(See front cover)
It is humidly hot in Sumatra; the intense sunlight encourages luxuriant plant life. One of the chief Sumatran products is, as all the world knows, rubber. South American rubber is garnered mainly from wild trees, carried through jungle paths. In the Far East and Middle East the business is much more highly organized. To handle the product roads have been built, heavy trucks imported; railroad tracks have been laid. The only primitive factor remaining is the labor—cheap labor that can be bought for about 30¢ a day. Loinclothed natives do most of the work. They slit the rubber tree's bark, gather the soft flowing latex, load it into tank cars. This type of worker has no pride in his job, nor does he become devoted to the boss directly over him. Yet last week perhaps a few of the natives working on some 46,000 acres of Goodyear Rubber Plantation Co.'s Sumatran rubber land heard of a change in bosses, of indirect, remote bosses, for it became known that control of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has definitely passed to the Cyrus Stephen Eaton-Otis & Co. interests.
Mr. Eaton's journey from the herring-savored village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to remote control of thousands of natives in Sumatra has been indeed a strange passage. Yet upon him it has left none of the travel marks that are found on most tycoons who have made similar trips from nowhere to the inner circle. He has none of the restlessness of a Ulysses, such as drove the late great Thomas Fortune Ryan from enterprise to enterprise. Nor has he the swagger of a Magellan, such as is found in Motormaker Chrysler.
Most important of the many milestones along the obscure Eaton route was 1905., when he graduated from McMaster's University (Toronto) and descended upon the U. S., settling in Cleveland. In this first excursion there was, however, no quest for a golden fleece. Mr. Eaton's sole purpose in coming to Cleveland was to join an uncle, Dr. Charles Aubrey Eaton,* in spreading the Baptist Gospel, although he himself was never ordained.
Just what extra-curriculum activities engaged Mr. Eaton during the ensuing period is not clear. But something must have kept him busy, for when during the panic of 1907 a member of the congregation made a proposition, he was able to secure some stray public utilities in Iowa. No slow-growing oaks sprang from these little acorns. Within eight years he was estimated to control $2,000,000,000 of invested money in Mid-West gas, power, light and traction companies. Now he is one of the foremost U. S. utility men, has been especially active in developing the United Power & Light Co.
To account for this rapid expansion, Eatonists give credit to neither stock manipulations nor managerial ability. His special genius is in organization. Speaking in exact, ministerial tones, casting penetrating looks from his blue eyes, he wields great power when it comes to exhorting ancient industrial rivals to quell their jealousies and lock their arms in Christian fashion before fighting the fight for bigger profits.