THE BIG BONANZA KINGS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6488, 17 May 1899, Page 4

THE BIG BONANZA KINGS.

— -» » . MORE WONDERFUL TITAN ""HE WILDEST ROMANCE. (Detroit Free Press.) ■ Notliing has so stirred the memories of the veteran gold miners of. the Pacific Coast in years as the news of the approaching marriage of Miss Virginia Fair to William K. Vanderbilt, jun. , in New York city. The several hundreds of- greyhaired men who have followed the fitful beekonings of the fickle goddess Fortune all over the gold a«id silver mining regions of the coast" for forty or more years, have clear memories of the days when young Jim Faic^r-a tattered, horny-handed, feotsore, and unkempt soldier of fortune like themselves*—lived in a redwood shanty or a. greasy tent along themselves,' washed his flannel shirt and overalls, cooked his meals of fried pork and boiled 'beans over a smoky damp fire, and worked over the gravelly benches of the California creeks for stray particles of gold. Since the information came that the younger daughter of the late James G. Fair w^ll soon marry a scion of the Vanderbilt aristocracy, and become the sister-in-law of the Duchess of xlborough, the old-time miners are iplatkig their personal reminiscences of rhe hard, bitter, early struggles of Jim Fair for a livelihood, of his extraordinary leap into multi-millions, of the influence of the several bonanza fortunes in Europe and America, and esoecially of the childhood of the prospective Mrs WiiliainK. Vanderbilt, The exact history of the achievement of the bonanza millions in the Comstock lode, is as fascinating as anything in. the most extravagant romances of Alexandre Du-' raas, or in Oriental; lore. The: account of. the rise of James G. Fair, John W. Mackav, Jameg Gi Flood and William; S. O'Brien to the possesion of tens of millions of dollars in a few years is as marvellous as one may find in any literature. From a bit of sun-baked, barren, blasted rock and earth, three miles long and having anaverage width of one-third of a mile, away up on the eastern side of Mount Davidson in Nevada, over 320*000,000^61 in silver and gold was taken out by miners between 1860 and 1879. It is the Comstock lode — a series < of ledges oi gold and silver sulphurets—and is tha richest ever known. From several of these ledges the four bonanza miners took out precious ore that in six years made them worth 137,000,000 dol. James G. Fair made over 50,000,000 dol there in eight years. John W, Mackay went to Virginia City with 800dol. When he sold out his interest in the Cornstock mines and. went to New York he had nearly 47,00Q,0Q0d0l to his credit. The faWed King Solomon's mines were not as wonderful as these of THE SAGE-BRUSH PLAINS OF. XEVADA. James G. Fair reached San Francisco ;'n the winter of 1849-50. He was eighteen years old and had come by the Isthmus of Panama with thousands of other young men to dig gold in California. Many people in San Francisco recall the poor, but strong and energetic lad as he came into the seaport settlement among the yellow sand dunes of those days. He 'was born in County Tyrone, near Belfast, Ireland, in December, 1831, of Irish peasants. With his parents and many other, children the boy came to America in 1844, and settled in a pioneer's cabin on the prairies of western Illinois. In 1848 young Jim Fair, who had grown weary of the ceaseless toil and struggle on a lonely farm, walked to Chicago. There he 'worked about the docks as a general rouseabout. When the •news of the- finding of gold in California excited the Eastern States in 1849, young Fair got to New York in some way. There as a deck hand on a Panama vessel he partly worked for and- partly paid his passage to the new goldfields. For fourteen years Jim Fair fought adversity in every form and guise in Pacific coast mining camps. • Very few young men would have stayed with so unlucky and unpromising a pursuit. Jim Fair's ten by twelve redwood shanty of one room with a little window and a hole in the slake roof for a projecting stovepipe, still stands where he occupied it for three years on the Feather River in Central California. Grizzled and decrepit miners in Calaveras County tell how Jim Fair lived in several diggings there, and what pinching economy he had to exercise to keep liimself in food during the later fifties. For three . years, the sturdy young Irish miner lived in a tent at Rough and Ready in Nevada County. Then he joined the stampede to the Frazer River goidfields in British Columbia, and he came back from there even poorer and more battered than he had gone away. It was a constant round of privations, exposure, hard work and poverty. To this day when the veteran miners recount those days of "Jim Fair's mining career they marvel at Ins persistency under- such baffling circumstances. At last when Fair turned liis attention to quartz mining he met with some success. From 1860 to 1863 he lived in the quartzmining camps near Grass Valley in Nevada County. While he lived in a shanty and was his own housekeeper and cook, he searched the mountain