[Illustration:
_C P. Huntington_ ]
COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON.
One of the financiers who may be seen daily entering the palatial Mills Building in Broad street, New York, is a tall, well-built man, with a full beard tinged with gray, a square, resolute jaw, and keen bluish-gray eyes. Though now in his 66th year, his step is light and quick, betokening good habits in his youth and due care of himself in his later years. He is one of the best known of American financial chieftains. It is Collis P. Huntington. He is a born leader of men. As a boy of 15 he came to New York, with scarcely a penny. Now he is worth thirty million dollars. He was born October 22d, 1821, at Harwinton, in Litchfield county, Connecticut. He numbers among his ancestors Samuel Huntington, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who was also President of the Continental Congress and Governor and Chief Justice of Connecticut; and also Bishop F. D. Huntington and the artist Daniel Huntington. C. P. Huntington’s father was a farmer and small manufacturer, in his fourteenth year Huntington left school and asked his father to give him his time on condition that he should support himself. He came to New York in the following year, 1836, and bought a small bill of goods, a neighbor of his father’s becoming his surety. At that early age he showed the same shrewdness in business, the same energy and resolution in carrying through his projects as he did in later life. At twenty-three he settled at Oneonta, Otsego county, New York, as a general merchant. In 1844 he married a Connecticut girl, who proved a valuable helpmeet in days when it was never supposed he would ever attain any particular financial distinction. In March, 1849, he sailed for San Francisco, going by way of the Isthmus, and following a consignment of goods which he had made in the previous year. He was now in his 28th year, and a future full of marvellous success awaited him. This was not immediately apparent, however. Business success is not usually attained without long and persistent efforts, and in spite of repeated discouragements. He found San Francisco at that time a resort merely for the idle and the reckless. It did not prove at this particular juncture a satisfactory field for his business; his funds ran low, and he determined to go to Sacramento. He earned his passage money thither on a schooner, by helping to load her for a dollar an hour. In Sacramento he started in business, after a time, with a small tent as a store, and a limited supply of general merchandise as his stock in trade; he worked hard; he labored early and late. Here he met Mark Hopkins, and they formed a business co-partnership, which proved so successful that by 1856 the firm was known as one of the wealthiest on the Pacific slope. California, however, was isolated. It was a long trip over the plains by wagon trains to the nearest point of commercial importance east of the Rocky Mountains, and the ocean voyage by way of the Isthmus of Panama was long and slow. A railroad to the East was imperatively needed, in order to develop the enormous resources of the broad territory lying west of that natural barrier known as the Rocky Mountains. But how to bring it about was the question. Few were daring enough to seriously grapple with the problem. It was in the store of Huntington & Hopkins that the project was first considered with a resolute purpose to push it through. The Civil War, however, broke out just then, and the first gun fired on Fort Sumter seemed like the knell of this great project. Collis P. Huntington was undaunted. “I will,” he says, “be one of the eight or ten, if Hopkins agrees, to bear the expense of a careful and thorough survey.” The result was that seven gentlemen agreed to defray the expense of such a survey. Two subsequently ceased to give their aid. The remaining five organized the Central Pacific Railroad Company. Mr. Huntington at once went to Washington to secure Government aid in constructing the first trans-continental railway. He was successful. When the Pacific Railroad bill was passed he telegraphed to his partners with characteristic humor and terseness: “We have drawn the elephant.” He at once came to New York to form a syndicate to take the bonds. Many at such a time would have gone to speculators begging for aid and pledging his bonds for railroad material with which to commence the great line. He did nothing of the kind. The French saying, “_Toujours de l’audace_,” seemed to be his maxim. He was always bold. He coolly announced that he would not dispose of his bonds except for cash, and, strange as it may have seemed, he capped the climax by refusing to sell any at all unless $1,500,000 worth were taken. He was again successful, but the purchaser required more security. Thereupon Mr. Huntington made himself and his firm responsible for the whole amount. It was thus on the pledge of the private fortunes of Mr. Huntington and his partner that the first fifty miles of the road were built. After a time, however, funds ran low; it seemed inevitable that the number of laborers should be reduced. Certainly more means were necessary. At that time the Government held the first mortgage on the road, and no Government subsidy bonds were obtainable until a section of fifty miles of the road had been completed. Huntington and Hopkins stepped into the breach, and agreed to keep five hundred men at work for a year at their private expense, and three other gentlemen agreed to furnish three hundred men for the same length of time. This resolution ended their troubles; the road was built through to a connection with the Atlantic seaboard, and trans-continental transportation became a fact and no longer a dream. Mr. Huntington came to New York again, and here he now resides in a fine mansion on Park avenue. He is still a hard worker, but after business hours he dismisses as far as possible the cares of his financial functions. Among the railroad systems controlled and operated by him and his associates, the executive conduct of which is largely directed by himself, are the Central Pacific, the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Trans-Mississippi roads, and the Southern Pacific, making a total of nearly eight thousand miles of line. He is also heavily interested in roads in Mexico and Central America and steamship lines plying to the Chesapeake Bay, to Brazil, China and Japan and other parts of the world. Directly or indirectly he has thirty thousand men under him. In business he is an autocrat; his manner is quick and decisive; he is direct in his speech, and expresses himself with force when he says anything. He also knows when silence is golden. He is a good story teller, and has a large fund of anecdotes; he has original wit, a store of quaint, homely sayings, which are often singularly apt. Sitting in his office chair, with a black skull cap, which he usually wears in business hours, pushed back on his head, he has an open, jolly, unassuming look, and the stranger would hardly take him for one of the uncrowned financial kings of this country. He is one of the few men in this country who have shown themselves more than a match for Jay Gould.
