DARIUS OGDEN MILLS.

 

            DARIUS OGDEN MILLS was a financier of the most perfect type. He was a forty-niner, I believe, and had a little money when he reached San Francisco. He went to California with the idea that as California was a land of gold, it was every man's duty to get as much of that gold as he honestly could. We say honestly could, for Mr. Mills was an honest man, often a coldly honest man.

            Reaching San Francisco, his eyes turned naturally to such commercial and financial news as was then available. Southern California mines -- mines south of the San Francisco parallel -- were sending up much gold, and he went to them, bringing up, I think, at or near San Andreas. He probably brought with him a stock of miners' goods and opened a little store, but of this I am not sure. When I first heard of him it was as a gold dust buyer and banker. Gold is worth $20.67 per ounce, when pure, but gold dust is not quite pure, and ordinary California dust generally sold at from $16.50 to $18 per ounce when unalloyed ; on the east side of the Sierra, it was alloyed with silver and brought from $11 to $13 per ounce.

            I believe that buyers expected to clear about $2 per ounce, and when two or three hundred miners came in on Saturday night or Sunday morning with the dust they had mined the previous week, from three ounces to thirty and forty ounces each, the man who purchased the dust was doing fairly well.

            When the cream of the placers was skimmed Mr. Mills removed to Sacramento and opened a bank, continuing the purchase of gold dust. The stages and pack animals brought it in from all sections of the state from Siskiyou to Mariposa.

            Mr. Mills quickly made a state-wide reputation as a far-sighted business man and safe and high-minded banker.

            Many people have wondered that the big four who built the old Central Pacific railroad did not enlist and include D. O. Mills.

            I know nothing of the facts, but think I understand per-

DARIUS OGDEN MILLS. 57

fectly why such a thing would have been impossible at the time.

            Careful business men looked upon the scheme of building a railroad over the Sierra as impossible, and if possible utterly impractical, for what was there beyond but the desert?

            It seemed that way to Huntington and Hopkins, but they did have a hope of building to Dutch Flat, then by connecting with their toll road to Truckee, to make a fortune.

            With Stanford it was different. Stanford, when young, never discounted native land, nor the possibilities that might quickly materialize into accomplished facts.

            When W. C. Ralston was organizing the California bank he wanted a president that would give dignity and strength and character to the new institution, and he chose Mr. Mills, who accepted the place. It had become a commanding financial institution, when Mr. Sharon wired from Virginia City that the thing the Comstock needed was a real bank, and Ralston wired him back to "come to San Francisco and we will talk it over."

            The result was the establishment of the branch bank in Virginia City, with Sharon in charge.

            There had been some petty banks that had loaned their money at five per cent per month, which the borrowers could not pay. Their property could not be realized on, the banks had no more money to loan it was nearly a tie up and lockout all around.

            Sharon took up the indebtedness, with liens on mines and mills as security, reduced interest to one per cent per month, established regular pay days at the mines and generally removed the weights that had paralyzed effort and made labor impotent. Dealing in stocks was changed from feet to shares, and he dealt in them himself.

            What Webster said of Hamilton might have been said of William Sharon at that time :

            "He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue burst forth. He touched the corpse of public credit and it sprang upon its feet."

            But within a year Sharon had loaned out of the bank's

58 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

money -- $700,000, with nothing behind it but some interests in mills and mines.

            People cannot comprehend it now, but that was a vast sum at that time. It seemed much greater than $17,000,000 does now.

            When Mr. Mills as a stockholder and director of the parent bank saw the figures, he was shocked. He insisted that a meeting of the directors be called and Sharon sent for. It was done, and in a fiery speech he reviewed the figures and demanded that the Comstock business should be closed up, the branch bank be called in, the losses relegated to the column of losses, and that thenceforth the bank should pursue a legitimate banking business.

            In reply Sharon stated the situation as it appeared to him, he being on the ground and watching everything; said the property he had acquired was live property and declaring that if given a few more months' time he would not only clear up everything, but make the parent bank more money than its original capital.

