A supreme example of how the general principles can be applied is the case of Sir William Burrell, who inherited the family steamship company in the late nineteenth century and ran it with such success that he was able to retire relatively young and devote the rest of his life to collecting artefacts which are now housed in the Burrell Museum in Glasgow. He made an enormous amount of money out of shipping. How? The following is an extract from a letter written by the eminent Scottish architect Sir Robert Lorimer to an Australian friend in January 1902.
His [Sir William Burrell’s] scheme is really the nimblest I’ve ever struck. He sells his fleet when there is the periodical boom and then puts his money into 3 per cent stock and lies back until things are absolutely in the gutter – soup kitchen times – everyone starving for a job. He then goes like a roaring lion. Orders a dozen steamers in a week, gets them built at rock bottom prices, less than half what they’d have cost him last year. Then by the time they’re delivered to him things have begun to improve a little bit and there he is ready with a tip top fleet of brand new steamers and owing to the cheap rate he’s had them built at, ready to carry cheaper than anybody. Sounds like a game anyone could play at but none of them have the pluck to do it. They simply sit and look at him ‘making money like slate stones’ as he expresses it.
Submitted June 16, 2018 at 09:20AM by kCinvest https://ift.tt/2ldv6Fx
