Show THE WORLDS BIGGEST MINING CAMP special correspondence ce oj the me NEWS BUTTS BUTTE CITY april 27 1893 butte city is the greatest maniag camp in n the world and there is no city like it in in the rl universe montana has given more than worth of precious metal to humankind and in the neigh C boyhood od of a year are ship ped W away irom from this state it has more minerals perhaps than any other state in the union and this city of butte makes about annually out of mining minine it ls is one of the queerest queer cities I 1 have ever visited if you could sail up lito into the air a mile above the sea level r you I 1 would be within fett feet of the L altitude at which these people live the L year round the town is located right up tip in the mountains and on all sides west peaks rise upward and the sides of the huls bills ar are e lined with vast smelting smelling sm elting lur furnaces naces which pour out day and night a sulphurous smoke A large part of the e production here is copper and the copper ore has to be roasted in order to I 1 get et the sulphur out of it in its reduction I 1 the the result is that the air is filled with brimstone and though the city is as to heaven as any other in the union it has more of the surroundings of hell these sulphurous fumes are so areat grea t that they destroy the vegetation the grass never grows here the flowers never blossom and the trees have long since shed their leaves for good until a few years ago no one supposed aup posed that butte would be a perman ent eat city and the people built houses only with the idea of leaving them when the mines were played out of late however it has become evident than the will always be a great mining center the anaconda mines the largest copper veins of the world have enough ore in sight to last for ninety years and the other copper and silver mines here seem inexhaustible the result is that butte city is now founded on a substantial basis it has a population of jut about people and it has bial business blocks which pay a better interest on their investment than the averal average ge of business property anywhere in the united states rents are high in butte and business buildings bring in from fifteen to twenty five and forty per dent cent on the investment there is is pro 1 bably no city in the united states that i does aes so large a business in in proportion I 1 to its population as butte and there is none which has so big a pay ron roll linearly a million dollars in wages are paid here every month and the lowest are aso a day for eight hours work the smelters shelters sm elters turn out about difeo worth of ore in a year and day and night week day and sunday the streets are jammed with people the majority of them are miners but you XU s see ee many well dressed men and ine I looking cooking women butte has a very stured society as well as a decidedly wicked viewed one and there are churchiel chur chies lind sunday schools literary societies and chautauqua circles as well as gambling cam bling hells dance halls and all bf the mining accompaniments of vice THE ME VICIOUS ELEMENT OF THE CITY CIT you see the vicious element first for this is the more prominent the main streets of the city have gambling hells sandwiched between banks and stores and gambling ambling is is licensed by law i I 1 aft keda leading citizen whether he did not hope to get rid of this soon he replied that the first step would be to make a law that there should be no gambling on the first floor and after that they hoped to get rid of the amblers entirely this 1 his will however I 1 fe E e a long time hence miners take naturally to gambling and the big wages find their way to the faro tables other forms of vice are just as open and there are streets ot of little one story houses occupied bv women of questionable reputation each of whom has hasher first name painted on the door and who usually leans out of the ground floor window soliciting custom these women are of all races and colors chinese japanese african and american and they are the lowest of the low some of the saloons make you think ot of the bowery of new york and others would not be out ol of place in five points SOMETHING ABOUT MONTANA MINES these places of vice are however decreasing every year and montana will eventually come down to a solid basis the mines are rafial rapidly Y going into the hands bands of big capla capitalists sta placer mining could be done by any one and the millions that were taken out of the state in the latter part of the sixties and in the seventies were largely panned out of placer diggings right here at butte city about were taken out in this way before they began to work the quartz and one claim which sold for netted the purchaser another claim near this produced 1000 a day for a long time and one man found a nugget which was worth 1800 at this time water was very scarce in some of the claims and fortunes were made in selling water I 1 talked with an old miner yesterday who said that he had to give up a mine because it cost him a day for water to work it and thou though h it eventually panned out well he couig could not afford to wait another man told me that he used to get eight dollars a day for working in the mine at this time and that he thought he was doing well until he found he had