Business and Later Political Career
McCullough's political activity went alongside maintaining and developing an instrument making and retail music business in Belfast’s Howard Street, generated from his original trade as a piano tuner. F.J. Biggar, the solicitor antiquarian and friend of Roger Casement, encouraged its growth with orders for bagpipes for his boy bands. In time, after he moved to Dublin, this became McCullough Pigott of Suffolk Street and marked the beginning of a highly successful and influential Free State business career.
McCullough distinguished himself (inspired by Michael Collins) in forming the New Ireland Assurance Company. A director of Clondalkin Paper Mills, he also had a role in the Irish Army School of Music, and the Gate Theatre. While in America as Special Commissioner for the Free State (leaving his wife in charge of the music business) his new premises in Dawson Street were entirely destroyed by an Anti-Treaty IRA land mine as a reprisal, during the Irish Civil War.
He was an unsuccessful Sinn Féin candidate at the 1918 general election for the Tyrone South constituency. On 20 November 1924, McCullough stood as the Cumann na nGaedheal candidate at a by-election in the Donegal constituency, following the resignation of Cumann na nGaedheal TD Peter Ward. He was elected to the 4th Dáil Éireann, but did not stand again at the next general election, held in June 1927.
Read more about this topic: Denis McCullough
Famous quotes containing the words business, political and/or career:
“Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.”
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915)
“To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property is like cutting off the hands. To refuse political equality is like robbing the ostracized of all self-respect, of credit in the market place, of recompense in the world of work, of a voice in choosing those who make and administer the law, a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)