THE WONDERFUL UNITED VERDE COPPER MINE
And a Sketch of the Life of the Man Who Controls It
The story of the rise of William A. Clark, of Butte Mont., now United States Senator, is the story of busy life, the plain telling of which reads like a romance. It is a story of close application in everything he has set out upon, of complete master of every detail of every enterprise, no matter how complex it might have been.
Having developed copper properties with a capacity that will only be limited by the demand for the red metal, Mr. Clark is now extensively engaged in the exploitation of what promises to be the biggest lead mine in the world, in the operation bonanza gold and silver mines, in the manufacture of sugar from beets by the thousands of tons, in the development of coal measures, the building of railroads, the manufacture of copper wired, all these on a scale that may properly be called “extensive.” And in addition to that he is beginning to grow coffee, sugar cane, tobacco and rubber, and may become a grower of tea. The conclusion that these enterprises will be extensive ones, too, follows from the unbroken record of progress that goes before. In every branch of his interests he is master of them. He has been a business man in the mercantile sense, and is a banker and stock grower. And yet he has found odd moments in a life so busy that it would make most men’s heads whirl, to become proficient in some of the arts and sciences, and to add to his storehouse of utilitarian information much in the way of knowledge of public affairs and of the better things of life.
It is the story of ambition to succeed that led a man step by step to succeed the ladder of life, broadening his field of activity gradually but surely, until a stake he made in a placer mine in 1893 has grown to gigantic proportions without having taken a cent from the possessions of any other man, and until he has become an employer in all his vast enterprises of thousands of men; some say that directly and indirectly 5,000 of them share in his schemes for producing wealth where there was none before.
Mr. Clark was born at Connellsville, Pa., on January 8, 1839, and is therefore sixty years old, although he does not look a day over fifty, and is as full of vigor and energy as any man of thirty. He had worked in 1862 in the quartz mines around Central City, Col., and had acquired a taste for mining that led to his joining the adventurous spirits who went West when the territory was young. His name during the thirty-five years of progress of the territory and state since then has been associated with the development of its mining resources as perhaps that of no other man has been.
It took sixty-five days of travel with an ox-team in three days to reach the gold fields, and Mr. Clark arrived in time to go with several others to Horse Prairie, to which there was then a stampede. There he secured a claim that he worked that season and part of the next, the $15,000 that he cleaned up as a result of the first season work forming a basis for his future operations in the territory. It has been by constant and close application to details, by continual effort to perfect himself, in the knowledge of all that appertains to his chosen calling, that the first product of his work in the placer ground of the state has been to multiply itself until now his interests in mining in Montana surpasses those of any individual within its confines, and he has been enabled to broaden the field of his enterprise until it takes in not only his state, but other states, and not only this country but other countries.
Mr. Clark became a business man after he had begun as a miner. There were opportunities for trade in the territory in those days. Provisions were scarce. He brought in a load from Salt Lake City in the winter of 1863 and sold it at an advance that enabled him to enter upon other enterprises. The experiment was repeated the following winter, Virginia City, being his market. In the spring of 1865, he opened a general merchandise market at Blackfoot City, a new hustling mining camp of the type that went with the passing of the sixties. He sold that store the same year. Tobacco was a scarce article in the territory, and Mr. Clark rode horseback to Boise City, where he purchased 5000 pounds at $1.50 a pound. He secured teams and drove to Helena with his cargo, which he sold at prices ranging from $5 to $6 a pound to ready purchasers. He joined another stampede to Elk Creek in 1866, where he established another store. There he spent the summer trading goods to the miners and selling out in the fall. He went to San Francisco on horseback that year, returning with a stock of goods. Mr. Clark had been born with a faculty for absorbing details in business affairs. He had not lived in the territory among the miners for nothing. He had studied the necessities and their wants, and selected a stock of goods with particular reference to the needs of the country. That stock was freighted to Montana with the usual difficulties of travel in those times, but it sold at a profit that left a substantial margin to the good.
