Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/124

  [q.v.] and Percy Carlyle Gilchrist made known in 1878 their new basic process for the conversion of phosphoric iron ores, which in England was generally disregarded, he took a keen interest from the first in the possibility of its application to the product of the Swedish mines. Through him the Thomas-Gilchrist process, which was eventually taken up in Germany, was introduced into Sweden with highly successful results. The mines and the railway (of which Cassel became a director in 1885) were turned into profitable concerns; and this led to a considerable enlargement of Cassel’s field of enterprise in Sweden. More mines were acquired, new railways were created, and large interests in docks and shipping rounded off an extensive business from which ultimately Cassel derived a substantial part of his wealth. In 1894 he acquired a large interest in the Swedish Association, Ltd., which had a considerable holding in these concerns; and in 1896 he took part in the formation of the Grängesberg-Oxelösund Traffic Company which incorporated them.

Among the other important operations undertaken by Cassel when he had become independent of the Bischoffsheim house in 1884, one of the first was the reorganization of the Louisville and Nashville Railway in America. This he carried through successfully in conjunction with Kuhn, Loeb, & Co., of New York, and Wertheim and Gompertz of Amsterdam. He also became interested in the Mexican Central Railway, and arranged its finances throughout a considerable period; and in this connexion he subsequently formed (in 1899) the Mexican Central Railway Securities Company, Ltd., for receiving deposits of the consolidated mortgage bonds of the railway and thus securing a position of influence over the American company by a preponderating holding of the bonds. In 1893 he issued the Mexican government 6 per cent. loan; in 1895 the Chinese government 6 per cent. loan; and in 1896 the Uruguay government 5 per cent. loan. At home he took a leading part in the financing of the Electric Traction Company, Ltd., formed in 1894, which in 1895 underwrote the construction of the Central London Railway, opened in 1900. In 1897 he was instrumental in purchasing the Barrow Naval and Shipbuilding Construction Company for amalgamation with Vickers, Sons and Company, and, after the amalgamation of the Maxim Gun and Nordenfelt companies, in acquiring them also for Vickers. For some years thereafter he underwrote the chief financial issues for the Vickers Company and its subsidiaries.

From early years Cassel had been interested in Egyptian affairs, and in 1898 he cemented a very important connexion with Egypt by financing the construction of the great Nile dams at Assuan and Assiut through the formation of the Irrigation Investment Corporation. He was subsequently prime mover in the formation of the National Bank of Egypt; of the Daira Sanieh Company, which purchased the Daira Sanieh estates from the Egyptian government; of the Agricultural Bank of Egypt; of the Daira Sanieh Sugar Corporation, which purchased from the Daira Sanieh Company certain sugar factories, 292 miles of railway with rolling-stock, and the benefit of contracts with the Egyptian government; of the Société Anonyme de Wadi Kom Ombo, for the development by irrigation of the great desert plain extending from the Nile to Gebel Silsileh—a daring enterprise, the later success of which, with all its benefits to the native cultivators, was another typical proof of Cassel’s farsightedness; and in 1908 of the Mortgage Company of Egypt, Ltd. In 1906 the State Bank of Morocco, and in 1909 the National Bank of Turkey, were created under his auspices; in both these cases, as indeed in some others concerned with international finance, he was acting under unofficial encouragement from the government, in British national interests.

The first public recognition of Cassel’s importance in the financial world was the K.C.M.G. conferred on him by Queen Victoria in 1899; under King Edward he received the further distinctions of K.C.V.O. (1902), a privy councillorship (1902), G.C.M.G. (1905), G.C.V.O. (1906), and G.C.B. (1909). He was also the recipient of various foreign decorations; commander, first class, of the royal order of Vasa, Sweden (1900); grand cordon of the imperial Ottoman Order of the Osmanieh (conferred by the khedive of Egypt, in 1908); commander of the French legion of honour (1906); Crown of Prussia, first class (1908); grand cross of the Polar Star, Sweden (1909); order of the Rising Sun, first class, Japan (1911); and Red Eagle of Prussia, first class, with brilliants (1913).

Though in private life there was an. element of stoicism in Cassel’s character, shown in his personal abstemiousness and in an habitual reticence and reserve which made him somewhat of a mystery to the public, he kept house on the scale of his  98