Show building of famous sutro tunnel on the comstock lode calls forth eulogy of jewish backers of huge enterprise by albert parry last august theodore sutro a prominent lawyer died in his new york home at the well advanced age of 82 the brief associated press telegram spelled more than the death of a distinguished citizen and celebrated attorney of hebrew blood it spelled the end of the sutro saga at least so it did for the american far west for whatever the other achievements and accomplishments of theodore sutro were the west will remember him mainly for his association with his elder brother adolph sutro the famous originator and builder of the far famed sutro tunnel a historical monument protruding magnificently through the pages of american mining annals and old west tales to be sure theodore sutro continued where his elder brother left off in 1887 lie he as it is known to every chos who in america reader saved the threatened welfare of the sutro tunnel company for the ithe batters lat stockholders organizing 6 and managing the comstock tunnel company qs s its successful successor so to the west the mining adventures of adolph and executive feats of theodore merge into one great and fascinating sutro saga the elder brother the en engineer 6 ineer miner miller builder capitalist bibliophile phil anthro patriot mayor of san francisco as an enthusiastic inscription of an 1895 portrait calls him died in 1898 and it remained for his younger kinsman to carry on the traditions of the first generation butros now with theodores death the sa saga 6 a has ended it is ready to be transferred in a duly expanded and commented on form from chos who pages to historical records the butros were prussians the two sutro brothers were born at aachen or aix lachappelle chappelle la in western prussia on april 29 1830 and march 14 1845 respectively sons of a prosperous german jewish cloth manufacturer two outstanding world events of 1848 1849 had combined to bring the family to america and lure the elder brother to the far west the german revolution of those two years ruined the business which the 19 year old adolph was running in place of his father who died in december 1847 hardly had the famil family y settled in its new baltimore home when the californian gold rush made adolph bid his mother and his ten tell sisters and brothers the 5 year old theodore among them a hasty goodbye good bye and set out on his long pas sage ge to the golden gate he landed there after several months of rough and adventurous sailing around cape horn on oil november 21 1850 one of the great cosmopolitan horde 0 of miners merchants and soldiers of fortune attracted to the sierras by marshalls marchalls Mar discovery he the only jew in the merry crowd there were many co religionists at adolphs elbow hailing from the eastern and southern states of america a as s well as from 1 england germany poland and ev even en australia congregations and benevolent societies of J jew miners s existed in many a wild camp of northern and central california I talf half forgot I 1 ten jewish cemeteries and lone lonc Z graves mark many ciany a sleepy pueblo to this day adolph did not care to mine but adolph choose gold digging as ills his vocation though as a former student of some of the best polytechnic schools of germany lie he was to quote a just remark of one of his biographers much better prepared for mining opera eions than the majority who at that time were flocking to i 1 in the jewish tribune november 4 1927 the goldfields gold old fields instead he followed a merchants career selling cigars and tobacco in a petty way and hardly making a living this in the era when the whole west boomed with golden olden bullion and bully times it until 1859 that adolph turned his competent eye and sharp mind to his proper field the mining that was the year of the Z greatest excitement in the history of mining 6 pete oriley and pat mclaughlin two patient and hardworking hard working 6 prospectors struck some luck on mount davidson in the nevada wilderness one comstock an ever fighting and boisterous fellow bamboozled bamboozler the pair into a belief that the claim belonged to him and succeeded in edging himself and some of his friends into partnership with pete and pat thus the now world famous name of comstock lode it honestly earned its universal fame for the whole mountain turned out to be chock full of finest gold and silver ore ever found the ophir mine alone had brought to those nevada miners nearly four hundred million dollars worth w orth of precious dust and rock from 1859 up to 1880 men hurried to nevada by hundreds and thousands from all p points eints of the compass long lon 1 I and deep shafts pierced the bowels of mount davidson in all spots available soon the original handful of pete and pat and of their claim jumpers was lost in the perspiring feverish sea of eager miners cities rose all around the place where dame fortune walked at the time of the world creation merchants tourists and visitors came to get their share of jack and thrill adolph sutro was in this corps he stopped looked and listened in amazement he expect that tall tales heard in frisco would be true and even too mild this time in his own words he was astonished at the magnitude and importance of the discoveries that had been made but he was also astonished at the utter incompetency with which the whole labor of getting the riches was conducted in april 1860 he wrote to the san francisco alta california finally sees need of better mining methods the working of the mines is done without any system yet most of the companies commence without an eye to future success instead of running a tunnel from low down on the hill and then sinking sinkin cr a shaft to meet it which at once insures insures drainage ventilation and facilitates the work by going ino upward the claims are mostly entered from above and lar large age openings are made which require considerable timbering and expose the mine to all sorts of difficulties to cite only a few of those difficulties the temper temperature attire in the low levels of unventilated mines reached as high as deg fahr and nore inore I many a hardy miner fainted or dropped dead while at work arwas or was trapped by a fire a common mon occurrence here or perished from gases or in water which could not be pumped up the fifteen hundred feet of the mine many mines were abandoned for sheer physical impossibility of any further exploitation of their treasures started plans for big tunnel bove in 1861 adolph sutro started to work on liis his newly born idea of a huge draining and ventilating tunnel that would benefit all the mines of the mountain from 1861 to 1864 he quietly perfected his plans in the office of his ore reduction mill at dayton nevada in 1864 lie he went before the state congress of nevada with neitha a petition for a right of way vay for his tunnel the congress gave him what he asked for though many solons thought of sutro as a man hopelessly insane to nurse such a plan N yet ret when U S sen sell ator stewart as the president of the newly formed sutro tunnel company began beg an to close contracts with many min mining companies for tunnel privileges at 2 a ton of ore extracted tr acted and when sutro himself be began an to flutter to washington and europe to consult scientists and engineers