MARCUS DALY.

 

            MARCUS DALY graduated from the Comstock, took a post graduate course in Utah, then went to Butte, Montana, to win his degrees. And he won them all. I do not know his career before he reached the Comstock, but it was there that he first comprehended what a great mine was and what great mining was. He took it in fully, by actual practice mastered every detail, and I suspect it was in the depths, down among the gnomes, that an unspoken determination came to him to rival the best that had been accomplished there, if he could but find a field big enough to expand in.

            He removed to Utah and did some fine mining in different parts of the state, and it was there he made the greatest strike of his life he found and won the wife that was his life and light even until his final call.

            I think he contemplated securing the Ontario for a while. Had he, doubtless he would have been the inspiration and financially the king of Parley's Park, but the Ophir and Gould and Curry and Gold Hill croppings were in his thoughts, and he reasoned that a big mine must have a great outcrop, so he advised Craig Chambers to look after the Ontario while he went for the Walker Brothers to Butte to open the Alice Mine.

            There he grasped the outlines of the Anaconda mine and watched all that was clone toward exploring it until his impressions of it deepened into conviction and then he obtained an option upon it.

            He knew George Hearst and through him Haggin and Tevis of San Francisco. He went to them and laid his plans before them, gave them frankly his belief that the mine would prove, when fully developed, a wonder of the world, but explained that it was a long distance from cheap and rapid transportation and that to buy it, develop it into working form would require a good deal of money, a vast amount of money, a mint of money, giving increased emphasis to each statement.

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            Old man Haggin, next to William Sharon, the shrewdest and gamest and boldest of all the then rich men on the coast, was impressed with the description of the property, but more impressed with the frankness and dash of Mr. Daly, and told him that the money he needed for a starter was ready for him, and when that was gone to draw for more and to keep drawing.

            Then the little chief returned to Butte and began his real work.

            I saw him there in 1881 and he said to me that the world did not know it, but it would after a while learn that he had the biggest mine ever found. He worked on its development for two years, expending vast sums of money, and then wrote to Haggin and Tevis that he needed further funds, but that he would not draw for another dollar until one or both came to Butte and saw what he had done with the money he had drawn, and what use he had for more.

            Mr. Haggin went to Butte and spent several days in examining the mine and the contemplated reduction works, and then said :

            "Daly, you make me a vast amount of trouble. I am getting old, but you drag me up here, race me through your mine workings for days and give me your ideas of what yet remains to be done, and the whole business was unnecessary.

            'The property is bigger than you led me to believe, which I suspected was the truth before I left home ; you have shown me where all the money has gone which I was confident I should find ; indeed I cannot see how you could do the work with so little money, and you tell me what is needed, which is clear enough, but I am no better satisfied than I was before I left home, and so all this work of mine has been useless. Hereafter please keep in mind what I told you when we first began this enterprise : when you need money draw, and keep drawing."

            So the work went on and began to pay. Then there came a crisis. Copper began to fall in price and the percentage of copper in the rock began to decrease at the same time, until the margin of profit left after deducting expenses became most

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dangerously small. Moreover, the deeper explorations in the mine made clear that low-grade copper was thenceforth to be the rule. Something had to be done. Fortunately the ore bodies increased in magnitude. That gave Mr. Daly an idea. He said to a friend who was an old gold quartz miner : 'If a five-stamp mill is running on five dollar rock, how much does it make a day?"

            The friend replied : "A five stamp mill ought to crush from twelve and a half to fifteen tons of ore daily. If the rock is favorable, it will crush fifteen tons. To mine and mill it generally costs from $2.00 to $2.25 per ton. If 90 per cent is saved that leaves about $2.25 to $2.50 per ton profit, or on fifteen tons $34 or $35 per day ; but everything has to be favor- able to produce that result."

            'Then if the ore becomes rebellious, or a heavy volume of water is encountered, or the machinery is faulty, there is not much left, is there?" asked Marcus.

            The friend replied : "Not much ; and often the most careful management cannot keep even."

            "I thought so," said Marcus, "but if the mine is big enough to produce 1,000 tons per day, how then?"

            "Why, at least $1.50 profit per ton should be saved, which, you see, in a year of 300 working days, would mean nearly half a million," said the friend.

            "I thought so," said Marcus.

            That night he called in his mechanical engineers, and laying before them the outlines of certain machinery which he wanted for the mine and for the reduction works, asked them to bring him the estimate of what it would all cost as soon as possible.

            Then he said to Otto Stalmann, who was with him: "I want you to give me an estimate of what your expenses would be to go to Europe, visit all the copper reduction and refining plants there, which I take it will require a year's time, and see if you can find something through which we can work this ore cheaper and save a little larger percentage of copper."

