PEOPLE OF THE PERIOD

Southland Times, Issue 19290, 30 July 1921, Page 8

PEOPLE OF THE PERIOD

PEN PORTRAITS OF PROMINENT PERSONALITIES. (By Criticue.} o G No. 75. A FIGHT PROMOTER. In these dirtant shores the principals- oi the recent world’s heavy-weight championship fight at New Jersey are the only people connected with the argument about whom very much is known. The records, the weights and peculiarities of both Dempsey and Carpentier have been the subject of much newspaper publicity, but very little has been revealed of the life and doings of the man who staged the battle and reaped golden profits from it—George Lewis Rickard. To the American public he is known familiarly as Tex Rickard, a nickname that is the direct result of some of his earlier achievements. Tex Rickard was born in Kansas City,Mo., on January 2, 1871. His family were Illinois pioneers. His father was a millwright and moved to the Panhandle of Texas when the future promoter of prizefights was a small child. At twelve years Tex found himself alone and cast on his own resources in the bigbest State in the Union. More than that, he had a widowed mother, two brothers and three sisters to support. He could ride and throw a rope, like all Texas boys of twelve and up, and he turned to the universal calling of cowpunching. Those were the days when cattle from Texas and Old Mexico were being trailed to Dodge City, Kan., for shipment East and to Indian reservations in the North-west for sale to the government. Tex took two trips along the north trail, with big herds that were sold in Montana. That is, they were sold if they came through the besetting items of thirst, storms, quicksands and cattle rustlers. To get an idea of the hardships and dangers of the great north trail from Texas in those days, one has only to read "The Log of a Cowboy,’’ by Andy Adams, a truthful, straightforward, appealing account of a trip along the highway of the beef steer, written by one 1 who lived the life and remembered it with singular vividness. In 1886 Rickard was with an outfit that wintered 13,000 head of cattle, in three herds, in Montana. When spring came, less than 1000 had survived the blizzards. Tex drifted back to the State for which he had been nicknamed, and in 1892 the citizens of Henrietta, a brisk little town in the Panhandle, elected the youth marshal. Two years later Rickard resigned and hit north for Alaska, lured by certain rumours of wealth to be won in the mining game. When the Klondike gold rush started, Rickard was at Circle City, 300 miles away. With the rest of the population of Circle City, Tex rushed to the gold fields. He staked out claims from which he secured £lO,OOO, though that comparatively small amount was not secured until after months of hardship. "I often look back and wonder how* we went through the life on the trail,” said Rickard the other day. Many a time I have put a 100-pound pack on my back and started out through the snow. It was killing work, but we got through it somehow.” With the money from the sale of his ■Dawson interests—which interests developed more than £60,000 for their purchasers —Rickard opened a gambling house, the Northern, in that hectic camp. For awhile he was ahead of the game, but eventually he lost everything—simply because Tex ran a "square game,” as his friends have it. No bitterness tinges Rickard’s talk when he touches on this part of his career. "I simply learned some things,” he has since said. Among the men with whom Rickard was thrown in contact at that time was a stalwart young collegian named Rex Beach. They were both broke, and together they sawed wood at Rampart, in the winter of 1898, to supply the river steamers. A few years later Rex Beach, in writing his Alaska novel, "The Spoilers,” put his friend, Tex Rickard, into the book as the Broncho Kid, "the world’s greatest fistic promoter.” When Nome began to scintillate on the map as Dawson City had done, Tex Rickard w&s one of the first on the scene, and with a stake which he had accumulated, opened another gambling house, which, like the one he opened at Dawson, and like the one he was to open later at Goldfield, he called The Northern. He was elected to the first city council, and was the youngest member of that assemblage. Mining excitements had an irresistible appeal, and when Goldfield brought Nevada out of its long somnolence, Rickard was among those present immediatelj r after the christening. His ’Northern was one of the chief centres of activity in a town that never did believe much in the rest cure, and when a Commercial Club was formed the counsel of Tex Rickard was often sought and respectfully listened to. When the club was casting about for something which would advertise Goldfield as it never had been advertised before, Rickard suggested staging a prize-fight— not the kind that was usually put on in mining camps—but a real championship affair. "I had in mind a fight between McGovern and Britt,” said Rickard. “I did not know how much we ought to offer for a purse, but I suggested thirty thousand dollars (£6ooo)—a sum far greater than fighters were used to receiving in those days. I went out on the rtreet and asked a few of my friends if they would get in on the guarantee. One by one they said: ‘Put me down for five thousand,’ until I had fifty thousand dollars (£10,000) guaranteed in that way.” The offer, coming to McGovern’s manager from an unknown person named Rickard in a Far Western mining camp, was hailed on Broadway as a joke and was not even answered. Richard then got in touch with Joe Gang and Battling Nelson, whose sense of humour did not prove to be so exag gerated. It is true that it required a display of the £6009 in newly minted gold pieces before the manager of Nelson conquered his lurking scepticism, but the fight was eventually arranged, Goldfield was advertised as it had never been advertised before and the name of Tex Rickard began to creep into the great American household. It is estimated that seven of the fights that Tex Rickard has promoted since that day have drawn more than £200,000. The Johnson-Jeffries fight, which he had to shift quickly from California to Nevada when an unexpected anti-prizefighting decision closed the former State to him, brought in a total of nearly £56,000. The Dempsey-Willard fight at Toledo brought in £90,500 and the Willard-Moran fight in New j York City was worth something over £30,000. His success with the bout in Goldfield did not imbue Rickard with a sudden determination to make fight promoting his business. He had done his trick for the good of Goldfield and it had proved a success, and he wus willing to let it go at that. It was only after earnest solicitation that he promoted the boutd immediately succeeding that first affair, in which he was so much of a "tenderfoot” that he admits he was the most surprised man in the world when correspondents from newspapers in other cities began flocking to town and besieging the promoter for interviews. It seems as if apparently insurmountable ob stacks merely offer mental •’ ulation to Tex Rickard. He has le:> d Madison Square Carden for ten years, • nd for the first time in the history of th a; time-hon-oured institution, he has taken steps to make it pay re urns in summer. The project of a swimming pool in the Garden has been talked of many times. Individuals and corporations with unlimited capital have been a most at the point of going ahead with the construction of such a pool, but the cost has frightened them off. Tex Rickard has gone ahead where others dared not. He is having the greatest concrete

