop. It was not the sole grocer's shop in the place; it was not even the chief one, and it did not differ remarkably from the other grocers' shops in having a small boy to tie up its parcels and carry them home to its customers.
But this small boy was very small, and, unlike other small boys, he had his head screwed on the right way, and very tightly. He went on tying up tea and sugar and soap and candles and treacle - no! not treacle; that he ran smoothly into mugs and very carefully stopped the dripping to prevent waste - and for his own delectation.
But when the days of his apprenticeship were up, although he hadn't grown very much in stature, he had expanded in ideas. He determined to measure out tea and soap, &c., &c., for his own benefit. In other words, when he had scarcely reached man's estate he opened a shop of his own. It was like himself, very small; but he had to leam that for success in the grocery business other things besides adroitness in tying up parcels are necessary. For one thing, capital, which he hadn't. He struggled on for a time; he was frugal, and would dine sumptuously off "potatoes and point;" he was temperate, and never took kindly to the whisky, which was the native element of the inhabitants. But for all that, he failed. He shut up his shop, paid off everybody in full, packed his trunk - which didn't take long - and started to seek his fortune in Glasgow.
He didn't find it. Somehow there was an unaccountably large supply both of grocers' shops and of grocers' boys, and there didn't seem room for another. While turning about in his wise little head what to do next, he received a letter from another native of Glenusquebagh, who a few years before had gone out to India on spec., and had gradually worked up a small shipping business on the coast. This friend asked out grocer's boy, whom we will call Macslimun - for he was a slim 'un - to come out and be his clerk. Macslimun didn't take long to make up his mind: he took longer to make up the money for his passage, but that he got, and was off
He found his friend had only a small business, but a snug one. It was one - the coast-carrying trade - in which there was at the time little or no competition and infinite possibilities. Mac. set himself with all the energies of a peculiarly energetic nature to learn all the ins and outs of it, and all the whys and wherefores it should be extended.
Two things are required to coincide in order to
produce success in any great affair. They are, the right man and the right
opportunity. Lots of good opportunities are lost because the right man does
not turn up at the right moment to seize upon them. Lots of good men are
worsted because the right opportunity never comes their way. Now Mac. was
one of these men who are always seeking for opportunities, and
"Who know the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand to make
The hounds of venture wider yet."
When a man like Mac. meets his opportunity other men call it "luck;" but luck spells success, and success the world has agreed to accept as the index of merit. For my part I believe that in the careers of all successful men there has been a commingling of luck and of quickness to take hold of luck. Mac., as we have seen, had "grappled with his evil star" pretty early in life, and was waiting to "grasp the skirts of happy chance" at an age when most men are thinking more of play than of work.
The "happy chance" came to him in India. This little coasting business, into which he had fallen so unexpectedly, soon became all his own by another "happy chance." His partner - for he hadn't been very long out before he was made a partner - got out of health - was never, I believe, a strong man - and had to take a voyage home. On the voyage he died, or was drowned - I don't remember which - and he left neither kith nor kin, so our friend became sole proprietor of the business.
It was growing pretty quickly by this time, and Mac. saw that a steamer or two would be of immense service in developing it. Good long freights were to be eamed on the coast, and still better "pickings" in the way of landing and forwarding charges. So a steamer - a small affair she was - was ordered from England. She was lost on the voyage out. Another was ordered, and she also was lost. Very vexatious were these delays, but at last a start was made, and the results more than fulfilled expectations. Mac. sent to Glenusquebagh for an old friend to come out and help him, and later on he got out a couple of nephews. But by this time he had accumulated a tolerable amount of money, and had schemed a magnificent scheme, which he came home to work.
First of all he established a branch of his house in Glasgow, and then he went down with his scheme to Glenusquebagh. Now, in Glenusquebagh there is a good deal of money, which has been made off whisky and herrings. And in Glenusquebagh the fame of Mac.'s successes in the short time he had been abroad had spread, and had not lost in the spreading. Further, when Mac. wanted a lad as a clerk, or a captain for a vessel, or anybody to do anything, he always sent to Glenusquebagh for him. Mac. believed in the people of Glenusquebagh, and in consequence the people of Glenusquebagh believed in him, and were ready to listen to anything he had to say. Let me add that this mutual trust remains to this day. If there is an appointment in Mac's gift or under his influence, a Glenusquebagh man can always command the preference over any number of candidates. If Mac. requires money for any scheme, he always goes to Glenusquebagh for it first of all. This is a trait which I rather like in the man - his staunch devotion to his native place. As it happens, he has brought it a good deal of wealth; at the same time, the devotion of Glenusquebagh has been the making of him.