sides and canyons over <md over. He finally found an outcropping of pay rock. He located the Hopewell mine, and when he had blasted and pecked away the outside rock he opened the claim. But he had no capt tal- to develop it. In the summer of 1863 the property was bought for 8000dol cash And THE FAIR FORTUNE OF MILLION'S WAS BEGUN. i For three .years the miners in Nevada had been coming across the Sierras \to California with tales of the incalculable wealth there was in the mines of the Cornstock lode. Fairhad long- .had the miner's 1 restlessness to go and try his luck in the : new field. A week after he had been paid for has Nevada. County mine,, he went over the mountain ranges into Calaveras County on a visit. He had known there a family named Rooney from the North of Ireland and they bad been Ms friends in his struggles upward. There was a jolly, ambitious girl, in the family, and she and Jim had become great friends while she waited on the miners m her father's little merchandise store at Douglas Flat: She nad promised Jim to marry him when he struck it rich. Now Jim claimed his bride. ■- They were married by Father Casey A fortnight later the bride and groom started tor the Comstock at Virginia City. They made their bridal tour with a mule team aoid m a big lumber waggon, over the Placerville and Red Dog trail, two hundred miles across the mountains to Nevada All their household effects were in the back of the waggon, and their capital was in Jim's leathern belt and his skill for mining lears later, when dames G. Fair was the richest miner on earth, he used to say the days of that journey were, his happiest Jim Fair's rise in the mining operations in the great mining camp of Virginia City was fast. He was for a time boss in the underground tunnels of the Hale and Nor cross mines. He worked like a Troian His closest friend was John W. Mackay who had been born in. Dublin, Ireland but three weeks prior to Fair's birth. The' two men became mining superintendents'- and they were at last getting vp . in the world pretty fast, . They kept their eyes open when they were in the drifts and laterals underground, and never spoke except to each other about what they knew of the possibilities of- mining down there. At tlus time the two Irishmen had two common friends of Irish descent, in a little - saloon on' Washington Street, : San Francisco Ihese latter were James C. Flood and William S. O'Brien. They had profited b y the secrets that the drunken mining labourers from the Comstock had spoken in the Washington Street saloon, and were quietly investing all their earnings in mining ■ stocks. Secretly the mining fi rm o f Mackay, Fair,. Flood and O'Brien was formed in the rear of the saloon to accomplish certain' tilings when the tijm c came. . . In the fall of 1868 rumours got afloat that .. .the . ledges of pay- ore in the Comstock lode were petering out. In 1869 the four; miiies ' The Quintessence of Cinnamon nas ' i One bnen recognised as having a powerful influence over the bacilli of consumption pnd' typhoid > end further experiments resulted in the perfecting of an actual remedy for consumption" "This is Townend's Celebrated Cinnamon Cure All chemists, 2s 6d. • ' . .

there virtually became bankrupt. The great Opbir paid no dividend for seven months. The stock in the Virginia and California mines went down 300 per cent in one year. Two panics in the "San Francisco mining exchange were narrowly averted. Virginia City's population melted away and THOSE WHO REMAINED WEBB DISCONSOLATE. Mackay, Pair; Flood and O'Brien had kept- their own counsels for months. Flood and O'Brien were in San Francisco adroitly buying the depreciated shares in the California and Consolidated Virginia properties. The mining public in the city thought the ex-saloon keepers were crazy. The firm was not known in those days. For something like 80,000dol Flood and O'Brien bought for themselves and their two partners at the mines stock once worth 1,200,000 dol, and they had control of the California and Consolidated Virginia mines. On Jan. 1, 1872, Mackay, Fair, Flood and O'Brien took charge of their property. While Flood and O'Brien raised money by all sorts of financial' operations in San Francisco, Mackay and Fair prosecuted the work in the mines. For four months the costly work was done in extending laterals and sinking shafts in the once practically abandoned California and Consolidated Virginia. Outside mining operators waited_ to see ' the firm become bankrupt. Not one person in ten in Virginia City believed that Mackay and Fair knew Avhat they were about. Suddenly ore which paid 60dol to lOOdol a ton was reached. Doubters began to diminish. Three' months later the miners entered a ledge wheh assayed 150dol to me ton. The big four mining firm was now out of debt and was fast making money. In .May. 1873, a ledge 1200 ft down was reached, and for months that alone. gave the firm a net profit of over 10 : CO? 1 .:.:. day. But I.. ■''■.