Fifty years in Wall Street
magnificent estate at South Great Barrington, in Massachusetts.
We come now to the famous mining princes of the Pacific Slope. The
discovery of gold in California, and of the rich deposits of the
precious metal elsewhere on the Pacific Slope, led not merely to the
accumulation of vast individual fortunes; it sent the currents of new
life humming through the veins, so to speak, of the entire country; it
stimulated trade; it awakened new life; it gave a tremendous impulse to
a thousand industrial enterprises; it sent the Republic forth as a
conquering hero of commerce, leveling all obstacles and laughing at
difficulties; tunneling mountains, building railroads whose very rails
seem to catch a golden gleam from the rich traffic; spanning great
rivers with majestic bridges, building ships and steamers; setting vast
manufactories to awake the solitude of primeval forests with the thunder
of machinery, the ringing of hammers and the thousand voices of labor;
building villages, towns and cities with such marvelous rapidity as to
suggest the touch of the magical wand of genii. With the treasure taken
from her bosom nature herself was subdued; an electric thrill stirred
the older centres of population as it led the new sections, and the
Republic has ever since, regardless of those periodical reactions known
as panics, kept its onward march in fulfillment of that far-sighted
prophecy that the star of empire takes its way to the West, and that on
the broad stage of the American Continent the Anglo-Saxon race will win
far greater triumphs than it has ever achieved in its amazing career
since it sprang from the barbarism of the Northern wilds of Europe to
take its proud station as the dominant family on this globe. The rich
gold mines, and later the great silver mines, have given this country a
feverish dream of speculation, in which gigantic fortunes have been
amassed. The richest deposit of silver in Nevada, if not in the world,
was the Comstock lode on the east side of Mount Davidson, in Storey
county, and partly under the towns of Virginia and Gold Hill. At one
time its ores contained one-third in value of gold and two-thirds of
silver. The lode has been traced on the surface some twenty-seven
thousand feet, and has actually been explored about twenty thousand
feet, within which space most of the larger mines are located. The lode
has been opened to the depth of about twenty-two hundred feet. The
various mines on this lode have given a total return, it is estimated,
of some three hundred millions of dollars.
One of the most famous of the bonanza magnates is John W. Mackay. His
rise to financial power reads like a romance, and yet his astounding
success was by no means attained as by turning over a hand. He believed
in the richness of the bonanza field; he and a number of associates
purchased the controlling interest in the corporations which owned it.
Then began the grand hunt for the ore body. Others had tried to find it,
but had given it up in despair. The idea that the property was worth
working was laughed to scorn. The men who believed in it persisted in
spite of all discouragements, which were many; they spent about half a
million in prospecting. They made in 1875, after long and trying
efforts, the famous strike which astounded the business world, and
stirred up a speculative fever which did not die out for years. This
plain, quiet, unpretending financier was born in the humblest
circumstances in Dublin, Nov. 28, 1835, and is consequently in his 52nd
year. He came to this country very early in life, and as a boy worked
for Wm. H. Webb, the once famous shipbuilder of New York. In 1852 he
went with a party to California, sailing in one of the ships of his
former employer. It has been said that previous to this he kept a liquor
saloon in Louisville. Like so many others, however, he caught the gold
fever, and on arriving in California he immediately engaged in placer
mining in Sierra county of that State. He met with the usual
vicissitudes of fortune, but at last a fair degree of success rewarded
his untiring efforts, and he thereupon went to Virginia City, Nevada,
and started a tunnel in what was called the Union ground, north of the
Ophir mine. The speculation was disastrous. He lost all he possessed,
but he was not conquered. He secured work as a timber man in the Mexican
mine, and he engaged also as a miner, swinging the pick and shovel, and
little dreaming that this would be told as an interesting circumstance
in a career which was to be successful beyond his wildest hopes. He
labored industriously; he saved his money, and he watched his
opportunities, which very few people do. He got his first important
start in connection with the Kentuck mine in Gold Hill, but he had
frequent fluctuations of fortune until finally, in 1863, he formed a
mining co-partnership with J. M. Walker, a brother of a former Governor
of Virginia, and subsequently the firm was strengthened by the addition
of Messrs. Flood, O’Brien, and Fair. The firm struck their first great
success in 1865-67 during their control of the Hale & Norcross mine.