Now, this scheme of his required a good deal of money, which he could get together only by means of a limited liability company. Limited liability companies were neither so plentiful nor so easily floated in those days as in these. But he showed the Glenusquebagh people what could be made out of a large service of steamers encircling the whole coast of India. They listened, they believed, and they subscribed to a man. The company was floated, and there wasn't a shopkeeper or a man of any description in Glenusquebagh who could scrape twenty or fifty pounds together who didn't take shares.
I have always wondered how Mac. managed to make so many people believe in him - for the belief long ago has spread far beyond Glenusquebagh. He is what the Scotch call a "shilpit wee body," with a shy, retiring, almost timorous, manner. A man, you would say to look at, who couldn't say boo to a goose, and who would scuttle away from his own shadow on a moonlight night. But his timidity must be only surface, for he has ventured deeper than most men, and he has faced storms such as break on the heads of very few.
This grand scheme of his, of course, took time to work out, and meanwhile he didn't let the grass grow round his doors. he was always beating up business for his Indian firm, getting consignments of cottons and all sorts of things, and bringing home produce. He was marked as a rising man, and his Indian connection was already enough to attract the attention of bankers. By one bank, then trying to stand straight after a severe shaking, he was invited to become a director. He went, and people say the position it gave him was of more use in floating his company than he cares to acknowledge. In time he became chairman of this bank, and he guided it through some very complicated manoeuvres. Some people say he led it into some very risky affairs; others, that he kept it clear as far as he could of such affairs. Anyhow the bank began to get into a net of apparently inextricable meshes, and Mac. prudently retired. He sold out all his shares, and, curiously enough, all his friends did the same; but whether because he told them to do so, or merely because he did so, I am not in a position to say.
While he was in this bank affair, however, he managed to make it pay him, as he does with most things he touches. The bank used to get hard up periodically on account of its many gigantic involvements, and Mac.'s firm was often called upon to lend its name as a drawing-post. He used to protest, and was always very careful to have it expressed as well as understood that the accommodation was for the bank, not for himself; and he also exacted a pretty tidy commission for his assistance. At times even the hard-up bank rebelled at his terms, but after a trial or two elsewhere had to come back to him. This carefulness on Mac.'s part was not thrown away, as the sequel of events showed. In process of time, but years after Mac. had cut the connection, this remarkable bank collapsed, and Mac. had much difficulty to avoid being caught in the ruins. Even all his former care and astuteness did not prevent him being the defendant in an action for the largest sum ever claimed in a court of law. He escaped by the skin of his teeth, and a mighty sigh of relief he must have heaved, for a criminal prosecution would have followed had he lost the civil action. We will not consider the nature and the result of the action, seeing that a full bench of judges decided it in his favour, it cost him, however, a few thousand pounds and more grey hairs.
Among the many ponderous babies which this unfortunate bank had to hold, even in the days of Mac.'s directorship, there was one in the nature of a spinning-mill. Whether the mill was to spin spider's webs, or silk, or cotton, or yams, is not material to the story. This mill was so heavily indebted to the bank that the bank humanely resolved to transfer the burden to the public. A limited company accordingly was floated, the public subscribed enough, I believe, to free the bank, and Mac. became a director of the Spinning Company. Now, this mill had never paid, never did pay, and never could pay those who owned it. There was no reason, however, why it should not pay somebody. It paid Mac. He made his firm buying agents for its raw material and consignees for its products. He also obligingly financed for it to enormous amounts - with security. He took care to keep clear of risks, and to always get payment of his commission, and interest, and expenses, so that while it lasted the mill was a very handsome annuity to him. Like most good things, however, in this world it came to an end; and, although 'twas a good game while it lasted, perhaps Mac. wasn't altogether sorry when it ended.
By this time his Steam Company was afloat, and building steamer after steamer as fast as they could be got. They could not be got fast enough, for the trade grew with the supply, and now is a very big thing indeed. Mac. had secured, of course, the sole Indian agency for his firm, who established the sub-agencies along the coast, mostly by clerks sent from their own office. The agency commission was 10 per cent. on the freights, and the sub-agents were allowed something like 2½ per cent. on what went through their hands. So you see it became a very good thing indeed for Mac.'s firm, now composed of himself, his two nephews, and the old friend aforesaid. This old friend, by the bye, retired with his "pile," and his brother took his place. It was altogether a family and a Glenusquebagh concern.
For a time, indeed, the board of directors was of similar constitution, but of late years Mac. has assimilated new blood. He dearly loves a title, and it was a great help to him to get into the society he loved, to have a lord or two and a baronet or two on the board of which he was chairman. It also removed the generally "shoppy" appearance of the concern.
This concern, be it noted, has from first to last been one of the most successful in the history of Shipping. It has never failed to pay handsome dividends, to build new steamers out of the profits, and to set by, year after year, large sums for "reserve." It is, in short, the wealthiest and strongest company in Shipping.
It is said that the commission which it puts into the coffers of Mac's firm every year mounts into six figures. The management is such a heavy affair that Mac.'s firm have now given up all their other agency business in order to attend to it. But they are extensive owners of plantations, of factories, and of a number of industrial concerns in India, which make them very important people indeed at the I.O. It has even been said, more than once, that Mac's "services to India" merit some honourable recognition at the hands of the Empress. As yet it has not been made.
Mac. takes no active part in business now beyond acting as chairman of his company, and as director of a few substantial institutions. For the London agency of the company he set up another nephew, who also feathered his nest to a remarkably downy extent. Indeed, so much is made out of the concern by the family connections that were the dividends to fall off seriously a turn-over might not improbably result. But the dividends keep up, the concern prospers, and everybody is satisfied. Once upon a time a too critical shareholder did animadvert on the cost of management. Mac. was equal to the occasion. He courteously admitted that the criticism was allowable, and that the company had certainly the right to manage its own vessels if it liked. "But in that case," added Mac., "I and all my friends will withdraw our money, as we will not support that which we cannot control, and we will start a line of our own." The shareholder was silenced, and the subject has never been revived, for the success of the concern is popularly supposed to be dependent on its nominal head.
Long ago Mac. was able to purchase a nice estate in the Highlands, and there he lives most of the summer. He owns a small yacht, in which in fine weather and smooth waters he will occasionally take his 'swell" friends for a sail. But, curiously enough, although indebted to the sea for his now enormous fortune, he has a cordial hatred of the sea. Every year, when a fine new steamer is launched, he takes a large company of Lords and Ladies and "people of quality" for an extended tour round Scotland, or to Norway, or may be to Iceland, but it is more than suspected that his own discomfort considerably neutralises the pleasure he enjoys in gathering such people about him. So much does he dislike the sea that even when the bank was in a most critical position with some investments in America he could not be persuaded by his co-directors to take a trip across to look after things. Serious as the position was, with possible ruin depending on all concerned, he shirked the sea voyage and sent one of his partners, who wasn't interested in the bank, instead.
For the rest, Mac. is not prone to putting his hand into his pocket. But if he doesn't give away much, he is always willing to help with his influence those whom he fancies, and especially if they can claim kindred with Glenusquebagh. He belongs to the rigid Scotch pietism, and is a staunch upholder of the Free Kirk. Many a Free Kirk minister's son owes his success in life to Mac., and many a Free Kirk minister has himself been put up to "a good thing." It is said that a certain well-known D.D. of Edinburgh, now departed, was able to leave behind him a goodly fortune in consequence of some very profitable little specs. in which Mac. allowed him a share. Although prominent in his religious professions, he is business-like in all his dealings, and rigid to his word. Yet, to use his own words in a now historical letter, he says, "I am always ready to strain a point in favour of expediency in handling business interests, as opposed to adhering strictly to what might legally be accepted as the construction of a doubtful point of policy." The meaning of this exposition depends on the mind of the interpreter. In other words, the "bearings of the observation lie in the application of it."
The foregoing thinly disguised "appreciation" of
Campbeltown 's most outstanding nineteenth century businessman, Sir William
Mackinnon, appeared in 1885 in Clydeside Cameos, a series of sketches of
prominent Clydeside men and was reprinted from Fairplay - a journal devoted
to shipping, trade and finance. The journal cost 3d or 3½, post free.
Changed days!
No 38 Autumn 1995
Page 2: Campbeltown Whalers
Page 3: Franciscan Converts in Kintyre - Part 1
Page 5: Military Echoes
Page 6: The Cuckoo is a Bonnie bird // Roadside Flowers
Page 7: James Watt at Campbeltown - Part 1
Page 8: By Hill and Shore - Part 1
Page 9: The Screws