Mackay always maintained his prior relationships, and with his income risen to such dizzying heights, among a gathering of old friends, Jack O’Brien, his onetime Gold Rush mining partner, teasingly reminded him that he’d once claimed he’d have been content for his whole life with $25,000.
“W-w-well,” Mackay stammered, “I’ve ch-ch-changed my mind.”
• • •
The two bonanza mines drove the Comstock Lode to the height of its greatest boom in the summer of 1876. Of the approximately 20,000 inhabitants of Storey County, more than three-quarters lived in the booming camps of Gold Hill and Virginia City. (The 1875 census counted just over 1,300 Chinese, about 130 “colored” citizens, almost 6,000 white females, and more than 12,000 white males—about half of whom had been born in countries other than the United States.) The Con. Virginia alone used more than a million feet of lumber and more than 3,300 cords of wood fuel per month. Together, the Con. Virginia and California mines employed more than 900 men, and of the 3,000-odd miners working the Comstock, about two-thirds drew their paychecks from mines controlled and operated by the Bonanza Firm. The mines worked full blast, three shifts a day, seven days a week, those mines not “in bonanza” sinking their incline shafts and drifting and crosscutting the lower levels with all possible speed in the hope of striking a similar ore body. The principal companies banded into groups that started sinking eight third-line shafts with the intention of prospecting the lode below two thousand feet.
Men getting off shift kept Virginia City roaring at all hours of the day and night. A reporter from the New York Tribune described C Street crowded like Broadway. He crowed about Virginia City’s fine restaurants and “drinking saloons more gorgeous in appointment than any in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York,” and wrote, “I have never been in a place where money is so plenty, nor where it is spent with so much extravagance and recklessness.” He described “inhabitants in the garb of laborers . . . with the habits of Parisians.” No coin less than a quarter-dollar circulated. A bootblack returned the reporter’s dime with a look of such derision that it made the New Yorker want to switch places with him “and give him the dime to boot.” In the melting and assaying rooms of the Con. Virginia and California mills, bullion bars weighing ninety to one hundred pounds and worth $3,000 to $4,000 each (45 percent of their value in gold, the rest silver) were “stacked up by the hundreds in rooms and halls” and thrown into wagons for transport like “so many pigs of iron.”
A Mining & Scientific Press article that year thought that any Comstocker could “ask no better fun” than to guide “some Massachusetts stranger” down C Street “on a Sunday evening promenade.” The glaring lights, brass bands, pianos, melodeons, and wide-open doors of the saloons; the work going on in all the mines; the horse racing and dog fighting at the race track; the cigar-smoking, lounging, laughing, and swearing crowds—to say nothing of the tawdry delights available one street below—what a lovely chill of horror they would give the tight-laced New Englander. “Are we in America?” he would exclaim. “No, we are on the Comstock!” his guide would chirp. “Whether we ought to be proud of it or regretful is a question which need not be discussed,” the newspaper mused, “but certainly we can send any New Englander back to the blue laws and bitter Sabbath with the valuable knowledge that although Boston may be the hub of the universe, it has one very lively spoke.”
Not all descriptions of the Comstock’s bonanza times waxed so ebullient. The Pacific Tourist, a railroad publication intended to promote western travel, said of bonanza-times Virginia City that “one expects streets of gold and silver, and instead finds them of mud and dust”—although the writer did grant the “sorrowfully beautiful” view from Virginia City. All classes of men, and occasionally women, clogged the streets and saloons. Refined personalities recoiled from the Comstock’s “fearfully prevalent” profanity. Others lamented Virginia City’s hot, oily smell and the smoke and steam of its machinery, the lack of level ground, the dearth of respectable women and children, the fierce cold wind, and the total absence of greenery. The Tourist described Comstockers worshipping heathen deities—“Mammon, Bacchus, and Venus”—with the brokers’ offices, whisky shops, gambling hells, and brothels held up as temples. “There is wonderful enterprise, much intelligence, some refinement, not a little courtesy, and a sea of sin.”
