Maurice Sluyter has been one of the vital and successful figures in real estate operations in Grand Rapids, and his status in connection with important business activities is notably advanced by his being president of the Belmont Sand & Gravel Company, which was organized by him and which is one of the most important concerns of its kind in Michigan. Mr. Sluyter was born at Holland, Ottawa county, Michigan, April 2, 1886, and was two years of age at the time of the family removal to Grand Rapids, where he was reared to adult age and where he supplemented the discipline of the public schools by attending night school after he had become an employee in the press room of the Grand Rapids Herald. He remained with the Herald three years, and later as a skilled and efficient pressman, he was employed sixteen years in the office of the Grand Rapids Press. His ambition and progressiveness were shown in the meantime by his conducting a general store Kellogsville, seven miles south of Grand Rapids, during the last four years of his service in the press room of the Grand Rapids Press. He continued in the ownership of this mercantile establishment during a period of three years after he had given up the work of his trade, and it was within this period that he gained his initial experience in the real estate business. After selling his mercantile business he was for a time associated with one of the large real estate concerns of Grand Rapids, and finally he engaged in this line of enterprise in an independent way, with a well appointed office in the Building & Loan building. In his real estate operations Mr. Sluyter has specialized in the development and exploitation of suburban property, and his success has been in consonance with his energy, discrimination and progressive policies, with the result that he is one of the representative exponents of the real estate business in Kent county. His appreciation of the great industrial value of gravel and sand was quickened by his successful experience in the real estate business, and in 1920 he organized the Belmont Sand & Gravel Company, after promoting a substantial capitalistic and executive co-operation. He became president of the company at the time of it incorporation; E. W. Stewart is vice-president; Isaac B. Blandford is secretary and general manager, and Henry VanAalderen is the treasurer, the offices of the company being in the Building & Loan building. This company has a valuable tract of 156 acres of the best grade of sand and gravel land, has provided the best modern facilities for the handling of the products, and the output finds ready demand throughout the Michigan territory within a radius of 200 miles from Grand Rapids. Fifteen men are employed by the company and the general equipment is conceded to be the most complete and modern in the state. The business of the company has become one of most substantial order and shows a constantly cumulative tendency. Mr. Sluyter is loyal and progressive not only as a business man but also as an appreciative and public spirited citizen. He is a Republican in his political proclivities, and is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity.