Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/395

Rh society. She was a sister of W. P. Schreiner, afterwards Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and married in 1894 Mr. S. C. Cron- wright, also a S. African politician. Early in 1882, when she was 20 years old, she brought to England the MS. of her first novel, The Story of an African Farm, and submitted it first to George Meredith, then reader for Chapman & Hall. He praised the book and suggested certain alterations, most of which she accepted. Eventually it was published by the firm in 1883, over the pseudonym " Ralph Iron." Its success was immediate, but nothing else that she wrote had quite the same literary quality. Her later work includes Dreams (1891); Trooper Peter Halkett of Mashonaland (1897), a much-criticized attack on the first settlers in Rhodesia; An English South African's View of the Situation (1899); and Woman and Labour (1911), a fragment of an earlier MS. which had been burnt with other papers during the S. African War. She died at Cape Town in Det. 1920.

SCHREINER, WILLIAM PHILIP (1837-1919), South African lawyer and statesman, the youngest son of a German missionary, was born in the district of Herschel, Cape Colony. He studied law at Cape Town and at Cambridge and London universities. He was called to the bar (Inner Temple) in 1882 and the same year returned to the Cape where he was admitted an advocate of the Supreme Court. He soon attained success and was for many years leader of the Cape bar. In 1893 Schreiner, who had been legal adviser to the High Commissioner since 1887, began his political career as attorney-general in the second Ministry of Cecil Rhodes. He resigned the same year, took the same portfolio again in Sept. 1894 and remained in office until the Jameson Raid brought about the downfall of the Rhodes Ministry. In 1898, having helped to bring about the fall of the Sprigg Ministry, Schreiner became Prime Minister of Cape Colony and held that position when the Anglo-Boer War of 1899- 1902 began. During the crisis which preceded the outbreak of hostilities he allowed the passage of armaments to the Dutch republics, and when the war broke out he wished to keep Cape Colony neutral (see 5. 244). Acute differences in the Cabinet caused Schreiner to resign office in June 1900. Later he advo- cated, unsuccessfully, the federation instead of the unification of the South African colonies. In 1914 he accepted the office of High Commissioner of the Union in London and held that post until his death. He died at Llandrindod Wells on June 28 1919. Schreiner married, in 1884, Frances, sister of F. W. Reitz, President of the Orange Free State. He was a brother of Olive Schreiner, the novelist. Schreiner was a man of high attainments, great industry and impressive speech. His qualities showed at their best at the bar, and the proper crown of his career would have been a seat on the bench. But as a politician he suffered from a lack of suppleness which dis- qualified him from becoming a popular leader. He had also too much of the cross-bench mind. He was a sincere friend of the natives, and, in 1908-9 successfully defended Dinizulu against the charges of treason and murder brought against him. He also went to London as a delegate of the Coloured Races Political Association to oppose restrictions in the Act of Union.

SCHULTZ, HERMANN (1836-1903), German theologian (see 24.382), died in 1903. SCHURMAN, JACOB GOULD (1854- ), American educa- tionist (see 24.386), was appointed in 1912 U.S. minister to Greece and Montenegro, serving one year. During the World War, when Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare, he urged that American rights be firmly insisted upon; he pointed out that the destruction of the " Lusitania " in 1915 threatened to efface the distinction between combatants and non-combat- ants long recognized by civilized peoples. In 1915 he was first vice-president of the N.Y. State Constitutional Convention. In Oct. 1917 he was appointed a member of the N.Y. State Food Commission, resigning in June 1918 to go to France as lecturer to American soldiers under the auspices of the Y.M.C.A. He was opposed to many of President Wilson's policies, especially in connexion with Mexico, and also to Article X. of the Covenant of the League of Nations, believing that it would involve the United States in war. As early as 1913 he urged the independence of the Philippines in the near future; in 1914 he declared in favour of woman suffrage. He resigned the presidency of Cornell University in 1920. He was appointed minister to China in 1921. He was the author of The Balkan Wars 1912-1913 (1914, lectures at Princeton).

SCHUSTER, SIR ARTHUR (1851- ), British physicist, was born in Frankfort-on-Main Sept. 12 1851, the son of Francis Joseph Schuster, of Frankfort, who in early life made his home in London, where he carried on a successful business as merchant- banker in Cannon St., his three sons, Ernest Joseph (b.iSso), subsequently a well-known lawyer, Arthur, and Felix (see below), being brought up, like himself, as British subjects. Arthur Schus- ter was educated at Owens College, Manchester, and at Heidel- berg University, and devoted himself to a scientific career as an astronomer and mathematical physicist. He was chief of the " Eclipse " expedition to Siam in 1875, and from 1888 to 1907 was professor of physics in Manchester University, his main work for many years being connected with advanced research in spectro- scopy, on which subject he contributed the article in the gth ed. of the E.B. in 1887 (as also to the nth ed. in 1910). He was awarded the royal medal of the Royal Society in 1893, and was one of the secretaries of the Royal Society from 1912 till 1920. He was president of the British Association in 1915, having in 1892 acted as sectional president for astronomy, and he became well known throughout the scientific world, receiving hon. de- grees from both Oxford and Cambridge. He was also secretary of the International Research Council, and during the World War, both in that capacity and as a representative of the Royal Society, he did invaluable work as a scientific adviser in con- nexion with the organization of research in various departments. He was knighted in 1920, and was appointed a member of the royal commission on the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His numerous publications include works on Theory of Optics (2nd ed. 1909), The Progress of Physics (1911) and Britain's Heritage of Science (1917).

His brother, SIR FELIX SCHUSTER, Bart. (1854- ), was also educated at Owens College, Manchester, and studied fur- ther abroad, afterwards making his career in London banking. From 1895 he was identified, as governor, with the Union Bank of London, afterwards the Union of London & Smiths Bank, and in 1918 amalgamated with the National Provincial Bank as the National Provincial & Union Bank of England. He was a member of the Council of India from 1906 to 1916, and became chairman both of the Central Association of Bankers and of the Committee of London Clearing Banks. In these years he es- tablished for himself a leading position in financial and economic circles, and was made a member of several important Govern- ment committees and royal commissions, his annual addresses to the shareholders of his bank being recognized, with those of Sir Edward Holden (of the London, City & Midland Bank), as among the most important contributions of the day to sound thinking on current monetary problems. He was created a baronet in 1906.

SCHWAB, CHARLES MICHAEL (1862- ), American capitalist, was born at Williamsburg, Pa., April 18 1862. He was educated in the .public schools and at St. Francis College, Loretto, Pa., where he gained an elementary knowledge of engineering. From 1878 to 1880 he was a clerk in a store at Braddock, Pa., and then became a stake driver in the engineering corps of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works of Carnegie Bros. & Co. His ability brought him rapid promotion and in 1881 he was made chief engineer and assistant manager. Six years later he was appointed superintendent of the Homestead Steel Works. In 1889, on the recommendation of Henry Frick, he was made general superintendent of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, and in 1892, after the formation of the Carnegie Steel Co., he was made also general superintendent of the Homestead Works. In 1897 he was elected president of the Carnegie Steel Co., and when this was merged in 1901 in the U.S. Steel Corp. he was made president of the latter. He resigned in 1903. He then turned his attention to shipbuilding and a few years later with other capitalists secured control of the Bethlehem Steel Corp.,