he compelling force behind the building of the
Katanga Railway. In 1912 he became Vice Governor of the Societe and the
following year assumed the Governorship. In addition to being President
of the Forminiere he is also head of the Union Miniere and of the new
railroad which is to connect the Katanga with the Lower Congo.

When you meet Jadot you are face to face with a human organization
tingling with nervous vitality. He reminds me more of E. H. Harriman
than of any other American empire builder that I have met, and like
Harriman he seems to be incessantly bound up to the telephone. He is
keen, quick, and forceful and talks as rapidly as he thinks. Almost
slight of body, he at first gives the impression of being a student for
his eyes are deep and thoughtful. There is nothing meditative in his
manner, however, for he is a live wire in the fullest American sense.
Every time I talked with him I went away with a new wonder at his stock
of world information. Men of the Jadot type never climb to the heights
they attain without a reason. In his case it is first and foremost an
accurate knowledge of every undertaking. He never goes into a project
without first knowing all about it--a helpful rule, by the way, that the
average person may well observe in the employment of his money.

If Jadot is a live wire, then his confrere, Emile Francqui, is a whole
battery. Here you touch the most romantic and many-sided career in all
Belgian financial history. It reads like a melodrama and is packed with
action and adventure. I could almost write a book about any one of its
many stirring phases.

At fourteen Francqui was a penniless orphan. He worked his way through a
regimental school and at twenty was commissioned a sub-lieutenant. It
was 1885 and the Congo Free State had just been launched. Having studied
engineering he was sent out at once to Boma to join the Topographic
Brigade. During this first stay in the Congo he was in charge of a
boat-load of workmen engaged in wharf construction. The captain of a
British gunboat hailed him and demanded that he stop. Francqui replied,

"If you try to stop me I will lash my boat to yours and destroy it with
dynamite." He had no further trouble.

After three years service in the Congo he returned to Brussels and
became the military instructor of Prince Albert, now King of the
Belgians. The African fever was in his veins. He heard that a mission
was about to depart for Zanzibar and East Afric