din r. GIFT OF Mrs* W. W. Kemp THE IRON HUNTER THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED tONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, I/ra. TORONTO My mother Margaret Ann Fannon Osborn THE IKON HUNTER BY CHASE S. OSBORN Author of "The Andean Land" J!3eto gotfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1919 All right* reserved TW'/yo /\ . .?:;*:: f *-/ ::*: */ COPTBIGHT, 1919 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and clectrotyped. Published May, 1919. TO M. F. H. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE ... 1 II WHAT'S IN YOUR NAME OR MINE? ... 15 III NATURAL BORN REBELS 22 IV POVERTY THAT CRAMPS AND THEN EX- PANDS THE SOUL 37 V WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS FILL MY MIND AND I ACT UPON THEM 48 VI SWEPT INTO THE HUMAN MAELSTROM OF CHICAGO 60 VII I DRIVE A COAL WAGON PILE LUMBER CAPTURE A MURDERER AND DOCK WALLOP IN MILWAUKEE 68 VTEI MARRIED ON CREDIT I GIVE MY BRIDE A FIVE CENT BOUQUET AND WE TAKE A WEDDING TRIP ON A STREET CAR ... 81 IX I UNDERTAKE THE STUDY OF IRON ORE AND ENGAGE IN EXPLORATION AND PROSPECTING 89 X MY FIRST TRIP INTO THE TRACKLESS WILDS OF UNEXPLORED CANADA 94 XI CHARMED BY THE BEAUTY OF SAULT DE SAINTE MARIE AND FASCINATED BY ITS EN- VIRONS I CHOOSE IT AS A HOME FOR LIFE 102 XII I AM. USED AS A POLITICAL FULCRUM BY JAY HUBBELL TO PRY OUT SAM STEPHEN- SON -v , v = v'. 113 XIII THE SACRIFICE OF GENERAL ALGER TO AP- PEASE POLITICAL BLOOD HOWLERS . . . 121 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XIV MY ASSOCIATION WITH HAZEN S. PINGREE PLUNGES ME INTO POLITICS DEEPER THAN EVER 127 XV I BECOME A CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR TO SUCCEED HAZEN S. PINGREE .... 137 XVI THE POETRY, CHARM, ROMANCE AND USE- FULNESS OF IRON ORE 145 XVII IRON ORE BACTERIA 153 XVIII READING THE STORY OF THE STONES AS PRINTED ON THE PAGES OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE 159 XIX GREAT LEAN OUTCROPPING OF IRON ORE UNSEEN UNDER THE VERY EYES OF THE WORLD 165 XX INTO THE HEART OF THE ARCTIC LAPLAND WHERE THE MYSTERIES ARE ATTUNED TO THE MUFFLED FOOTFALLS OF SILENCE . . 174 XXI DEPOSITS OF IRON ORE AND BEDS OF COAL UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE POLE . . 184 XXII A STARVATION HIKE TO HUNT FOR A HID- DEN RANGE OF IRON ORE 190 XXIII FATHERLY ATTITUDE OF JOHN W. GATES AND JOHN J. MITCHELL 202 XXIV EATING MOOSE MEAT FROM ONE YEAR'S END TO ANOTHER AT THE MOOSE MOUNTAIN CAMP . , '. 210 XXV SIR DONALD MANN PROPOSES TO USE DOUBLE-BITTED AXES AS WEAPONS IN A DUEL WITH A RUSSIAN COUNT .... 215 XXVI WORLD WORKERS IN IRON IN ALL AGES . . 223 XXVII CONCENTRATION OF LEAN ORES IN THE UNITED STATES SIDERITE MAGNETITE HEMATITE . . . ..... v * :,*. . 233 XXVIII ACCIDENTAL FORTUNES FROM IRON ORE . . 244 CONTENTS CHAPTER XXIX MESABA RANGE IN MINNESOTA, THE GREAT- EST IRON ORE DISTRICT THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN ........ 249 XXX CONSIDERATION OF CHARLES EVANS "HUGHES, WOODROW WILSON AND OTHERS IN SEARCH- ING FOR A SUCCESSOR TO JAMES B. ANGELL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN . . . 257 XXXI TOM MAY'S KERRY PHILOSOPHY A SOCIAL THERMOMETER ........ 265 XXXII I AM ELECTED GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN . 268 XXXIII I START A FIGHT AGAINST THE SALOON THAT KEEPS UP TO THE END .... 276 XXXIV FIGHTING FOR THE LIFE OF MICHIGAN AGAINST THE HUMAN BLOODSUCKERS THAT SUBSIST ON SOCIETY EVERYWHERE . . 280 XXXV MY PART m THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 .......... 289 XXXVI OFF FOR MADAGASCAR, ASIA AND AFRICA FOR A LONG TOUR IN THE UNUSUAL PARTS OF THE EARTH ......... 293 XXXVII SOME REFERENCES TO BURMA, CEYLON, COCHIN-CHINA, TURKESTAN, PERSIA . . 298 XXXVIII I DISCOVER ANOTHER GREAT IRON ORE RANGE THAT WILL SOME DAY HELP TO SUPPLY THE WORLD ....... 305 XXXIX MANY PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN AGAIN URGE ME TO TAKE UP THE GONFALON FOR BETTER THINGS IN THE STATE ...... 307 XL IN CONCLUSION ......... 311 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS My Mother, Margaret Ann Fannon Osborn . Frontispiece FACING PAGB Florence, Wisconsin, 40 years ago 98 Where Lake Superior Breaks Through La Sault de Sainte Marie 108 Author in typical Primeval Jungle on the Hudson Bay Height of Land 162 Alfred Noble Promontory Lake Superior .... 168 Upturned tree where iron ore was first discovered on Lake Superior at Negaunee 246 Tom May's Sketch of Deerfoot showing how a tender- foot hung a Buck 278 A Press Cartoon, 1910 284 Afield with Tiglath Pilezer Bones No. II 306 I made a sun dial at Camp in Windigo Land on a sawed stump and Emerson Hough inspects it ... 306 My father George Augustus Osborn 314 STATEMENT Cellini states that all men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are per- sons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hands ; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise until they have passed the age of forty. And so, he says, in a work like this there will always be found occasion for natural bragging. Guizot wrote the history of France after undertaking to tell it to his grandchildren as they sat about his knee. When my friend, Emerson Hough, added his urging to that of my children and grandchildren, I first gave a serious thought to it. My father had a great prejudice against autobiographies. This he communicated to me congenitally. I am not abnormally modest, I think, but I rebelled at the idea of writing about myself. It staged my ego too prominently. " The fact is," said Mr. Hough, " you unconsciously possess such a Gargantuan ego that you think you must conceal it by a false show of modesty. If you were really modest, you would not think of your ego, but would as willingly write of yourself as of another." Others supported him. And even with it all I feel like explaining the reason why I consented to try. STATEMENT I confess I am glad to have my Marco Polo and Abbe Hue and my Stephenson and Eoosevelt and Sid- ney. And I would set great store by it if I had a life of my own grandfather. Probably the decision to set down what follows grew from the belief that the opportunities of life in America are as numerous as they ever were. If I, as an average American, and that is all I claim to be or wish to be, can have done the things that engaged my existence, others may also have enlivened hope. With gratefulness to God for His mercy and protec- tion and providence and for all the wondrous blessings I have enjoyed, I submit, as incomplete, a sketch of some of the work of my life. I view the future for my country, my family, my friends and myself cheerfully and hopefully, in the light of God's love and His merciful direction. CHASE S. OSBORN. Sault de Sainte Marie, Michigan, December, 1918. THE IRON HUNTER CHAPTER I WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE HOSE awful wolves I ! ! " My wife exclaimed, as a long, low, blood- freezing howl sifted to our ears with the pine- needle, wind rhythms. It came from a mile north on the course of a late fall gale. Our baby, a girlie a year old, slept like a little hairless savage in a padded, corn- can box. The wolf howl did not reach the tiny ears. We were in the back room of a rakish, one-story shack. There were three such rooms, just little cages partitioned with rough ceiling boards, with broken tongues and warped edges, making cracks that prevented anything like eye privacy. As for hearing, our ears were not shut off at all. I used the front end of the building as a printing office. It contained an old Washington hand lever-press and a new Taylor cylinder, painted as flor- idly as a German reception room. There were two job presses, a Peerless and a Universal both new a paper cutter, imposing stone, type cases, small piles of print and job papers, a big box stove, and the usual ath- letic towel, ethiopic with ink. The smell that came from the room needed no ambergris as a matrix, but was like wild roses in the nostrils of a young, country news- paper man. 1 2 THE IRON HUNTER The blood-searching howl was repeated in greater vol- ume four wolves this time. It was getting late in the little mining town, but drunken shouts and the crack of a shot could now and then be heard. " We can't live here, Chase," my wife said. " Even if we can, it is no place for the baby." " You are right," I replied. " Just give me a little time to clean this place up and make it a fit place for decent people. If I fail, we will go back to Milwaukee or some other place where outlaws are not the law." This took place at Florence, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Menominee iron range, one of the Lake Superior iron ore districts. Conditions here were similar to those of every new range. There is always an outlaw headquarters in all new regions remote from disciplined centers. Florence, at this period of the early eighties, was a metropolis of vice. There was gambling on the main streets, outdoors in clement weather and un- screened indoors when driven in by cold and storm. Prostitution was just as bold. Its red passion garbings paraded every prominent place in town. A mile out of town, Mudge's stockade was the central supply station. It was the prison used by the nerviest white slavers that ever dealt in women. A big log camp with frame gables held a bar and dance hall and stalls on the first floor. On the second floor were rooms about the size of those in a Tokio Yoshiwara. A third-floor attic contained dungeons and two trap doors. In the cellar were dark cells and a secret passage, well timbered with cedar, leading to where the hill on which the stockade was located broke down into a dense swamp. Surrounding this camp of death, and worse, were sharp pointed pali- sades, ten feet high, of the kind used against the Indians to inclose pioneer blockhouses. There were loopholes. WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE 3 Two passages led through the stockade. One was wide enough to admit a team. This was fastened with horn- beam cross bars. The other entrance was narrower and for commoner use. It was protected by a solid sliding gate of ironwood. On either side of this gate, inside, two big, gaunt, terrifying timber wolves were chained. It was the howls of these four wolves we had heard. This stockade was a wholesale warehouse of women. There were several in the Lake Superior iron country in the early days, but I think this one at Florence was the most notorious and the worst. It was built by " Old Man " Mudge. He was a white-livered, sepulchral in- dividual who wore a cotton tie, a Prince Albert coat and a plug hat ; even wore this outfit when he fed the wolves. Mudge worked as a preacher through northern Indi- ana and Ohio and the scoundrel used his clerical make- up to fine advantage. He had a ready tongue and roped in girl after girl. Not much attention was paid in those days to pimping and procuring. Whenever a murder grew out of his acts, the old fox would so in- volve his trail that, if it led anywhere at all, a church was at the end of it, and that would throw off the sleuth. Old Mudge ruined his daughter Mina, and she was " keeper " of the place. Mina Mudge was a stunning woman. Her concentrated depravity, for she too had a child and brought it up in infamy, was glossed over by a fine animal figure, a rubescent complexion, semi- pug nose, lurking gray eyes, sensual lips and sharpish chin. Her lips were the clew to passion, and eyes and chin betokened the cruelty of a she hyena. Girls were wheedled or beaten into submission, and nearly always when she sold them she had them broken to the business. Two days before, in the evening, a shrinking, girlish young woman was found just outside our door by my 4 THE IRON HUNTER wife. She cowered and shivered and looked wild-eyed. It took some time to coax her in. After warmth and food, she told her story. Old Mudge had found her on a farm in Ohio. An orphan, she was sort of bound out, and her life was one of work and little else. Rather attractive, she was spied by the old serpent, and taken north " to a good home." In her heart the girl was good and she was brave. Mina Mudge starved her, beat her, tied her ankles and wrists with thongs and, to break her in with terror, fastened her just out of the reach of the wolves. It was night, and the girl grew cold with exposure and fear. Her wrists and ankles shrunk some, and she wriggled out of the cut- ting thongs. Then she fled to the swamp and hid until hunger forced her to search for food. We took as good care of her as our means afforded and planned her com- plete rescue. The day we heard the wolves howling, as mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, the girl disappeared. It was years later before I knew what had befallen her. Mudge's gang had located and trapped her. They forcibly kidnaped her and carried her to the wolf stockade. There she was given no chance again to escape. Her spirit was broken. She was sold to a brothel-keeper in Ontonagon County, Michigan, and was murdered by him one night in a ranch near to the Lake Superior shore. Murders often occurred, but those guilty were seldom punished. When this girl so mysteriously disappeared from our house, I was suspicious. I went to the sheriff, an Irish saloon-keeper, but could not get him to act. He was either a member of the gang or honestly afraid. The Mudge gang was organized over a territory in- cluding the region for five hundred miles south of Lake Superior from Canada to Minnesota. " Old Man " WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE 5 Mudge was as much of a genius in some directions as he was a devil in others. Compared with him, Machia- velli was a saint. They did not confine themselves to woman stealing. They would run off witnesses when arrests occurred near the law-and-order line. If they could not get rid of them any other way, the witnesses were killed. Any man who showed an inclination to oppose the gang was either intimidated or murdered. Within their own ranks a rebel never got away alive. Mudge tolerated no rivals. No sea pirate was ever more bloodthirsty or vengeful. The most notorious murder he was responsible for was that of Dan Dunn, at Trout Lake. Dunn was just as bad a man as Mudge, and not so much of a sneak about it. That was really how Mudge came to get him. Such were conditions in the iron country when I arrived. The picture cannot be overdrawn. I had gone there upon a telegram sent by Hiram D. Fisher, discoverer of the Florence mine, to Colonel J. A. Wat- rous of Milwaukee, asking him to " send up a young fellow not afraid to run a newspaper." It was a weekly publication. The owner and editor, a man of culture and courage, too old and too fine for the rough pioneer- ing and outlaws, had just " disappeared." The gang was against all newspapers and dead against any that tried to improve conditions or oppose them in any way. Just a little time before they had burned the Manis- tique Pioneer office and had tried desperately but un- successfully to assassinate its brave editor, the late Major Clarke, a veteran of the Civil War. All along the line they had terrorized editors if possible. So the first night after I arrived they shot out my windows and shot a leg off one of the job presses, just to show me what they would do to me if I wasn't " good." 6 THE IRON HUNTER A short time before that the gang had gotten down on Captain William E. Dickinson, superintendent of the Commonwealth mine, two miles from Florence. Cap- tain Dickinson had come there from the ISTew York mine in one of the older Lake Superior districts. He was fearless and a man of order and high ideals. With a fine family of yoimg children, he felt the necessity of improving conditions. Successful in his previous en- vironment, he did not apprehend serious trouble. But he did not correctly take the measure of the desperate characters who made up the Mudge gang. Hardly had he started to move against them before they stole his little son Willie. They sent him word that if he fought them they would kill the child. It was a knife in his heart, the wound of which finally carried him to his grave. Captain Dickinson spent money, followed clews, sent spies to join the gang and gave up every thought except the recovery of his little son. It is nearly forty years ago now. Captain Dickinson has gone to his final reward. Where Willie Dickinson is or what became of him or whether he is dead or alive, is a mystery to this day. It is the most piteous tragedy of scores enacted by the iron pirates. Something had to be done. I began a study of the situation in detail. The encouraging fact was de- veloped that the law-abiding citizens outnumbered the outlaws. A majority of them were timid and could not be depended upon to act, but we could be certain that not many of them would openly join the leeches. Many men with families deplored conditions but feared that a war on the toughs would hurt business. Hasn't it been always so ? Then to my amazement and cha- grin, for I was only twenty-three years old and to a degree unsophisticated, I uncovered the fact that that WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE 7 Borgia of a Mina Mudge had something on half or more of the merchants, who thought easily or made that ex- cuse to their conscience, that they had to be good fel- lows and go to her place with the miners and woodsmen in order to get business. The outlaws were able to keep close tab on the plans of any who threatened them through these dwellers in the twilight zone of morals. As soon as I could be certain of some backing, I at- tacked Mudge and his gang in my little paper. It was a thunderer there though, no matter what its size. I charged crimes home and named those who were guilty or probably so, whenever I had facts or tangible sus- picions. The time must have been just ripe for it for some astounding things occurred. Some of those against whom I made charges came to see me; not all peaceably. But from some of them I obtained denials of participation, and one or two gave to me invaluable inside information. Consequently I was informed in advance when my office was to be wrecked, and when I was to be gotten rid of. I built a little conning place of glass and kept some one on watch there every day- light moment. Also I bought Winchesters for all the office force, and for a long time every type stand was a gun rack for a repeating rifle. At night I took extra care and kept watch. A couple of faithful dogs with plenty of bulldog blood guarded the office, and were much better for the purpose than Mudge's wolves, but did not make as terrifying a setting in the mind of a tenderfoot. I found a fighting preacher at the little mission church in Florence in the person of Harlan Page Cory, a young Presbyterian just suited to the work to be done and entirely unafraid. An undersheriff named Char- ley Noyes, from the Androscoggin country, was found 8 THE IRON HUNTER to be clean and brave and dependable. Bill Noyes, his brother, was a six footer plus, and the best shot and dry ground trailer anywhere around. He was not afraid of a mad catamount, and his morals had sprouted in the Green Mountains where Ethan Allen got his. Bill was eager to help clean up. A little concave-chested hardware man named Rolb- stell, with whiskers like a deer mouse and a voice like a consumptive cuckoo, was found, when the meter was applied to him, to be as full of good points as a box of tacks. There was no law against shining deer in those days ; anyhow not in Florence. Rolbstell built a scaffold one day, twenty feet up in a birch that leaned over a connecting gut of Spread Eagle Lake, where a fine runway crossed. The first dark, soft night that came he climbed up there with a bull's-eye lamp cocked over his left eye. He nearly went to sleep before he heard anything. Then he suddenly came to and saw a pair of silvery eyes and let go at them. Forgetting in his state of mind where he was, he stepped off the scaf- fold just as if he had been on the solid ground and down he went. That is where Rolbstell made his reputation. He lit astride of a two-hundred-pound buck that he had wounded and which was floundering in about four feet of water. Of course, he lost his gun in the descent. Pulling out his tomahawk, he nearly chopped the buck's head off before he succeeded in killing him. Rolbstell had plenty of that intestinal courage that was the fas- cination of Tsin, who built the Great Wall and meas- ured all men by it. So he became a leader, if not the leader, in the new movement. With these and others assured, we called a meeting and organized the Citizen Regulators. The meeting was such a hummer and so many joined that the sheriff WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE 9 aud district attorney had a street duel the next day, growing out of a row that was caused by each trying to shift blame upon the other. I had publicly charged them both with being controlled by the Mudge gang. The district attorney shot the sheriff through the lungs. A lot of the sheriff's friends got a rope ready to hang the lawyer, who really was one of the worst of citi- zens, while the sheriff had told several that he intended to join the Regulators. Meanwhile the sheriff lived long enough for the mob to cool off. The preacher and I decided that we must get rid of all crooked and cow- ardly officials. I started to Milwaukee and Madison to enlist influ- ence and see the governor, in order to have the district attorney removed and a man appointed who would en- force the law. All the way to Milwaukee I was har- assed by telegrams for my arrest. The gang tried to capture me at the train, but I learned of their plans in time to elude them. Then we had a wild race through the woods to the Michigan line. If they had caught me in Wisconsin they were going to finish me in some way. The pursuit kept up almost to Iron Mountain, which was nearly as bad as Florence at the time. I dodged them but was afraid to stop at Iron Mountain because the local authorities there were believed to be under the control of the Mudge outlaws. It was night. I had expected to take an evening train. Prevented from doing this, I ran two miles through the woods to Com- monwealth. There one of my faithful printers, an Irish lad named Billy Doyle, had a team in waiting. Hastily climbing into the buckboard and taking the lines, I lashed the horses into a gallop. Over my shoul- ders I could see the gang coming on foot, on horse and in rigs. I had a Colt's revolver and could shoot it quite 10 THE IRON HUNTER well enough. Billy had thrown in a Winchester. I made up my mind they would riot take me in Wisconsin without a fight. We madly galloped over the corduroy roads in the dark. That it was night and the pursuers were unorganized was all that saved me. We crossed the line. On the outskirts of Iron Mountain I gave the reins to Billy and jumped out and went on alone. Safely making a detour of the town, I took the rail- road track and hiked southwards towards law arid order. I was in Michigan. Between Keel Ridge arid Quin- nesec three men stepped out of the gloom and leveled guns at my head. I obeyed their order to hold up my hands and they took me back to Iron Mountain by main force, and not a sign of legal warrant. They were Mudge agents. It was after midnight. I made a big roar as soon as I got where anybody could hear. In spite of the racket I made they took me to a place which was not the jail and locked me in a room. Be- fore they got me confined I managed to send word to Cook and Flarmigan, whose firm of attorneys at Norway was the ablest on the Range. The late Hon. A. C. Cook got to me and secured my release. To this day I do not know how he did it. Perhaps his partner, R. C. Flannigan, now a prominent mining country judge, and a good one, could tell if he wished to. I continued on my way. Efforts were made to stop me at Marinette and Green Bay. These were unsuccessful. Finally I got to Milwaukee where I had any number of strong friends. Lemuel Ellsworth had just become chief of police, and the present Milwaukee chief, John T. Jans- sen, was on the detective staff. I went to the central station to call upon them, as they were old friends of mine during my police reporter days. The chief handed me a telegram to read. It was for my arrest. WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE 11 They had sent it to the wrong place. I told my story. All of us knew the chief affectionately as Lem. He said: u Glad to see you, Chase. Now, let's do something to those hell-hounds. I will wire I have you and ask them to send for you with a strong guard. This will possibly bring a crowd of them down, and I will throw them all into the bull pen." " Of course I can't wait to do that," I replied, for I had to accomplish my bigger mission and return as quickly as possible. During the afternoon I received a telegram signed " H. P. Cory." It read : " Don't come back. They are going to kill you if you do." I knew it as a fake at once, for that preacher would have had me come back and be killed rather than have me run away from the fine fight I had started. I felt the same way. It was only wisdom to be apprehensive enough to be on the alert, as the gang had not hesitated to resort to murder in the dark before. I saw rugged Jeremiah M. Rusk, then governor of Wisconsin, and secured the appointment of a clean, but rather gentle lawyer named Howard E. Thompson as district attorney, to succeed the Mudge gang lawyer, who, although possessed of a kind of brute bravery, got out of the way. Before he had downed the sheriff that officer had bowled him over, after being shot through the body himself, and stood over him, futilely snapping a revolver, all the loads of which had been discharged, in a frantic attempt to kill. Then the sheriff fell into the pool of blood that had trickled around his feet and the lawyer bad man was run off. Governor Rusk gave me every encouragment. " Go after them, boy," he said, " and if you need 12 THE IRON HUNTER help just say the word. I'll back you with the troops if it is necessary." I made my way back north about as rapidly as I had fled. The gang was in a panic when they saw me and heard of the support the governor had fortified me with. I had it told to them in as amplified and impressive a manner as possible arid then I played it up in my paper with all my might and type. The gang was on the run from that time, but it was not beaten yet. Dives and relays were started along the border so that the outlaws could jump from one State to the other handily. Claudius B. Grant was a circuit judge in the adjacent region of Michigan. He became a terror to the bad men and women and clearly showed what a man rightly constituted can do with the law in his own hands. He was waging a solitary war against the gang, and sheriffs and prosecuting attorneys who were their tools. Finally he made it so hot for them on his side, and we so reciprocated on our side that the bad people began to look for other and less troublesome pastures. They fled to Seney, Trout Lake, Ewen, Sidnaw, Hurley and other points in the Lake Superior country out of Grant's jurisdiction, and out of our reach, where they operated for some years without molestation. There was a temporary renascence of outlawry in Judge Grant's district because the gang had gotten rid of him by designedly electing him to the Supreme Court of Michigan. But it did not last long. Civilization must have something more than that kind of outlawry to subsist upon, and civilization was growing a good deal like a weed. All of this was not achieved as easily as it has been briefly written. There were many clashes and excit- WOLVES HUMAN AND OTHERWISE 13 ing performances. Both sides were high handed. Shootings occurred by day and night, and the fight was a real battle. At first the gang had nearly all the law officers on its side. By degrees we changed this. The average follow in office is quick to try to pick the winning side. These trimmers, usually so despicable, were a real help to us because they trimmed gradually to our side. Mudge withdrew his worst operations to more remote spots in the woods. The Regulators determined to clean all of them out. The law was too slow under the conditions that existed and the punishments inadequate. At the time there was really no law against white slav- ery and procuring. Pat McHugh, a bully and retired prize fighter, was Madge's head man. Nearly everybody was afraid of him. He had even been known to fight in the day- time with his backers at hand, and he was fairly quick with a gun, but could not fan. On a day agreed upon the Regulators, armed with Winchester rifles, Colt re- volvers and blacksnake whips, started on a rodeo. They drove the toughs off the streets. Those who did not move quickly enough were lashed smartly with the blacksnakes. Theirs had been a reign of terror long enough. It was our turn. They showed as many tem- peraments as one could find among any men and women. Some were whimpering cowards. Others were sullen. The women were most bold and loudest in profanity and vulgarity. A woman has capacity to be the very best and the very worst. McHugh was one of the first to run. He hid in the swamp stockade with half a dozen others of the gang. The Regulators rode down against them. They opened a hot fire with Winchester repeaters. The Regulators replied and charged. It 14 THE IKON HUNTER fell to Bill Noyes to capture Pat McHugh. The bully had often boasted what he would do to Bill if he ever got a chance. Now he fled into the swamp, revolver in hand. Bill saw him and ran after him. They dodged from tree to tree, Indian fashion, exchanging shots from time to time. Bill was too good a woods- man for McHugh. He loaded his gun as he ran and soon had a drop on the leader of the outfit. McHugh fell on his knees and begged for mercy. Bill spared him. He said to me only a short time ago : " Chase, I reckon I oughta killed that red-handed devil that day I got him in the swamp, but I'm kinda glad I didn't, 'cause it goes agin the grain with me to kill anything I can't eat." After that we burned a number of stockades and soon had the community so fit to live in that I spent four happy years there. And my wife, who had given up a good home to share her lot with a young reporter, was contented, and our girlie grew fat and crowed when her first brother was born in the little boarded rooms full of cracks, in the rear of the one-story, country printing office. What became of Mudge will never be told. Only a half dozen Regulators ever knew. CHAPTER II WHAT'S IN YOUR NAME OB MINE? THE name Osborn, Osborne, Osburn, Osbern, Os- beorn, et cetera, has an interesting genesis, true of the origin of most family names, with source variations dependent upon what name system, Teutonic or other, is consulted. Leo's " Essay on Anglo-Saxon Names/' published in 1841, appears to be as thorough as any and has become an authority. " Bearo " or " bern," betokens, as gathered from Kemble's " Char- ters/ 7 a fruitful, productive wood, yielding beechnuts, acorns and other mast, wild pears, crabapples, paw- paws, persimmons, and other wild fruits of the forest. The word " beran," meaning to yield, to produce fruit, evolves into bear, barron, boren, be re, barley. Beam, a child, the fruit of the body, and bearo, bero, byro, the fruit wood, are similar derivatives. These things I am setting down, not because of any especial name vanity, but for the reason that these references suggest the manner of the making and the giving of all family names, the reader's as well as mine and all others. Also the growth system of our language is indicated by the way family names have started and by their methods of change in obedience to the influence of thought and time. Ferguson, in his " Surnames as a Science " builds my name of the Old North " As " or the Anglo-Saxon " Os," implicative of the deity and " beorn," meaning 15 16 THE IRON HUNTER bear. He says the name is Norse and means " The Di- vine Bear " or " Godbear." Lower's " Patronymica Britanriica," published 1860, says that Osborn, Os- borne, Osbern, Osbernus and so forth are variations of a very common baptismal name. Several persons bear- ing these names are referred to in Domesday as tenants in chief in different counties of England. William Arthur, father of Chester A. Arthur, brought out a name hunt book in 1857, in which he says Osborn is Saxon, from bus, house, and beam, a child, hence a family child or perhaps an adopted child. Bowditch's " Suffolk Surnames," Boston, 1861, makes very free with Arthur's offerings, as Arthur had done with other name sleuths, and says Osborn means " housechild." Bardsley's " English Surnames," says that " Os " as a root word carrying the significance of deity has made for itself a firm place among English names, as proven by Osborn, Oswald, Oswin, Osmond, Osmer, Osgot, Osgood, Oslac (Asluck, Hasluck, etc.). Edmunds, in " Traces of History in Names of Places," says Osborn means " brave bear." Sophy Moody, in " What is Your Name ? " has it that Osborn means " a chief appointed by the gods." " Gentry, Family Names," Philadelphia, 1892, gives " Os " as hero and " beorn " as chief, general, prince, king, hence hero king, or something akin to it. In " Homes of Family Names in Great Britain," Guppy, 1890, I find the claim that my name was borne by farmers or yeoman attached to the soil in England before the Norman Conquest, According to Guppy, it was confined south of a line joining the Humber and the Mersey, and its principal area of distribution is in the form of a belt crossing Central England from East WHAT'S IN YOUR NAME OR MINE 17 Anglia to the borders of Wales. Though well repre- sented also in the southwest of England, especially in Somerset and Cornwall, it is rare or absent in the other south coast counties excepting Sussex. Osborne is common in England and Osborn is uncommon in com- parison, although the latter is sprinkled through Bed- fordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Lin- colnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Somersetshire, Suffolk, Sussex, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. A book with author's name not given, " The Norrnan People and their existing descendents in the British Dominions and the United States," London, 1874, con- tains a dictionary of 3000 Norman names. I gather here that our family descends from a Kentish branch of the family of Fitz-Osberne, seated in that county early in the reign of Henry VI, where Thomas Osberne appeared to a writ of quo warranto for the Abbey of Dartford. The family had come from Essex and Suf- folk, where the name is traced to Thomas Fitz-Osberne, 1227-1240, who granted lands to Holy Trinity. His grandfather, Richard Fitz-Osberne or Fitz-Osbert, held a fief from Earl Bigot in 1105 and was ancestor of the Lords Fitz-Osberne summoned by writ in 1312. Fitz- Letard Osbern came to England in 1060 and held lands from Odo, of Bayeux in 1086. " The Battle of Abbey Roll with some account of the Norman Lineages," by the Duchess of Cleveland, has many references to the Osborns. " Dugdale Baronage of England, or an Historical Account of the Lives and Most Memorable Actions of our English Nobility in the Saxon Times to the Norman Conquest, and from thence of Those who had Their Rise before the end of Henry Ill's Reign," genealog- 18 THE IRON HUNTER ical tables, etc., 3 volumes, by the author of " Monasti- con Angelicanuin," published 1675, is a notable work and a chief authority for that time in what it purports to cover. Planche, in " The Conqueror and His Com- panions," visits it liberally, as do other writers dealing with that era. In Lower's " English Surnames " I found a story of the Osborn name which, whether true or false, mirrors the times arid depicts the light regard mediaeval mon- archs had for the lands and property of the people that were vested in the crown. Walter, a Norman knight and a great favorite of King William the First, playing at chess with his Sire on a summer evening on the banks of the River Ouse, won all he played for. The King said he had nothing more to play for and was about to quit the game. " Sire," said Walter, " here is land." " There is so," replied King William, " and I will further play with thee. If thou beatest me this game also, thine is all this land on this side the bourne (river) which thou canst see as thou sittest." Walter won. King William clapped him on the shoulder and de- clared : " The lands are yours. Henceforth shall you be a lord, and have the name ' Ousebourne.' ' And thence sprang the family of Osborn. The family name is treated in Burke's " General Armory " and especially in Burke's " Vicissitudes of Families." In the Church of Dives, Normandy, is a roll of the " Companions of William in the Conquest of England in 1066." It gives Osbern d'Arquess, Osbern du Ber- WHAT'S IN YOUR NAME OR MINE 19 nib, Osbern d'Eu, Osbern Giffard, Osbern Pastforiere, Osboru du Quesnai, Osborn du Soussai, and Osbern de Wauci. I have thought that the word Osborn in this roll was synonymous with Chieftain; at least to desig- nate feudal retainers of the Conqueror from the parts of Normandy mentioned. Undoubtedly William Fitz-Osbern was the nearest personal friend of William the Conqueror. J. R. Planche, in " The Conqueror and His Companions," says he was and also that Osbern was the chief officer of the household. He fought in all the battles in Nor- mandy during the twenty years which immediately pre- ceded the invasion of England, from that of Val-es- Dunes, in 1047, to that of Varaville, in 1060, and took part in the expedition against Conan, in Brittany, and in the invasion of Maine in 1063. Osbern is men- tioned in the accounts of the siege of Domfront in 1054, when he was sent to demand an explanation from Geof- frey Martel of his conduct in marching into Normandy and seizing Alencon. I shall now quote a few pages from Planche's story of this Osbern, mostly because of its rather odd sidelight upon a most important event in history : " Osbern seems to have resembled the Conqueror, his mas- ter, in character, combining great valor with readiness of wit and astuteness of policy. We have seen him entering the hall of the palace at Rouen humming a tune and rous- ing the moody Duke from his silent and sullen consideration of the news from England by bidding him bestir himself and take vengeance upon Harold, who had been disloyal to him ; to call together all he could call, cross the Channel and wrest the crown from the perjured usurper. The Duke called his retainer ' Osbern of the Bold Heart.' " At the large assembly of the whole baronage of Nor- 20 THE IRON HUNTER mandy at Lillebonne to consider the question of fighting Harold, the audacity and cunning of Osbern displayed it- self in an amazing effrontery that saved the day for the Conqueror. The barons were irresolute and even rebellious. Puzzled and ill at ease the council finally turned to the wily Dapifer Osbern and asked him to be their spokesman; to say to their lord that they not only feared the sea but were not bound to serve him beyond it. No such decision did Osbern voice. Upon the exact contrary, to the amaze- ment and confusion of the nobles, he told the Duke that they were loyal to a man and eager to serve him; that he who should bring twenty men would bring forty; that he who was bound to serve with one hundred would bring two hundred, and that the one assigned five hundred would bring a thousand and so on down the line he represented that all the barons would double their quota, thus insuring success. As for himself, Osbern promised to furnish sixty ships with full crews of fighting men. At first the barons were crazed with indignation, but stupefied and bewildered. Out of the wild disorder thus created, one of them was sud- denly stricken with the idea that if all would do as Osbern had unwarrantedly promised the campaign could not fail. And one by one they consented." Taylor's list of William the Conqueror's ships puts Osbern at the head and agrees with Wace that he fur- nished sixty ships and crews. The record reads: "Habuit a Willielmo Dapifero, filio Osberni LX naves." At another time Wace tells of Osbern's chiding the Conqueror before a battle, demanding less delay and indecision. He commanded the men from Boulogne and Paix, rode a horse covered from head to tail with fine woven iron chain armor. Even though Osbern was the only companion of the Conqueror who ever dared to cross him or bluntly advise him, he was much loved and was granted lands, position and honor in England by William after the Conquest, and he and his family WHAT'S IN YOUR NAME OK MINE 21 have never since been separated from the history of England. The Norse Osborns were also an interesting people. Our family has always clung to the idea that it had a Scandinavian origin, easily tracing the name histori- cally to participants in the Norse invasion of England. CHAPTEE III NATURAL BORN REBELS OSBORN is the English corruption for polar bear or godbear in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, whether spelled Isbjorn, Esbjerne or otherwise. Our family story, is that our ancestor was one of two jarls, who got into England at the invasion of 800. The other was promptly killed, and sometimes I fear I have made certain persons wish both had been. George the Settler brought one wing of our family to America and others came during the Huge- not hegira to Massachusetts. The fact that there was much titled nobility in the family did not keep some of my forbears from being rebels. They fought with Cromwell in the Black Watch and with the Irish kings. For so long had they lived in the British Isles that they were scattered throughout England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. To this day a royal chateau on the Isle of Wight bears our family name and the favorite yacht of King Edward VII bore it also. A lot of us must have been naturally democratic despite those of the family who courted royal favor. Every movement of reform from the time of King John and the affair at Runnymede and on through the religious wars has been participated in by my kinsfolk. The American Revo- lution found most of the family in New Jersey and New York. As usual, a split occurred. Some became rebels under Washington and others were Tories; later NATURAL BORN REBELS 23 these mostly went back to England or moved to Canada. To make a distinction the rebels dropped the final " e " and spelled their name " Osborn." The Tories re- tained the " e " and so ashamed were they of my grand- sires that many of them made even greater changes in spelling, such as Osbourne, and even Gisborne. Some of the Gisbornes got as far away from us as they easily could by going to New Zealand, where they founded a flourishing town. During a visit to Gisborne I had many talks about our common ancestors with my dis- tant relatives, and much wholesome laughter. My twice great grandfather, John Osborn, was a revolutionary chaplain and an uncle was a captain. Several others served as privates. The record of all is good without being especially dramatic. My grandfather, Isaac Osborn, was born in a fishing village on the northwest coast of Long Island, in 1795. He carried a musket as a private in the War of 1812, and was slightly wounded at Lundy Lane. In 1818 he was married to Sarah Pardee at Guilford, Connecti- cut. One of my grandmother's uncles had a private French school at New Haven, in the vicinity of where Yale College was afterward located. The fact that she was a refined young woman only made her more eager to help make powder and mold bullets during the War of 1812. The same heroic tendency inspired to abet my grandfather in his pioneering dreams. Finally they started to cross the Alleghenies with an ox team. Following the trail of westward emigration my grand- father located on the Ohio River at Madison, Indiana. He had been a fisherman and it was not such a big change to become a riverman. It was not long before he owned a flat boat and soon afterwards we find him trading as far down river as New Orleans. He would 24 THE IKON HtJNTEB steer his laden boats down the current and sell his cargo and also his scows wherever the best trade could be made. Then he would return home overland. There came a day when he did not return. Grand- mother told me when I was a little boy that grand- father had a fleet of five flat boats on his last trip, laden with a miscellaneous assortment of hogs, cattle, wheat, corn, maple sugar, furs, beans, and so forth. He ex- pected to realize between four and five thousand dol- lars for his outfit. He was last heard of after selling out at New Orleans and starting for home. Years afterward a lot of skeletons were found in a hole in a cellar underneath a tavern that was a kind of a back- woods, halfway house, near where Memphis now stands, where river traders horsebacking north were accommo- dated. It turned out to be a worse murder trap than the Benders had in Kansas. So far as ever could be learned my grandfather was one of the many murdered at that place. He had had all of his capital invested in the outfit. It left my grandmother almost destitute. She just waited long enough for my father, George Au- gustus Osborn, to be born, a posthumous child, Febru- ary 28, 1823, and then moved up to Cincinnati and, as she was fitted for the profession, became a school teacher until she married Amos Davis as her second husband. My father was twelve years old at the time. He had learned to chew tobacco and swear on the river levee by the time he was three years old. I remember now with what needless chagrin he would discuss his boy- hood with me after he had become a man of as much probity of character as I have ever known, and a total abstainer from all forms of tobacco and liquor. He rebelled at once against the new step-daddy and very soon afterward ran away from home. By the time he NATURAL BORX REBELS 25 was eighteen he had acquired quite some education, and owned a little water-power saw mill in the backwoods of Ohio, where only the best walnut logs were ripped up, the rest going into rails or wood or brush fires. Amos Davis was a leading spiritualist, and was said to have possessed the most numerous library of books upon spiritualism west of the Allegheny Mountains. My father, who had become a Wesleyan, grew to hate his stepfather, and in seeking afterwards for a reason was inclined to attribute this to the spiritualism excitant. He confessed to me that he burned his stepfather's books every chance he got, and was encouraged to do so by his Wesleyan Sunday school teacher, which glimpses the pioneer Buckeye intolerance of the day. In this way, to my deep regret, most of the great Davis library disappeared. I inherited a few of the books, and strange enough are they. One is an " Epic of the Starry Heavens," presumed to -have been written by dis- embodied poets, but proving that a poet can be no worse while in the body. Another is a mysterious work de- voted to the subject of " Spiritual Transference of Thought," and even of more substantial things. As a boy I used to devour this ghost book until I could not sleep of nights. But none of it would my father have. He sawed walnut lumber, built houses, hunted cata- mounts, deer, coons and squirrels, wrestled and studied medicine with an old doctor of the horse-syringe school. It was while in the backwoods of Piqua County, Ohio, at the village of Circleville, that he met and married Margaret Ann Fannon, my sainted mother. She was the most superb woman I have ever known, and I try to think of her apart from being my mother so that I can be certain she was most wonderful as all mothers are wonderful. I do not know much about her family 26 THE IKON HUNTER because both of her parents died of a mysterious sickness within two days, when my mother was a babe in arms. The disease was called " milk sickness." Nobody knew anything about it or how to cure it, nor do they to this time. During a critical epoch in Ohio and Indiana hundreds of pioneers died from it. It was more deadly than the Indians and beside it " fever and agur " were just nothing at all. It was supposed to be caused by poisoned milk because it occurred at a certain time when the cows ranged in the woods and pastured, feed- ing upon many strange herbs. Dr. Victor Vaughan, dean of the medical school of the University of Mich- igan, than whom there is not a more earnest devotee of medical research in the world, writes to me that the " milk sickness " so-called of the pioneer days in the Ohio and Wabash basin, was and is yet a medical mys- tery. Happily it disappeared when the land was cul- tivated. My mother was born at Circleville, Piqua County, Ohio, April 30, 1827. She was of immediate Prot- estant Irish descent, although her grandfather on her mother's side was a McGrath and a great grandfather was a McKenna. When her parents died, leaving her a homeless, helpless baby, a big-hearted neighboring fam- ily named Hoblett took her to " raise." ^The Hobletts had numerous children of their own but, as it was with most of the pioneers, there was plenty of room around the warm hearth stone of their hearts. Children were always being desolated by one tragedy or another and in belief that theirs might be next, a feeling developed that insurance for the future could only be had by acts of kindness on all sides. It is not a bad investment to-day and can be depended upon right now to pay royal dividends of happiness. NATURAL BORN REBELS 27 The Hobletts saw to it that the eagerness my mother showed for learning did not go unappeased. They gave her as good a chance as their own youngsters had, and she took advantage of it, with the result that, al- though schools were crude and teachers equally so, my mother had a better education in her girlhood than most young women of the time. This she improved every day of her long and useful life. Of course she could cook, and knit, and weave, and on a pinch she was a good rifle shot, albeit she did not like wantonly to kill things. In this sentiment as in all things she was truly womanly. The supernal matrix of life has an instinctive re- spect for all sentient things. One evening in the Autumn a fat young buck joined the homestead herd of cattle that was foraging near the log cabin. There was no one at home except my mother. The deer would make the very best jerked venison for winter use. My mother took the big rifle down from its deer horn rack, softly opened the little window enough to admit the barrel, poked it through and shot the deer. I think this story fevered my boyish blood more than any other. My mother was almost twenty years old when she was married to rny father. This occurred in April, 1847. My father was twenty-four. It was getting to be too tame around Circleville for my father, so they soon made up their minds to trek to Indiana. Their first child, Eugene, was born in Ohio and then the little family in 1848 started off through the woods for the West. From that moment their lives were filled with work and unrest. They entered government land in Blackford County, Indiana, and fought malaria there. It was deadly. Two children died its victims. Other 28 THE IRON HUNTER little ones came to take their place. Three more were born in Blackford, two daughters and a son Emma, Georgiana and Stephen Pardee, named for my paternal grandmother's brother, who had entered lands in what is now the heart of Chicago. On the land occupied there by my parents oil and gas wells of great value were found later. In 1858 they moved to Huntington County, Indiana, where prospects for health and life seemed better. My father had become a doctor and my mother had been studying medicine with him. They had some practice but not enough to afford a living. To eke out, my father kept a little store, bought walnut timber, which was coming to have a small market value, and industriously traded. Exciting times had brewed. Even before leaving Ohio my father had become a devoted abolitionist and was so earnest that he often aided negroes running away to Canada by driving Allen's " underground " railway, an inclosed night wagon that was used for spiriting negroes northward. In the " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," log-cabin campaign he had marched and carried a torch and a coon-skin banner and had riotously sung songs, and even tried to vote although he was only a slip of a boy. His open endeavor to vote before of age was a joke in the neighborhood for years. All this in- sured that he would have part in the inflammatory drama that was enacted in Indiana just before and dur- ing the war. No one who is not familiar with those border social conflagrations can understand them at all. Bitterness was not common in the far South until actual war was translated there. Nor did the furnace of pas- sions reach such a great incandescence farther north. It was where the north and south came together along that line of frictional contact run by Mason and Dixon, NATURAL BORN REBELS 29 that the feeling assumed a fierce rancor that made for monomania and homicidal obsession. There were more Copperheads than Union men in our part of Hunting- ton County, but they came very far from having their own way. A Union flag was hoisted at the log school house, and a bloody fight in which bowie knives and rifles were used came off when the Copperheads tried to pull it down but failed. The Southern sympathizers wore butternuts as insignias of their sentiments. Their women were especially violent. More than once a riot broke out on Sunday at the services in the log meeting house. Men would generally go for the open, but the women would pull each other over the benches, tear and scratch and pummel and drag each other around by the hair. It is difficult to adjust the mind to a realization that these things happened such a short time ago. We have made advances on our way but the trail we must travel is still a long one and so often very dim. In such an atmosphere I was born January 22, 1860, in Huntiugton County, Indiana, in a little log house of two rooms with one real glass window and two others of greased paper. Wabash, in an enjoining county fourteen miles away, was our big town. It had a pop- ulation of over two hundred. There were meeting houses at ^Etna, Lagro, Dora and New Holland, all near by, and about equidistant in various directions. Not far away were the Wabash, the Salimonie and the Mississiuiwa rivers, beautiful streams full of channel cats and silver bass, now stealing quietly along some bepooled dark bank only to burst over a limestone ledge with golden transparency and jolly gurglings, just like the complexion and laughter of a Hoosier girl. Judging from what I have been told by my parents 30 THE IRON HUNTER and sisters and older brothers, I was one of those puny babies that modern eugenics would condemn to infantile death, indeed a peaceful issue of life compared with running the gauntlet of American politics and business, but not nearly so enjoyable. I could digest nothing and had, among other things, a bloody flux that drained my body of almost the last vital spark. But my mother was in advance of her time in baby raising. She made gruel for me of the germ scrapings near the cob of green sweet corn. This, with the delicate pulp just inside the skin of the grape, supplied nutrition. Outdoors in the air night and day, with rides on old " Snip," held on a pillow, and walks in the same fashion won me strength slowly. Once they lost me off a pillow. It took a fight every minute for three years to save my life. Even then the first words I spoke as a babe were " Solly me " sorry me. My earliest recollection is of seeing soldiers in blue uniforms and of telling a lie to my mother. There is no connection between them. My mother to get rid of me and amuse me made a fishing outfit for me by tying a thread to a gad on which she fastened a pin hook baited with a little piece of plantain leaf. With this she said I might go to a little nearby ditch and fish for frogs. I do not even know whether there were frogs or fish but I think none. However I returned with a famous story. I told my mother that I caught so many frogs that I could not carry them and that then I stopped catching frogs and caught fish and also caught so many of them that I could not carry them. She did not ask me why I had not brought all I could carry, but with much sober concern quietly took me by the hand and carrying a large, homemade bag in the other, started down to the ditch. My alarm was terrible. I NATUEAL BOKN T KEBELS 31 had not looked ahead at all and, as I was not yet four years old, this did not betoken abnormal stupidity. On the way I tried to convince my mother that the frogs and iish might all have jumped back in ; that in fact most of them had before I left. She asked me why I didn't bring home such as were left. After much deep thought I replied that they were jumping around so fast and were so slick that I couldn't pick them up. On we went to the scene of the big catch. My mother looked the ground over and we marched back even more soberly than our going. When we got to the house she talked to me about the sin of lying. Then she made a lather of soft soap and thoroughly washed out my mouth. I thought it the nastiest dose I had ever taken, although children of that time and in that part of In- diana were dosed all the time with all sorts of hor- rible stuff. After soaping my mouth my mother made me kneel at her knee and ask God to forgive me. That touched my little heart, and made an impression, with many tears, that is as vivid now as it was at the moment. My father enlisted for the war. He was promised an assistant surgeon's position. On his way on horse- back to Indianapolis the beast stumbled and dragged my father for a long distance through the woods. His head was hurt, several ribs were broken, his spine was in- jured and there were internal bruises. After that he was an invalid for the remainder of his life. He was six feet tall, weighed two hundred pounds, and had been a powerful man. His life had been filled with energy that drove him to many deeds. Once he had gone for a time, west of Iowa, among the Indians then wild, for study and exploration. On his way home from the trip he had been the house guest of Joseph Smith, the Mor- mon prophet at Nauvoo. Father told me that eight 32 THE IKON HUNTEK women sat at the table with the prophet and himself, and he understood all of them were wives. Joseph Smith was gentle in his household, father said, and al- though he greatly detested Mormonism, he always spoke kindly of Smith and regretted his assassination. Two more children were born in Huntington County Horace Edwin in 1862 and Charles Eussell in 1864. My mother began to take the lead as a doctor. She had learned much from my father. Both had strong intel- lects. My father was impetuous and extreme. My mother was calm and lovely. Both had by now de- veloped lofty characters. In 1857 my father had gone to Cleveland to study hydropathy at a sanitarium. The great water cure discoveries of Vincenz Priessnitz were taking hold of America, fostered by such English and American hydropathic propagandists as Gully and Shew. Heavy dosing was the order of the day until the average patient measured his prospects for recovery by the quantity of nauseous drugs he swallowed. To pretend to cure anybody of anything with just simple pure water seemed a grotesquery if not an insanity. But my parents were courageous and would not fool anybody even with a placebo. They compounded their own prescriptions and carried their own medicine as did most practitioners of the time. The older children were growing up. Grandmother had been a school teacher. My parents realized the ad- vantages of schooling. The opportunities in the back- woods were slight. So they decided to move by wagon to LaFayette. I had passed my sixth year, had helped to carry in wild turkeys my older brother Eugene had shot just back of our brush fence, and had heard the story in eager tones of the bear tracks in our deadening. I had tried to ride a bull calf with the willing help of NATURAL BORX REBELS 33 my brothers and had done a lot of things that attached me to the place. The watermelon patch was a luscious place, and the melons grew almost large enough for me to hide behind. So I cried when they talked of moving away. That did not postpone proceedings. One day the things had all been loaded into three wagons, one of them covered for the family like a prairie schooner, and we started. We had three teams and were regarded as rich. I remember father and my older brothers march- ing beside their teams, and they would let me walk as far as I could. Our two dogs, Carlo and Rover, would dart off the road after rabbits, or bark as they treed black and gray squirrels. Not infrequently they flushed wild turkeys. The meals we had on that trek were taken from boxes in the wagon and cylinder re- ceptacles of hollow logs with the ends closed with skins. The elders shot game enroute, and we got fruit that was mostly wild. The rough read followed near the canal along the Wabash River. Everybody called it the canawl. Swift packets, making as much as six miles an hour, carried passengers and mail, and drove a swash along the banks that looked to my boyish eyes like a big ever-running water snake. We had plenty of snakes, too, and I knew their motion blue racers, blacksnakes and rattlers. Mules and bony horses, driven tandem, plodded along the towpath driven by ragged, barefoot and often hat- less boys. It was interesting to see them pass the locks. One afternoon the wagons started a down-hill run to cross a creek that flowed into the Wabash. It was quite terrifying the way the wagons swayed, but the worst was to come. When the horses were midstream we heard a blood-curdling scream. The animals plunged madly and ran as hard as they could in the water as thev 34 THE IRON HUNTER were. I looked out and just ahead and off to the left I saw a monster coming and the horses saw it too. It was belching white smoke and sparks, and I was cer- tain we must be near the gateway of hell and that this was the devil about to catch us and drag us in. I had never seen or heard of a locomotive and had not seen an engine of any kind. The fear it caused in me could not be overdrawn. It was an old wood-burner on what was then the new Wabash Valley Railroad, afterwards the Toledo, Wabash & Western, and now the Wabash. The young children could not realize and the older ones knew better, so I had a monopoly of fright. There were seven of us children on this expedition, the young- est two years and the eldest eighteen. How many women to-day would dream of starting on a single day's railroad journey with seven children ? However, I think they would if they had to, because women to-day are confronted by more dangers than their mothers were. Social pitfalls are worse than ever were Indian ambushes, and the suffering and death they bring are worse than the scalping wounds, or the toma- hawk hacks of the gauntlet that maimed only the body and left the heart purer and the soul more serene than before. We were over two weeks on the road. On rainy days we mostly camped while the older males hunted and fished for the larder. There was no travel on Sunday, and on Monday we stopped to permit mother and the girls to do our washing. In this way we moved to LaFayette. Soon we were sumptuously installed in a big, three-story, frame house, with four acres of grounds surrounding, and barns, out- buildings, fruit trees, shrubs, flowers and gardens. Contrast this with the woods and the little log house NATURAL BORN REBELS 35 we had left. We children thought it was a palace and our father a king. Aunt Goldthwaite had come out some time before from Connecticut to visit us and told us fairy stories, just enough to make us wonder and credit to the fairies all the things we could not under- stand. My present from Aunt Goldthwaite was a toy watch we called it a " dumb " watch then. No Wal- tham, Patek-Phillippe or Jurggeson since has been worth a quarter as much ! Down below the hill reposed the city, and just then LaFayette was a sleepy place. Near by were neighbors. Everything was as different as it could be. We had a real lamp with something green in the oil bowl and a ground glass globe and shining chimney. It was kept in the parlor, that holy of holies of the time, and never lighted. Candles made our light, and father used two at a time when he read, and snuffed them with his fingers in a manner that fired all of us with emulation. The big house had a huge cellar. Soon there were mysterious goings on in it. My eldest brother was the only one of the children permitted the secret. But we learned when the time came that father was an in- ventor ; that he had devised one of the first stoves with an oven and that now he had designed a washing ma- chine. We did not know that nearly everybody of that period had invented a washing machine, so when father sold out his patents for what seemed a large amount of money we took it as a matter of course. All of us had had plenty to eat and good enough clothing up to that time. But with the sale of the patent came still better days. Mother had two black silk dresses and father, wherever he got the idea, donned a frock coat and plug hat. I had seen a daguerreotype of him as a youth with a beaver on, and I know he was familiar with the 36 THE IKON HUNTER advice of Polonius to Laertes. Then he went to In- dianapolis and entered the Indiana Medical College, where he received a degree. Once while father was absent the household was aroused in the night by thunderous knocks and loud calls. Good old Charley Kurtz, a neighbor butcher, called "Old Charley" because he had a son called " Young Charley," on his way home from the Odd Fel- lows, discovered that our house was on fire. It got a good start in the cellar, that was full of shavings from the washing machine models that were kept for kin- dling. It gave me one of the big scares of my young life. I escaped from the family circle, and in an obsession of excitement ran wildly about the place in my nightie. I was seven. There was a big patch of gooseberry bushes. Their thorns tore my limbs and body when I repeatedly ran through them as I cried out frantically for help. The last child, William Douglas, was born in 1867, making ten in all with eight living three girls and seven boys, with two girls and six boys living as I write these notes in 1916. CHAPTEE IV POVERTY THAT CKAMPS AND THEN EXPANDS THE SOUL EARLY in 1868 something happened to our fam- ily fortunes. I do not know what it was more than that my father lost all of his money, every cent. It actually took the carpets off the floors to pay out, and there was no hesitation about permitting them to be taken. It was one of those occurrences that are continually happening and directly or indirectly, mostly the latter, exert a great influence both upon individuals and society, serving to cure pride and remind man in a decisive manner of his self-insufficiency. All of a sudden we were as a family translated from luxury to necessity from affluence to abysmal pov- erty. It seems to me that I must have been taken out of the big house while asleep. I was eight years old, and must have had sufficient intellect to comprehend things to some degree. Perhaps my senses were be- numbed by the shock. Anyhow all I remember is that I seemed to go to sleep in the big house and to awaken in a little frame shack, with only two rooms and a lean-to. The big parlor lamp was gone and so was the parlor and the base-burner with the red coals shining through the mica. Each youngster had had a horse to ride. They were all gone. Two old crowbaits, that were dying of old age and were a liability, and were only kept in deference to a creditable sentiment, re- mained. We called them " Baldy " and " Goalie," be- 37 38 THE IKON HUNTER cause one had a white forehead and the other was coal black. The first real fight I ever had was with a boy who shouted after me " flip-flop ! " " flip-flop ! " " flip- flop ! " as I was urging old Baldy into a sort of earth- quake, bone-racking trot. He was rather too big for me, and I got a bloody nose and a black eye. He got enough so that he did not yell " flip-flop ! " at me again. I did not understand then why my parents wished to keep these worthless animals and were so tender with them. As for myself, I was so ashamed of them and so angered at times that I hate a " flip-flop " to this day. Also I am thankful to have a feeling grow within me that would not permit me to turn out a faithful old horse or dog to starve to death. The new abode is known in our family history as " the little brown house." And it was small. The fur- niture consisted of a few wooden chairs, a wooden table, poorly equipped beds, iron knives and forks, tin plates, cheap cooking utensils and one stove, a cooking stove with two holes and a square box oven on top at the back, supported by long, spider-like iron legs. Food was scarce too. We children were put on a corn meal diet and not any too much corn meal. Every Friday was hog killing day at the slaughter house down on the old Plank Road. At such times hogs' hearts could be had for five cents a pound. Father and mother took ad- vantage of that and as a consequence we had hogs' heart meat once a week and no meat at all between times. I noticed a change in everything. The big dogs were gone. Only we had kept Pinkie, a little black and tan feist with a hole in her throat, cut by a ground hog she had crawled after into a den. Father acted strangely. He was depressed. I did not know that then. He hung out his doctor sign and POVERTY THAT CRAMPS 39 one for mother, too. Also he would parade in front of the house with his long coat, gold-headed cane and silk hat, which he had managed somehow to hang onto. After thus showing himself he would return to the house, put on cotton overalls and waist, and departing by the rear and through the alley go to a remote part of town and work as a carpenter a trade he had well learned as a boy. He was not strong. Soon he grew ill and was very sick. He could not eat. Delicacies were tried. One day I smelled what to a hungry boy was about the sweetest odor I could remember. It came from the cook stove where five cents' worth of prunes were sim- mering in a tin cup. They were for father and his life might have depended upon them for all I knew. That did not shield me from temptation. I made up my mind to steal those prunes and eat them and then run away to Texas. My mother must have suspected me in that divine way that mothers have. Anyhow she watched me and kept such a vigil over the prunes that I was foiled. That was my first tangible temptation, and there flowed from it my first crystallized ambition. I made up my mind then and there that when I became a man I would not stop in my efforts until I had all the prunes I wished for, even if I had to be a pirate. Sometimes all of us were hungry and we were ill- clad but cleanly. Old clothing was transformed dex- terously and handed down from child to child. We were sent to school. Other children made fun of us because we were poorly garbed. This made me so sensitive and wounded me to such an extent that I would not look at other children. Fatty Tyner, Nigger Bill and a German boy named Theodore Mersch, called 40 THE IKON HUNTER by the urchins " Tater Mash," as being near the Ger- man pronunciation, were particularly kind to me. They would back me in my fights and permitted me to lead them in expeditions for nuts, berries, paw paws, fishing, and against the " Micks " of the Plank Road. Always there seemed to be war among the boys of LaFayette. If some of us went to the " old sycamore " to swim in the Wabash our enemies were nearly certain to come and muss our clothes, tie them in wet knots, and as we dragged at them with our teeth they would deride us with " Chawed beef and roasted mutton ! Chawed beef and roasted mutton ! " We learned to keep a standing guard and pickets. If the Micks outnumbered us we would run. If there was a fair chance we stood our ground and fought, with honors about even from day to day. I learned to swim at the " wide water," an impound- ing reservoir used to adjust the canal levels. It looked big to me as a boy and it was over a man's head in depth. A bigger crowd than ours chased us away from the " old sycamore " swimming hole. We grabbed our clothing and ran across the Wabash bottoms to the wide water. I remember that I arrived bleeding and sting- ing from the smarting wounds of thorns and sandburrs. Although I could not swim or had not swum before I was on fire. I rushed down the steep, artificial bank into the wide water where it was about ten feet in depth. I went to the bottom. When I came up I struck out just, as naturally as though I was a good swimmer, not dog fashion, but a full sweeping stroke. It was not long before I developed into a good swimmer. One day Nigger Bill showed me how to cure warts. He was the son of Reverend Maveety, who preached on Sunday and wielded a whitewash brush week days. POVERTY THAT CRAMPS 41 His mother knew how to " Kunjer " he said and was sister of a hoodoo (voo-doo) queen. I was deeply im- pressed and told my mother. She ordered me to keep away from the negro boy and told me the rules he gave me were foolish. I still had faith in Nigger Bill. A block from our house lived the Purnells. They had a nice little girl named Laura, about my age. She had more warts on her hands than a Texan toad and was quite proud of them. I got her to let me try to take off just one of them, and because we were good friends she consented. Nigger Bill had told me to take a piece of blue thread, tie it in a hard knot over the wart and then slip it off and bury it, repeating as I did so, u TToblin, goblin, go an' snort, Rot in the groun' an' kill a wart." As the thread rotted the wart would rot and come off. Mystery of mysteries, but to me perfectly natural then, Laura PurnelFs big wart on her left hand, that I had tied the blue thread over, became inflamed, and the swelling communicated to the entire hand and arm. Laura was in great pain, and some thought she might die. I was frightened to death. After a really se- vere siege she recovered, minus the wart. Then I went and dug for the thread to see if it had rotted. Either I dug in the wrong place or it had disintegrated, for I could not find it. I was afraid to be a wart doctor because somebody might die before the wart came off. Just what happened I do not know unless I slightly cut or irritated the wart and it was infected by the thread. Warts are not nice to have but they are preferable to Nigger Bill's cure, in which there is the philosophy of the ages. 42 THE IKON HOTTTEE To help out I became a rag picker, which included gathering old iron as well. I got to know the alleys of the town better than the streets. Also I carried a news- paper route and sold papers. It brought me into con- tact with all phases and strata of life, and I early came to know, I do not know how I knew but I did, that God takes especial care of boys and girls or there wouldn't be one on earth uncontaminated. Down in the Wabash bottoms I used to see men and women derelicts. In the summer they infested the now dry flood lands. I had as much abhorrence of them as of a snake. Nobody told me about them or the great dangers of boyhood. I just knew instinctively, and I think other boys do. Once the circulator of William S. Lingle's Daily Courier asked me to carry papers in a part of the town where the carrier was always being licked and his papers destroyed. He said I would have to fight and that maybe as many as twenty boys would attack me at once. I couldn't whip twenty boys without preparedness, so I bought a second-hand, twenty-two caliber, seven-shot revolver. It was autumn. The coming January I would be eleven years old. Hard knocks and life in the alleys were developing me fast. I took the papers and started out really hoping to get a chance to shoot a few boys just to test the killing power of my gun. I had al- ready tried it on a cow out in the commons, and when she walked away seemingly unconcerned I was ready to take the revolver back to the second-hand man. But I thought I might have better luck shooting boys. At the corner of Thirteenth and Union streets a colored boy, possibly a little larger than I, came up to me in a bantering way and grabbed at my papers. I forgot my revolver and laid down my sack and waded into the POVERTY THAT CRAMPS 43 Negro. We were rolling around on the ground and I was getting a little the best of him I thought, until he got my left fore arm between his sharklike teeth. That made me desperate and caused me somehow to remember the gun in my pocket. I got it out and when the Negro boy saw it he yelled " murder " and " help " and gave up. Then boys began to appear from everywhere, but mostly from behind an old barn near by and from under a street bridge over an open surface sewer called Pearl River. When I saw them I ran for my papers and bolted. The yelling crowd of boys pursued me. I thought there must be a hundred. Some were larger than I. As I was ascending to the sidewalk after cross- ing that Pearl River, a bigger boy struck me over the head with a broken shinny stick. Down I went. I had already been hit several times by rocks and clubs but I was not hurt. Now was the time to use the revolver. I pulled it out and shot all seven shots slam into that crowd. Really I expected to kill seven boys at least and maybe more. There was a scattering in all directions and it wasn't long before a policeman had me. I don't know where he came from. There weren't many in La- Fayette those days. He took my gun and instead of taking me to the calaboose, as we called the local lockup, he took me home. I had not lost many papers. As soon as the officer turned me loose I got an older brother to go with me and we finished the paper delivery that night. I hadn't hit a boy. Just like shooting into a flock of any- thing without picking your bird. From that day I carried that route unmolested. I wouldn't advise boys to follow my example, even though in what I did I was perfectly innocent of intentional wrong doing. 