            The next day Mr. Stalmann reported that he could not make the trip with less than $2,000 or $2,250.

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            In his impetuous way Mr. Daly swung around to his desk, filled out a check for $10,000, and handing it to Stalmann, said :

            "'If you go to Europe for the Anaconda company, keep in mind that you are to go as a gentleman. When that money begins to run low, draw for more."

            The change of front in the working of the mine and at the reduction works, Marcus kept from his partners in San Francisco, bearing all the expense himself until he made a success. "I did not know but it might fail," he said.

            There have been some marvelous triumphs in copper mining and in the reduction of copper ores since, but it must not be forgotten that Marcus Daly was the Columbus who found the first islands of the new copper world.

            When he had achieved that great success and had become a copper king, his nature changed a little. He seemed to be less patient under opposition and more arrogant in manner, especially to those he was not fond of, though he was as generous as ever : as thoughtful for others as ever, but he began to be active in politics and impatient at opposition. Then he looked around to gratify a longing that he had all his life been hugging to his soul. He wanted the finest farm in the world and wanted to own the finest blood horses. He found the farm in Bitter Root valley and bought it. It contained more than 20,000 acres. What he paid for it I do not know, but he must have expended from $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 in stocking it and making it perfect. In the meantime, if any blooded horse performed a great feat, Marcus purchased him if the horse could be bought. He sent an agent to Hungary to purchase the great English blood-horse Ormonde, that had been purchased and taken to Hungary.

            The agent bid for the horse as long as he dared, but a South American finally bid him in at $140,000, if we remember correctly, and the animal was sent to Rio.

            The agent returned and reported to Mr. Daly, saying : "I bid as long as I dared to, as long as I thought you would approve of my bidding."

            "But you permitted a greaser to outbid you and take the

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horse to South America after I had told you to buy him. That is not the way a faithful agent obeys instructions," said Daly, and turned away in disgust.

            The last time I saw Marcus he told me that just then his ambition was to have a Montana horse win the English derby.

            Many people thought he paid most extravagant prices for some of his horses, but when, after his death, his stable was sold, the animals brought as much as he had paid for them.

            His clear judgment never failed him. Most of the horses are gone, but the farm remains, and a Montana man will tell you it is the finest farm in all the world.

            For many years he took an active part in advertising Montana; his only trouble being that he would bear no opposition, and when fiercely opposed, his motto seemed to be "Millions to carry my point, but not a cent for graft."

            He made scores of friends rich and rejoiced as much in their prosperity as in his own. In many ways, he was a most extraordinary man. A great strike was once threatened among his host of employees. To a committee that called upon him he frankly stated that he could not accede to their demands; that it would be unjust to his company. To this the chairman replied that in that case the men would strike. 'Very well," was Mr. Daly's answer, "that is your privilege in this free country, but remember that if you do, it will not be long until there will be much suffering among your men who have saved no money. When that time arrives, don't hesitate about calling on me. I will see that none of your wives or children suffer until the men can get work again. I have been a working man all my life and know how hard their lot is sometimes. I cannot grant your demands ; because it would be an injustice to my company, to the men who have invested millions of dollars here, and besides I am boss here and do not propose to divide my duties with you, but personally I will do all I can for those dependent upon your work."

            When this was reported to the union it was decided that it would be bad business to strike on a man like Marcus Daly.

            He sold the mines and reduction works at last and meant

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thereafter to live easy, but in the work he had carried on so long his vitality had been well nigh exhausted.

            He had been a most material factor in the transformation of Montana. He had not been much disciplined in his youth, and he fretted at any opposition ; then, too, between his mighty success and the insidious disease that was even then creeping upon him, he became impatient and sometimes arrogant; generous to a fault himself, anything like ingratitude awakened in him a fierce desire for vengeance, and he did some things which hurt Montana, but they weighed as nothing compared with the good he had done the state ; the unheralded and un- measured help he had been to scores and hundreds of his fellow men.

            He carried on a tremendous work there for years, out of a multitude of difficulties he finally wrought a magnificent success, but in the work he forfeited every chance to enjoy a peaceful old age, for he died just when he should have been in his prime.

            His death caused profound sorrow all over Montana ; to this day there are hundreds of men who will tell, as the tears run down their faces, that there never was but one Marcus Daly; so great was he, so clean his life, so warm was his heart; so high his soul.

            When Montana builds her hall of fame, in a sculptured niche where sunbeams will play upon it all the day long and weave golden halos around his brow, will be the statue of Marcus Daly.