History was made rapidly in the 60’s in Montana, and the lives of men moved with the swift current. Mr. Clark went East in October, 1866, by way of Fort Benton and the “Mackinaw route” which took thirty-five days to go from Fort Benton to Sioux City, Iowa. He returned to Montana in 1867, and was next heard from as a mail contractor between Missoula, Montana, and Fort Walla Walla, Wash., a distance of 400 miles. He made a success of the undertaking, as he had done in every other one. Then he made another move in the direction of a wider sphere of business activity. The autumn of 1868 he spent in New York City, and there he formed a co-partnership with R.W. Donnell to engage in wholesale mercantile and banking business in the territory. The connection resulted in one of the strongest business firms of that period. They shipped an immense stock of merchandise up the Missouri River and established an extensive wholesale business at Helena. In 1870 the business was transferred to Deer Lodge and consolidated with Mr. Donell’s west side enterprise, S.E. Larrabie being admitted to the business and the firm of Donnell, Clark & Larrabie being formed, which was one of the pioneer banking firms of the territory. The business was extended to Butte, and Mr. Clark and his brother, J. Ross Clark, subsequently acquired the Butte bank, the firm of W.A. Clark & Brother having since then grown into one of the notable banking institutions of the west.
Mining enterprise was Mr. Clark’s forte. The scientific side of it commanded his attention and gave him an opportunity to take a step in advance of the methods of the day. Those were the days when values went away with the forkings that would make a careful miner rich today. Mr. Clark studied the treatment of base ores and gave attention to the quartz prospects of Butte. In 1872 he purchased the Original, Calusa, Mountain Chief, Gambetta, and other claims, which have since proved to be fabulously rich. To fit himself for a successful mining career he spent the winter of 1872 in the Columbia College of mines, in New York, where he took a course in practical assaying and metallurgy. That he absorbed in that time more than a passing knowledge of the scientific details of the work – that his enthusiasm in seeking for practical knowledge made for him something more than a student in every-day college sense of the word, has been demonstrated a score of times since them. He returned to Butte and interested himself in the first stamp mill in that camp – the “Old Dexter.” The first smelter of consequence in Butte was built by a company that he organized – the Colorado and Montana Mining company, which is still one of the leading enterprizes of the copper city. In 1880 he organized the Moulton mill and developed the Moulton mine. The company built a complete dry crushing and chlorodizing 40-stamp mill and sank a three-compartment shaft 800 feet, put in a modern pumping and hoisting works, and explored the property at a cost of $500,000. The mine has been in successful operation ever since. Even through the period of depression for silver mines, when nearly every other silver mine in the West closed down, the stamps in Moulton went on dropping with the Butte Reduction Works, the Colusa-Parrot, and several other mines in connection with them.
Mr. Clark made a study of copper during the era when the Butte ore deposits with the increasing depth were showing the marvelous values that have made Butte the Copper City of the world. He developed his copper mines by degrees, carefully considering every step he took. He looked into the subject of the refining of copper and mastered its intricacies. The Oxford Copper company, of Verde Point, N.J., and he acquired and interest in its business. The little things had never escaped his attention, and they did not then. He examined the books of the company and in looking over the shipment records in the office, noticed that the richest material received during 1863 was a large amount of rich copper bullion from a small property in Arizona. Its gold and silver values attracted his attention. He investigated the source of the bullion and found the mine under bond to others. They had employed notable experts to pass upon it, and the decision of the experts resulted in the forfeiture of the bond and lease, which was promptly renewed by Mr. Clark. A controlling interest in the property was placed in escrow for a year, with a bond and lease for three years.
