Opportunist

A notable example of his own philosophy of life, Stephen M. Ryder 'Bl is still making the best "of whatever opportunities present themselves." During the course of his long and active life, Mr. Ryder, now 86, has created from circumstance several interesting and worthwhile careers though he was disappointed early in life in his plan of becoming a physician.

Now well past what less enterprising men consider the age of retirement, Mr. Ryder as the head of The ChisholmRyder Cos. and The Niagara Searchlight Co.—employing 700 persons—is actively engaged in straightening out the normal and the wartime problems of busymanufacturing plants. To these duties he has added those of directing the affairs of the New Way Machine Cos., Hanover, Pa., which he purchased recently. His home city of Niagara Falls rates him one of its outstanding businessmen.

Alert as usual to opportunity's knock, Mr. Ryder started his successful business career at the age o£ 67 when he purchased a Niagara Falls canning machinery plant he had heard was for sale. During the twenty years previous to this move, he had been a teacher on Cape Cod; in Sanderson Academy, Ashville, Mass.; and principal of a large night school in Washington, D. C.

Mr. Ryder, a New Englander by heritage, was born at sea on his father's whaling vessel in 1858. After a boyhood spent on Cap Cod and his father's whaler, Mr. Ryder entered Dartmouth Medical School in 1877. Three years later, upon the death of his father, he left college to start, on the sea where he was born, nearly seventy years of successful business enterprise.