CHAPTER 23
FATHERLY ATTITUDE OF JOHN W. GATES
AND JOHN J. MITCHELL
AT ONE time I owned the entire Moose Mountain iron range with all of its immense values. Of course I could do nothing with it without financial help. I did not have much trouble arranging for this.
One of the first men I went to see was the late John W. Gates. My idea was to go to men who had made their wealth in iron, who knew the business and would understand all the risks involved. Mr. Gates knew enough about me readily to grant me an interview. I told him that I had discovered a new iron range in the wilds of Canada. We talked a while in the forenoon and he asked me to return in the afternoon. When I went back he told me that he had decided to become interested.
I learned years afterwards that during the luncheon hour he had wired to the late Joseph Sellwood, of Duluth, asking if I knew what I was talking about when I talked iron ore. Mr. Sell-wood was one of the most successful of the early practical school of Lake Superior iron men. His reply to Mr. Gates, with whom he had been associated for a long time, was: “You can go sled length on Osborn.”
I did not realize then that I was so favorably regarded by those whose political trails I had not seriously crossed. I had heard a great deal about John W. Gates, and all of it was not favorable. My opinion is that he was much maligned, as men in big business were wont to be during a certain period of industrial, and consequent political unrest. All of my memories of Mr. Gates possess a kindly tone. The picture I like best to recall is that of one I saw on a day when he arose in his office and started out to lunch. His son, the late Charles G. Gates, noticed that his father’s shoe lace was unfastened.
“Wait a moment, father,” requested the young man.
As the father halted and stood, the son knelt at his feet and tied his shoe. Nothing much could have been wrong with a father and a son between whom there was such a tender tie. And both were fat.
Another clearly open window to the character of John W. Gates is his action during the iron panic winter of 1903–4. The Illinois Steel Company shut down its plants at Chicago and nearly twenty thousand workers were thrown out of employment. Mr. Gates was a director. He opposed closing down. At the same time he controlled the Consolidated Steel & Wire Works at Joliet. He kept these going and carried nearly ten thousand workmen through a critically hungry period.
All this was creditable to him as an economic humanist. The way that he secured enough business so that he could pull through was an unusual tribute to his business perspicacity and perhaps nerve. He went to England and saw the late Joseph Chamberlain.
When Mr. Gates explained that the object of his visit was to sell him steel products of the very kind that Mr. Chamberlain was manufacturing at Birmingham, the great colonial secretary of the empire was at first amused, and then was insulted or pretended to be. Chicago insistence would not be thwarted. Mr. Gates declared that he could sell to Mr. Chamberlain better goods at a lower price than the latter’s cost. This interested the Birmingham iron master. He went into details, and the result was a big order for the Joliet mills at a critical time. While at Birmingham, Mr. Chamberlain took Mr. Gates through his steel plants. When they finished he asked Mr. Gates what he thought of them. Blunt enough usually and outspoken as an avalanche, Mr. Gates posed cautiously.
“You really do not wish me to tell you honestly what I think, do you?”
“Indeed, it will be a favor to me,” replied the big Englishman.
“Well, I’d junk the whole outfit and wreck the buildings,” was the explosive reply.
Mr. Chamberlain was visibly shocked, but he smiled and asked, “What then?”
“Then I would engage John W. Garrett, of Joliet, Illinois. United States of America, to build you a real works with modern machinery and structural conveniences.”
Joseph Chamberlain took the advice. Mr. Garrett thoroughly rebuilt the Birmingham plant, and the undertaking was speedily justified by the increased earnings that resulted from the reduced cost of an increased and improved production.
We organized the Moose Mountain Mining Company, Limited. Among those who took stock, in addition to the quarter interest that Mr. Gates signed for, was Mr. John J. Mitchell, president of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank of Chicago; James C. Hutchins, attorney for Mr. Mitchell’s bank; Mr. John Lambert, a business associate of Mr. Gates; Blair & Co., New York bankers, and Joseph W. Sellwood. The agreement we had made obligated them to give me one-fourth of the stock of the company free of carrying charges of all kinds. On my part I was to secure to the company at actual cost all of the Moose Mountain iron ore lands. There were conditions and requirements relating to financing and developing the properties.
I was made president and treasurer of the company. Just as soon as I was given my quarter interest, I divided it with a Chicago promoter who had agreed to finance me at Moose Mountain, but had failed to live up to his agreement. As I looked at it he had done his best and so I treated him just as if he had been worthy.
It turned out to be the most unwarranted business act of my life as I view it now, because this man sent word to me to “go to hell” when it was supposed I was dying.
I had injured my spine by a fall in the woods. A dead tree trunk lying across a rocky ravine gave way as I walked over it. I fell nearly twenty feet and alighted upon the coccyx on a sharp, jagged rock. This endangered my life. When it was supposed and commonly reported that I would not recover, a good many interesting things occurred that emphasize the folly of jumping on a man, or consigning him to the eternal bow-wows just because he is going to die. At least wait until he is dead.