Mr. Clark’s practical experience as a miner came into play, and the years he devoted to the scientific part of mining stood him in good stead. He took charge, and clad in overalls and jumper, spent three weeks underground. The sampling of the former experts had been ineffective. Mr. Clark took his own samples and made his own assays. He took samples on each side of the tunnel at intervals of twelve inches with infinite pains. The preceding experts had sampled in a circle at five-foot intervals. They had encountered the lean streaks, as it happened, and they could see nothing in the result of their analysis to justify a large expenditure. Mr. Clark backed his judgement with his money – and his judgement made him the owner of perhaps the richest copper mine in the world. The output today is not less 5,000,000 pounds of fine copper per month, containing more than enough gold and silver to pay for the separation of the metals. It is the largest copper mine owned by a single individual in the world. He secured it for $300,000, has refused $60,000,000 offered him by a French syndicate, and the copper in sight is said to be worth nearly $600,000,000.
Mr. Clark has established what are known as the Waclark Wire Works, at Elizabethport, N.J., which were fully completed during the autumn of 1898, and have a productive capacity of fifty tons of copper wire a day, and double that amount when at work day and night. The copper is shipped from the West in bars and anodes, and refined at three electrotypie works in Eastern states. Much of the Arizona product is made into wire at Mr. Clark’s own factory. To make it rank among the leading wire factories of the world, Mr. Clark studies the necessities of machinery for the manufacture of crude copper into the finished product. His friends now point with pride to the result – the most complete, modern, and economical plant of its character in the United States. It is today in operation in full force, running to the height of its capacity.
Mr. Clark has stood aloof from the “copper combination” sought to be organized by the Rothechilds-London syndicate, which has been taking active steps within the last three years to secure control of the copper of the world, and which has included even the Anaconda Company in its grasp. With his Butte properties and his rapidly growing Verde mine he controls effectually a sufficient proportion of the world’s copper output to be able to laugh at the threats and to even take a turn himself at retaliation against the greatest syndicate connected with the metal production of this country.
He ships copper used in the wire factory from Jerome, Arizona, where the United Verde is located, twenty-seven miles, over his own railroad to Jerome Junctions, where he connects with the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix Railroad. The railroad is Mr. Clark’s own property and Jerome is his. The coal mines that keep the Jerome furnaces going, which are located at Gallup, N.M., also belong to Mr. Clark.
This railroad, which is an engineering marvel, is the only railroad in the world with a forty-five degree curve. It has thirty, forty degree curves, nearly all of which are on 3 percent grades. The road cost him about $400,000, and has proven a profitable investment, for it is always busy. It follows the lines of the hills, and has only one cut in the entire length, and that is through the high ridge of the mountain summit. The United Verde mine lies on the surface of a tremendous mountain slope just under the brow of the hill. It is 1,500 feet down to the Verde River which winds through the barren hills like a broad silver band. It is six or seven miles to the river from the mine, but the clear atmosphere of Arizona makes the distance seem much less. The ore itself is an even rock of greenish gray color, and gives few indications of the richness it hides. It contains so much sulphur that when a fire is lighted beneath it, the sulphur keeps burning until the ore is practically free.
There are a few of even the trivial things connected with his many enterprises that Mr. Clark does not know about. Men who know him best wonder how he has succeeded in crowding so much in one lifetime. He has been enthusiastic in every business enterprise – in every vocation he has become interested in. His abilities to seize upon the essentials of life and knowledge, and to weed them out and retain them and make use of them has been the secret of his success in life. He has been recognized among men prominent in the country as an authority upon some of the public questions of the day. As long ago as 1876, when Gov. Potts appointed him State orator at the Philadelphia centennial, his oration on that occasion did more than had ever been done before by a single man to make Montana known to the outside world. He was elected grand master of the Masonic fraternity in 1877. He found time in 1878, during the Nez Perces’ invasion to take the field as a major of the Butte battalion in pursuit of Chief Joseph. He won new laurels as a public man and a presiding officer when he acted as chairman of the constitutional convention in 1884.