■ "~"~?. "-ii^e — the richest body of ore ever known — was reached on the 1300 ft level in May, 1874. It "vras a vast natural treasury of gold and silver in combination in the bowels of Mount Davidson. Miners who saw the extraordinary deposit of precious metals while the ledge was being developed, cannot yet find language to express the bewildering wealth they saw • in the rocks all about them. So fabulous did the early reports of the richness of the newly-found ledge seem to be that for a .few weeks no one outside of the men who saw for themselves put much, faith in the stories of the miners. When, however, the mint began to pay Mackay, Fair, Flood and O'Brien about 3,500,000 dpi a month the mining world on the Pacific coast went wild with excitement. Shares in the California Con solidated Virginia rose in one month from 48dol to 470d01. In another month the share were snapped up at 790d0l each. For seventeen months the bonanza ledge was worked day and night. Blocks of ore from the ledge a yard square assayed at. 250d0l and even 300dol. Many a day in 1874 the big four mining company had a net income of 25,000d01. In November, 1874, the firm's net income was over 1,600,000d0l a week. Mackay and Fair never lost their heads. In their overhauls and jumpers they worked early and late in and about the mines. They were down in the shafts, 1600 ft and 2000 ft below the surface of the L-arth, every day. A string of stories are told in Virginia City of the mistakes peoTjle from abroad used to make in taking Mackay and Fair for mining labourers. Onco, when Fair was having AX INCOME OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS EVERT DAT, he escorted a man from New York about the California mine, and without a smile received, as a reward, a silver half-dollar for his service. Mrs Fair, with her children, came down from the wooden house on Washoe Street every few days to chat with her husband at the mines. From May, 1874, to January, 1876, the California and Consolidated Virginia paid over 72,000,000d01. At one time Mackay, Fair/Flood and O'Brien had a deposit in four San Francisco banks, of 41,000,000 dol. The San Francisco Mining Journal sent "experts to see the vast treasure-bed the bonanza miners had opened in January, 1875, and they reported over 60,000,0Q0d0l in sight without expending over 10,000dol to get it worked into coin. The thousands of mining stock speculators, comprising every class of people and every human pursuit and vocation in San Francisco and California, had been awaiting the least indication from the bonanza ledges when to unload their shares on some less suspecting speculators. In June, 1875, there came rumours that the bonanzas were petering out. In July the rumours became common report. One day early in August the report was wired from Virginia City to San Francisco that no more pay .remained in the Comstock. A frightful panic ensued. The San Francisco Mining Exchange' was a. scene of SURGING, TELLING, FRANTIC MEN. The depreciation in Comstock stocks in two days was over 9,000,000d01. Sharesthat sold at 700dol each went down to 35d0l and 40dol. Several banks closed their doors, among them the great and powerful Bank of California. Many men who were rich in July, 1875, became paupers a few days later, and never after recovered their wealth. It was the blackest of Black Fridays for California. Amid the wrecks of San Francisco fortunes Mackay, Fair, Flood and O'Brien remained serene. In the anguish of the doy they were accused of having manipulated the stock market so that they made fortunes by speculations, but Mackay and Fair at least always denied it. The collapse of the stock had no effect on the working of the mines. But in April, 1876, the pay ore had so diminished that the California and Consolidated Virginia went lower. The value of the shares gradually [ lessened until 1880, when California shares j sold at Idol 90cents, and the Consolidated Virginia at Idol 60cents. At that time the I firm of Mackay, Fair, Flood , and O'Brien | had bit by>bit parted in previous years with all their: holdings in. the Comstock. In 1880 they dissolved business connection. John W. Mackay moved to' New York. James G. Fair and his family went to San Francisco in 1884. . ■ j An interesting chapter in the "history of the bonanza mining kings is that concerning tho influence of the Comstock millions in the social and political worlds in the last twenty years. Mrs Mackay has been a social queen in Paris for two decades. Miss Eva Mackay, bom in Placerville, Cal., married the Prince Colonna, ot Italy ; Clarence Mackay, born at Virginia City, married Miss Duer, of one of the most select Knickerbocker families of New York. James G. Fair spent a fortune in the Nevada Legislature and became United States Senator in 1881. While he was senator an, estrangement grew up between him and Ms wife A legal separation (by special dispensation of the Pope) was had in 1886, and Mrs Fair and her daughters, Theresa and Virginia, went to live in a superb mansion on Pine Street, near Nob Hill, in San Francisco. Senator Fair and his sons, Charles and James G , jun., made their homes at the Lick Hotel on Montgomery Street, San Francisco.