44 THE IRON HUNTER As I grew stronger I did all kinds of work. It seems to me now that the hardest work of my youth was cut- ting and shocking green corn. When I was thirteen, my brother Steve and I took a contract cutting corn and shocking it for ten cents a shock every fourteen rows and fourteen hills of corn. Those who know Indiana corn along the Wabash will think of each stalk as almost a tree. I wielded the corn cutter and Steve carried the big heavy bundles and shocked them. He was older by eight years arid was equal to the work. When I would be awakened in the morning I would ache from head to toe and would be so stiff and sore I could have cried out with pain when I essayed to move. And I was too young to harden and get used to it. Also I learned to cradle, rake, bind, mow, stack hay and grain, load hay, rive clapboards, split rails and chop cord wood. I still enjoy swinging an ax just as I liked it best of all as a boy. Many hardships have been my lot by land and sea, if one calls enjoyable, exacting adventures hardships, but not one caused me as much suffering as corn cutting in the Indiana maize forest. I went to Sunday school. My mother was a Metho- dist and my father a Wesleyan, between which denomi- nations there is little difference. At Christmas time I managed to get to six Sunday schools. It required no end of scheming, but I really received gifts one Christmas from six different trees. It was not right I now know but I thought no wrong of it then. In fact, I thought a boy who went to only one Sunday school at Christmas time was downright shiftless. Two things I best remember that I heard in church while a boy. One was the temperance examples told by Francis Murphy. The other is a picture of a devout Sunday school superintendent of the Ninth Street M. E. POVEKTY THAT CRAMPS 45 Church of LaFayette, named J. Q. A. Perrin, as I slyly glanced at him while he repeated the childhood prayer : Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. This I ask for Jesus' sake. The above is not the way Billy Sunday words and spells it but it is the way Mr. Perrin recited it, and it is the way I have repeated it every night of my life since I was nine, with the alteration since I have had a wife and children to " our " instead of " my." It is a selfish little prayer but one does not have to stop with it. The pangs of poverty and attendant humiliation ground into me more and more. I did not have as good clothing as had the other boys that I thought I would like to consort with, and many fisticuffs grew out of the scorn and derision of those who assumed to look down upon me. I did not win all these by any means, but all of them gave me a kind of confidence in myself. I got hold of several dime novels and read also the Jack Harkaway adventures, and a lot of stuff about Jesse James and his brother Frank, who were just beginning to limn on the lurid horizon of boys' brains. I also read the more wholesome " Ashore and Afloat " books by William Taylor Adams, who signed himself Oliver Optic. History began to unfold to me interesting pages, and I found ornithology, entomology, botany and astron- omy fascinating. Not that I went very far with any of them; only I liked them better than mathematics. Zoological and biological things were entertainment and mathematics were study. About the very first book I read was a brave little tome called " Little Prudy's 46 THE IRON HUNTER Captain Horace/ 7 by Sophie May, one of the Little Prudy series of delightful books for children. I was nine years of age when I got it off a Baptist Sunday school Christmas tree. The year before three impressive little books fell into my hands. They were the " Burial of the Firstborn/ 7 by Joseph Alden ; " The Little Brown Jug/ 7 by Mrs. C. M. Edwards, and " Not a Minute to Spare/ 7 by S. C. I read all these before I was nine. Really I seemed to partially understand in " Not a Minute to Spare " Tup- per 7 s line " now is the constant syllable ticking from the clock of Time. 77 At least forever after the tick-tocks said to me, " Never return, never return 77 ! So early does the mind of the average child begin to function. In fact, I read just about everything I could lay my hands on, including all the doctor books I could find around the house. At an early age, too early, I had read Gray 7 s " Anat- omy/ 7 Dalton 7 s physiology, Thomas on " Diseases of Women and Children/ 7 pages of Dunglison 7 s medical dictionary, Gully's and also Shew 7 s hydropathy. Fine reading for a youth of ten to twelve! and it made me knowing beyond my years. I would gather a crowd of boys on the curbstone on dark nights and be- fore a Rembrandt fire in the gutter, with its vivid chiar- oscuro, I would tell them the secrets of these doctor books in low tones. The greatest horror of impression would be made by the descriptions of awful diseases that befel men and women who were not good. Nearly all of us had read " Robinson Crusoe " and " Swiss Family Robinson. 77 We would tell riddles and ghost stories also until all POVERTY THAT CHAMPS 47 of us were of a shiver. Then there were famous nights when we played u Blank Lie Low " and hunted coon and 'possums, and, best of all, camping on the banks of the Wabash all night keeping up a fire big enough for a lion country, while those of us who were bigger baited and ran " trot " lines. We used liver for bait and sometimes we had a thousand hooks out. They were fine fish, those channel cats (siluridae), but they would sort of gurgle and squawk when we slit them just through the skin behind their horns, and then holding them between the fingers of the left hand would pull off the skin with pincers in the right hand. The niggers used to say that the catfish were trying to tell what they would do to us when they were men and we were catfish, and their strange metempsychosis folk lore made a deep impression. We boys thought we could see the catfish squirm, like eels and frog meat do when first put into a hot frying pan. This the niggers said was nothing to the way bad boys would squirm in hell. All through the dimmest social fabric there seemed to run the certainty that good is rewarded and bad is punished, which must have been one way the Creator has of manifesting a fundamental truth. Boys were wild and adventurous but they were not nasty or impure, and if there was a degenerate unfor- tunate he soon come to be marked and shunned. I wish to believe that that is the way of boys to-day. CHAPTEK V WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS FILL MY MIND AND I ACT UPON THEM MY parents would teach us American history traditionally and they were hoth well informed. As my father loved or hated so did I come to do. He could not, without rage, think of Simon Girty, who, as an English agent in Canada, had aroused the border Indians, and was charged with paying them fifty cents for the scalp of an American white woman and seventy-five cents to a dollar for the scalp of a man, but only twenty-five cents for a child or a gray-haired scalp. Some of our relatives had met this fate and it has left a bitterness that even I have to struggle against to this day. Next to the bloody Girty my father hated Aaron Burr and so did I. He was wont to say that Jeff Davis was a gentleman beside Burr and his tool Blennerhassett, and that Benedict Arnold had not been worse. His condemnation of Henry Clay was because Clay had been Burr's attorney. Father was intolerant of anybody who would hire out his talents to criminals. He loved Alex- ander Hamilton as the greatest American, and always put Washington as secondary to Hamilton. To his mind Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Albert Sydney Johnston were misguided good men, and of the three he placed Albert Sydney Johnston first. He told me stories of Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton and Davy Crock- 48 WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS 49 ett and their contemporaries until I forthwith got an old bored-out army musket and hid it under the shed, as against the time when I would become an Indian fighter. Soon I was able to grind down a corncutter blade into the most savage-looking bowie knife I have ever seen. These preparations were soon followed by a decision to run away, which was promptly acted upon. My first adventure of this kind was when I was ten years of age. With an older boy named John Godfrey, son of a bel- ligerent Methodist preacher named Samuel Godfrey, the best silver bass fisherman on the Wabash " riffles," I started out. We got nearly fifty miles away before our parents caught us. Without discouragement I kept at running away two or three times a year until I succeeded. Once I got clear away on a raft and with the two other boys floated down the Wabash to the Ohio and quite a distance into the Mississippi. We were gone several months and had enough adventure to fill a book. My longest runaway absence was when I went into the wild Michigan lumber woods in Newaygo County near the present village of Hungerford. I spent a win- ter in the camps as a cookee and chore boy. In the spring I worked in a saw mill and shingle mill. That winter I got a terrible thrashing. There was a boast- ful fellow in camp named Jason Grimsby. No one knew whether he would fight, but from his tell he could lick his weight in wild cats and then some. Some of the woodsmen had families in near about shacks and there were several boys of about my age. We made up our minds that Jason was a coward. Our plan to try him out was to waylay him at night and while not hurting him, we were to leap on him and tou- 50 THE IRON HUNTER sle him about pretty lively. Good idea, but it didn't work, and to this day we have no correct measure of Jason although he got one of me. I was a sort of leader. Perhaps I was the biggest boy. Anyhow Jason came beating it along a trail swinging a candle lantern and whistling. I made a jump for him. There were five of us boys, two on one side of the trail and three on the other. All I know is that every one of them ran away and Jason mopped up the earth with me. The lantern went out at once and it took Jason some time in the dark to tell when he had pounded me enough. I tried to accuse him of attacking me, but while my attitude confused him a little, it did no good. From that time to this I have depended more upon myself than others and have more carefully considered undertakings. I went back to Indiana with quite a sum of money saved up, amounting to near one hundred dollars. I had walked most of the way to Michigan, and I earned good wages in savings by walking the most of the way back, over two hundred miles. At thirteen I was in the LaFayette high school de- spite the fact that my runaway trips had broken into my schooling. I cannot remember that I was more than an ordinary student. When I was fourteen I was admitted to Purdue Uni- versity at its opening. There was not much organiza- tion or grading or I surely could not have been ad- mitted. The institution had been endowed by John Purdue under certain conditions, one of which was, I believe, that it must be open for students by a certain time. In order to save itself the university was opened hurriedly and perhaps without much previous prepara- tion. I spent three years at Purdue. They were years WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS 51 of mingled happiness and bitterness. I seemed to get along with my work all right but, struggle as 1 did, I never seemed to have enough clothing to prevent richer boys from making fun of me. Shortridge was presi- dent, and before I left he was succeeded by White, a strong man. The university was coeducational from the beginning and it grew rapidly. The boy that I most disliked in school was Jim Reidy, son of a banker and rich. He was bigger and older than I, quite a flashy fellow, whose sole accomplishment was to write a good hand. That fellow goaded me to desperation. He would call attention in a loud voice to the fact that I wore no undergarments and often no socks, and that my shoes were cowhide. He was a handsome young animal, and T couldn't lick him as I found out. Secretly I half admired him, al- together envied him and often came near to a deter- mination to murder him. Reidy married a charming co-ed and became a partner in his father's banking busi- ness. They expanded into a string of banks. A panic struck them; there were irregularities and Jim was sent to the penitentiary. I did not learn of this for a long time. I was governor of Michigan when I did find it out and I was not only sorry for Reidy but at once endeavored to do what I could for him. One of my best friends at Purdue was Orth Stein, son of Judge Stein, a prominent lawyer and worthy citizen of LaFayette. Orth was tall, amomic and some- what effeminate. He was such a good boy that mothers commonly pointed him out to their sons as a model. And he had a good, double-barreled shotgun that he would loan. That endeared him to rne more than any- thing else, I think. You cannot always tell about a good boy. Before they hung Orth he murdered several 52 THE IKON HUNTER people, including a woman. It was the whiskey and prostitution route. Harvey W. Wiley, foremost American food expert, was then professor of chemistry at Purdue. He also drilled the college cadets and was a pitcher in the base- hall team. It was permitted at this time to give the ball a kind of underhand throw. Dr. Wiley's fame was made one day when he knocked a cigar down the throat of Johnny Harper, the catcher. Baseball nowadays with an unmasked, unprotected catcher behind the bat with a cigar in his mouth would be the quintessence of comedy. There was hazing of a rough kind, such as putting a freshman on a straw stack in the night and setting it on fire so that he had to jump through the flames. An- other stunt was to make the candidate walk a plank blindfolded into a deep hole in the Wabash. Some- times we tied his hands behind his back. The victim was always rescued but often he was first nearly drowned. Boys were not much good who did not go in for these things and it is a fact that the roughest and wildest boys have done the most in life. They were always fair and square, were not bullies and adhered to certain unwritten laws of young buck chivalry. Indiana was full of such youths, and I hope the country is still developing them. All of the college pranks were played, and the Greek letter fraternities had quite a vogue. It was just before I left Purdue that President White started his fight against them, singling out the Sigma Chi as the one to make the test upon. His defeat disappointed him and checkered a life of great usefulness. Professor Hussey taught zoology. He asked for specimens. It took a great effort on my part to gather WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS 53 all the bones of a borse skeleton in the river bottoms and pile them in the class room. The specimen was too new and really I can smell it yet. Professor Hussey was fine usually but he lost his temper. I confessed to the act. He came near to where I sat and glowering down upon me growled : " Osborn, do you know how near a fool you are ? " I replied, " Two feet." It was not an original retort, I am certain, but it nearly ran me out of college. Altogether an act upon my part to be condemned, the psychology of it was that its very boldness gave me greater confidence in myself, a trait I was deficient in to the extent that I was bash- ful, sensitive and terribly ill at ease in company. One night at the end of my third year, I attended a commencement reception at President White's house. Several of the young men actually wore evening dress suits. I had never seen one before and the mental effect they had on me was as strange as it was ludicrous. All along I had been struggling to get far enough into style to wear an undershirt, and here were these claw hammer coats. The case was hopeless; the odds were too terrible to struggle against. Then and there I vowed to leave school for good, and I did. I was seven- teen. My father no longer worked at carpentering. The unusual medical skill of both my parents insured them from being in poverty very long. So far on the up- grade had they gone that father was able to buy a tract of forty-seven acres of land about three miles from La- Fayette. It was a network of swampy pond holes, with a planched growth of sassafras, hazel, ash, water elm and briars with numerous enough rattlesnakes, black snakes and blue racers. My brothers and I were given 54 THE IRON HUN TEE the job of clearing that land. No work was better for us. We straightened a sluggish creek and laid tile in every direction. The timber was cut into cordwood and rails, with now and then a linn or an oak sawlog. Working at many things during my hungry youth I had learned to set type, put a job on a press, make rollers, pull a Washington and turn the old man-power cylinders. Also I had crudely written some for the papers and really began to gather news items at ten. But I had not formed a definite desire to do newspaper work. Only it was true of me that accidentally or otherwise I had done more work around newspaper outfits, and had learned more about them than about anything else. An event occurred before I was eighteen that caused me to leave Indiana in deep disgust, mostly with my- self. Quite a notorious bully named Ed Rawles, a young fighting widower, was the high cockalorum, as he claimed, of the Hebron district, about seven miles from LaFayette. If he didn't like a young fellow he would scare him away by bluffing or licking him. He tabooed me and sent me word not to