Mr. Clark has found time to respond to the calls of his party and his state on more than one occasion. He was a nominee for Congress in 1898 but treachery of the same enemy who is still making a personal matter of party affairs in the state, resulted in his defeat.
Mr. Clark enjoys what is probably the largest legitimate income in the United States. It is certain that he is the richest member of the United States Senate, and a calculation has been made that his income alone is more than that of eight of his colleagues, no matter what their rating may be in the commercial world. Eleven million dollars a year is computed to be his net income from his United Verde copper mines at Jerome, Arizona. From this one investment, Senator Clark has made more money than he has been able to spend on magnificent houses in New York and elsewhere and the most costly works of art, of which he has been one of the principal buyers of the world in the past few years. Nobody knows the product of this copper mine, except Mr. Clark, and he keeps this information to himself. At the mines, and works no information can be obtained for two reasons. One owing to the positive orders to that effect, and the other that few, if any, of the employees on the ground know what the result of a month’s run may be. No man who works above the ground can go below, and miners who work in one part of the property are never permitted to go into other parts upon any pretex whatever. One side of the company’s ledger is kept at Jerome, and the other at New York, and hence no matter how trusted an employee may be, it is impossible for any one to strike a balance.
From a manager of one of the railroads handling the product of the Verde mines it has it has been ascertained that during the last year Mr. Clark shipped 5,000,000 pounds of copper every month, and from Mr. Clark, himself it was ascertained that he hoped to be able to raise this output to 8,000,000 pounds per month. This copper is nearly all clear profit, and 5,000,000 pounds a month means 60,000,000 pounds a year, with an approximate annual income of $11,000,000. At the Eastern rate of money, 3 per cent., the United Verde copper mine is worth at least $370,000,000. At the present rate of progress, according to the experts, the amount of ore available from excavation will continue from twenty to fifty years. This vast ore body is a mountain of mineral wealth.
Even if Senator Clark should receive an offer for the Verde property, which he considered to be a fair proposition, it is doubtful whether he would sell it, for there is considerable sentiment in his mind in connection with the property. He looks upon it as his pet investment and greatest resource, and it undoubtedly places him at the head of the rich men of this country. There are other and perhaps more famous millionaires of the United States whose wealth consists of large holdings of lands and blocks of railroad stock. Lands may lie idle and railroad stock may fluctuate in value, but the United Verde copper mine produces enough every day in the year to make an ordinary fortune, and this is but a part of the income of the Montana Senator, who was a multi-millionaire before he developed the Verde mine.
From the United Verde copper mine, with its income of $11,000,000 a year, Senator Clark derives $30,000 a day, which is $1,250 an hour, or $20 a minute. If the expectations of Mr. Clark in regard to the output of the United Verde mine are realized, of 996,000,000 pounds of copper a year, his income alone from this source will be $17,230,000 a year, or $46,000 a day. At this rate Mr. Clark’s copper mine is worth $530,000,000. There have ben other mines which have produced enormously for a short time, but they soon have become exhausted. The Verde mine, however, is the marvel of the age, and miners who have had access in any way to the ore body do not pretend to predict what the future may show. If it lasts twenty years at the present rate of production, Mr. Clark has yet $220,000,000 to draw upon in annual installments. If the mine should last fifty years, his heirs will find a bank account unequalled by that of any in the world.
At present Senator Clark has probably the largest annual cash income of any man in America, if not in the world. He is a multi-millionaire in Montana, a millionaire in California, New York, New Jersey, and Mexico, and in Arizona, he has a mountain of money. In recent years he has attracted the attention by building magnificent houses in the leading cities of the United States and decorating them at a cost to which there has been no limit. He has paid enormous prices for works of art, and whenever anything struck his fancy he has not hesitated to outbid the richest man in the world. Notwithstanding all his expenditures, however, Senator Clark has not succeeded in spending in one year the income he draws from one of his least known properties, the copper mine at Jerome Arizona. – Republican.
