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9. The Future of Cap'n Thies From the vantage point of the Victorian bed where Dr. Adolph Thies was propped up with pillows, he observed with pleasure the beautiful old mahogany chest and above it his favorite Vermeer painting. On the walls were diplomas from famous schools of mining in Germany, and mementos from mines in North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama where he had worked in managerial or consulting positions. A chaise and chairs were strewn with a profusion of pillows: footstools were everywhere and on the table was a Meissen tea set. Here were all the exquisite objects he had collected, the comforting clutter with which a German of his means and taste liked to surround himself. And then the objects began to fade.... In these last few minutes before Dr. Thies' death he was imagining himselfback in the house at Kershaw, back in the old days of the Haile Mine. The room is somewhat darker than usual he thought to himself but he felt very satisfied for the house seemed to him to be the finest in the little South Carolina town and he was proud of the way it sat upon the hill overlooking the mine and the village. The faces around him were those of the people he loved. There was his daughter seated in a chair near him and his boys Gus, Oscar, and Adolph ... but where was Ernest? Where was the son he had trained to follow in his own footsteps? Everyone was there except for him. No matter. Ernest was always preoccupied with work and the mine and as he had often told him. "Dat is goat. You vill go far, 86 The Future ofCap'n Thies 87 Ernest." Ernest had the best education money could buy, all the spending money he wanted and the whole family knew he loved him above any of his other sons. Adolph Thies felt as if he might be going to sleep before the boy got here for he was drifting off now. But he was sure he would see him soon ... soon ... soo ... and, so he would. He was dying and in these last moments his thoughts had slipped back, back to more than a decade ago ... the years before Ernest was gone. A moment later a nurse bustled in and a frenzy of activity began in the big Myers Park house at Charlotte, North Carolina. It was 1917 and the great Dr. Adolph Thies, world famous metallurgist, was dead. Educated in mining in Germany at Liegen, Giesen, and Carlsruhe he was drawn like a magnet to America during the gold rush years; and his fame had spread across the southern states from the Carolinas to Alabama. Dr. Adolph's last great challenge came in his old age. It was 1887 when he arrived at the Haile Mine, South Carolina 's richest gold field and, perhaps, one of the richest in the southeast. Although an aging man, he had never lost his dreams and now he was consumed with a new ambition, how to better extract gold from the low-grade sulfide ores left after the early, more accessible gold. His son, Ernest, was equally absorbed, joining in all the experiments for a process that would rescue the famous mine, and turn it into a profitable operation. Within a few years the mill capacity was increased as surveys discovered richer veins and larger ore bodies. Dr. Thies' optimistic goal of "100 tons a day" became a reality by the early 1890s. He not only made the Haile-Adolph Thies was the Haile. By the turn ofthe century his mine was famous and there were visits from the best-known mining engineers of the day. 149.25.85] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 07:25 GMT) 88 The Gold Seekers "Ernest, I've trained you and it is time for you to take over management of the mine," he had said one afternoon. His energies were flagging and in 1904 Dr. Thies would retire to Charlotte. Ernest was stamped with the same sense of purpose but he knew he must prove himself. "They don't trust me yet in New York," he thought. "They don't know whether I can handle responsibility like my father did." So much of his time was spent planning how to improve the yield. At night he read and kept up on mining developments throughout the world and during the day he continued to pursue both open cut and pit mining...

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