come again into his neighborhood under penalty of a thrashing at his hands. My older brother told me not to go. He said Rawles would maul me all to pieces, and I really thought he would myself, but I wasn't going to be scared out. The very next time there were any doings at Hebron church, I went. Rawles was in a seat in front of me. It was in the evening. He leaned over and called me a vile name in a loud whisper and said he was going to " lick the stuffin' out of me " after church. I didn't wait until after church, but waded into Mr. Rawles then and there. I struck him in the face, and before he WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS 55 could recover from the surprise and the blow, I climbed over the seat and gattied him. We had a fine fight. He would jam in between the seats. I was thinner and had him at a disadvantage. Naturally the church was in an uproar in a moment. Women and girls screamed, but there weren't many fainting Hoosier women those days. Men got to us and pulled us out into the aisle. Then it seemed to me the tide of battle turned. I had been having all the best of the mix-up among the seats. Now a half dozen were holding me and it seemed to me that no one was holding Rawles. He pounded away at me and my arms were pinioned. When they thought I had enough, for I was blind and delirious with fighting rage, they faced me about and threw me out of church. I ran as fast as I could go to " Doc " Coleman's, the nearest farmer I knew, and tried to borrow his shotgun in order to go back and get even. Of course he refused it. Next day I was arrested. It seems that I was not only guilty of assault and battery but of church dese- cration, a much worse crime. Colonel Dick DeHart, a famous soldier and criminal lawyer and afterwards an able judge for years, defended me without charge and I was acquitted. But from that moment I was a marked youth. Par- ents forbade their daughters to speak to me and ordered their sons to shun me. I was the most depraved youth in Indiana according to their ideas. It did not matter what reputation Rawles had, nor did it count that I ended his days as a bully. I had but one destiny and that included both penitentiary and hanging. In fact, so persistent was the opinion that thirty-five years later, 56 THE IRON HUNTER when I had gone to Indiana as a guest of that State as Governor of Michigan, a fine old gentleman named Kantz, of German extraction, exclaimed: " 1st dis der real Chase Osborn ? Vat, ain't you hung yet?" The girls and boys did not all taboo me by any means but my social relations were, to say the least, clandes- tine, so I packed my " turkey." While on the farm engaged in the work of clearing I had time to read, to go to the country parties and spelling schools and debates, in all of which I seemed to take an average part. Opportunities came to go har- vesting with better wages and to follow the threshing machine that did the work for many farmers. There was much interchange and exchange of work. At threshing and harvest time women, old and young, showed their best at cooking and housekeeping. The tables bent with wholesome, well-cooked food turkey, chicken, beef, mutton, pork, potatoes and many other vegetables, big bowls of steaming gravy, pies and cakes of many varieties, preserves, spiced fruit and pickles. They were wonderful feeding days and for feasting even exceeded Christmas time. I learned when very young to cut bands and several times nearly cut the feeder's hands, but luckily did not. As I grew older I learned to rig up the horse power, pitch from the stack onto the feeding table and also to feed the machine, which required the greatest degree of expertness of all. Binding in the wheat field behind a reaper they were a new thing and there were only a few in our part ; cradling, raking and binding also. Excellence marked women and men. To be a good cook and housekeeper and economical made a woman famous, and the young WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS 57 woman thus distinguished married early. Young men were told to observe a girl peeling apples or potatoes. If she pared them thickly and wastefully avoid her as a wasteful wench, but if the parings were thin it was evidence of care and thrift. Men who excelled in chopping, cradling, binding, or in anything were known all over wide communities and were pointed out. It all made for wholesome ideals. There were a good many chances to dicker and use one's wits. One winter evening walking along a frozen dirt road that ran at right angles to the pike that had been recently built to the Tippecanoe battleground, where General Harrison beat the Prophet, I saw a queer- looking animal in a bleak field of dry and rustling corn stalks. It was yellow and had long, matted hair, and at the distance it was, might have been a big goat or almost anything. When I came up to where the man of the place was feeding the hogs I asked him what it was. He said it was a mule and as he didn't like mules nohow he would sell it. To my consternation he made me a price of two dollars on it. I was not sharp at trading but I asked him what was the matter with the mule. " Boy," he said, " so far's health is consarned that critter be a well one an' kin eat glass." Then I asked the age ! " Dumined if I know," he replied, " and it don't make no difference nohow kase nobody never seen a dead mule." I bought the mule. When I entered the field to inspect my purchase the thing came at me with mouth open, teeth gleaming and issuing fiery snorts altogether like a ferocious fiend. I have been in close quarters since with grizzly bears and lions, but nothing has ever come so near to getting 58 THE IRON HUNTER me, to the best of my belief, as that mule did. I barely made the rail fence and fell over it as though thrown by a cyclone. The former owner of the beast was doubled up with raucous laughter. I felt cheap and some mad. When I asked him what he meant by unloading that thing on me he offered to buy the mule back for a dollar. I refused. The thought came to me that I might also sell him " as lie ran/' as I had bought him, and there seemed to be nothing wrong about trying. In fact, I did not think of ethics at all. The only thing that I really wondered about was whether it was a mule or something else. I had heard repeatedly that there are nine kinds of meat in a turtle and I really thought the mule might have nine kinds of animals in him. He roared like a lion, opened his jaws like an alligator, showed his teeth like a dragon and charged with lowered head like a billy goat. I went on to town. Next day I looked up a Jew junk dealer. We knew him as the ragman. I told him I had a mule for sale for twenty-five dollars. It seemed to me that his eyes gleamed at the chance he foresaw to beat me. My eyes could have gleamed also because I made up my mind to sell that mule for two dollars if I couldn't get more. He started for the country with me at once. When we reached the field of cornstalks the mule was browsing about a hundred yards from the fence. It was a frosty morning. The sun glinted from the rufous side of the beast. He didn't look badly at all. What I feared was that the Jew would try to inspect him. To my sur- prise and deep relief he did not. We had been hauled out by a poor, old, gray rack o' bones that was ready to cave in at any time, and the junk dealer knew it. WILD BOYHOOD DREAMS 59 Evidently lie was bound to buy that mule without ex- citing me as to his intentions. His first offer was five dollars. I was anxious to take it but the lap gods held rue off. We dickered rapidly for a short time and I sold the wild red mule to him for eleven dollars. He went to the farmer who owned the field and asked if the mule belonged to me to sell, and that farmer looked as innocent as a poisonous toad stool to a mush- room hunter as lie told him it did. Then the Jew paid me eleven dollars out of a very greasy wallet. The? farmer and I stood where we could watch the new owner take 1 over his property. We had a roaring laugh and then a fright, because it looked at one time as though the mule would catch the Jew and eat him. The ragman was more persistent than I had been. He detected power in that mule which if harnessed would pull his junk wagon many a mile. But no use. He finally came to me and demanded his money back. I followed the example of the farmer and offered him six dollars. At the same time I suggested to him that he might get help and catch the beast, or failing that he could sell him " as he ran." That ended the mule trade so far as I was concerned. CHAPTER VI SWEPT INTO THE HUMAN MAELSTROM OF CHICAGO I STARTED to walk to Chicago, along the Lake Erie and Western railroad tracks. The exact reason I started to walk was because the train crew pulled me out of a box car and bade me do so. Tramps were everywhere and had become such a men- ace as to forfeit all sympathy. I had spent nearly all my money on clothing and did not have any to spare for railroad fare. At that time the fares were so high that a tolerable walker could make good wages afoot. It was autumn. The golden pawpaws burst as they fell to the ground. Wrinkled persimmons hung on the trees. Pheasants were in full plumage arid the quail and prairie chickens were strong of flight. Wild ducks and geese were winging south. Apples and turnips and cabbages were buried in pyramidal heaps in the field. Corn husking was occupying the men folks, and the women were about through " putting up " canned stuff for the winter. I was leaving all these Hoosier things forever. But I did not know it then; I did not even recognize my own feelings as they surged within me. Only one thing was clear. I was going to Chicago where so many Hoosier lads had gone before and have gone since, only to be swallowed remorselessly. At that age of limited experience I did not know the 60 THE HUMAN MAELSTROM 61 great cities devour boys and girls as a more avid Mino- taur than the Cretan monster in the Labyrinth that Daedalus built, that ate the seven maidens and seven youths sent by Athens as an annual tribute, until The- seus killed the demon. What a lot of Theseuses we need nowadays to hunt down the modern monster Minotau^s. One night I slept a while in a straw stack. First I dug a hole in the stack and crawling in I pulled the straw in after me. Just as I got comfortably warm and asleep, the farmer's dog treed me, and I was driven forth. Next I crawled into a corn shock where I was very cold and did not sleep much. It took me three days and nights to get to Chicago, only one hundred and thirty miles from LaFayette. Part of the way I managed to cover in freight trains, but I walked more than half the distance. There was a railroad station at the foot of Lake Street, I think, with dismal, unpainted, wooden sheds and many rookeries about. Across from the station were saloon dives, cheap hotels, restaurants and barber shops. My first impressions of Chicago were very dis- appointing and I fear they have not improved much yet. I had just fifteen cents. About nine o'clock in the morning I arrived. Entering a barber shop I asked if I might wash. The boss said I could. When I thanked him as I started to leave the shop the barber stopped me and said I owed him fifteen cents. It was every cent I had in the world but I paid and then plunged into the human jungle. I have seen the highways and byways of the earth since and have confronted many exacting conditions, but I never again have had such heart sinkings as I had 62 THE IRON HUNTER that morning. To have no breakfast was not such a serious thing for a strong boy. Alone in the middle of the Sahara I have felt nearer to friends and love and sympathy than I felt after the barber took my last cent. Some one to turn to was what I hungered for more than food. Where to go or which way to turn seemed to make no difference. Rivers of people swept by in ceaseless, rapid flow. There was the sullen roar of the city like a Niagara of fierce sorrow. It seemed to me that all the faces I saw were hungry and hard. I had heard of the Y. M. C. A., rather a new thing then, and made my way to its rooms. But they stared at me and spoke in a manner so short and feelingless that I almost fled from the room. It seemed as though the Y. M. C. A. was run for boys who had a home, and not for the strange and homeless. Of course I felt hard, unjustly so no doubt, and I was terrified by my own thoughts, which were that I hoped the place would burn down. What a trivial cause to start such a low trend! I soon tired and wandered about cold and rather despair- ingly. Soon again I was at the depot. A man with a big valise hailed me and gave me the bag to carry. It was big and heavy but I was strong. When I got it to the dollar-a-day hotel he sought he gave me five cents. I could have blessed him, but I only hurried away and found a place where I got a big bowl of soup and bread for the money I had earned. I haunted the railroad station and for several days carried quite a number of bags and parcels and earned twenty-five cents a day. At night I slept in the depot and was seldom mo- lested. To me it was a cheerful room at night, as the THE HUMAN MAELSTKOM 63 coal stove with open door cast a bituminous glow which made fine shadows that I was too big now to be afraid of. Sometimes I had bad dreams, and once I awoke in a cold sweat because I was chased by " Nigger Henry," who lived in a cave up Tenth Street " holler " at La- Fayette, hissed on by " Crazy Cyrus," who lived out by Reynold's pasture, and wrung his hands and gawped " bloodle-doodle." Between errands for passengers I hunted for a job. Finally a cheap sort of hotel boarding house on Wa- bash Avenue near Polk Street took me as assistant porter. The work was to do anything I was told to do by anybody. When nothing more definite was in sight I was to scrub the stairs and floor and wash the win- dows. I got my board and was promised three dollars a week. My shoes were wearing out and I had no over- coat. Trips downtown afoot through the snow and slush breasting the lake winds not warmly clad are the fea- tures I best remember of that experience. I could not get my pay so I began to hunt for an- other job. A fifteen-cent restaurant on Clark Street offered me two dollars a week and board as a potato peeler. I had to work in a grimy basement but I liked it because when the first week was up I got my pay and I could see new shoes ahead. The cook made soup of the potato peelings which was strained and sent up on a dumb waiter. I worked here for some weeks. There were many swift changes in the staff and soon I found myself sec- ond cook. Then I went upstairs as a waiter at two dollars and fifty cents a week, because the business could not afford a second cook. It was while waiting on the table that I met a Trib- 64 THE IRON HUNTER une reporter, who came to eat our best fifteen-cent meals in the city. We became friends and he found work for me with his paper. The Times was the big paper of Chicago, but the Tribune had started upon the growth that landed it at the top. I really ran errands at first for the city editor. Sometimes he gave me unimportant assignments. Gradually he gave me more to do and I learned a great deal. Of course, I felt at home around a newspaper on account of the experience I had had at LaFayette. Hard times grew harder. It was the early summer of 1879 that the Tribune cut things to the marrow. I was one of the first to go because I could be easiest spared. For my work on the Tribune I had been paid five dollars a week, perhaps really more than I earned. I lived on less than two dollars a week for food and saved enough to improve the quality and character of my clothing. The streets were filled with workless men and to get a job of any kind seemed hopeless. So I made up my mind to go to Milwaukee and farther north if neces- sary. The trains were closely watched and I suppose I was not a clever hobo, so I walked most of the eighty- five miles to Milwaukee. Naturally