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Show About Senator Clark. ! An unusally picturesque short per-' per-' sonal sketch Is that of Senator William Wil-liam Andrews Clark, of Montana, contributed con-tributed to the February Cosmopolitan j by Ilcnry R. Knapp, William An-I An-I drews Clark was of Pennsylvania f Scotch-Irish stock, and though of ! slight physique, has so much endur-' endur-' ance and vitality that at slxty-thrco 1 he seems as full of energy as he was at twenty-three, t At the latter age, after having enjoyed en-joyed an academic education, he hired as a teamster and drove an emigrant ' wagon from his parents'home at Mount 1 Pleasant, Iowa, to Central City, Colo., 1 750 miles, In 45 days. He expected to I find gold, and though disappointed In the prospect became a miner. IrKayear or so, he drove an ox-team toMtlntana, taking 65 days for the dangerous Journey. AtVlrglna City, he bought a claim with his oxen, and after nine months of back-breaking work, knee-deep In icy water, cleaned up $1,500. Clark drove 300 miles to Salt Lake, bought goods, and became a trader. Flour was $150 a sack, ham was $1 a pound. One Napoleonic expedition ex-pedition for tobacco netted him $7,000. In the meantime, Clark kept trying try-ing to find a good mine. After some failures, ho wanted to know of the I 'vchnlcal side and went to Columbia cSlege and studied metallurgy In 1872. Later, ho took two years In Europe. I In the meantime, the development of electricity and the necessity for copper wire impressed Clark with the value this metal would have in the future. "So, looking for a big, rich, and easily worked copper mine he oc- "uplcd his spare time for a year. He rejected many promising ones, until one day there rode into a mining camp, thirty miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, a modest, unassuming man, tailed, and bearing the stamp of a j 'health-seeker.1 He talked mines, i and used his eyes. Then ho asked the S price of a group of mines. " 'One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,' was the reply, Jocularly and skeptically. " 'I'll take It. Make out your papers.' pa-pers.' "What's your name?' "William A. Clark, of Butte; and here's a check for fifty thousand dollars. dol-lars. I will pay the balance In thirty days.' "Those owners were gleeful. Their mine was sold, and so, thought they, was Clark. But that was not their business. It was twenty-five miles from a railroad, up and down a precipitous pre-cipitous mountain trail. It had never made any money, because there was no egress, and no smelter. Clark built a railway where It was said that could not be done; and, discarding ramshackle buildings and haphazard machinery, he installed a modern plant, and then built a smelter. The town of Jerome grew up. The outside out-side trafllo on the railway now pays all chtfiges, leaving the mine and smelter traffic clear of expense. "Today, the United Verdo mine yields a million dollars a mouth. It could be made to yield twice as much Just as readily. The body of copper is rich, and apparently inexhaustible. Fifteen million pounds cash was refus-'ed refus-'ed by Clark In 1805. It Is worth twice or thrlec or even a dozen times that today. No ono knows but Clark, and he will not discuss it. "It.s nobody's business,' Is his reply. It's not for sale.' " 1 |