Later came the celebrated California and Consolidated Virginia mines,
the wonders of the mining world. He was married in 1867 to the daughter
of Daniel Hungerford. Hungerford, by the way, was a Canadian, who came
to New York many years ago and lived in West Broadway, where he followed
the occupation of a barber. When the Mexican war broke out he enlisted,
and at the close of that war he returned to his family and his previous
occupation. When the famous Colonel Walker raised a force in New York
for the invasion of Nicaragua, Hungerford, who seems to have been of an
adventurous spirit, enlisted, and barely escaped the fate of Walker and
those of his force who were captured and shot by the Nicaragua
authorities. He escaped by fleet running, and again returned to his
family and tonsorial profession, dying soon after his return. His
daughter married a physician, with whom she went to Nevada. He died and
left her in reduced circumstances. With the open-handed generosity
characteristic of the financiers of the Pacific Slope, a number of
wealthy gentlemen, learning of the circumstances, started a
subscription, to which Mr. Mackay made a large contribution. She called
to thank him, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into mutual
attachment, whose happy consummation was their marriage a few years
later. Mrs. Mackay, during the last few years, has resided for the most
part in Paris and London, where she has lived on a scale of magnificence
which has dazzled and astounded foreigners. Mr. Mackay himself has
apparently little inclination for social triumphs; he is well liked
wherever he is known for his quick, genial manners, but seems to avoid
publicity. He alternates, for the most part, between New York and San
Francisco. In New York his office is at the Nevada Bank, in which he is
a large stockholder, owning, in fact, half of the stock. In recent years
he has become largely interested in a cable line to Europe, started in
opposition to other well-known lines. His fortune is estimated at twenty
millions. Mr. Mackay’s step-daughter was married a few years ago to the
Prince of Colonna, who belongs to one of the most ancient and wealthy
families of the nobility of Italy.
James C. Flood was once a poor boy of New York city, now he is worth
more millions than can exactly be told. He went to San Francisco in
1849, poor and friendless, and in company with the late W. S. O’Brien,
opened a liquor saloon, where he sold whiskey at 12½ cents a glass. He
drew the liquor from casks piled one upon another. In those early days
of the future queen of the Pacific Slope there were no gorgeous saloons
with tesselated marble floors, a dazzling stretch of costly mirrors, and
a gallery of rare pictures. Such resorts as Flood’s, in the slang of the
day, were termed “gin mills,” and in the man who drew whiskey from the
casks rather than tendering a heavy cut glass decanter, it would have
been difficult for the most fanciful to have recognized the future
famous man of millions. He made money and went into mining stocks. The
first great mining speculation in which Flood, with his partner,
O’Brien, embarked was in 1862, in Kentuck and the stocks of other mines
on the Comstock lode. Then they went heavily into Hale & Norcross, one
of the old time favorites. They were generally successful in these
operations, but a crowning and dazzling triumph awaited them. In
February of 1874 there were whispers that the Consolidated Virginia,
which had caused a furore some ten years previous, but had fallen off
materially, and the newer mine, the California, would soon develop rich
bodies of ore. Flood and his partners, who owned these mines, became
certain of this prospective bonanza in the following winter, and early
in 1875 came the announcement of the discovery of the fabulous ore
bodies which made the name of the Comstock lode known round the world,
and lifted the owners of the celebrated mines at once into wealth so
enormous as to make the extravagances of the Arabian Nights seem tame.
The establishment of the Nevada Bank was the idea of Mr. Flood, who is
said to possess a natural aptitude for finance. He became president of
the bank and a large stockholder in it. He is a man of compact robust
build, five feet nine inches in height, with quiet, courteous manners,
and of an energetic, self-reliant and industrious disposition. He has
had a remarkable rise, but has shown himself equal to the surprising
good fortune which has attended his strange career.
It is of interest to recall the fact that the original Comstock
syndicate, most of whom derived such enormous wealth from the Comstock
lode, was composed of Messrs. Mackay, Flood, O’Brien, Fair and Walker.
Soon after these gentlemen became associated in their great enterprises,
Walker sold out his share of one-fifth to Mackay, for a very small
consideration, and this consequently gave that gentleman an interest of
two-fifths, against the one-fifth share held by each of the three others
in the firm, a fact which accounts for Mackay’s greater wealth. Walker,
one of the original parties in interest, afterward not only lost in
mining and other speculations the amount which Mackay had paid him for
his share, but all his other means, and was, in fact, completely
beggared, and died in an asylum for paupers. He had experienced dramatic
vicissitudes of fortune. He ought to have been worth fully twenty
millions of dollars. He died without a penny.
W. S. O’BRIEN.
W. S. O’Brien was associated with Mackay, Flood and Fair in developing
mines on the Comstock, and died in 1878, enormously wealthy. He was born
in New York, went to San Francisco in the early days of the gold
excitement, and at first kept a liquor saloon with Flood. He gradually
engaged in mining speculations, and ultimately met with such success
that he died famous as one of the bonanza kings. It is an interesting
circumstance that four Irishmen secured the lion’s share of the bonanza
millions, and they were all born poor. The harp of Tara’s halls never
was struck to so strange a roundelay as this.
JAMES G. FAIR.
James G. Fair is another of the bonanza kings who has had an interesting
career. He was born Dec. 3d, 1831, near Belfast, Ireland. He came to
this country with his parents in 1843 and settled in Illinois. He
received a thorough business education in Chicago, and at the same time
devoted considerable attention to scientific studies. On the breaking
out of the gold fever in 1849 he removed to California, settling at