            Ralston sided with Sharon and carried a majority of the directors to his side. As a last fling, Mills pointed out the old quartz mills that Sharon had purchased and declared that they were fit only for the scrap pile. To this Sharon replied that he had made a little money legitimately outside the bank and would take the mills at what they had cost the bank.

            This was agreed to. Ralston joined with Sharon, and the Union Milling company was organized. It was said that it made money sometimes when the mines did not, for the charge of milling was $12 per ton, and a good deal of ore worked did not yield much in excess of that amount. To mill a ton of $9 and a ton of $18 ore together cost $24, and there was not much profit left.

            Mr. Sharon began to swiftly vindicate himself, and Mr. Mills began to have faith in his discernment and sometimes bought stocks himself. When the Belcher and Crown Point bonanzas were uncovered all concerned made great fortunes, which the Con.-Cal. Bonanza added. But Ralston, the most public-spirited man in the world, as the money came in, began

DARIUS OGDEN MILLS. 59

to launch out. He opened New Montgomery street, began the building of the Palace hotel, and spread out in a hundred directions, and reduced the deposits in the bank down so low that it was forced to close its doors. When, at a meeting of the directors, the real facts were made clear, Mills arose, and going to Ralston's private office, demanded his resignation as president.

            Ralston turned to his desk, wrote the resignation, handed it to Mills, arose, put on his hat, walked to north beach, and sprang into the bay.

            Many men have blamed Mills for that act. Certain it is that had the case been reversed, had Mills made the failure, Ralston would have gone to him, put his arm around him and said : "Brace up, Mills ; you have made a mistake, but who of us does not make mistakes ; brace up, we will pull through yet."

            But D. O. Mills could not do that. He was absolutely honest ; with him such an act would have looked like condoning a crime.

            Mills lived several years at the Palace hotel; he never built a fine home in the west. In private he was most courteous and agreeable to meet.

            He built one great office building in San Francisco ; he was the chief factor in the building of the Virginia and Truckee railroad, and in the Palisade and Eureka road, and must have gotten his money back many times from both roads. He financed the Carson and Colorado road. He removed to New York City about thirty-two or thirty-three years ago.

            His building of the Mills hotels in New York was characteristic of the man. He never believed much in direct charity, but rather in that indirect charity which was a help to honest effort. He figured that if he could reduce the living expenses of a laboring man or woman one-half, he or she would have an increased incentive to work and put by the surplus earnings. So he built the hotels, and by them gave to working men and women more sanitary accommodations and better food than they had been accustomed to at one-half or one-third what they had been paying. But so exact had been his calculations and so thorough his knowledge of the cost of things, that the struc-

60 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

tures from the start paid better interest on their cost than many of the royal sky-scrapers near.

            He would not advance money on an undeveloped mine, for no matter what the promise of it was, there was an element of chance connected with it, and with him business was an exact science, around which no visible evidence of chance lingered, and so as an exact business man he was infallible.

            So he went on increasing his fortune, but he never permitted his wealth to cause his nature to harden or his native instincts to wane. He was always a fond husband and father and no matter how strict were his dealings with men, every- thing he had was always for his loved ones. Their lives were bound up in his and when he gave them aught, it was as though he was making a present to himself.

            He who was late ambassador to the court of St. James married his daughter. Home on leave of absence, three years ago, they entertained the royal Connaught and his family.

            We suspect that the boys who were on the Comstock thirty-five years ago and who are still on this side, as they read the account said : 'Here's to you, Duke and Whitelaw ! We bear no malice if we did put up some of that money which makes the entertainment. Shucks to a man who, if he has a thing to do does not do it gallantly !"

            But we would not do Mr. Reid injustice. He was an able editor and had more money in his own right than any editor ought to have.

            He took the editorship of the Tribune when the pen fell from the hand of Horace Greeley, and held the paper up to a standard which in such a place as New York City with the country behind it could not help but make him rich.

            But it was a proud day for him when he met Miss Mills.

            D. O. Mills died in 1910 or 1911, if I remember correctly, died near where he made his first stake, and no more perfect business man ever made a higher name than he.