The evening world. Newspaper, July 19, 1922, Page 14

THE EVENING WORLD, WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 1922. * 4", Yet C.Lee Cook, Helpless in Body) Found Both Romance and Saete 4 ————~ Has Never Walked a Step Moves Only Head and Hands Changed Poverty to Wealth Manages Factory He Built Is Inventor, Orator, Artist And Is Paid $100 an Hour As Consulting Engineer By J. W. Norwood. w York Evening World), ublishing Company HAT could you earn {f you had nothing but your brain to work witht? Most people con- sider thelr earning capacity permanently @mpaired if they lose a hand or foot. But there is a man in Louisville, By., who owns and manages a large factory which he built from the ground up; who Is an authority on law, architecture, painting, invention, mechanical engineering and several other branches of art and sciences who is a noted orator, lecturer and traveller, and who earns $100 an hour for his service as a consulting en- gineer alone—and he hes never Walked a step in his life! Charles Lee Cook 1s no ordinary tripple. His life has been one of Yomance ani honor beyond the drsams of the novelist. All his fifty-two years he has lived a life of the most strenu- ous activity while his body remained absolutely motionless with the exce| fion of a slight movement of wrists ‘and hands and the ability to move is head. A wheel chair carries ground Mr. Cook's body, but it is the (Cook brain that carries the man Itself. ‘And that brain contains the most wonderful business mind in the Ken- Rucky metropolis in the estimation of Bis fellow citizens. They have elected him to life membership in the Louts- Wille Board of Trade and in the ho tary Club. Thoy have urged him to accept nominations for Mayor of Louisville, for Congressman and for the United States Senate, none of Which he has so far accepted. Charles Lee Cook was born to that wondition ordinarily supposed to be “helpless.” He has proved himself ® more capable man than thousands of others with whole bodies and trained business brains. The bare facts connected with his leap from poverty to wealth, from an earning eapacity of $5 per week to $100 per pour, are so astounding that comment seems trivial. When a lad of four he was taken to @ little country school near Lafay- ette, Ind., where he received the only schooling from teachers and school books he has ever had, When seven years of ago he had to stop school. But books and men and !deas have been his constant companions ever since, He educated himself with these and now institutions of learning are proud to honor him for his broad culture. In 1907 he did take a partial law course at the University of Louis- ville—got a start in the knowledge of law that now brings him Invitations to lecture to bar associations in various states. Handicapped by inability to give physical expression to his ideas, Mr. Cook ly began to think with deep purpose, ‘Thinking was all that he could do. And thought evolved some stnall {n- ventions which turned his keen mind in the direction of mechanical engi- neering. A little machine shop in an old stable became his constant “thinking place’ for twelve years. A faithful negro servant who had cared for him from infancy, together with gome boy companions, eagerly acted as arms and legs for that remarkable mind they had come to believe could solve any mystery or puzzle. ‘The little shop in a stable has since become e great factory, employing Bint, Owns nd Manages Fact ory Charles Wrote two Books on Arcnitecture and Art — ° hundreds of men on a payroll of $2,500 a, we ©. Lee Cook Manufacturing Company, producing metallic packing, which is used throughout the world. It ts the Coox improvements and the Cook patents and the Cook tions that have made it famous. Mr. Cook is Pres!- dent, Treasurer and manager of the plant Sometimes Mr, Cook will smile over his early les during those twelve years n his pecuniary compensation averaged about $5 4 week for the odd suggestions he would make io avlve the ixoubles of : wry if f ede Big se others. For now, although all sorts of ducting it. He has designed many people still bring their troubles to him, machines and has personally super- his time is more valuable. intended large construction work. He ‘A few months ago one of the largest has designed and erected big buildings manufacturers of a certain soft drink and industrial plants. fountain which may be seen In thou. In 1914 he designed and superin- sands of drug stores throughout the tended the construction of a creosot~ land to-day, came to consult him asa !ng plant at Brunswick, Ga. cov~ mechanical engineer. The fountain ering nine acres and requiring over seemed perfect except in one small 160 carloads of material and equip- particular—it wouldn't work aa in- ment, It has been pronounced the tended. Tinest in the United States. It was “Gentlemen, my time {s too valu- 80ld to and operated by the American able to let you consume any of it in Creosoting Company, talking,” sald Mr. Cook, “I charge _ $0 successful has Mr. Cook been in $100 an hour and cannot promise you business affairs that he recently de- that I will be able to rectify the dim- Clined a position that carried with it culty. I can only do my best." a salary of $40,000 a year, When he His caller eagerly accepted the Was urged for the U. 8. Senate he de- offer, for ho knew C. Lee Cook's best clined on the ground that his business was the court