Wuen Mr. Ewen Cameron left here for home now some nine years ago he was certainly and deservedly one of the most popular men in Shanghai. He took over the managership of the Shanghai branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank from another very popular man, Mr. David Maclean, in 1874, and though he was comparatively an unknown and untried man when he came here, it was very soon felt that Shanghai had lost nothing by the change. He piloted the Bank here through bad years—for a wave of depression was just coming over Shanghai when Mr. Maclean went away—as well as good years, and was always the courteous.and genial gentleman and able banker, as ready to rejoice with his friends in their prosperity as to help them when times were hard with them and it was felt' by all who had any business with the Bank, which means 351 practically the whole of Shanghai, that he was emphatically a man to. be relied on. In our article last week on Sir Thomas Jackson, we remarked that ' everybody-; in China knows that. the present position of the, Bank is largely due to the-ability and force of character of its Chief Manager;" we.do not Mr. Cameron's name is so well-known mean to weaken the force of this tribute when we say that it is also largely due to the ability and force of.character of the man who practically made the Bank what it is in the north of China, Mr. Ewen Cameron.
When Mr. Cameron went to London to manage the London branch, there were probably not many even of his warmest admirers who foresaw what a power he would become in 48 his new sphere. London, the financial centre of the world, proves what a man really is. A man may be a leading spirit in a comparatively small place like Shanghai or Hongkong, a triton among the minnows; but when he comes to mix with the hundreds of other tritons in London, he must be a giant indeed if he makes a stir in the waters there. Many a boy whose abilities have made him regarded with awe by his schoolfellows, and who is ex-ceted to set the Thames on fire, inds when he goes up to the {university that instead of standing out among his new comrades, there are many as clever as or cleverer than he is, and his late schoolfellows wonder that they never hear of his doing anything great in the larger field to which he has gone. Mr. Cameron's modesty and his unassuming nature blinded us to his real powers, and few of us ever imagined that he would become distinguished, in that gathering of the talents, the city of London. But it is a fact that he has conquered there a really unique position. The London Bankers' Magazine of February last had a special article on the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, with a portrait of, Mr. Cameron, and in its article it says "How far the Hongkong Bank is a factor in important political questions affecting the welfare of British interests in China it would, perhaps, be~ indiscreet to speculate. ° Probably this influence is even greater than is generally recognised, and in recent valuable concessions obtained by this Government from China the bank, we believe, played no mean part.
"There is one figure which to bankers and financial circles in the city is the personal embodiment of the status and position of the bank, and that person is the London manager, Mr. Ewen Cameron.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.