D.M. STEVENSON
CHIEFLY associated in the view of the public with the
municipalization of the Glasgow tramways, the inauguration of municipal
telephones and district libraries, the consolidation of the municipal finances,
and the running of a pioneer "labour colony" at Midlocharwoods, Ex-Bailie
Stevenson is a man of many strenuous interests and enthusiasms. He was born in
Glasgow in 1851, and educated at the Secular School in Carlton Place. After a
dozen years in the office of a shipbroker and coal exporter - the last seven as
a full partner - he began a coal-exporting business of his own at the age of
twenty-eight, and for nearly twenty years that business has been the largest of
its kind in Scotland. From an early period he had decided and definite views as
to the possibilities of municipal government, and to farther these views he
entered the Town Council in 1892 as member for the Eleventh Ward. In 1896 when
the wards were rearranged, he was elected for Woodside, and of that ward he has
since remained a representative. As a town councillor he has been a chief means
of furthering many municipal schemes regarding which he was enthusiastic, and
has seen them attain success. There is probably no more active and conscientious
administrator of the public interests of the city, and he has filled all the
grades of the magistracy up to that of senior bailie with success. Mr. Stevenson
has travelled much abroad. On one occasion he made a special tour to study the
farm colonies of Germany and Holland, and contributed the results of his
observations to the columns of the Glasgow Herald. He is also a frequent writer
in the correspondence columns of that paper on burning questions of the hour.
His father, Mr. John Stevenson, Engineer, is still hale and
hearty, although in his 87th year, and his brother is the well-known artist, R.
Macaulay Stevenson.