Asheville Shut-In Conducts Business Over Phone from His Bed, Dec. 17, 1925

Asheville “Shut In” Cheats the Doctors. . . Given Six Months to Live, He Goes Into Business for Himself

A man may be down, but he’s not out until he gives up. At any rate, that is the philosophy of M.S. White, 29 Baird Street, who five years ago was given six months to live by attending physicians and who now conducts a prosperous radio business from his bedside.

Mr. White is a graduate of Georgia Tech, where he took a course in mechanical and electrical engineering. Following his schooling he worked in various cities and 10 years ago he suffered a physical breakdown. He remained at home, Mebane, for a time, and later went out into Arizona and Colorado for a time seeking a cure for tuberculosis, which he had contracted.

He believed himself cured and returned to his work at his home only to break down completely five years ago. The physicians gave him six months to live. Mr. White then came to Asheville and, to occupy his time, he took a correspondence school sales course. He began to sell various articles, such as phonographs, automobile accessories, flour, and other commodities from his room. He was successful and now has gone into business for himself.

By his bed is a telephone stand on which sits a telephone and a small portable typewriter. Here Mr. White outlines his business program and interviews his prospects for sale of radio sets by telephone. He handles all correspondence in his work and has two assistants who set up the outfits for him after he had dug up prospects and sold them.

He even conducts demonstrations of radio with the set that is at his bedside to those who sometimes go to his room and quite often, he said, he lets his prospect listen in to the program of the radio set over the telephone.

Mr. White is strictly a business man in his transactions, but has one weakness, that of sympathy for fellow shut-ins, and to these he furnishes radio sets at cost, he said, because he realizes that their lives are not particularly bright. Mr. White never leaves his room and rarely his bed, he said, and he believes that it is his work that has enabled him to “cheat the doctors.”

From the front page of The Concord Daily Tribune, Thursday, Dec. 17, 1925

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