Anyone with “a curiosity to find the liveliest place in Virginia” in June 1876 found it by stepping into the Delta Saloon at 18 C Street.II Inside, the highfalutin’ grogshop shone “resplendent” and echoed with bawdy piano music, bawls of coarse laughter, and “the ever-varying tones” of a keno dealer locally renowned for the lingering emphasis with which he announced the appearance of the number “eeeeeeee-leven.” That same month, in the southeastern Montana Territory, the assembled power of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho Indian nations killed every man in five companies of the Seventh Cavalry near the Little Big Horn River, including their flamboyant commander, General George Armstrong Custer.
• • •
Mackay wasn’t in Nevada when he heard the news. Fair had returned or recovered from whatever had kept him away, allowing Mackay in turn to take a break from the mines. With John William, Jr., approaching school age, money no longer even the slightest consideration, Mackay needed at the mines for months at a stretch, and Louise never truly satisfied in San Francisco, John and Louise decided to move the family to Paris.
John and Louise probably made the decision to shift the family to Paris for three reasons: to give Willie access to what they considered the best possible international education, because Louise would rather live in Paris than anywhere else in the world, and because John Mackay thought it was an excellent idea. Mackay wanted his sons to have the top-shelf educational opportunities he’d missed, and he’d always promised Louise anything within his power to give. If John Mackay felt those things were to be had in Paris, then Paris it would be. Besides, he’d spent time in the French capital and probably fallen in love with it himself.
The Mackays escaped California in mid-May, traveling east in William Sharon’s beautifully luxurious private rail carriage, toured the huge Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia built to show off the economic muscle and talents of the rapidly expanding nation—where the Bonanza Firm won first prize for “silver ores, gold bearing”—and sailed for Liverpool aboard the SS Adriatic on June 10, 1876.
Marie Louise Antoinette Hungerford Mackay would never again set foot in Virginia City. As an act of gratitude to the town that she loathed and that had made her, before departure, Louise bought van Bokkelen’s Beer Garden at the downhill edge of Virginia City. (Van Bokkelen had also been an explosives dealer who slept atop the boxes that held his supply—until his stash blew up one night in 1873, killing him and ten other people and injuring many others.) Louise donated the land to the Catholic Daughters of Charity, who built a hospital on the site and named it St. Mary Louise Hospital in honor of their benefactor.
In Paris, Mackay bought 9 Rue de Tilsitt, one of the capital’s most prestigious addresses,III a “splendid” two-year-old residence on one of the roads that circled the Place de l’Étoile—at the center of which stood the Arc de Triomphe. The New York Herald claimed the house cost Mackay 1.5 million francs and that Louise spent another 500,000 on its furnishings. The San Francisco Bulletin reported Mackay back in the Comstock mines before the middle of August. In September, he sold the house in San Francisco. Louise was done with the West.
In 1876, the Con. Virginia raised $16.7 million and the California disgorged $13.4 million. That year, the three mints of the United States Treasury in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Carson City coined a total of $70.8 million in gold and silver. The Big Bonanza contributed more than 42 percent to the total annual coinage of the United States. (Mackay’s share of the $21.6 million in dividends amounted to a cash sum of between $4.6 and $6 million.)
• • •
Mackay returned to a storm of personal cri
ticism. While he was in Europe, James Fair had publicly accused him of “gutting the mine” of its best ore. To an extent that was true—Mackay had been planning to mine $10 million in a single month to display at the Centennial Exhibition, a plan derailed by a savage bear raid on the bonanza stocks. He had indeed mined shoots of the best ore to increase production and combat the raiders’ outpouring of negative publicity claiming the mines weren’t worth their stock valuations. In truth, they weren’t. The root problem was the mine’s annual report published at the end of 1875 over Superintendent James G. Fair’s signature. Fair had exaggerated the size of the ore body, gifting the mine millions of dollars it didn’t possess. Fair deflected criticism with his accusation that Mackay had stripped the mine of its best ore while he was away. “Colonel Fair” promised his presence would set things right. (Although Mackay may not have seen the report before its publication, he did bear a certain amount of responsibility—he oversaw the Firm’s operations, knew the underground situation in detail, and should have insisted on the exact reporting.)
