Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/488

 Taschereau.' Tall in stature, he was a refined scholar and a cultured gentleman. He died at Ottawa on 14 April 1911. He married twice: (1) on 1 May 1857 Marie Antoinette (d. June 1896), daughter of R. U. Harwood, member of the legislative council of Quebec; by her he had five sons and three daughters; (2) in March 1897 Marie Louise, daughter of Charles Panet of Ottawa; she survived him.

(1841-1909), Canadian judge, first cousin of the chief justice, born in Quebec on 6 Oct. 1841, was son of Jean Thomas Taschereau, judge of the supreme court of Canada, by his first wife, Louise Adèle, daughter of the hon. Amable Dionne, a member of the legislative council. After education at the Quebec Seminary and at Laval University, where he graduated B.L. in 1861 and B.C.L. in 1862, and received the hon. degree of LL.D. in 1890, he was called to the Quebec bar in 1863 and practised there. While an undergraduate he edited in 1862 a journal, 'Les Debats,' in which he first reported verbatim in French the parliamentary debates. He was also one of the editors in 1863 of the liberal journal 'La Tribune.' In 1870 Taschereau was elected to the city council of Quebec, serving for some time as alderman, and he represented Quebec on the north shore railway board for four years. As a liberal he sat in the dominion parliament for Montmagny from 1872 to 1878, and actively supported Sir Antoine Aime Dorion [q. v. Suppl. I] and Alexander Mackenzie [q. v.]. On 7 Oct. 1878 he was appointed a puisne judge of the superior court of the province of Quebec. On 29 Jan. 1907, on the resignation of Sir Alexander Lacoste, he was made chief justice of the king's bench for Quebec, and next year (on 26 June) he was knighted. Taschereau left Canada in May 1909 for a tour in England and France; he died suddenly at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. J. N. Lyon, at Montmorency, near Paris, on 11 Oct. 1909. Taschereau was twice married, and had four sons and five daughters (Canadian Law Times, 1909, xxix; 1045-6; Quebec Daily Telegraph, 12 Oct. 1909).

 TATA, JAMSETJI NASARWANJI (1839–1904), pioneer of Indian industries, born on 3 March 1839 at Naosari, in Gujerat, was only son of five children of Nasarwanji Ratanji Tata, a Parsi of priestly family, by his wife (and cousin) Jiverbal Cowasjee Tata. When he was thirteen his father started business in Bombay, and after sending him to the Elphinstone College from 1855 to 1858, put him in his office. In 1859 the youth visited China and laid the foundations of the large export business in which, after some vicissitudes, the firm of Tata & Co. (later Tata & Sons) successfully engaged on an immense scale, forming branches in Japan, China, Paris, and New York, and agencies in London and elsewhere. Returning from China in 1863, Tata paid the first of many visits to England, mainly with a view, to the establishment of an Indian bank in London. That scheme was frustrated by the financial crisis following the 'share mania' in Bombay. Tata's firm, which was brought to bankruptcy, was rehabilitated by contracts for army supplies in the Abyssinian war.

Turning his attention to the nascent cotton manufacturing industry in Bombay, Tata returned to England in 1872 to study the work and conditions of the Lancashire mills. Subsequently he fixed upon Nagpur as a site for a model mill, and his Empress mills were opened there on 1 Jan. 1877, the day of Queen Victoria's proclamation as Empress. He afterwards founded at Coorla, near Bombay, the Swadeshi ('own country') mills. These concerns were soon recognised to be the best managed of Indian-owned factories. Improvements were adopted to protect and advance the interests of operatives and to reduce the cost of production. At first Indian mills confined themselves almost entirely to coarse goods which the deteriorated country staple was alone capable of producing. Tata, resolved to spin finer 'counts,' not only initiated the importation of longer-stapled cotton, but perseveringly sought to acclimatise Egyptian cotton in spite of the discouragement of agricultural advisers of government. In 1896 Tata published a convincing pamphlet on 'Growth of Egyptian Cotton in India,' which was republished in 1903. Another pamphlet (1893) discussed methods of increasing the supply of skilled labour. In order to reduce the heavy freight charges between Bombay and the Far East, Tata helped to promote in 1893 the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japanese Steam Navigation Company) so as to break down 