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Show Elbert Hubbard Passes O-Vcr S"omc Hot Ones "Butte. W. A. ClarfL. and Mary McLane get theirs in the "Philistine. Butte is a city built on a hill, and run wide open. Most folks think that only two people live in Butte W. A. Clark and Mary McLane. This is a mistake. These two worthies are somewhat like the genus Guinea pig, which is not a pig and does not come from Guinea. Mary lives in Boston, where she has gone to complete her education, and while Senator Clark has a nice seven-room house in Butte, he is building a mansion on Fifth avenue, New York, that is making the Vanderbilts greeny green. If he has a mission in the skies and is laying up treasure in heaven, nobody in Butte knows it. No one in Butte ever heard of Mary McLane until she threw a book at their heads. Not one person in a hundred there ever saw her. She was just a nice, healthy High School girl who wrote as she felt. All girls of nineteen have feelings, and this girl described hers. The best thing In her book is the description of the tooth brushes in the family bath room. A tooth brush is personal property, even in Butte. It stands for the individual, and if you have imagination, are psychic, being given a tooth brush, you can construct the owner. Mary's book should have been called 'The Psychology of a Bath Room." It was a cross-section of life, and therefore interesting; interest-ing; but now Mary Is learning to write proper, and notonly is she finishing her education, but her literary career. She is engaged to a wholesale whole-sale grocer her wire is grounded. Dam, dam, dam! Senator Clark, I believe, is the richest man in America today. He is worth over two hundred million dollars and his income from the -Butte copper mines is about sixty thousand dollars a day. He is small in stature and commonplace in appearance. In a restaurant you would never take a second look at him. Personally his wants are few; life to him is a game of checkers power is his plaything, and now, at sixty-four, all of his men are in the king-row. And the only reason I can think of why he snould want the senatorship, is because there were people who did not want him to have it. Now that he has gotten it, if he could get rid of it gracefully, he would. Clark has two sons one of whom is the son of his father. This boy is rich in his own name and is quietly getting richer. He has recently opposed his father politically, and on several occasions, denounced him from the stump. Recently this son of Clark organized a mining company, salted the mine, and offered the property to the Senator for the modest sum of four hundred thousand dollars. dol-lars. The old man sent his experts to report: this son of his parent bribed the experts for ten thousand thou-sand apiece, and the old man bought the property. I asked the Senator about this story and he would neither deny nor affirm the truth of it. "I brought that boy up well; gave him a good education, educa-tion, loaned him a hundred thousand dollars to go into business on, and now see how he is treating me!" and the little man smiled in a way that tokened to-kened there was a deal of admiration in this seeming seem-ing strife between father and son. Let no one imagine that Clark is an unlettered and greedy grabber of pay gravel. He came here in 1865, from Pennsylvania, a penniless youth. His slight build and quiet courage fitted him for a dispatch rider and mail carrier between the military posts. The work was extra hazardous in this Indian country, and the pay was in proportion. Where other men got fifty dollars a month, young Clark got three hundred, and saved it all. Later, he went to mining, and having a little money ahead, he managed to hire other men to do the hard work. On these very hills of Butte, he hired men to work the windlasses and he stood by to take care of the ore as it came up. He has succeeded suc-ceeded by natural means not luck just plain persistency to mathematics and a love for the lode. Like Yim Hill, he is a bit of a book crank he knows first editions, and has an outlook into the world of literature. His intense intellect keeps in touch with the doers and the workers, and all the time he has one eye on the main chance. We judge men by comparing them with other men, and to compare Senator Gibson with Senator Sen-ator Clark is the most natural thing in the world. Two men more unlike, it would be hard to find they seem to complement each 'other. Clark is quick, impulsive, nervous, eager. Gibson Gib-son is big, slow, patient and looks like a Hick-site Hick-site Quaker grown rich on hornless cattle. He is seventy-three years old, has wide-open, gentle blue eyes, and a complexion like a baby. Surely God must feel good when He thinks of Paris Gibson. Gib-son. W. A. Clark is a product of the rocks and hills. Gibson is from the great wide-stretching plains. Clark owns Butte. In Butte, there is not a tree, nor' flower bed, nor spring, nor a grass plot even a yard square. No blades of grass grow in Butte. It is the ugliest city on earth. The town clings to the rocky hillside, and over it hovers the thick black smoke touched with the green fumes from the smelters. It is a place of plans and plots. Night is turned into day; the music from dance halls competes with the fife and drum of the Salvation Sal-vation Army. The