to pay a dollar apiece bece for eggs and loo for a sack 0 of f ago flour ur the most ot of the placer mining of today is done by androu and you find these pigtailed pig tailed almond eyed yellow skinned mortals washing gold every where you go they herg herd together in little cottages and every one of these rocky mountain towns has its chinese quarter there are about a thousand in helena and a great number in butte city while I 1 was in great falls one attempted to enter the town and was put out by a mob QUARTZ MINING jahe the chief mining now done is quartz mining and it takes a fortune to develop these mines the result is that the best mines are owned by wealthy men or by large corporations and mining is as systematically done here as any great business of the east the very best of machinery and the most costly is used and e very every mine has skilled scientists connected with it high wages are paid and you will find as finel finely y cultured men at the head of these mines mines as of the clubs of you ou can find in any toston boston or new york think of a mine like that of the anaconda which has actually expended 4 0 in ten years and you g get t some idea of montana mining the smelters shelters sm elters of butte turn out about worth of metal a year and the bulte Butte mines dur ing the last ten years have turned out considerably more than and have paid more than 0 in dividends BANKING AND INTEREST IN MONTANA you would think with all this that there was plenty of money in butte and that you could borrow it for nothing the truth is that the bankers get from 10 to 12 per cent throughout this whole region with gilt edged security and that is 15 per cent is not uncommon the most of the men I 1 have met claim to be making money and quite a number of eastern men told me that the they would not sta stay here without they could make it I 1 ind find the necessaries of life which are sold in the stores not much different than those of the east and the cost of the same things in the east and the only thing that seems to be high is labor I 1 I 1 saw pantaloons in a store in anaconda the other day with the price mark of 1 I ao 50 on hem diem and it would seem to me that a place where a man can make a day and can buy his trousers for ought to be a good one servant girls get from 20 to 30 30 a month here and it costs you 25 cents lor for a shave I 1 chatted with a barber here yesterday while he was shaving me he was the head of the stipp shop and he told me that he guaranteed his men 25 a week said he 1 I give them 60 60 per cent of all they make and this nets the shop io 10 cents cent on every shave and it is good pay for us in the last year or so some 15 cent barber shops have been established in montana but the maj majority on t still shave for a quarter and that is littile little enough for this part of the country millionaires AND HOTELS they have a queer lot of millionaires out in this country the greatest ambition of the rich man here seems to be to build a hotel at minneapolis I 1 found an immense structure known as the west house which is owned by a millionaire and which was built b by millionaire west of cincinnati john ta T I 1 west the proprietor is still under fifty and he is widely traveled and cultured he began life as a conductor on the B and P railroad and he came out to minneapolis I 1 think for his cifes health he got into tale the saloon business here and was doing well when his uncle the rich charles ff west of cincinnati offered to take the nicollet house for him if he would leave the saloon john said all right and he borrowed of his uncle this was along in 1882 at the end of the first year he paid back the he had borrowed and had I 1 am told made additional dit ional this tickled his uncle so that he built the big hotel for him it cost coat more than a million and he left him the bulk of his fortune in addition to this when he died at helena I 1 found a big hotel which had been built by a famous millionaire of this region named broadwater and there is a summer hotel near helena which was also put up by this same man THE BIGGEST SWIMMING BATH OF THE WORLD this broadwater hotel has the biggest swimming bath in the world and one of the leading politicians of helena calls it broadwaters folly it is said to have cost about and is built over some hot springs which are about four miles from helena every room has hot mineral water in it and the bath tubs are of solid porcelain and cost apiece it has a swimming pool which covers three quarters of an acre and it takes k a half acre of cathedral glass to roof it it is surrounded by a conservatory of trees and this big acre bath tub contains from two to feet vf of hot water SOME STORIES OF millionaire broadwater col broadwater was one of the curious characters of this region re he died worth several millions not long ago and he was interested in nearly everything of note in montana for years he was in new york at about the time of the baring brothers failure and he grew disgusted at the lack of attention which he received from the capitalists there one day he said 1 I am going home every one knows here that I 1 am worth over and I 1 cant for the life of me borrow io oooo I 1 am going back to montana where money means something and he went br broadwater adwater was bowlegged bow legged