Mount Gambier. He remained at that pretty town for twelve years, and gave the greatest satisfaction to his employer by the skilful way in which he pursued his business. He had in that period reaped a knowledge of colonial brewing, and was now ready to embark on an enterprise of his own.
He started business for himself in Albany in 1869, but found many difficulties barring the door to success. Leaving there, he entered Perth in 1872, and established the Stanley Brewing Company, with Mr. J. M. Ferguson as his partner—a tolerably successful venture. The formation of the Swan Brewery was Mr. Mumme's next achievement, and again Mr. Ferguson was his partner. For fourteen years he was manager and during that period the growth of the business was enormous and rapid. Partnership, however, was dissolved, and Mr. Mumme floated the Stanley Brewing Company, Limited. He purchased the Stanley Brewery from John Johns, who had taken it over on the expiry of Harwood and Smith's lease. The capital obtained was £6,500, made up of £1 shares. This company has been exceptionally successful, and the directors are T. F. Quinlan, J P.; H. Sherwood, and J. C. Foster.
Mr. Mumme is social, and esteemed by all who know him. He is a keen sportsman, having a perfect enthusiasm for yachting. He is a Freemason, and a member of Tattersall's Club. The characteristic temperament of his nationality, namely, the slow response to stimuli, is not his. He has directly and indirectly been a large employer of labour in Perth. His years of toil are rewarded, and he may devote himself to the higher ideal of altruism.
CAPTAIN OATES, M.L.A.
CARLYLE states that it is perhaps questionable whether, from a psychological standpoint, much prescient insight is to be gained of character from the chronicle of genealogy and birth. Though in some phenomena the beginning is the most notable moment, yet with man no social science may asseverate a special eventuation of character and power. Notwithstanding this, however, the great mass of people exhibit an eager, and perhaps not altogether idle, curiosity in the birth, ancestry, and especially the early peculiarities of a public man.
 |
Photo by CAPTAIN OATES, M.L.A. Greenham & Evans. |
Nor is the mining magnate exempt from such curiosity. The success that has attended Captain Oates on Western Australian goldfields should stimulate a wholesome interest in his career. In all mining communities there are men who by a lucky turn of the pick unearth a fortune, but their numbers are small, and the majority who rise to positions of affluence do so by their own inflexibility. To the latter class the subject of our sketch belongs. Like innumerable mining captains, Captain Oates hails from Cornwall, his birthplace being the little town of St. Just, Land's End. His father (Mr. Richard Oates), a mathematician, known throughout the West of England, died when William was only a few years old, and left a wife and family in such poor circumstances that William was unable to attend school. He made his first entry into the serious affairs of life in 1853; when eleven years of age he began to work in Cornish mines. After years of toil he graduated from boys' work to the position of a working manager—a sweet reward for laborious striving. The Hull Owles Mine (tin and copper) where he was engaged, lay among the sombre cliffs, and its operations were conducted on the most extensive scale, necessitating the employment of sometimes 300 and sometimes 500 men. The varying price of tin was in a great measure responsible for the different number of miners employed, a fall in price of 50 per cent. being frequent. For instance, on one occasion tin fell within three months from £100 to £30 per ton. Captain Oates remained with this company for over thirty years, for fifteen of which he was the working manager. Prior to obtaining that position he had studied in spare moments chemistry and different branches of mining engineering at the School of Mines, and, although he never submitted himself for examination in the theory, he was acknowledged to be the equal, if not the superior, of many who had passed through the curriculum of the school.
His attention was at last directed towards Australia by Mr. George Lansell, the Bendigo quartz king. During a visit to Cornwall, Mr. Lansell met the Captain, and conversation naturally turned on the mines of the great Southern Hemisphere. Captain Oates determined to try his fortune in the south land. To an enterprising Cornishman, a change to the other side of the world is nothing, and, resigning his position in Cornwall, Captain Oates sailed for Australia in 1884. He proceeded to Bendigo to examine the gold mines and their different methods of working. Only familiar with tin and copper mines, he wisely decided to obtain a practical experience before attempting the management of a gold mine. Curious to say, on arriving in Bendigo, he found in the Inspector