instantly suspicion and opposition were rampant the opposition had gansl of subtle legal points but its true motives rested in jealousy now that the mining world of america understood the feasibility and coming profits of plan many a greedy hand reached for the jews brainchild brain child A long and fight mostly confined to the channels of the federal congress ensued the interests which fought sutro had the press of the coast at its dominating fingers the project and its originator were ridi ridiculed caled and decried at every step the pressure was so great and adroit that even the few newspapers which took up butros defense had no faith in his ultimate success frank A leach in his recollections of a newspaper man tells how in 1868 he in his vallejo chronicle gave the sutro subject some space in the editorial column favorably commenting on the scheme as well as the courage and enterprise of mr sutro with no thought of the comments ever reaching his eye two weeks later sutro sent leach a letter thanking him for his support and enclosing a present of an order for shares of the tunnel stock leach thought so little of their value that tha only tonly some fourteen years later he accidentally discovered that the tunnel was all right and that the shares could be sold for a nice sum which he hastened to do j adolph sutro sank his all and won time came cam when ewhen all of butros capital was sunk into his enterprise and the task of parrying off his opponents onslaught his credit was stopped the whole world was against him it seemed adolph sutro decided to try an extraordinary sensational sally he called a mass meeting of all virginia city miners advertising it far wide and forcefully he addressed the huge and skeptical crowd with a fiery plea and won it confidence and financial aid came to his side joseph aron another jew was one of the first and most ardent friends of adolph undertaking years later he rallied to theodore butros side too when the younger brother needed help badly the tunnel was started oct 19 1869 and finished july 8 1879 its main haulage tl way was 12 feet wide 10 fe feet et high and feet long it ran 1600 feet below the surface its lateral branches were nearly feet long it cost but it brought many more millions of dollars to the mining companies and individual diggers t it brought brough ta a small fortune to adolph who invested it in san francisco real estate and so became rich beyond his wildest dreams he lived in san francisco nearly two decades more busy with civic activities which eventually brought him a mayoralty resting in his magnificent library amid its rare collections of semitic works and the original parchments parch ments of Maimo sutro heights and sutro baths remind the present day san francisco of this historical personage evil days of the enterprise Enter ise but the story of the sutro tunnel had not ended then and there after adolph sutro had sold his interest in it the company fell upon evir evil days the main trouble could be located and charged to the somewhat management of the tunnel affairs by some of adolph butros successors litigation over mortgage followed other handicaps arose in the path of financial success of the company and as a result on oct 15 1886 the sutro tunnel stock dropped to the unheard of quotation of six cents per share As theodore sutro later admitted this property was in great danger of being absolutely lost theodore sutro was called to salvage the imperilled imperil led structure not only because he was so closely related to its builder but also because he was known as a brilliant actor ney and a man of financial genius ever since 1874 the year he harvard and Cd columbia lumbia when a graduate was first admitted to the new york bar theodore responded to the call with great readiness very likely it a mere matter of business with him he knew that in case of a crash adolphs reputation would be daman ged he wanted to save the name of his illustrious clan and at the same time ito silence the inevitable anti semitic attacks and rumors theodore heads off disaster he set to work on the case almost immediately in the spring of 1887 not satisfied with an examination of the com banys books and records he spent a period of time investigating the physical condition of the tunnel he descended into all alii the nooks and corners of the bore tra tramping m ping through its dim laterals literals late rals where a decade back his brother helped the laborers with abick a pick and shovel in a report subsequently given out to the anxious stockholders and later published in a book form theodore sutro testified as to the perfect condition of the whole structure this was good news to the shareholders as it meant very little further expense to be laid out for the tunnel the question of interest to be paid was much more grave and difficult the litigation aforementioned was to foreclose the mortgage on the tunnel for nonpayment non payment of principal as well as of interest and it took several months of most skillful maneuvers on the athe part of theodore sutro to have the foreclosure postponed and finally to work out a plan of settlement mutually satisfactory both to the plaintiffs and the shareholders during this time sutro constantly moved from new york to san francisco and back losing much of his eastern practice but saving the tunnel in the end plans that worked to tunnels benefit gold and silver fieldings yield ings at mount davidson were at their L lowest ebb at that time and this g gave ave rise ris e to a wid av id e spread belief that the nevada mines were played out and the sutro tunnel was a good for nothing hole in in the ground theodore sutro answered that bad business if 01 the moment was caused by the unsystematic land and insane insa search for bonanzas and the disgraceful stock manupu eions he predicted better and bigger odesas ores as soon as the in bonanza hunt and the stock swindles would stop lie e was right in his predictions soon the increased output of reorganized organized re mining mining corn c oin panics brought greater royalties into the treasury of bitne the tun nel another source of income was pointed out by theo al dore sutro the provision of the act of co congress which old lowed the tunnel owners to exploit the rich silver silve r and ana lodes which the useless hole in the ground met meton 0 n its IV very little work was done in this direction till theodore ine and sutro called the attention of the tunnel management of stockholders to it sale and lease of lands at the mow of the tunnel belonging to the company was another si rescue theodore sutro was given full confidence of the share e holders and free rein of the companas comp anys matters the from stock tunnel company was the phoenix that had antin risen the ashes thanks sutro he W ca solely to the younger it avas aed to serve as its first president up till 1894 when of faler AM more inore than evident that one of the greatest wonders 0 ican engineering was saved saved the theodore butros legal and financial mind adolph brainchild brain child of adolph butros engineering geni ealus us As theodore heido had saved great fortunes for the miners so did i and 0 save the small fortunes of teachers clerks aldow the ahans which they had invested in the tunnel sto a Jori jiom saga of two jewish masterminds master minds lived to have a y ending |