The Cyclopædia of American Biography/Metz, Herman A.

METZ, Herman A., man of affairs and publicist, b. in New York City, 19 Oct., 1867, son of Edward J. and Frances Metz, both natives of Germany who came to the United States in 1848. He was born on the lower East Side whence so many self-made men have sprung, and his earliest years were marked by toil and self-sacrifice. It has always been his proud boast that after he had attained his twelfth year, he never cost his parents a penny. While attending the public schools he earned enough money selling newspapers to cover his living expenses. Shortly after he had graduated from public school No. 13, on East Houston Street, the family removed to Newark, N. J., where he attended the high school for one year. This was the extent of his educational opportunities, which it is quite likely the already keen instinct of the lad for affairs, curtailed of his own volition, for at the age fourteen, in 1881, he entered as office-boy a house of which but a few years later he emerged as the head, a position which he has held for the past seventeen years. This was the office of P. Schulze-Berge, the founder of the business which later became the corporation of Victor Koechl & Co., and later still, the Farbwerke-Hoechst Company. His father dying two years later the whole burden of the support of the family, a mother and three younger brothers at school, was thrown upon the lad. And now he began at once to show those qualities which have ever lain at the foundation of true greatness in the American man of affairs. Utter self-reliance, unswervingness, and high devotion, to principle. Ever looking forward to a full career he at once took up the study of the science of chemistry evenings at Cooper Union, the trade branch being what occupied his daytime hours. This determination to master his subject whatever it might be, has been his distinguishing characteristic through life. His career on this his first job was as has been intimated one of progressive success. As office-boy, laboratory assistant, clerk, he advanced in the practical branches to city salesman, traveling salesman, and as a real factor in expansion opened and managed a branch house in Boston and later in Chicago. In 1903, he divided the business, of which he had been in full control for several years, incorporating the firm of H. A. Metz and Company to handle the chemicals and dye-stuffs, becoming president and sole owner of both corporations. In the business of importing dye-stuffs and medicinal products from European countries he became the leading power in the trade before he was thirty-five years old. The house of H. A. Metz and Company, and Farbwerke-Hoechst Company, with main offices in New York City have branches in Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Charlotte, N. C., Montreal, Toronto, and Hamburg. A purely American enterprise in the same field which he has brought to great success is the Consolidated Color and Chemical Company, with factories at Newark, N. J. He has also lately established in Brooklyn the H. A. Metz Laboratories where certain important and essential drugs, hitherto made only in Germany, are successfully manufactured. One of the many interests outside of that business in which he laid the foundations of his great fortune is the plant called the Ettrick Mills at Auburn, Mass., devoted to the manufacture of carpets and rugs. The town of Auburn includes the village of Stoneville nearly all of whose land, buildings, water-rights, etc., belong to the Stoneville Company, of which he is the president. In his various business enterprises he employs over 2,000 people. From an early day made his home in Brooklyn and for more than a quarter of a century he took an active interest in local politics. This finally culminated in his election to Congress by a very large popular vote in 1912. Meantime his career in public affairs was full and very notable. Always a stanch Democrat he was the founder and first president of the Kings County Democratic Club of Brooklyn. Afterward he was president of the National Civic Club, the Democratic Club of Brooklyn, and a governor of the National Democratic and Reform Clubs of New York. In public affairs as in business his methods were broad-minded and expansive as soon became evident. From Mayor Van Wyck he received in 1898 an appointment on the Brooklyn School Board, and was appointed a delegate to the Board of Education of Greater New York. Mayor McClellan, in 1910, appointed him to the same office for five years. His great executive ability and great willingness to serve brought him various appointments to the public service. By Governor Dix, he was made a commissioner of the State Board of Charities for the term of eight years. From Governor Hughes came the appointment as a member of the Charter Revision Commission of New York, and President Taft made him an honorary commissioner to the American Exposition in Berlin to be held in 1910. The crown of his services to the municipality was his triumphant election to the comptrollership of Greater New York in 1906. His administration for the next four years was memorable. It was that of a highly-trained and thoroughly capable man of affairs whom the office had sought out and who liked his job. He was now so fully in the public eye that his nomination for Congress in the campaign of 1912 came unsought, and his election as a Democrat in a Republican district, of which he was not even a resident, followed as a matter of course. His strong personality and splendid record as a man of affairs and as a politician immediately brought him into notice, and he was constantly sought out for counsel on measures affecting the business of the country after the outbreak of the war. He was known in the House of Representatives as a forcible speaker whose brief, clear, pointed speeches always held attention. Personally he was very popular among his colleagues. He served with distinction on the Committee on Claims, and the Committee on Patents. Declining to run again for Congress although practically sure of re-election, he a little later declined the nomination of his party for United States Senator. On the outbreak of the war, Mr. Metz, although naturally of strongly German affiliations, both in business and social affairs, hastened to prove his fervent patriotism to the land of his birth. In every way by word and deed he stands by his country. He is a large contributor to every patriotic cause, including the Red Cross. He is one of the founders and the president of the National School Camp Association, which has given rudimentary training to 2,000 school and working boys in New York. He is a reserve officer, having