and this makes me think of a story I 1 heard yesterday of the feud between maj maginnis and senator sanders sanders and maginnis have at different times in their lives been opposed to one another and sanders sometimes makes remarks about maginnis which are by no means complimentary not long ago he was speaking of maginnis as a politician and he said maj maginnis is all thinks things to all men in order that he may deceive them he is a republican to a republican a democrat to a demo crat a presbyterian toa to a presbyterian and by jove he is even bowlegged bow legged to broadwater by the way I 1 understand that senator sanders will settle down to his law practice in helena he has a big ak practice rac d ice and he has made two or three fortunes fortunes at the law he is not a great reat accumulator and he spends nearby nearly all he makes he is interested in some mines which may turn out well and he owns a fine brick residence in helena which overlooks the city WHAT TOM CARTER IS DOING the hon thomas A carter who was at the head of the republican national committee last year has left montana for a trip throughout washington state with congressman john L wilson of spokane and the two will probably investigate vesti gate some of the new enterprises of puget sound and may make some investments in that region carter is well to do he h has as a fine house in helena which he keeps up though during the past four years he has spent the most of his time in the east he is worth something over a hundred thousand dollars and he has a father in law worth over a million he is a jolly good lellow alow and does not lie awake at night thinking about president harrison and his unfortunate campaign I 1 met mr carter during my stay in helena and I 1 asked him if he ever made any money in mining minine no he replied 1 I own lots of mining stock but I 1 never made anything 0 speak of out of mining except once when I 1 cleared about in a few days there was a mine owned by some parties for whom I 1 was the attorney they had spent all their money in P putting ut t i ag down the shaft and had struck nothing n at h ing at last the chief owner came to me and begged me to lend him some money on the stock I 1 told him I 1 could not do it he then wanted me to bu buy some of the stock and finally offered it to me at 50 50 cents on the dollar I 1 took it and the next day they struck a big lead the ore assayed at per ton and it was thought we had a great find I 1 sold out my stock for profit and went off and got married the lead panned out well for a few days and it was then found as only a great boulder of silver and when they went through that that was the end of it the result was that when I 1 came back from my wedding journey you could buy the stock for nothing and I 1 was the only man who made any money out of it A LOOK AT GRE ATtlAS S tsa I 1 spent several days at great falls montana have you ou ever heard of it it is a half days ue ride north of here at the head of navigation of the missouri river and it is the newest of the promising cities of montana it is only four years old and it contains about people it covers enough ground for a city of but it grows like a green bay tree and it promises to be the largest city between spokane and st paul the town has one of the greatest water powers of the world the missouri river here jumps downward in a series of falls more than feet in a distance of ten miles and goes seething and foaming on to the sea it has great coal beds near it and these are I 1 I 1 am told owned almost choly by jim hill the railroad magnate who has made the town his pet and is pushing it for all he is worth his townsite town site company laid it out and as they have reserved a certain number of lots in all parts of it they are bound to make a fortune out of their sale the coal fields already net mr hill I 1 have been told something like a quarter of a million dollars yearly and heis interested in many of th the e in institutions i of the city great falls has a rich agricultural region about it it is near the richest mines and athas it has two railroads and expects a third this summer A baby city of four years it has a bank building that cost the interior of which is lined with marble and it has an opera house just comple ted tea which cost and will seat 1200 all of its houses are lighted by electricity furnished by the water falls and it his has electric car lines and great smelting smelling sm elting works in which electricity is being used to separate the gold silver and copper senator washburn is I 1 think interested in the big washburn elevators and flouring floering flou ring mills which have recent recently lv been built there and the people of great falls believe that it will be a sort of pittsburg of the west the population of the town is made up of young men from the middle and eastern states and I 1 met many young fellows who told me they were making money one young new yorker was building houses which he said he could rent at about fifteen per cent on his investment and which he could usually sell at a profit STOCK RAISING IN MONTANA A great many sheep are owned about great falls and I 1 found a number of men who had gone as they say here into sheep sheep raising is in fact taking the place of stock raising in the northwest and there |