Several times in attempting to do that Keene has been cleaned out and left as poor as he was when he started out in California in the fifties. He was a sickly, nervous, near-sighted boy of twelve when he arrived in the West. Three years of life in the open built him up, and he started in as a prospector on his own account. It didn't pan out well, and he turned farmer for a while, left that work as a cowboy, and then put in a year as a newspaper reporter.
But the mines drew him back, and he managed to get ten thousand dollars out of the Comstock lode. With this he went to San Francisco, and when he saw how things were run on the exchange there he decided that he would enter the game. It took him three months to turn his ten thousand dollars into a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it took his opponents two days to take that away from him and leave him not only without a cent, but also heavily in debt.
Young Keene's Period of Poverty.
The period that followed was one of poverty for Keene, and for two years he fought through it, working at whatever he could find to do, but all the time intent on getting back to the exchange. Finally, his creditors allowed him to join the Mining Exchange, and his knowledge of mining properties soon put him at the head of the mining stockbrokers.
Keene won his success as a broker through his painstaking study of the property in which he invested either for himself or for others, and through the amazing courage he evinced in taking a chance on properties in which he believed.
"Keene's too blamed conscientious," said one of his fellow-brokers. "Why, he's taken a week to look over some Idaho property, and he could just as well have handled the investments even if there wasn't a sign of metal there. He wouldn't lose anything."
That was not Keene's way. He was not in the game to make a little and risk nothing. He was willing to risk everything in order to make a big killing, and usually the campaigns that looked like wild and reckless gambles were backed by good, solid knowledge, gained after examination of the value of the property involved.
Keene's clients liked such methods, and they came to him in such numbers that in a short time he forced his way to the leading position among the San Francisco brokers, and as an operator on his own account he easily distanced all the others both in daring and in winnings.
Thirty years ago he had a fortune of six million dollars, and he started for Europe, but stopped off in New York to sell railroad shares short, for what he had seen on his trip East convinced him that there would be a break. His first deal netted him two hundred thousand dollars, and he threw up all thoughts of a European trip.
There was a story current at the time that Keene had all his wealth turned into gold, and the gold was done up in neat little parcels. With this, so he was credited with saying, he intended to wipe Jay Gould off the financial map. This story, however, is not true. It was Keene's intention to take a little flier, gain a little spending money, and continue on his way to Europe for rest.