swimming pool in the world constructed in the arena of Madison Square Garden. He is installing the necessary machinery to make it the most peffeet as well m the largest of pools. This enormous burden of work has come on him in the thick of his burden of detail resulting from the Demp-sey-Carpentier fight. Carrying on either one of those enterprises is a man-sized job, but Tex Rickard is putting them through together, and thinks nothing of it. Prizefight promoting, with ell its Mtendent profits, has not caused Tex Rickard to forget his first love, the cattle business. Ho declares that there is no song pletuinter than the creak of saddle leather. Rut though he is still in the cattie "game” it is not ai a hired h»nd, as it was in the aid days of the long trails out of 'Texas. Rick, ard ia a partner in huge stock-raising enterprises in South America. He has a ranch in Paraguay, in a vast tract known as the Chaco. This ranch contains mote than 4,000,000 acres, being almost as large as the State of New Jersey. Mr and Mrs Rickard have been all over it, camping just as Tex used to camp in the sagtbruah in the Wert. Big financiers are the backers of this enormous project, and Tex Rickard is general manager. The Paraguayan Government has granted a concession for a meat treating and chilling plant—part of a scheme for cheap and profitable handling of beef products close to the source of supply. Probably a large, share of Rickard's success is due to the fact that he is actually interested in any one who talks with him. It is stated that he can tlirn away from his desk, piled high with letters containing thousands of dollars in cheques, and indulge in reminiscence as whole-heartedly. as if the financial affairs of the moment were of no consequence. He is never hurried, never abrupt, and if anything ruffles his temper he seldom shows it in voice or manner. He is quiet-spoken, but is by no means reserved, especially among his friends of old days. He talks freely and is unreserved in the good judgments he n asses upon men. The bad judgments he leaves to other?. He shows little trace of the hardships he his gone through—hardships which he says he would hesitate to face again. “I am mighty fond of hunting,” he said, when asked about his favourite recreation. “I like to fish, too. I have hunted in all parts of th! world, and have taken all sorts of chances against big game. The worst chances I took were in Alaska, when I had to go out and hunt in order to get enough to eat. I have htlnted bear in Alaska when it was a case of kill at the firtt shot Or get killed. The bears there are not safe to fool with." Though Rickard has been the biggest flggure among promoters of pugilism, he shrinks from appearing in public. He refereed the Jeffries-Johnson fight, at the earnest solicitation of everybody concerned, .-nd according to his friends not even eicepting the loser on that famed occasion, he was the most miserable man in the ring. Such ia the man who came out of the Wild West to achieve a feat in showmanship which more experienced men had declared impossible—the promotion of a single affair which would attract approximately a million dollars to the box-omce. But. as one of his old-time intimates put it: "They don’t nickname ’em Tax out there if they are just ordinary hombreys ”