served ten years in the National Guard, and in the prime of his manhood stands ready at any time to respond to his country's call. The purely philanthropic side of Mr. Metz's nature is a very large part of the man. He has the genuine instinct of the true philanthropist, combining a deep interest in all movements for the betterment of his fellows, with large benefactions to them all, irrespective of race or creed. As the common saying about him goes: “Everybody knows him, everybody relies on him, and his shoulders only seem to grow stronger under the burden.” A large part of his time, too limited for even his personal affairs, is devoted to hearing and helping the innumerable many who keep calling on him for aid and comfort. Still in his active and youthful prime, he is now devoting his attention to his large business affairs. First and foremost, of course, come the great dye-stuff, drug, and chemical enterprises which were the foundation of his business career. But his activities are so varied that they cannot be described in detail, and can only be indicated by recording the various organizations of which he is an active part. As the Brooklyn “Daily Eagle” once said of him: “He is an excellent financier, an excellent executive, an excellent judge of the capacity and character of others, and an organizer and manager of personal forces, and of business purposes probably without a superior among men of his age in this great city.” He is a member of the Aldine Club, the Academy of Political Sciences, the Army and Navy Club, the Aero Club of America, the Brooklyn Club, the Banker's Club of America, the Bibliophile Society, the Crescent Club, the City Club of New York, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, the Chemists' Club, the Drug and Chemical Club, the Engineers' Club, of Boston, the Franklin Institute, the Hanover Club, the Hardware Club, the Insurance Society of New York, the Japan Society, the League to Enforce Peace, the Municipal Art Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Manhattan Club, the Montauk Club, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Geographic Society, the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers, the National Democratic Club, the National Woolen Manufacturers' Association, the National Arts Club, the Rotary Club of New York, the Silk Association of America, the Society of Chemical Industry of London, Swiss Benevolent Society, Textile Club, Worcester Club, and very many other social commercial, political, scientific, and philanthropic organizations. He is a director of the Germania Savings Bank, and of the First National Bank, both of Brooklyn. His business affiliations included the presidency of the Manufacturers' Association of New York, director of the Merchants' Association of New York, chairman of the Committee on Inland Waterways, and a member of the committee on Tariff and Revenue Laws, so important to New York merchants in connection with foreign duties. A member of the Chamber of Commerce in the State of New York, member of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation, member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, and American Chamber of Commerce in Paris. He was chairman of the Finance Committee and director of the North American Civic League for Immigrants and vice-president (for New York State) of the National Rivers and Harbors Commission. There is scarcely any branch of human activity into which his strong hand does not reach. From Union College he received the degree of Doctor of Sciences in 1911, and from Manhattan College, the degree of Doctor of Laws in 1914. Mr. Metz is a thirty-second degree Mason, a member of Palestine Commandery, and Mecca Temple of the Mystic Shrine, and president of the Board of Trustees of the Masonic Hall and Asylum Fund. He is a member of Gilbert Council, Royal Arcanum, and Brooklyn Lodge No. 22, B. P. O. E, He is particularly proud of his military connections, being an associate member of U. S. Grant Post, and the Old Guard, and having served as captain and commissary of the Fourteenth Regiment of the National Guard of New York State. He was one of the militia officers detailed to the United States army during the manœuvers in Texas a few years ago. His personal and private character can scarcely better be described than in the words of the great journal already quoted which at the time of his candidacy for Comptroller of Greater New York said of him: “American by birth, German by descent, he is a scholarly, broajd-minded, enterprising and honorable business man. He is a friend of education, a friend of broad ethical and humane movements, and his work for schools, for parks, for playgrounds, for the uplift of the poor and of the distraught has been notable. He has done none of the fine things to his credit for any other reason than the good which has thereby come to others, by the addition of health, of opportunity, and of leisure to their lives. He has done all this without ostentation or demagogy, or any lowering considerations whatever, and wherever the results of this election may be, he will keep on the benign tenor of his life without haste and without rest. Success found him simple and sincere and has left him so. The friendships of his youth and of his manhood have been retained, augmented, and vindicated by him; his loyalty to the obligations of principle, of friendship, and of partisansiiip has been unquestionable.” As to hia temporamental characteristics he has been aptly called a human dynamo. “Restless, unresisting, irresistible energy is his, from the earliest hour till late at night. There is a tradition about New York that four hours is a long sleep for this high-strung, keen, nervously active man. His day of work is literally that of three stalwart men at constant pressure. The working hours of Metz are the extraordinary incident in business or political life today.” In manner he is frank, democratic, and easy a man who at once proclaims himself a master of men by his utter simplicity and readiness to meet any man on his own ground, and having once met him you are thereafter his friend. Besides the business enterprises mentioned he is president and director of the Textileather Company, of Newark, N. J., manufacturers of leather substitutes, vice-president of the International Alcohol Corporation of Louisiana, manufacturing ethyl-alcohol from wood-waste; president of the Grain-Chemical Company, and largely interested in the management of the Central Dye-stuff and Chemical Company, of Newark, N. J.; the General Drug Company, of New York, and a director of the Pathe Freres Phonograph Company, and president of the Ettrick Realty Company.