MILLER, THEODORE KLEIN. A study of the lives of successful business men leads to the impression that as a rule an early touch of financial adversity - or at least a pressure of moderate circumstances - making necessary self-denial,
proves of inestimable value in the formation of business character and the development of business ability. A personality which is strong enough to endure privation without giving place to pessimism or bitterness will usually emerge from the experience better equipped for the tasks of life than if there had been no season of trial.
The late Daniel Miller, who founded the Baltimore house of Daniel Miller and Company, was a pure "self-made" man. His
parents were poor and unable to give their son a liberal education. His father, also Daniel Miller, had emigrated from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania, where he pursued the profession of school teaching. When he became convinced that he must carve out his own fortune in the world without much aid from others, the son left his home and started in the business world to win for himself a position. He built up the firm of Daniel Miller and Company, which has since become a corporation under the name of the Daniel Miller Company, and has spread its fame from one end of the country to the other and he was chosen president of the National Exchange Bank of Baltimore.
His son, Theodore Miller, did not know in his early life the ease which is enjoyed by most sons of well-to-do parents. He received a good elementary education; but the years which might otherwise have been spent at college, had his father already at that time won great success, were instead spent in laboring in more or less humble positions for the same end toward which Mr. Daniel Miller aimed. From a junior clerkship he rose to be the head of the house which bears his father's name; and the son has not only won for himself a place among the successful self-made business men, but he has contributed very materially toward the success won by his father.
Theodore Klein Miller was born at Lovettsville, Virginia, on September 8, 1844, the son of Daniel and Mary Ann Miller. His entire school training was received at the public schools of Baltimore. After completing the grammar school course he entered the Baltimore City College, from which he was graduated in 1863, taking the first Peabody prize of one hundred dollars, and being chosen to deliver the honorary oration of his class. In September of the same year he began his business career, entering the store of his father. He had realized at the time of his entrance at the City College that he should probably have to pursue a mercantile career; and he had come to look forward eagerly to the time when he could enter business life. From the bottom round of the ladder, by perseverance, industry, and determination he worked his way up to a position of eminence in the business. As president of the Daniel Miller Company he is at the head of one of the largest wholesale dry goods houses of the South, his firm doing an annual business of between four and five millions of dollars. Both in the amount of business done, and in the extent of territory covered, the firm is steadily growing in importance.
Although the house of Daniel Miller and Company and its successor, the Daniel Miller Company, have made constant and close demands upon Mr. Theodore Miller, he has, nevertheless, found time to devote to other enterprises. He is a member of the board of directors of the Hopkins Place Savings Bank; a director in the Merchants and Manufacturers Association of Baltimore City, and president of the Merchants and Manufacturers Building and Loan Association. He is a member of the board of visitors to the Baltimore City College, and has been an active worker in the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Miller was president of the Presbyterian Association for a number of years, and in his own church he is an elder, president of the board of trustees, and superintendent emeritus of the Sunday School.
Mr. Miller was married on June 2, 1869, to Miss Mary Louisa Bradley, daughter of James H. Bradley and Lucilla S. Bradley of Fredericksburg, Virginia, who died on December 2, 1892. They had five children, all of whom are living in 1907. On April 17, 1907, he was married to Miss Grace Reid MacKenzie, daughter of Mrs. William MacKenzie of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