[Illustration:
_Leland Stanford._ ]
LELAND STANFORD.
Leland Stanford, one of California’s United States Senators, is worth from thirty to forty million dollars. He was born in Albany county, New York, March 9, 1824. He received an academical education and entered a law office in Albany in 1846, and, after three years’ study, was admitted to practice law in the Supreme Court of the State of New York. He removed to Port Washington, in the northern part of Wisconsin, and there engaged in the practice of his profession for four years. In 1852 fire destroyed his law library and other property, whereupon he went to California and became associated in business with his three brothers, who had preceded him in seeking fortune on the Pacific Slope. His first business venture was in Michigan Bluffs, but in 1856 he removed to San Francisco to engage in business enterprises on a large scale. His business at one time, it seems, was in oil, and, later, in various manufacturing and agricultural ventures. He was elected Governor of California in 1861. He insisted upon being inaugurated as provided by the State constitution, at the Capitol building, though the locality was under water by reason of floods. He became President of the Central Pacific Railroad and superintended its construction over the mountains, building 530 miles of it in 293 days. He was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1884, and his term does not expire till 1891. He is still the President of the Central Pacific Railroad and of several of its associated lines, while he is a director in others. He owns a princely domain in California, known as Palo Alto ranch, comprising six thousand acres, which he has devoted to the site of an Industrial University for both sexes, as a memorial of his only son, who died some years ago. He has richly endowed this great educational institution, setting aside for it about ten million dollars. Here both sexes will be fitted to fill a useful part in the battle of life; they will be instructed in mechanical arts and agricultural as well as in other branches of education, which will start the student fairly in life. He found, as President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, that many bright young men of collegiate education were not specially fitted for any particular work in the great school of life, and those who are familiar with great cities know that thousands of men have really wasted their years in obtaining a collegiate education which never enabled them to earn more than barely enough to live upon. They become, in many cases, ill-paid book-keepers, entry clerks, salesmen, car conductors, postmen, and sometimes find themselves obliged to turn their hands to hard manual labor, or else starve. Senator Stanford’s beneficent plan, then, of giving the young such a practical education that they can face the world with confidence and with a reasonable certainty of remunerative employment, or with the requisite knowledge to guide them in enterprises of their own, is worthy of the highest commendation, and his example is likewise worthy of the emulation of gentlemen with millions to spare in all parts of the country. If Samuel J. Tilden had endowed a university of this kind he would have been a far greater benefactor in many respects than he has undoubtedly shown himself in his will. Governor Stanford’s great ranch, which is to become a seat of learning, is situated about 32 miles from San Francisco, and promises to be the educational Mecca of the Pacific Slope. His fortune, notwithstanding this princely donation, is still enormous, amounting to twenty-five or thirty million dollars.
DARIUS O. MILLS.
One of the most notable figures daily seen on Wall Street is a man about five feet nine inches in height, with handsome, florid features and a firm jaw, indicative of great decision of character. He is now about fifty eight years of age, and is as industrious and energetic as when he began his eventful career. It is Darius O. Mills. He is one of the most astute and one of the boldest financiers in this country. He has the courage of a Richelieu, joined to that famous statesman’s caution and conservatism when the march of events requires it. Of the California magnates he is one of the most notable. In New York he has taken the highest rank, socially and financially, of them all. As I have intimated, he is bold, and yet, on occasion, he wisely acts upon the maxim that discretion is the better part of valor. He was born in a small town on the Hudson River, in this State. Before the California gold excitement broke out he and his brother were in the hotel business. He has always been dependent on his own exertions; he has fought his way to opulence, such as a prince might envy, by his own keen intelligence and undaunted enterprise. He began in humble circumstances. To-day he is worth twenty millions. He is a permanent resident in the metropolis, and is regarded as one of New York’s best and most influential citizens.
