A MILLIONAIRE PLUNGER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3003, 4 October 1911, Page 85

A MILLIONAIRE PLUNGER.

Mr John W. Gates, who died m August, was (says the Daily Telegraph) noted as a spectacular American financier, but he lacked the qualities of conserva-. tism, breadth, and intrinsic worth necessary to secure him permanent fame. He began life as a farmer's boy in the "wild and woolly" west, and throughout his career was meteoric, adventurous, exciting. He was sometimes making millions, : at others losing them. He was a financier of the swashbuckler type, always on the hunt for dollars, working hard and playing hard, never too particular in his fortunemaking methods. He leaves a fortune estimated to be worth at least £6,000,000. Probably J. W. Gates was the most picturesque plunger who ever entered Wall street, and in his spare moments he shot pigeons, bred racehorses, and betted on anything and everything. Once he kept a small ironmonger's shop in Illinois; then he branched out as a salesman to a barbed ■wire firm, receiving £5 per week. Young Gates soon mastered the barbed wire business, and started an opposition firm of his own in St. Louis. This was the beginning of his fortune, and Mr Gates's financial operations were soon on such a colossal scale that he could "hardly keep up with himself." His biographers in the American papers describe him as a shrewd speculator daring operator, and enterprising Stock Exchange trader. To tell the unvarnished truth, he was a financial gambler of the "most reckless, plunging type. Mr Gates was best known by his own countrymen as "Bet-you-a-million Gates." This title he first gained when he offered to wager £200,000 on a horse race with Mr John Drake, his partner. Betting with Gates was a mania which he practised in season and out of season. It

is recorded how once, when travelling in a Pullman oar, he and a companion watched two raindrops trickling and zigzagging down the window-pane. "That's my drop," said Gates, indicating his selection. "I'll race him against the field for £SOO even money." Gates's raindrop won easily. "Plunger" Gates, as everybody called him, stopped at nothing in the way of wild, brazen speculation. Even his best friends admit that he was relentless and unscrupuloais, uncouth in manner, and blasphemous in speech. He gambled at everything—cards, billiards, trap-shooting, horses, cotton, grain, and. coffee. Mr Pierpont Morgan did not like Gates and his bluff western way. Gates's part in effecting the formation of the Steel Trust did not lessen Mr Morgan's aversion. Gates expected a place on the board of the giant trust; he thought he was entitled to it as president of the Illinois Steel Company. But. Mr Morgan vetoed this ambition,:; he did not consider Gates a fit person. v / Revenge came in part when Gates gathered in the Louisville and Nashville railroad over night from the Belmont family, and compelled Mr J. P. Morgan to take it off his hands' at a profit of between £1,000,000 and £2,000,000. After that historic coup Wall street had greater respect for the new millionaire from the west. On the exchanges his campaigns were always spectacular. In 1903 the firm of Charles Gates and Go. was carrying on margin £15,000,000 worth of stocks. Most of this was for Mr J. W. Gates. The market had been bulled until it would bull no more. The banking element suddenly presented a hostile front. Mr Gates scented the calling in of his loans, so he sold every share of his speculative holdings in one session, causing a slump of over 10 points. In istriking a balance he found that he had lost £1,600,000, which he acknowledged, without reserve. 'i