of last res ved large contracts with the U. 8. In five hours Mr, Cook solved the Government, growing out of war aimoulty by Inventing a little addition Needs. His lawyers told him his to the fountain, He received his peculiar relations with the Govern= check for $500. rent, to which he had turned over his A few Woeks afterward the manu- factory during the war, were such that tacturer returned to have Mr. Cook Ro man could possibly criticise him for going to the Senate while retaining his connection with his company. ‘That was the best $500 Tever in- But C. Lee Cook's ideas on politics, vested in my life,"? he told the en- like his ideas on many other things, gineer. “Your invention has already are tiluminating. He told his lawyers meant a cool $100,000 to my factory!" and political friends he could not af- This story is cypical of the crip- ford to g've away his business and pled engincer's dally life. But Mr, 80 long as ho was connected with it and its Government contracts so long sign a waiver of his rights on the little invention. Cook has just certain hours for being an engin During those hours he did he feel he must decline all office, forks at the profession. During other ‘But gentlemen,"’ he sald, "I be- hours he manages his huge plant. lieve that every citizen should be suc- During other hours he Is a constructor cessful in business before accepting as well as engineer, In } th he office of any kind. After has ys he worked sixt hours a day laid by all the money he needs, as I developing his business have, I believe it is his duty to spend Now he Works seyentecn hours con. the latter years of bis Life in some service to the country that has given him all he has. I want to do that— in public office too if that Is possible. But here and now I want you to know that no party, no set of poll- ticlans, no group of even my personal friends, need waste their time telling me what to do if you ever send me to Congress. elect me Mayor or give me any other office.’ In his factory Mr, Cook sits like a Buddha directing the destinies of a little world. He thinks and direc Willing hands carry out his or His employees all love him, He hasn't an enemy in the world, They know him as justice personified. If there is trouble or dissatisfaction—they come directly to him He allows no profanity. If a man mistreats his wife, he gets the worst possible punishment—a lecture from “C, Lee." And “C, Lee’ is sure to hear from any domestic squabble among his employees, for the wive bring him their troubles to adjust— and the children too, According to Mr. Cook a man must be well paid and efficient to work for him. Do- mestic trouble, drink, profanity and debt impair a man’s efficiency—so he won't permit these things. Often women with tears in their eyes come to thank him for what he has done in making real men out of their men, “It's just a little matter of human mechanics— ot Ald ing," he says modestly. As @ throplist, C. Lee Cook has a lot of trouble hiding his light under a bush- el. He is perhaps the most loved white man among negroes in Louisville, though a Democrat in politics But it is in his home life that this remarkable man {s most remarkable Here he Is, the devoted husband of a beautiful wife, who is an accomplished horsewoman, Here he is the artist, the art collector, @ historian, whosq f 4 jan Mrs .Chariles Lee COONS: 5 fen perry knowledge of American history 1s seo- ond to no man’s, Here he writes and paints. Ho 1s now dictating a work on architecture and travel and history in several volumes for which an eager publisher waits. It deals with the lives of twenty of the world’s most famous h the slight movement nature has allowed his hands he paints in oils, water colors and with crayons. An old river man offered him $5,000 for one of his paintings of a famous boat steamine up the Ohio but was refused. 1’e knows the philosophies of ancient Greece and Rome and all their great writers. And he has travelled and painted in those countries and many others, His reproductions of the masterpieces of the twenty great artists wh s he is writing are said by competent art critics to be re- markable for their likeness to the So versatile is the great mind that dwells in the helpless body of C. Lee Cook that even many of his fellow townsmen who have known him intt- mately for years have never plumbed all its depths. No greater honor could be given one of them, however, than to be known as a friend of Cook the neer, Cook t rilst, Cook the ufacturer or Cook the man of ness in about seventeen trades rofessions, of which he {s master en) ms bu: an mentally and which he can have physicaNy executed by his employees at any time he desires Centre College conferred the degree of maste arts upon him elght although he was not a : He {s Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Presby- terian Church, of which he {s a mem- ber. He is Chairman of the Board of Patrons of the Louisville School of Art. When the Old Kentucky Home Commission, which the Legislature charged with making a public shrine of the place where the State's famous song, "My Old Kentucky Home," was written, wanted a law enacted {t was he who wrote it on the statute books, The Legislature just paksed tt, Nobody knows to-day just what ©. Lee Cook {s worth in money, Bue Louisville wouldn't part with him for many millions. He numbers his iends around 294,000 there—this ig the population of Louisville, —]