Characteristically, Mackay said nothing in public. In private, a man who placed such high value on his “good name” must have been deeply wounded. Although in the ever-racially conscious atmosphere of the nineteenth century, the Chicago Tribune’s San Francisco correspondent described the four members of the Bonanza Firm standing together in their business dealings “like Jews,” the scrutiny to which their shocking wealth subjected them brought their respective characters into sharp focus.
On display in his office, James Flood kept a painting called Changing the Shift showing a scene in the Con. Virginia hoisting works. He knew from whence his money came. Both he and James Fair invested heavily in San Francisco real estate and other California speculations. Flood acquired an excellent lot atop Nob Hill, but did nothing to develop it while he focused his energy on building a bizarre, forty-three-room mansion of jutting cupolas, porticos, and gables dwarfed by a 150-foot-tower on six hundred forested acres in Menlo Park, thirty miles south of San Francisco, and although his supposed stock market manipulations caused constant comment in the newspapers, stock-trading and financial circles generally credited Flood with “square dealing” and considered “his word” as “good as his bond in any business transaction.”
Fair didn’t attract such grudging nods. California and Nevada circles considered him “the sharpest and most unscrupulous of all the bonanza millionaires.” “Colonel Fair” had taken to keeping a bodyguard of “hired fighters” on the Comstock to insulate him from the unwashed crowd, and his prodigious appetites acquired a reputation—for food, drink, flattery, and, it was increasingly whispered, for women other than his wife. Fair loved to hear himself talk, convinced that his outrageous mining success qualified him to “pass upon” any subject, and he seldom missed a chance to make himself look good at somebody else’s expense. Whenever possible, he began taking those opportunities at the expense of his partners, saying, “Those lads would still be in overalls but for me” on many occasions.
For his part, “the jolly millionaire” William O’Brien—“Billy” to everyone who knew him—stayed as true to himself as possible. Asked about his success, he always said, “I caught the tail of a kite and hung on.” According to the Chicago Tribune, O’Brien spent more time “hobnobbing with the boys” in the back room of McGovern’s Saloon than he did at the offices of the Nevada Bank, playing low-stakes games of Pedro as he’d always done, careful not to drive off any old friends. He kept a pile of silver dollars nearby, to which any of his cronies were welcome to help themselves. His prized possession remained the silver trumpet he’d been given upon successful completion of a term as foreman of Volunteer Fire Company No. 4 back in the 1850s. Annually, O’Brien gave a lavish party for the gold rushers with whom he’d arrived in California aboard the ship Farolinto in 1849. His great service to the Firm seems to have been social—due to the high and genial regard in which he was held by men about town and his ability to keep the peace between his three strong-minded partners. The only indulgence Billy O’Brien allowed himself was a splendid trotting mare and fast buggy, which he often raced to the sand hills west of town to enjoy the dramatic view over “the Ocean Beach,” the splendid strip of sand and surf running south from the Cliff House.IV A committed bachelor in his personal life, O’Brien delighted in his sisters and nieces and spoiled them lavishly. Polite and chivalrous in his personal habits, he was considered by most San Franciscans the most “distinguished looking” of the bonanza millionaires, particularly when he appeared at parties escorting his sisters.
Although O’Brien presented the most decorous and mannerly appearance, most observers found Fair the most handsome, with his raven-black beard and hair, and spoke of his “indefatigable” devotion to work. Every miner acknowledged Fair’s expertise, but Fair had trouble trusting subordinates, even those of long experience. He forced expert mine foremen, engineers, and superintendents to report minute details multiple times per day, and he drove himself to frequent breakdowns. The stress of managing such enormous operations likely motivated a sharp uptick in his alcohol consumption. Always the most garrulous of the bonanza quartet, Fair spoke in “suave sentences” embellished with such phrases as “my dear boy” and “old man,” and when he spoke to women or girls, it was always, “my little dear,” “pretty creature,” and the like. But no matter how hard Fair pushed his self-aggrandizement, in comparisons of the Bonanza Firm’s two leading miners, less light almost always shone on James G. Fair. The contrasts became sharper as time passed. A pair of famous anecdotes showed up their different styles.
