WILLIAM SHARON.

 

            IT IS said that a new bonanza has been discovered and is now being explored in the deep levels of the old Mexican mine. It is fifty-two years since two placer miners, work- ins: with rockers on a little stream that ran down East canyon from Mount Davidson, in what was then Carson County, Utah, found as they worked up this ravine, increasing value in each day's work until at last, as they reached the head of the ravine, they realized $300 per day from each rocker ; notwithstanding that a persistent bluish rock annoyed them by clogging their rockers and despite the fact that some incomprehensible alloy reduced the value of their gold to $13 per ounce. Their eyes were blinded. They never had thought of sending the material they were washing to an assayer. Why should they? It was one hundred and fifty miles by trail to the nearest assay office, and then it was only gold that they were after, and they could get the gold bv washing. At the head of the ravine, they came upon a great deposit of this rich gravel, and located it. The news of the rich diggings they had found was told by one prospector to another and now and then a man climbed that rugged mountain out of curiosity to see what was there. One of these picked up a piece of this strange blue- black metal and carried it away as a pocket piece. He lived near where Reno, Nevada, now is, but a few days later made a visit to his old home in Nevada City, California. He gave this strange pocket piece to a friend. The friend took it to an assayer and asked him to test it for gold, silver, copper or anything else he could think of. The result was nearly $1,200 gold and nearly $1,500 silver per ton.

            So the gravel that the miners had been working up the ravine, and the deposit they had located at the head of the ravine, was not gravel at all, but decomposed rock from the croppings of the old Ophir and Mexican mines, as they have since been known.

            That was how one end of the great Comstock lode was

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discovered. Of course, there was an unparalleled excitement and rush for the astounding new camp. It was the first silver mine ever found in the United States ; a little later more silver mines were found out on the desert north, east and south ; the whole financial world was electrified. What fortunes could not men accumulate now. Who could measure the wealth of such a country as ours?

            No man in the republic knew how to successfully reduce silver ores, but that abashed no one. The silver and the gold were there, and there must be a way to work them, so they went to work. The story of those first years has often been told.

            Two or three years later a man went up from San Francisco to see the famous lode and the state of business around the mines. That man was William Sharon. He had early gone to California and engaged in the realty business in San Francisco.

            He was well educated in the schools, had studied law enough to understand its exact relations to business, was by nature shrewd and far-seeing and could reason from cause to effect on a business proposition with the quickness of intuition. He was a small man, weighing perhaps 135 pounds, always delicate of health. His hands were small and white as those of a dainty and perfectly groomed woman, but he carried a sovereign head upon his shoulders, and his features were as clearly cut as were those of that class of old Greeks that rung the world of their day. His face was lighted by a pair of cold gray eyes, a glance into which made clear that any one who dealt with him should understand from the first that no bluff would ever carry with him, that no matter what the crisis would be, it would be met without fear.

            The Vigilance committee of 1856 gave San Francisco business a very black eye ; the cream of the California placers had been skimmed ; the rush to Fraser River of thousands of miners in 1858, and the return of those miners as a rule bereft of everything, made any advance for San Francisco impossible, and men who were loaded up with San Francisco real estate.

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if much in debt, could not extricate themselves, and lost all they had.

            After 1859, the liveliest business there was dealing in mining shares. Sharon watched this for a while, and then went in person to Virginia City. He found a strange state of affairs. A good many crude quartz mills had been built, generally on insufficient capital; the cream of the croppings of the great lode had been skimmed; most of the mines were in litigation ; the little banks there had loaned all their money on mills and mines at a regular interest of five per cent per month, but could collect neither principal nor interest, nor could run the mines nor mills; there were no pay days for miners, and Sharon found a community of several thousand people standing over immeasurable treasures, but unable to utilize them.

            It was a case of oceans in sight but not a drop to drink. The prospect of bringing order out of such a situation would have daunted most men. Sharon, after looking around a few days, wired W. C. Ralston of the Bank of California that the thing needed there was a bank. Ralston wired back, "Come down, and we will talk it over."

            The result was that in a few days a branch bank was established there. It took over the interests of the little banks in the mines and 'mills, a regular pay-day for miners was established ; interest was reduced to twelve per cent per annum ; regular superintendents at high salaries were appointed on the separate mines ; about the same time the dealing ceased to be in feet, and began to be carried on in shares ; order was established, and business, reduced to business channels, began to move without friction. And William Sharon was the captain on the bridge that ordered everything, anticipated everything, Prepared for everything and with a nerve that was superb fought the difficulties that confronted him and kept the immense machinery of that business running smoothly; though there were times when the obstacles in the way would have broken the heart of any other man, for sometimes it looked as though the whole lode was going into perpetual borasca. His troubles were not all local. D. O. Mills was then presi-

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dent of the parent bank in San Francisco, and was exact in his business methods as a perfectly adjusted engine is in its movements, and looked upon anything like gambling in business when that in any way affected the integrity of a bank, as an unforgivable crime, and mining was not reduced to an exact science in those days by a very considerable extent. Indeed, there is always an element of gambling in mining, and for that matter in every kind of business. When the farmer ploughs his field and plants his crop, he gambles that the soil, the moisture, the sunlight and the air, will return him three or four or forty fold what he plants, and he does this, knowing that possibly frost, or the drought, or the locust or the worm, or the storm may render all his efforts rewardless.

            So the miner, when he sees an indication on one level, knowing the pitch and trend of the mine, figures that at a certain point in the depth, that indication will have swelled into an ore body and delves for it, all the time aware that a fault may have occurred a million years ago that would make his hopes futile, and his labor vain, but from the record of the doctrine of chances, estimates how often he will win. Many people pronounce his work extra hazardous, but call the gambling of the insurance man legitimate business when he, in fact, for $30 of your money hand paid, wagers that your $3,000 house will not burn for a year to come. In the same way Mr. Sharon learned the habits of the Comstock and so dealt with its moods, and though carrying the cares of a hundred men in his brain, directed and controlled that mighty business and knew every day his business latitude and longitude as certainly as does the master of a ship his place on the sea, when every day the great sun bends down to give him the needed data. So he was justly called the king of the Comstock for ten years. At last he aspired to be elected to the senate and he was. I fear all his methods would not have been approved by Senator Beveridge, but his methods were not like those in the East. Here is a sample : Joe Stewart was a Virginia City gambler. He was known far and near as a dead square man in business. Sharon met him one morning and said : "Joe, I am going to be a candidate for senator. You

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and I have long been friends. I want you to help me among your class of men. It will take much of your time, and you will naturally spend a good deal of money. Come into the bank and I will give you a check." 'Your check be d-----d," was Joe's reply. "I expect to help you; you know that I will  do all I can for you, but not for money. You can command me without any of your checks." "Oh, all right," said Sharon. They then talked for a few minutes, when Sharon suddenly said : "By the way, Joe, it is a long time since we had a game of poker. Can you not fix one for tonight?' "Oh, yes," said Stewart. "Well, make it for about 9 p. m. and, I will be up," said Sharon.

            He was there at the hour and the game began. Sharon was unlucky from the first. He lost and lost with a bad grace. He made a great ado over every loss, until Stewart said : "Why, Sharon, what is the matter with you tonight? I have seen you lose before, but have never known you to make such a fuss over it."

            "It is a blankety blank thieving game. How much do I owe?" asked Sharon. Stewart looked over the memoranda and replied, "Four thousand seven hundred and sixty-five dollars." Sharon called for a blank check, filled in the amount and signed it; then pushed it over to Stewart and said; 'I suppose you think you have earned that." 'Yes," said Stewart. "It was a square game." Then Sharon said: "See how much trouble you can make a man sometimes. That is just $235 less than I intended to give you this morning, if you had not got so cranky about nothing."

            In that same campaign a husky young man called at the office one day and, saying that his name was Sharon, asked to see Mr. William Sharon. General Dodge was in the anteroom, showed him in and explained to Mr. Sharon that the man said his own name was Sharon and that he hailed from eastern Nevada. Sharon greeted him cordially asking him what Sharon family he belonged to, and how things were in eastern Nevada. The man proceeded to business at once. He said he could control at least fifty votes, but it would require some money. "About how much money?" asked Sharon. "About

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$100 apiece," was the reply. A cold bluff for $5,000. It was too transparent. Sharon sprang from his chair like a tiger, and hurling an unspeakable volley of anathemas at the man, wound up by saying : 'You infernal petty larceny hold-up. I will give you $500 if you will petition some legislature to change your name, but would not give you another cent to save your worthless life."

            The man seemed glad to get out alive without even the $500.

            A year and a half later Ralston stretched out too far, and the great California bank had to close its doors. It was a bad break, so bad that it was believed to be hopeless. The eastern newspapers held it up as a sample of wild speculation, and scoffed at the idea that it could ever again open its doors. The directors of the bank were overwhelmed and utterly prostrated.

            For the marriage of his daughter to Senator Newlands and to please his children, Sharon had fitted his San Francisco home beautifully; the parlors were a dream. When the bank closed its doors he had some rough tables placed in those parlors, upon the tables were paper and pencils and cigars, and around these tables, amid clouds of cigar smoke, for six weeks the directors sat and consulted. Some were quitters, some cowards, some belligerent, but all, at the beginning, were settled in the conviction that the bank was hopelessly involved and intent only on seeing how much of their private fortunes could be saved from the wreck.

            One of the band intimated that the trouble started by adopting mining methods of running the bank. At this Sharon quietly rejoined that he had never suggested a change in the bank's methods ; that by his work in Nevada he had made every one of them more money than he had lost by the failure, and had four years previously saved the bank from disaster, when by the opening of New Montgomery street, and the purchase of the necessary realty, the bank had advanced too much money.

            Another director then began to assail the memory of Mr. Ralston, and then all the smothered wrath in Sharon's soul

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burst forth, and in a few terse and incisive sentences he declared that Mr. Ralston had more heart and soul than the whole band. That whatever his faults were he had made restitution for them all by dying of a broken heart, and that in their further deliberations those faults should not be called in evidence.

            Continuing, he then insisted that the question before them was not how to bury a wreck, but how to reinstate a great financial institution and save their individual honor, and the honor of the city and state. They all declared that to be im- possible, but Sharon insisted. So the matter hung for days. The bold and angry ones Sharon bluffed ; the fearful and timid ones he coaxed and conciliated, his position being that each from his private fortune should double his subscription as a stockholder ; that by so doing the bank would be in better standing in a year than it ever had been and would pay them better interest on their money than they could obtain in any other way. In addition, for his part he took the half-finished Palace Hotel with its liabilities. After some weeks of this, the announcement was one morning made in the papers that on a certain day the California Bank would resume business and be prepared to meet all demands.

            It did open as advertised, in three months it had won back all the prestige it had lost, and was making more money than ever before. It exalted the prestige and credit of the west in the east more than any other event ever did, and it made clear that among shrewd and sagacious financiers William Sharon was a past grand master.

            In private life Mr. Sharon had his moods. When annoyed he could be unreasonable, and say unjust words; again he could be the most delightful of hosts, and a most brilliant conversationalist, for he was a finished scholar alone: all the lines of the great thinkers, and again when in reminiscent mood to trusted friends he sometimes made clear the load he had carried while lifting the burdens from the well-nigh prostrate Comstock. In the gentle way he rehearsed them, with nothing like vanity or egotism in the narrative, the story was as win- some as a great drama.