[Thomas Fitch, Recollections and Reflections No. 2, San Francisco Call, 27 September 1903]

 

RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS OF THOMAS FITCH

THE BONANZA KINGS WHO PUT A GIRDLE OF GOLD AROUND THE WORLD

            HATS off, old Pioneers. Johnny Mackay was a man— every inch of him. Long before he girdled the world with his cable he wired an electric cord around ten thou- [sic] him while he lived, and with grief for him when he died.

            When great wealth or great fame comes suddenly to a man it sometimes engenders the disease of "magnus cabeza." That complaint never attacked Mackay. He was ever the same brave, chivalric, generous soul, who gave like a prince, fought like a crusader, and forgave like a priest. Those who know him wore wild with delight when this multi-millionaire, disregarding his fifty years, resented a sneering remark concerning his wife, not by a libel suit nor by a retort in kind, but by practicing an art of which he was in youth a past master, and thrashing the sand hearts that throbbed with love for scandalizer upon a street corner in San Francisco, and thrashing him well.

            The other bonanza kings left scarcely a perceptible mark upon their times. O'Brien died soon after he came into his great fortune, but while he lived went ever into his pocket at the sight of distress. Flood was originally a saloonkeeper, and in his contest for financial supremacy with William C. Ralston— the cashier and controlling spirit of the Bank of California— the latter is reported to have said. "I will send Flood back to his original business of selling cocktails." When this threat was communicated to Flood, he replied. "If I do, I will sell them over the counter of the Bank of California." When the great bank stopped payment and Ralston committed suicide, Flood negotiated for the purchase of the bank building, purposing to fit it up as a saloon with carved counter for a bar, behind which he designed, arrayed in a white apron, to officiate as barkeeper for a day. It was with great difficulty that Mackay and Fair dissuaded him from executing this scheme of vengeance upon the dead Ralston.

            Fair was the inventor of a plan to discourage widows and orphans who first offered proof of an alleged marriage with a millionaire after his death. He provided in his will that every lady who should prove herself to be his widow, and every child who should establish a title to call him father, should be entitled to receive from his estate a legacy of one hundred dollars.

            Mackay's generosity was unostentatious and took the form of private rather than of public benefactions. A few months before his death he locked himself in his office with his private secretary and destroyed notes, receipts and other evidence of loans and gifts to the amount of several millions of dollars. It was not only the poor who lacked food and shelter who were relieved by him, but his benefactions extended to those who, impoverished by ill fortune, yet struggled desperately with fate, and, like the Spartan boy, smiled in the face of the world while the wolf of disaster was eating at the vitals.

            Of a lawyer once prosperous, but who had lost his practice, a gentleman said to Mackay: "The Judge dresses well and he lives in a handsome house, but I happen to know that his wife's diamonds and furs are in pawn, that his furniture and law library are covered with chattel mortgages, that his rent and servant hire and grocery bills are unpaid, that his landlord is very impatient and that his family may at any time be thrust into the street."

            "Poor fellow," said Mackay, "and he has such a nice family. Such distress is greater than the suffering of one who has no position to maintain. Dick, draw a cheek for a thousand dollars and send it to him." "He won't take it, Mr. Mackay," replied the secretary. "He is as proud as Lucifer, and I believe that rather than accept charity he would commit suicide." "Is it as bad as that?" said Mackay. "Well, we'll find a way to make him take it. What has become of that litigation between the Durgon and Homeschich Company ?" "All settled," replied the secretary. "Well, you hunt up some other lawsuit, any old lawsuit. Sure there's enough of them bothering us when we don't want them. You employ the Judge in it to assist our other lawyers and pay him a thousand dollars, and don't you let on to him that I have anything to do with it. Tell him it is the order of the board of directors."

            Mackay's gifts sometimes took an eccentric form. He would send a hundred dollars or more to a widow "with the regards of William Sharon" until that capitalist was not only driven wild with protestations of gratitude, but his outer office was crammed with petitioners for similar aid, to whom Mackay's beneficiary had communicated the glad tidings that Sharon was taken with enlargement of the heart.

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            An old mining partner of Mackay, who had not seen him for years, came to San Francisco from the Siskiyou Mountains and called upon the multi-millionaire at his office in the Nevada block. Mackay greeted his old friend, warmly invited him to dinner, drove with him to the Cliff House, accompanied him to the theater, and for two days and nights abandoned all other engagements to entertain him. On the morning of the third day the old miner called at the bank to bid "Johnny" good-by. "Before you go," said Mackay, I have a little business with you. You remember that claim that we had and worked together at Crisely's bar? After you went on that wild goose chase to Fraser River I sold that claim for $600. I could not get any trace of you, so when I went to Washoe the next spring I put your half of the money in Gould and Curry. It stayed there all these years until yesterday, when I closed it out. It amounts, dividends and all, to $22,604 60. Here is a check for the money.

            "I'm glad you didn't forget the $4 60. Johnny," said the old miner, tearing the check up and throwing the pieces into the wastebasket. "You're a fine bookkeeper. Johnny, but you're also the biggest liar in the State of California. I know all about that claim, for I went back there after you left and worked it a month. I couldn't make grub money out of it and I gave it to some Chinamen for a vegetable garden. You never sold it and you are giving me this gift because you want to give me a lot of money. Sure, I don't want your money, Johnny; it would spoil the taste of the good time my old partner has given me. My place as foreman at Biggs' cattle ranch is kept open for me and I'm going back to it, so good-by, Johnny, and God bless you for dropping all the dudes for two days to take a run with the old man." "Hold on a minute," said Mackay, "If you won't let me do something for you maybe you will do something for me. I have loaned a lot of money to the Eureka Cattle Company and they have mismanaged things and cannot pay and I have got to take the ranch in. Now I want you to go up there and appraise the property for me, and if I take it you must act as manager, and I'll pay you go going wages and not a cent more, and if you don't run things properly I'll fire you." "Oh, that's business," said the old man, "that I'll do."

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            The next fall the manager of the Eureka Cattle Company ranch wrote to his old friend. "I have kept up all expenses so far from the sale of steers and the cattle have increased nearly one-third, but I need a lot of cash to pay taxes and put in more pipe, and beef on the hoof has gone down. I think it not best to sell any more at going prices, and maybe you had better send me the money needed." By return mail the manager received a letter from Mackay saying, "I am not lending money to old idiots who tear up checks. Pay your own taxes; if you haven't the cash, borrow it from the bank. You had better look at the records and find who owns your old ranch." And the old man found that Mackay had deeded him the ranch months before —consideration, the friendship and regard of John W. Mackay.

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            Mackay was an early riser, a hard worker, and, although exceedingly hospitable, was himself abstemious and could seldom be induced to play cards for money, and then for only nominal stakes. The only game that seemed to attract him was the "grasshopper races," with which the mining superintendents on the Comstock beguiled a portion of the noon hour, while waiting for luncheon at the Savage Company hoisting-house. Boys caught grasshoppers and sold them to the players at 25 cents to 50 cents each. Each player paid a fixed stake, ranging from one dollar to twenty dollars, into the pool, and the man whose hopper made the longest jump captured the pool. On the day before Christmas it was agreed to celebrate that holiday with a pool, the stakes in which were to be one hundred dollars for each player. The terms were "play or pay," and at the instance of a German professor who was a superintendent of a leading mine, each man was allowed to use any means that he might devise to stimulate his grasshopper. The professor was so full of his scheme to scientifically capture the thousand-dollar pool— for there were ten entries— that he communicated it to a young assayer, who was not a grasshopper plunger. The professor had experimented and ascertained that a grasshopper who was touched by a feather dipped in a weak solution of aqua ammonia would jump for his life. The young man also experimented, and as a result he filled a bottle of the same size and appearance with cyanide of potassium and managed to substitute it for the other in the professor's laboratory. The next day when the professor, after much boasting about his scientific attainments, dipped a feather in the substituted bottle and touched his insect with it the grasshopper rolled over as dead as a salt mackerel amid the roars of the crowd. Mackay's hopper won the big pool, and two widows, whose husbands had been killed in the Yellow Jacket mine, received a gift of five hundred dollars each from an unknown source.  

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            Mackay's wit was quick and occasionally scathing. After an absence of several years in Arizona, I visited San Francisco. In the Palace Hotel court Mackay accosted me saying jestingly, "Now that you have got rich in Arizona (alas! this was not true), I suppose that you won't speak to your old friends any more?" I replied, humoring his jest, "Well, John, we millionaires can hardly be civil to a poor man without his trying to borrow money of us. I'll speak to you, of course, but don't you take advantage of it to try and negotiate a loan." Just then C. P. Huntington, who was visiting San Francisco on one of his annual tours, crossed the hotel office and accosted me. We shook hands, and I, noticing that Mackay and Huntington did not speak to each other, said, "Why, is it possible that you gentlemen are not acquainted? Mr. Huntington, this is Mr. Mackay." The railroad king nodded coolly to Mackay and said, "How do you do, sir?" A moment afterward the expression of his face changed and he exclaimed, "Why this is not John W. Mackay, is it?" Mackay, who was evidently a little nettled at Huntington's failure to know him, touched his hat with mock deference and answered, "John W. is my first name, If you please, sir."

            The conversation drifted into comments upon the growth and prospects of San Francisco. "The people must rid of their expensive ways," said Huntington, "before San Francisco will really thrive." "Why, San Francisco is the cheapest city to live in in America," said Mackay. "That may be so," I suggested, "for people with small incomes who employ no domestic servants." "San Francisco," repeated Huntington, "must get down to business. There is no coin here smaller than a nickel. It should be so that you can buy something for a penny." "What," said Mackay, "do you want to buy for a penny?" "An apple, for instance," rejoined Huntington. "But," said I, "you can buy five apples for five cents." " What?" said Mackay, "and give away the other four, and break his heart?"

            This, though witty, was not just to Huntington, who was not by any means a small man in small things. In engineering a financial scheme in Wall street, or suggesting a freight and fare schedule he would unmercifully exact "all that the traffic would bear," but he was loyal to old friendships and generous to old friends, and if the stubs of his private check book were given in evidence, they would show many and many a benefaction known only to the recipient and himself, as well as many larger benefactions to promote public purposes and advance the success of principles in which he believed.

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            Leland Stanford was the philosopher and prophet of the pioneer overland road. Charles Crocker was its right arm, but C. P. Huntington was its brain. Crocker's favorite seat was upon the cowcatcher of the locomotive on the construction train, ever pushing to the front with restless energy. Stanford with dominant individuality controlled men, controlled caucuses, reconciled conflicting interests and placated enmities. But C. P. Huntington was the master spirit. When the financial necessities of the road called him to New York City he was no longer a young man and he was without special training for his task. But from the hour he entered Wall street until death called him he was successful in his operations. Rival capitalists could not entrap him and he was not to be bullied either by men or events. When one who had come into possession of a bundle of his letters, that were afterward used in the Colton case, tried to sell them to him for a large amount his cool and characteristic reply was: "They are worth the money, but I have read them. You want to sell them to somebody who has not read them." He had the courage of his convictions. He believed that the construction of an interoceanic canal would have a tendency to lessen the revenues of the Southern Pacific Company, and he did not hesitate to throw obstacles in the way of its construction. "It will never be built while I live," said he.

            He was a strong friend and a bitter enemy. He was a grand old fighter, who fought ever in the open. When he entered the lists he passed by all lesser antagonists and smote the brazen shields of the Brian de Bois Guilberts. When he began the hazardous experiment of constructing an overland road there were not fifty miles of railroad, all told, between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. He lived to see the locomotives of seven great transcontinental lines thundering daily from the Missouri to the Pacific, and to be able to ride in his private car from arctic to tropic seas. His most appropriate epitaph would be his reply to a member of a committee of the United States Senate, who said to him when he was examined as a witness before the Interstate Commerce Commission. "Mr. Huntington, have you no respect for public opinion?" "I have," was his reply, "the highest regard for the good opinion of C. P. Huntington."