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.
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.
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.