[Illustration:
_D. O. Mills_ ]
He laid the foundation of his vast wealth in California. On the breaking out of the gold fever he and his brother left their native town for the fields of adventure, where men of shrewd foresight and determined courage achieved a success stranger than the wonders of a Persian tale. The brothers did not trust to luck. They chartered a sailing vessel, loaded it with commodities likely to be in demand among the miners, and then sailed for the Golden Gate _via_ Cape Horn. After a narrow escape from shipwreck they arrived at San Francisco and at once opening a store, they sold their merchandise to the eager miners at fabulous prices. D. O. Mills rapidly accumulated wealth, and when Wm. C. Ralston organized the Bank of California, he became its President. During the time that Mr. Mills gave his attention to the Bank of California it was the most successful institution of a similar character in this country, but when he decided to remove to New York his connection with the great bank was severed. Disaster came under Ralston’s administration. Mr. Mills had continued to be a stockholder, and when a financial hurricane struck the bank, he was quick to go to the rescue. He contributed largely to provide for the bank’s losses and to reorganize it with new capital, which placed it again among the foremost financial institutions of the United States. The credit of this Herculean achievement was due more to him perhaps than to any other man. His social position is deservedly high. His son married the daughter of a member of the historic Livingston family, one of the oldest and most illustrious in this country. His daughter married the successor to the editorial chair of Greeley, Whitelaw Reid, whose able management of the _Tribune_ has established a world-wide fame for that gentleman. These marriages of his children strengthened his already strong position socially, which he soon won despite the fact that he was a newcomer. Mr. Mills is distinguished for a princely liberality. He believes in distributing his property generously while living. He has built, therefore, one of the finest residences in this city for his son; he bought for his daughter, Mrs. Reid, at a cost of four hundred thousand dollars, the Villard palace on Madison Avenue. His other acts of generosity are numberless. He himself lives in fine style. He paid the highest price ever paid per foot for a residence in New York when he bought from D. P. Morgan, for one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, that gentleman’s residence directly opposite St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. This mansion occupies two lots on a Columbia College leasehold. After purchasing it Mr. Mills gave a _carte blanche_ order to a noted decorator of New York, and during a trip to California the work of decoration was done. On his return he at once took possession of a mansion of which a Shah of Persia might be proud. He was delighted with all that had been wondrously wrought by the beautifying touch of splendid art; with the richly carved wood work, the gorgeously picturesque ceilings, the inlaid walls and floors, and the _tout ensemble_ of Oriental magnificence. His contentment was complete, but a surprise awaited him. It was the decorator’s bill for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This, it is said, slightly disturbed his serenity. It caused him to look with a critic’s eye on the splendid decorations which constituted a study in the fine arts at such high rates of tuition. As with the eagle eye of a connoisseur, he perceived that the bill was altogether too high. He succeeded in getting, however, only a slight reduction. Moral: Don’t give carte blanche orders to decorators any more than you would hire a cab without first making a bargain.
Mr. Mills came to New York to take up his residence some years ago, with a fortune of many millions of dollars. He is particularly worthy of a place in this book, as from the time of making his home here he has been prominently identified with Wall Street. Soon after taking up his residence here he became acquainted with William H. Vanderbilt, at whose suggestion he invested very heavily in Lake Shore. He made by this operation no less than $2,700,000. This large sum he devoted to the construction of a palatial building on Broad Street, which bears his name, and is probably the finest and most complete structure for office purposes in the world. It has a frontage of 175 feet on Broad street, 30 feet on Wall Street, and 150 feet on Exchange place, and is nine stories high. Thirteen buildings were torn down to secure its site. It was begun in May, 1880, and was practically finished in one year, the men working night and day. It is built largely of Philadelphia brick, with Belleville brown stone trimmings. It is otherwise ornamented with terra cotta, and Corinthian and Renaissance capitols, and red Kentucky marble pillars. On the first three floors the wainscoting is of Italian marble, and there is marble tiling throughout the building; the woodwork on the first two floors is mahogany, and on the upper floors it is reeded and panelled cherry. There are 400 offices, and the tenant population is 1,200. For weeks at a time the total daily average number of persons carried on six elevators has been no less than fifteen thousand. The working force necessary to look after this magnificent structure numbers 60 person. The net annual rental is about $200,000, the highest individual rent paid being $20,000.