men you meet are anxious, hurried, and whiskey at twenty-five cents a gulp hastens the mad pace. Nobody stops for the change. Young men salute you on the street and show you blue ore that they warrant will smelt GO per cent, and offer to let you in on the ground floor. Fashion is at its highest the stores are full of finery. At my lecture, seats were sold by speculators at five dollars each, and then when it was announced that I had no stereopticon, the price dropped to two. "How long does this man speak?" asked a man of one of the ladies of the Woman's Club who had the matter in charge. "An hour and a half," was the answer. "Can't spare the time," was the reply. "I'm literary, though here are ten dollars for the tickets. Give 'em to the poor." Yet it must not be imagined that Butte is crude and rude and devoid of refinement. She assays sixty per cent culture, and is made up of westernized Yankees. Everybody here goes East twice a year. More wealth is produced in Butte than in any other city of its size in the world. Copper is king. Silver is only a by-product. But the wealth of these mines goes out of the state, and only enough comes back to feed the miners. Ninety per cent of everything consumed in Butte comes from outside of Montana. Mining, like lumbering, is a form of devastation. devasta-tion. Neither forms a firm basis for prosperity. Montana has vast herds of cattle, but produces neither butter nor beef. Swift and Company send meat here from Omaha, and although Montana produces thirty million pounds of wool a year, there is not a woollen mill in tjhe state. And until yesterday, ninety-nine per cent of the flour consumed in Montana came from Minneapolis. Everybody in Butte knows when the trains leavemany have their trunks ready packed. Senator Clark is standing in with the Rockefellers Rocke-fellers and these men own a controlling interest in the mines. These mines may not be worked out for five years, or ten, or twenty;' but the limit is not so very far away, and when the miners min-ers decamp, Butte is doomed. Montana is being drained for the benefit of Boston and New York. Everybody In Butte intends to climb out just H as soon as he gets a staled. Senator Clark's 1 home on Fifth avenue, New York, mirrors the ! mind of every man here. jjH Senator Gibson, however, is a very different iH type. He is a poor man, comparatlvely-r-he may !l be worth one hundred thousand dollars, but I II doubt it. He lives at Great Falls. He laid out jl that town, and has done more to build it up 'l than any other individual. ':l Great Falls is platted on a plain that will make I it one of the most beautiful cities in America. i Eighteen thousand people live there, and In 1881 nothing was to bo seen but building lots not a jl house. Now there are fifty miles of streets boule- i I varded with doublo rows of elms. The town owns ' I its own nurseries, where trees, flowers and shrub- I bery are supplied to the residents at cost. It (l has great parks, squares, play grounds, prome- t nades, and sites set apart for schools and public II buildings. l It was this man Paris Gibson who first saw II and realized that hero on the banks of the Mis- I souri a river a thousand yards wide, with a water ill power second in America to Niagara a great jl city would be built. It was in his mind, an un- ' II spoken thought, and now it is becoming a re- 1 1 ality. Close at hand are great quarries of build- f'fl ing stone, and a thousand miles to the north and J I east stretch the immense fertile plains that only Jll need the water to make them blossom like a gar- ( Jfl den. And the water is not far away the Mis- ,'l souri at its source is bigger than it is five hun- ''1' dred miles down. The supply of water comes from i jl the melting snow of the mountains. To dam up t Jill the water and utlllzeit for the benefit of the peo- J I pie is the task of Paris Gibson and other splen- MSI did men of like mind. Already at Great Falls ho ulll has established flouring mills, foundries, and liHI various other manufactories. He is making his 111 town a city of homes. If he ever goes to New jfl'l York, he stays there no longer than John Rocke- ill feller does in Butte. Gibson's ambition is to have 81 Montana produce every thing she consumes. The j J I farmer, at the last, is the man that makes the J i I world prosperous. He is building for generations i yet to come. Every man who plants a tree de- J.J1 serves the blessing of posterity he alone is the fj true benefactor of his kind. The farmer has no (1 time for folly by the stern decree of nature he jc can draw only enough dividends to live upon, and k the balance of his labor goes to benefit and bless it those who shall come after. f The true wealth of Montana consists In her l I fertile plains, and the use of the mountains lies in their power to collect the snow and supply 1 1 the moisture for the garden of the world. ijj In working to make homes possible, in prepar- k j ing the way for peace and prosperity and beauty, j Paris Gibson Is the true benefactor of mankind. " The miner and the lumberman have their uses, J , but the Home Maker will live in the hearts of ' j j men when the mining towns have crumbled into ah ruins, and blackening stumps and desolatte slash- - Ings are the only monuments that tell of lumber ' ; jr kings dead and turned to dust. ' ' .. . 1t |