A tailor at Sault Ste. Marie told a lawyer that he had informed me about Moose Mountain, and later claimed he had introduced to me a man who had discovered the iron ore and showed it to me. This entitled him to a share or a commission according to his view, and it might have if there had been a vestige of truth in what he said. Eager to earn a fee and perhaps figuring that my family would settle the claim in order to save me from annoyance while ill, and that if I died it surely would be easy to make the false claim stick, a lawyer took the case.
There is no law against champerty in Michigan. I was told about the case and insisted that it be held up until I was well enough to fight it. That it was a purely fabricated affair for purpose of robbery could easily be proven. Never thinking that the person with whom I had divided my interest without the cost to him of a penny, would feel otherwise than a deep sense of pleasure at the opportunity to be of assistance, I directed my secretary to write him fully as to the details and ask him to look after matters until I recovered. This man also thought I was done for undoubtedly, because he sent me word that I could go to hell; that he was not taking on any law suits that he could duck and so on.
Of course I was not told this until after some months when I had recovered my health sufficiently to resume work. Then the case was speedily taken into court. They sued for fifty thousand dollars; finally they offered to settle for various sums down to one thousand dollars.
Judge Joseph H. Steere then presided as circuit judge where the case was brought. He was my intimate personal friend and business associate. Consequently he asked that another judge should hear the case, and it came up before the late Judge Streeter of Houghton County. Evidently the tailor’s lawyer had been fooled, for as soon as a portion of the testimony was in he threw up his hands and the case was dismissed.
Enough of it was heard to prove clearly that the story was a stupid lie. The claimant said that he had introduced a woodsman to me and that this woodsman had shown me the Moose Mountain properties. I proved that the woodsman they produced had never been to Moose Mountain, even at the time of the trial, and that he had been employed by me to do certain work three years before the tailor claimed he had introduced him to me. It was also clearly proven and made of official record that I had made the discovery of the Moose Mountain Iron Range, the greatest iron ore district in Canada. After the case ended so flatly, the tailor moved away from Sault Ste. Marie.
Later, when I was a candidate for Governor, the publisher of a paper at Escanaba, Michigan, used this case as a basis for printing libelous statements about me. I had him arrested for criminal libel and he was convicted. When he published the libel I really believe he thought that he was in the right, because I had known him well and was aware of his high character, his courage and his desire to serve the public unflinchingly. Of course such things travel far, so that a man’s only fundamental protection is his own knowledge of himself and within himself of what he really is, for “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.”
I would not have had the publisher arrested and punished if I had not been convinced that it was a public duty. Public opinion and the libel laws are the only censors of a free press, and their invocation is the only agency of determining the course of the press between freedom and license.
At various times I was given chances to sell out my interest at Moose Mountain and I was anxious to do so. There was no stock on the market, it has never been listed, and there was no certain way of measuring its value. Pittsburg parties offered me as much money as I thought I ever wanted, although the sum was not large as rich men compare and understand amounts. I was eager to sell for a good many reasons. Chiefly, I did not enjoy being tied down. We were on the eve of active mining and I did not and do not claim to be a practical mining man. It was my duty, as I looked upon it, to inform my associates of the offer, although there was no agreement that required such a proceeding.
I went to Chicago and told Mr. Gates and Mr. Mitchell. These men were older than I and had the largest interest in Moose Mountain. More than kindly in their manner towards me they assumed a fatherly attitude that I shall always remember with gratitude. It was in Mr. Gates’s office. He and Mr. Mitchell each put a hand on my shoulders and said:
“Don’t sell now. It isn’t enough. We will give you more than your offer. But if we did you might not feel kindly toward us in the long future. You would believe that we had taken an advantage of you, and we now feel ourselves that we would be doing so if we bought your interest, or permitted you to sell it, for the amount of your offer. Also, we need you with us for a time.”
At that very moment Mr. Gates and Mr. Mitchell and our New York partners were negotiating with McKenzie and Mann, of the Canadian Northern, to take an interest in Moose Mountain and build a railroad into it. I did not know of this. They could just as well have made a few hundred thousands out of my interest as not. But that was not the way of John W. Gates, and it is not the way of that prince of business men, John M. Mitchell, one of the first bankers of America.
I had already seen President Shaughnessy, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, about building in from Sudbury, and he had ordered a survey made and the branch line was actually printed upon their maps. But their freight rate on the ore was nearly double that of the Canadian Northern. Also I had had a number of the best mining men of Lake Superior visit Moose Mountain with me, including Messrs. Helberg, Sutherland, Walter Fitch, and also Professor Seaman, of the Michigan College of Mines department of geology. All of them were enthusiastic. Doctor Miller, Ontario Provincial geologist and Doctor Coleman, of the department of geology of Toronto University, were among the many distinguished Canadian mining men and geologists who visited my camp.
