Mr. Stuart is one of the self-made men of Montana, and no other man has done more to make Montana what it is than he. He was elected to the council from Deer Lodge County for the session of 1871–2, and to the house session 1873–4, and to the house from Lewis and Clarke County, session of 1878–9, and extra session of 1879, and from Fergus County to the council, session of 1882–3 and was president of this session. In February, 1894, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Paraguay and Uruguay by President Cleveland, and he served until December, 1897. Mr. Stuart is now in business in Butte, Mont.
Alder gulch, or Alder creek, as Mr. Stuart called it, was discovered in the spring of 1863 and soon became the Mecca of restless prospectors. It was not many months afterwards before Bevan, Last Chance, Nelson, Confederate, Highland, Lincoln, McClellan, and a score of other gulches were swarmed with miners who were taking out gold in great quantities. And thus the history of the mines of Montana began.
QUARTZ MINING AT NIEHART, MONTANA.
Since 1862 her mines and gulches have made rich contributions to the world’s treasure. For many years gold was in the lead as the chief production, but after the richest placer mines of the bars and gulches had been worked out, the gold production rapidly declined, and the new era in mining began by giving attention to quartz veins. It was not long before quartz mills and smelters were in operation, and, the consequences were that silver took the lead, but it did not hold the position very long before the base metals took the lead over the two precious metals. And now copper is king over all other metals put together, as can be seen by the following table which I received some time ago from Hon. Eugene Braden, United States assayer, at Helena, to whom I had written for the information. He says:
“The production of gold, silver, copper and lead in the state of Montana from 1862, the year of discovery of gold, until the end of the year 1898 is as follows:
| 1862 to 1897 (inclusive). | 1898 (estimated). | |
| Gold | $257,533,727 | $5,167,958.66 |
| Silver | 273,033,393 | 20,040,407.03 |
| Copper | 217,487,224 | 27,669,000.00 |
| Lead | 9,817,112 | 793,800.00 |
| $757,871,456 | $53,671,165.69.” |
The regular annual report of Mr. Braden for the year 1899 has just been made public. The value of the minerals mined during the year was $68,457,307.54, an increase of $17,138,240 over the preceding year. The output of the state was as follows:
| Copper, fine pounds | 245,602,214 |
| Silver, fine ounces | 16,850,764 |
| Gold, fine ounces | 233,126 |
| Lead, fine pounds | 20,344,750 |