(Jewish Daily Bulletin)
High praise for the career of Nathan Eckstein, voted by the citizens of Seattle, Washington, as that city’s most useful and most unselfish man, was voiced by the “Chicago Daily News” in a special article by John F. Sinclair.
Nathan Eckstein has been one of Seattle’s outstanding business leaders for the last twenty-five years. “When Seattle voted to determine the city’s most useful and most unselfish man, Mr. Eckstein was selected by a large majority. When a popular leader is needed to ‘put over’ something big-and Seattle is noted for doing big things, Mr. Eckstein is the one usually thought of. Four out of five business men I met in Seattle mentioned his name in connection with the city’s business and civic development,” states the “Chicago Daily News.”
“So I went down into the wholesale business section of the city, and in a small, cluttered office I met Mr. Eckstein.
“Nathan Eckstein, possessor of one of the finest private libraries in the west, is a large, heavy-set man, handsome, dark complexioned, with an abundance of black hair covering a well-shaped head. He greets one easily, and a stranger feels as though he had met a friend. Mr. Eckstein’s speech is fluent, and his words well chosen. He never hesitates for a word. If genius is the faculty of taking infinite pains, then here we have an example. This Seattle business leader never had a college education.”
“Is college a good thing for a business career?” Mr. Sinclair asked.
“A college boy who has lived in a home that has not supplied to him all his material wants naturally places ‘more emphasis on material success, or on that which will give him the things he was not able to have in early life,” was Mr. Eckstein’s reply. “This is the usual and the natural thing to expect.
“If as a poor boy he was denied the satisfaction of these wants his first impulse will be to concentrate his efforts on attaining these. So in his early years he works hard to get personal freedom in the economic and materialistic field. Sometimes it takes only a few years, sometimes many years. Sometimes one never quite reaches the goal. But it does register first in importance in his life.”
Loufs Topkis, of Wilmington, Del., is reported to be resting comfortably following on operation for appendicitis.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
