his book-education by the education of work, observation, and experience. Step by step he rose to the higher grades of employment, mastering every detail of the business as he went, until at the age of twenty-six, he was appointed superintendent of the establishment. Meantime, the proprietors of the mills had greatly extended their operations, and had adapted the machinery to the manufacture of fine cassimere cloths and suitings. In 1873 they were incorporated by the name of the Sawyer Woollen Mills, and Col. Sawyer became a part owner and agent; and in 1881, on the death of his uncle, Francis A. Sawyer the senior proprietor, he was chosen the president.
The Sawyer Woollen Mills Corporation is now a large and prosperous concern, employing somewhere about five hundred operatives, and turning out a quality of cloth which has acquired a high reputation in the market for beauty, durability, and uniform excellence of workmanship. None but the best materials are used, and the best class of help is employed. "Live and let live" is the motto of the managers. The employees have mainly grown up with the business, the changes having been very few; a great part of them have been in the employ of the concern for twenty years or more. They are paid liberal wages, and are comfortable and independent. They are large depositors in the savings-banks; and many of them own their own houses, purchased with their earnings. As may be inferred, they are, as a body, temperate, industrious, and orderly. They feel that their interests are identified with those of their employers; and no strikes or other labor troubles have ever disturbed the harmonious relations between them.
The Sawyer Woollen Mills have introduced one new feature into their business, which commends itself to the good sense of all. Instead of employing commission houses to dispose of their goods, as the former practice was, they now make their own sales. They thus reduce the chances of loss to the minimum; and there being no middleman's profit to pay, they can better afford employment to their hands in times of depression.
For a number of years past, the active management of the entire business—buying, manufacturing, and selling—has fallen upon Col. Sawyer; and it has been so conducted, that the credit of no other establishment stands higher. As a business man, alert, sagacious, and successful, the colonel has no superior in the State; and that is saying a great deal at this day, when the brightest of our New-Hampshire boys are finding employment at home.
The sterling business qualities which Col. Sawyer displayed in the conduct of his own affairs have naturally led to his being selected upon the board of management of other enterprises. He is a director of the Strafford National Bank, and a trustee of the Strafford Savings Bank; a director of the Dover Gas-light Company, and president of the Dover Horse-Railroad Company; a director and member of the Executive Board of the Granite-State Insurance Company; a director of the Portsmouth Bridge Company, and president of the Eliot Bridge Company; and a director in the Portsmouth and Dover, in the Portsmouth, Great Falls, and Conway, and in the Wolfeborough Branch Railroads. These various and important trusts, numerous as they and his private engagements are, receive his careful attention; and it is safe to say that
