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Show THREW MONEY AWAY. It Come Easy and Gates Was Willing to Distribute Some. (San Francisco Examiner.) John W. Gates of Chicago, who has made millions in iron and steel an 1 fought on their own ground the Standard Stan-dard Oil clique, Morgan, Widener and other easterners to whom he has publicly pub-licly referred as "kid glove capitalists, ' is at the Talace with three friends from New York, one from St. Louis and one from Chicago. It is a stag party and Gates says his friends and himself are out here solely for pleasure. They are going to shoot pigeons and ducks over at the Country club in Marin county for three or fuur days as the guests of Alex Hamilton. Gates, besides being a shrewd and successful merchant, is a bold plunger in railway and industrial shares. From the stories told about him he has, in addition, had phenomenal luck at cards and on the race track and, all in all, is a very picturesque character. It was at the Paris exposition, however, how-ever, in the summer of 1000, that Gates made a reputation as. a millionaire .vith money to throw at the birds. Flush with an abundance of French and English En-glish coins, he began to distribute them in a most unique manner. He got up in the Eiffel towei- and commenced throwing handfuls down among the great crowd below. The. surprise of the people at the rain of money may vell be imagined. And then what a scramble scram-ble for the lucre. Gates was a very generous god directing the little financial finan-cial storm, and might have continued indefinitely had riot gendarme ascended ascend-ed the tower and arrested him on suspicion sus-picion of lunacy. The French policemen soon saw that Gates was in his right mind and rather admired him when he remarked: "I've wc,n about $500,000 on the French and English races and I might as well leave a little of it here. It won't hurt me and I guess the crowd down below are not kicking." Gates' name has been mentioned in connection with a number of big poker g"mes. He is credited with having played in a game at a New York hotel in March, 1900. The sitting lasted about forty-eight hours. Five wealthy men' were at he table and $1,000,000 is reportJd to have changed hands. Mr. j Gates, so it is said, won $300,000. One of his great business coups was the organization of the American Steel & Wire company. It controlled all barbed wire patents. He Sold bis lake fleet of steamers to this company for $5,000,000 and afterward f was said to have remarked that he got two prices for the fleet. In whip-sawing the shares of the company, he is credited with making a big pile of money. At another an-other time he bought the Colorado Fuel & Iron company for $50 per share, and not long, afterward it was selling at lllVi. Gates stands well in Republican circles cir-cles in Illinois and his friends are trying try-ing to create a boom for him as the successor of United States Senator Cul-lom. Cul-lom. . . |