Mr. Mills’ exceptional skill as a financier has won him a high reputation in New York, and his counsel on vexed and abstruse questions has often been quoted by powerful corporations. He is a director in several railroads, including the Erie, and it is understood is interested in mining enterprises. In the battle of life he has achieved signal success. His career is a fitting lesson to future generations.
[Illustration:
_Chas Crocker_ ]
CHARLES CROCKER.
Charles Crocker is now about 65 years of age, and lives in New York city. He was born in Ohio in humble circumstances, and early in life followed for a time the occupation of blacksmith. He used to get up at four o’clock in the morning and work hard all day. It was a hard life, and he engaged, after a time, in other occupations, gradually, in the meantime, by thrift and industry, amassing a sufficient sum to enable him to go to California, in the height of the mining fever, and establish a general store in Sacramento. He met with considerable success in trade, and when the project was formed to build the Central Pacific Railroad, he lent his aid to the enterprise, and has ever since been identified with that corporation. He is now its Secretary and Vice-President, and is also interested in associate roads.
MARK HOPKINS.
Mark Hopkins died some years ago, worth fifteen million dollars. He was from Massachusetts, and went to California on the breaking out of the mining furore, and settled in Sacramento, where he soon engaged in the hardware business with C. P. Huntington, with whom he also embarked in the ambitious enterprise of building the Central Pacific Railroad. He won a large fortune in his railroad operations. His widow has a magnificent estate at South Great Barrington, in Massachusetts.
We come now to the famous mining princes of the Pacific Slope. The discovery of gold in California, and of the rich deposits of the precious metal elsewhere on the Pacific Slope, led not merely to the accumulation of vast individual fortunes; it sent the currents of new life humming through the veins, so to speak, of the entire country; it stimulated trade; it awakened new life; it gave a tremendous impulse to a thousand industrial enterprises; it sent the Republic forth as a conquering hero of commerce, leveling all obstacles and laughing at difficulties; tunneling mountains, building railroads whose very rails seem to catch a golden gleam from the rich traffic; spanning great rivers with majestic bridges, building ships and steamers; setting vast manufactories to awake the solitude of primeval forests with the thunder of machinery, the ringing of hammers and the thousand voices of labor; building villages, towns and cities with such marvelous rapidity as to suggest the touch of the magical wand of genii. With the treasure taken from her bosom nature herself was subdued; an electric thrill stirred the older centres of population as it led the new sections, and the Republic has ever since, regardless of those periodical reactions known as panics, kept its onward march in fulfillment of that far-sighted prophecy that the star of empire takes its way to the West, and that on the broad stage of the American Continent the Anglo-Saxon race will win far greater triumphs than it has ever achieved in its amazing career since it sprang from the barbarism of the Northern wilds of Europe to take its proud station as the dominant family on this globe. The rich gold mines, and later the great silver mines, have given this country a feverish dream of speculation, in which gigantic fortunes have been amassed. The richest deposit of silver in Nevada, if not in the world, was the Comstock lode on the east side of Mount Davidson, in Storey county, and partly under the towns of Virginia and Gold Hill. At one time its ores contained one-third in value of gold and two-thirds of silver. The lode has been traced on the surface some twenty-seven thousand feet, and has actually been explored about twenty thousand feet, within which space most of the larger mines are located. The lode has been opened to the depth of about twenty-two hundred feet. The various mines on this lode have given a total return, it is estimated, of some three hundred millions of dollars.