In one story, Fair traced the smell of tobacco smoke to a group of miners deep in the workings but couldn’t identify the guilty parties. (Underground miners easily discerned the differing odors of dynamite, cordite, black powder, blasting caps, candles, and lanterns from the one they dreaded—burning wood.) Fair told the men he wasn’t feeling well but would be greatly refreshed by a pipe and a smoke. A sheepish miner produced smoking paraphernalia and tobacco from a hidden cranny. Fair took his puffs, said his thanks, and went on his way. The men thought they’d been let off easy.
They had. Back on the surface, Fair told a foreman to have the men “given their time”—meaning paid off and fired.
Discharged hands said Fair caressed with his voice while he kicked with his boot, and “the more oil in his expression the more disagreeable surprise he [has] in store.”
Mackay handled similar situations in more aboveboard fashion. He followed his nose and found an otherwise hardworking man. “Pat, have you been smoking?” he asked.
Guilty, the man replied, “Mister Mackay, there’s been a good deal of shooting around here this morning . . .” (meaning blasting).
Mackay looked at him for a long moment. “Don’t do it again,” he said.
Pat never did. “I sure thought I was fired,” he later drawled.
A stocky fellow named “Shorty” Bailey worked as a top-carman—one of the men who met the cars of ore or waste at the shaft landings and dealt with them as appropriate. Walking up a trestle track after an inspection one morning, Mackay stopped a car running toward him that didn’t seem to have anyone behind it. A voice piped up from behind, “What son-of-a-bitch stopped the car?”
Bailey must have blanched when he realized to whom he’d addressed the insult, but Mackay just stepped aside. “It’s all right, Little One,” he said, “I thought the car was running away.” For the next twenty years, Mackay had a few pleasant words with Bailey whenever he encountered him about the mines.
One night during the bonanza times, local journalist and old friend Sam Davis called on Mackay in his austere rooms above the Gould & Curry office and to his astonishment, found the great miner poring over an “ordinary school book.” Mackay made no effort to conceal his reading. “I never received much education and have to put in my leisure hours catching up,” he said.
Davis recalled meeting Mackay at five o’clock in the morning on another occa
sion. Mackay was just leaving his quarters, having already had his breakfast, on his way to the Con. Virginia to begin the mine inspections with which he always started his workdays.
In the tradition of sagebrush journalism, Davis was on his way home from a night on the town. “If I had your money, John,” he said, “I wouldn’t get up at 5 o’clock.”
“If you keep going to bed at five in the morning, you’ll never have my money or anybody else’s!” Mackay replied.
When he wasn’t afoot, trudging between the mines, Mackay drove a shabby buggy, pulled by a single horse. Fair bought a fancy carriage and a gorgeous pair of matched bays adorned with shiny silver tack, and he employed a coachman. Boys out “coasting” down Virginia City’s cross streets in the winter season would whiz down from A Street to where the hill flattened out near the Con. Virginia hoisting works. If Mackay were about, the boys waited, knowing Mackay would let them tie their sleds on behind and give them a ride uphill as he made the rounds. If they saw Fair’s fancy carriage, they began the long upslope trudge, dragging their sleds.
When Mackay was on the lode, forty or fifty boys congregated outside the entrance to Piper’s rebuilt Opera House before each performance, knowing Mackay would be inside, and knowing that a few moments before curtain time, Mackay would poke his head through the door, nod toward the gang, and ask the proprietor, “How much for the bunch?”
John Piper would settle on fifty cents a head, and Mackay would dig a double eagle from his pocket. “We would enjoy the show,” a man reminiscing about his Virginia City childhood wrote years later, “and what is more, we would think better of all mankind because John Mackay had remembered that he was once a boy.”
Journalist Wells Drury visited Mackay one day in pursuit of mine intelligence. Mackay gestured him toward a stack of official reports. Drury copied lines and figures, but couldn’t help noticing Mackay looking out the window over Six Mile Cañon with a glum, lonely look. That struck Drury. He knew Mackay as a man usually “on good terms with himself and the world.” Drury asked Mackay if something was wrong and if he could help.
The Bonanza King Page 47