[Illustration:
_J W. Mackay_ ]
One of the most famous of the bonanza magnates is John W. Mackay. His rise to financial power reads like a romance, and yet his astounding success was by no means attained as by turning over a hand. He believed in the richness of the bonanza field; he and a number of associates purchased the controlling interest in the corporations which owned it. Then began the grand hunt for the ore body. Others had tried to find it, but had given it up in despair. The idea that the property was worth working was laughed to scorn. The men who believed in it persisted in spite of all discouragements, which were many; they spent about half a million in prospecting. They made in 1875, after long and trying efforts, the famous strike which astounded the business world, and stirred up a speculative fever which did not die out for years. This plain, quiet, unpretending financier was born in the humblest circumstances in Dublin, Nov. 28, 1835, and is consequently in his 52nd year. He came to this country very early in life, and as a boy worked for Wm. H. Webb, the once famous shipbuilder of New York. In 1852 he went with a party to California, sailing in one of the ships of his former employer. It has been said that previous to this he kept a liquor saloon in Louisville. Like so many others, however, he caught the gold fever, and on arriving in California he immediately engaged in placer mining in Sierra county of that State. He met with the usual vicissitudes of fortune, but at last a fair degree of success rewarded his untiring efforts, and he thereupon went to Virginia City, Nevada, and started a tunnel in what was called the Union ground, north of the Ophir mine. The speculation was disastrous. He lost all he possessed, but he was not conquered. He secured work as a timber man in the Mexican mine, and he engaged also as a miner, swinging the pick and shovel, and little dreaming that this would be told as an interesting circumstance in a career which was to be successful beyond his wildest hopes. He labored industriously; he saved his money, and he watched his opportunities, which very few people do. He got his first important start in connection with the Kentuck mine in Gold Hill, but he had frequent fluctuations of fortune until finally, in 1863, he formed a mining co-partnership with J. M. Walker, a brother of a former Governor of Virginia, and subsequently the firm was strengthened by the addition of Messrs. Flood, O’Brien, and Fair. The firm struck their first great success in 1865-67 during their control of the Hale & Norcross mine. Later came the celebrated California and Consolidated Virginia mines, the wonders of the mining world. He was married in 1867 to the daughter of Daniel Hungerford. Hungerford, by the way, was a Canadian, who came to New York many years ago and lived in West Broadway, where he followed the occupation of a barber. When the Mexican war broke out he enlisted, and at the close of that war he returned to his family and his previous occupation. When the famous Colonel Walker raised a force in New York for the invasion of Nicaragua, Hungerford, who seems to have been of an adventurous spirit, enlisted, and barely escaped the fate of Walker and those of his force who were captured and shot by the Nicaragua authorities. He escaped by fleet running, and again returned to his family and tonsorial profession, dying soon after his return. His daughter married a physician, with whom she went to Nevada. He died and left her in reduced circumstances. With the open-handed generosity characteristic of the financiers of the Pacific Slope, a number of wealthy gentlemen, learning of the circumstances, started a subscription, to which Mr. Mackay made a large contribution. She called to thank him, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into mutual attachment, whose happy consummation was their marriage a few years later. Mrs. Mackay, during the last few years, has resided for the most part in Paris and London, where she has lived on a scale of magnificence which has dazzled and astounded foreigners. Mr. Mackay himself has apparently little inclination for social triumphs; he is well liked wherever he is known for his quick, genial manners, but seems to avoid publicity. He alternates, for the most part, between New York and San Francisco. In New York his office is at the Nevada Bank, in which he is a large stockholder, owning, in fact, half of the stock. In recent years he has become largely interested in a cable line to Europe, started in opposition to other well-known lines. His fortune is estimated at twenty millions. Mr. Mackay’s step-daughter was married a few years ago to the Prince of Colonna, who belongs to one of the most ancient and wealthy families of the nobility of Italy.
[Illustration:
JAMES C. FLOOD. ]
James C. Flood was once a poor boy of New York city, now he is worth more millions than can exactly be told. He went to San Francisco in 1849, poor and friendless, and in company with the late W. S. O’Brien, opened a liquor saloon, where he sold whiskey at 12½ cents a glass. He drew the liquor from casks piled one upon another. In those early days of the future queen of the Pacific Slope there were no gorgeous saloons with tesselated marble floors, a dazzling stretch of costly mirrors, and a gallery of rare pictures. Such resorts as Flood’s, in the slang of the day, were termed “gin mills,” and in the man who drew whiskey from the casks rather than tendering a heavy cut glass decanter, it would have been difficult for the most fanciful to have recognized the future famous man of millions. He made money and went into mining stocks. The first great mining speculation in which Flood, with his partner, O’Brien, embarked was in 1862, in Kentuck and the stocks of other mines on the Comstock lode. Then they went heavily into Hale & Norcross, one of the old time favorites. They were generally successful in these operations, but a crowning and dazzling triumph awaited them. In February of 1874 there were whispers that the Consolidated Virginia, which had caused a furore some ten years previous, but had fallen off materially, and the newer mine, the California, would soon develop rich bodies of ore. Flood and his partners, who owned these mines, became certain of this prospective bonanza in the following winter, and early in 1875 came the announcement of the discovery of the fabulous ore bodies which made the name of the Comstock lode known round the world, and lifted the owners of the celebrated mines at once into wealth so enormous as to make the extravagances of the Arabian Nights seem tame. The establishment of the Nevada Bank was the idea of Mr. Flood, who is said to possess a natural aptitude for finance. He became president of the bank and a large stockholder in it. He is a man of compact robust build, five feet nine inches in height, with quiet, courteous manners, and of an energetic, self-reliant and industrious disposition. He has had a remarkable rise, but has shown himself equal to the surprising good fortune which has attended his strange career.