I saw and fell in with many tramps and learned their ways. It was a shock to my youthful ideals and sympathy to learn that most of these gentry would not work if they could get out of it. It was always a satisfactory day when they had bummed their grub without turning over a hand. Few of them were inclined to be criminals. In fact, they were drifting derelicts on their way to the hopeless, helpless, social sea of Sargasso which en- gulfs the inert human debris just as the flotsam of the ocean is caught. Nor did I then recognize the type at THE HUMAN MAELSTROM 65 all except as something not to tie up to permanently. It was only in after years that I came to realize that these deficients are the certain product of a social usury of yesterday and continued to-day with slight abate- ment. Theirs is a disease of the overworked world. Milwaukee offered nothing. It was winter. I walked on north through Fond du Lac, Oshkosh and Green Bay. A farmer living near Fond du Lac, to whom I ap- plied for work, said he would give me a job if I could hold it down. It consisted of being a valet to a man- eating stallion. I fought that horse for a week with everything that I could use and not kill him, and I would have finished the vicious brute if I had dared. After having my clothing partially bitten off me and suffering from not a few nips that reached my flesh, I gave up the job. It is really the only time in my life that I have admitted defeat, and I have longed for an- other chance at that horse but in vain. On toward the pole star I plugged away. At Osh- kosh I was seized with neuralgia from exposure and underfeeding. It made me jump, I tell you. Some good people took me to their home for a few days and then I went on. The Chicago & Northwestern was building its Me- nominee Range extension. I worked in the construc- tion gang near where Hermansville was afterwards located. The force was reduced and I found myself among those laid off at the northernmost limits of set- tlement. No use to go farther, so I began to retrace myself. There were tracks of bear, lynx and wolves, and the latter sounded their coursing tongues every night. Every hunting dream that had tenanted my mind as a 66 THE IRON HUNTER boy was revived as I saw deep-worn deer runway after runway. Strange how the red deer followed the same paths in their food migrations for centuries. Indians built deer fences and killed thousands along them, only taking skin and saddle. Civilization was even more ruthless. It is pathetic to observe the deer habits now. They try to migrate as in the olden days, but so restricted and cut up is the zone of wild life that it is more like a city Zoo. Game sanctuaries must be established. Things raced through my mind in a disconnected way. I wondered where I might get a start in life and how; a real one. Then back to the scenes and adventures of early boyhood my mind would travel. I contrasted the big forests with the Wea Plains, the Wabash bottoms and the borderland of the Grand Prairie in Indiana. I sat on a log to rest and heard the drumming of a pheasant. They call it a partridge north; the ruffed grouse. It made me think somehow or other of a June afternoon long ago when a mower had cut three legs off my double-nosed pointer pup as he lay in the grass, panting from his intense work. I had been training him on young prairie chickens that kind of just fluffed up out of the grass when I flushed them. I was a big boy, but I cried in secret when I shot the beautiful pointer to put him out of misery. He had been pre- sented to me by a man whose two children I had pulled out of a burning shed. When I was asked what I would like to have as a reward, poor as I was, I said a bird dog. One morning while going out to train the puppy I saw a black cat, and shot it as it was stealing up on some young quail. Nigger Bill had told me it was certain bad luck to kill a cat and worst of all to kill a black one, but I didn't believe him, because after many THE HUMAN MAELSTROM 67 struggles in which I was considerably scratched up I had cut a cat's head off and no bad luck seemed to fol- low. Now I believed it and as I sat on the log, with head full of disconnected thoughts, remembered that Nigger Bill had said that to kill a cat meant bad luck for seven years. I had two more years to go. Then I fell to thinking of signs and made up my mind to be very care- ful for, I argued, even if there's nothing to them, it won't hurt to avoid them. And that is the reason why signs are bad. Those who are unobserving and careless are always the ones who trespass most in the field of superstition with the consequences only those things that would naturally happen such persons. My thoughts covered a wide horizon as I tramped along day by day. Finally after the usual experiences of hunger and weariness I again reached Milwaukee. I had not been depressed a moment since the morning in Chicago when I was penniless and friendless in that awful mire of men. The limitless forests of the north that spread out under the boreal aurora with their bear, wolves and wild cat things were kinder than the big hungry city with its human wolves that are worse. CHAPTER VII I DRIVE A COAL WAGON PILE LUMBER CAPTURE A MURDERER AND DOCK WALLOP IN MILWAUKEE MY first job in Milwaukee was driving a coal wagon for H. B. Pearson. He was an alder- man and a prosperous coal dealer on West Water Street. In my memory he dwells as one of the best men in the world, just because he had a kind word and a bread-getting place for me. It was the early part of the spring of 1880. I was twenty years old and big and strong enough to do anything. Spring came with a rush that soon put the coal wagon out of business, but not before I learned a good deal about the streets and lay of the city. Right away I asked why none of the streets crossed the river straight and why all of them bore different names after cross- ing. Mr. Pearson patiently told me the reasons and said that they were the same that kept Milwaukee back, and from being a bigger place than Chicago. When the town was first started local rivalries, that have killed more towns than any other cause, were a conflagration in Milwaukee. Three towns separated by the Kinni- Kinnick and Milwaukee rivers strove against one an- other. They were Juneautown, Walkertown and Kil- bourne City, and so bitter were they that bridges were not built and there were many fights and much bad blood. Men build cities even more than nature. The fact that Milwaukee is a city at all with the bad start 68* I DKIVE A COAL WAGON 69 it got proves that it has better natural advantages than Chicago. By the time the coal wagon had to go the season of navigation had opened, and lumber hookers were com- ing in with their green cargoes. Mr. Pearson helped me to get a job piling lumber in Durr & Rugee's lumber yard on the south side. It was hard work and by quit- ting time I was always tired, but not so much so that I could riot do night work on Gregory Hurson's Good- rich docks. I got ninety cents a day in the lumber yard and twenty cents an hour for dock-walloping, plus kicks and curses at the latter. An attic over Godfrey & CrandalPs job printing shop on Michigan Street furnished a place to sleep on a pallet on the floor. It was always a soft pallet after I got through dock walloping at ten or eleven o'clock. Some- times I worked until midnight loading or unloading vessels, and the work was quite certain to be had every night. Real trouble soon brewed at the lumber yard. I was the only American on the job. All the others were Poles and the foreman was Polish. They conspired against me and gave me the worst end of it, or I thought they did, when it came to unloading a schooner. I noticed that two Poles were assigned to take away from one man over the rail. I had to do that job alone, and there were other signs that I was not welcome among them. Since that time I have been treated better in Poland that I was by the Polacks in Durr & Rugee's yard. Things were coming to a pass where there had to be a show down, and then I was certain I would have to go. My employers, no matter how fair, could not keep me as against all the balance of the gang. 70 THE IEON HUNTER There was a turn of good luck, if ever there is such a thing, and I think there is because so many things hap- pen in a person's life that cannot be traced to their cause source within the individual. Two young fellows from Louisville named Baber and Gesswein had started an evening newspaper called the Signal. It is now the Milwaukee Journal, with many hiatuses between. George Yenowine was also one of the unlucky Kentuckians. They got into debt to God- frey & Crandall, the printers, in whose attic I had my abode, and lost their struggling property for printing bills. Hampton Leedom, a sturdy man of middle age, with hunchback, red visage and kind heart, kept the books for Godfrey & Crandall and for some others. He, too, often worked at night and I became acquainted with him and he took an interest in me that I shall never forget. It was Mr. Leedom who told me about the Sig- nal and its troubles. I told him about the newspaper and printer's work I had done, and he promised to keep a look out for me for a job. Before taking the coal wagon I had been to every printer and publisher in Milwaukee. I could not hang around long because I had not done better up to that time than to work from hand to mouth, and there did not seem to be a job in prospect anyhow. One night Hampton Leedom advised me not to go to the lumber yard next day because he had been telling George Godfrey, of Godfrey & Crandall, about me. I took his advice. Mr. Godfrey was a slight, swart man who had char- acter and ability. He looked over his spectacles at me and appeared cross but he was not. I had heard a good deal about him. He was a greenbacker, and from what I DRIVE A COAL WAGON 71 I had heard of greenbackers from my father, I had a great prejudice against them and could not understand how a man could be one and a respectable citizen at the same time. That George Godfrey could be gave me a measure of his versatility. He also printed the Milwaukee Commercial Letter, which was edited by Mr. Friese, commercial editor of the Sentinel. Mr. Godfrey told me he was anxious to get circulation for the Signal, an ambition quite com- mon to publishers at all times. He said he did not wish to keep the paper but could not dispose of it to advan- tage without building it up some. I thought it queer that he should tell me these things and concluded it must be because I came from LaFayette, where he had a brother, the Methodist preacher. It was not this at all as I came to know. He was just one of those open men who think aloud and consequently never lie. I got a job soliciting subscriptions. The Signal was Milwaukee's first two-cent paper. The working peo- ple had never been canvassed, I think, for they seemed eager to try the daily at ten cents a week. I secured as many as fifty subscribers in a day at Bay View, where lived the rolling mill employees and other better paid, skilled workmen. My success made me quite famous in the office. Hampton Leedom told me I ought to shuck my Hoosier togs as not being suited to my new stratum in the world. He gave me a credit with F. P. Gluck, tailor, and I used it to obtain my first made-to-order suit. My big cowboy hat went into the discard with the old clothes for all of which I got one dollar and eighty cents, at a West Water Street den of three-ball finance. Mr. Godfrey was running the paper in quite a popu- lar way. He took a good deal of advice from Robert 72 THE IRON HUNTER Schilling, whose socialist paper, Der Deutsche Re- former, was printed at Godfrey & CrandalPs. Schill- ing was a strong, earnest, honest propagandist. A newspaper man named C. C. Bowsfield came along and made an offer for the Signal. He got it and changed the name to the Chronicle. Because I knew how to handle the carrier boys, as demonstrated one turbulent evening, Bowsfield made me city circulator. I got the routes arranged and made a pretty good start with street sales and newsdealers, be- fore I was transferred to the editorial department. This was what I had been praying for. Not that the writing end of the paper was very formidable, because it was not, but it was on the way for me. Bowsfield chewed a toothpick and looked wise and im- portant as owner and editor, and I was certain he felt just as he looked. Darwin Pavey, assistant to Bowsfield, was between six and seven feet tall, very skeletony and always looked hungry as his big, gray eyes wandered about his food- less environs. It seemed to me that he was always writ- ing puffs for the Newhall House that never got onto the advertising books. This was proved right by finding out that he got his dinner at that hotel without other pay. They even permitted him to carry fruit and stuff away from the table. Now and then he would bait me with a taste of these titbits. It was great to watch him pick his teeth with a wire he carried to clean his pipe. I thought that I would strive to become a great editor like Mr. Pavey and also pick my teeth with a pipe wire after enjoying a sump- tuous dinner at a two-dollar hotel. The Chronicle did not prosper any better than the Signal. Bowsfield got new blood and some money into I DRIVE A COAL WAGON 73 it by interesting Frank A. Flower. I never had known such a man as Flower. He seemed to me to be a walk- ing dictionary. But he could not supply the nourish- ment the Chronicle needed. My salary was supposed to be seven dollars a week. I had been getting enough of this barely to live up to the point it stopped altogether. My last week on the paper is memorable for several reasons. I had been sent to pawn Mrs. Flower's ear rings in order to pay the printers. We were all in terrible shape. I had gone from liv- ing on fifteen cents a day to a generous free-lunch saloon on East Water Street, across from the city hall, to which I was introduced by George C. Youngs, a printer friend. Every day, nearly, I scooped our rival, the Evening Wisconsin. The very police seemed to be won by the struggle I was making and everybody helped out with exclusive news. Walter Gardner, city editor of the Wisconsin, sent for me. I went with quaking knees, caused as much by lack of food as by awe and desire to get a job on the richest paper in town. Not in all my life before or since have I wanted anything so much. Mr. Gardner asked me how I would like to work on the Wisconsin. I replied with profound insincerity : " Oh ! I don't know." Manifestly he was surprised. " What ! " he exclaimed. " Don't you realize that you are a real newspaper man the minute you come over here?" I bantered him with the query : " Is that why they call it the Evening Granny? " Gardner was said to be a college man. They were rare in newspaper offices then. He had a reputation 74 THE IKON HUNTEK and was superior, but he had but a dim sense of humor. I could see that he was struggling between a desire to kick me out and a kind of admiration of my audacity. If he had known how high my gulp was he would have hired me on the spot. Perhaps he did know somewhat. Anyhow he offered me ten dollars a week. I am afraid now that I tried to give him the impression that my wages were more than that on the Chronicle, but such a preposterous idea could not have lodged in his sober brain. We had more conversation. I told him that on the Chronicle I was the whole thing, which now was the truth, with the exception that the paper never would have come out if it had not been for Julia O'Brien, a type sticker, and Dick Bavis, the foreman. They kept the crew going with such pawnshop money as I could raise for Bowsfield and Flower, who were afraid they would be caught at it and so sent me. Finally, Gardner offered me twelve dollars a week and the haggling stopped instantly. It was big wages even in Chicago, and unusually good for Milwaukee. I had not been on the Wisconsin long before Mr. Gard- ner and I clashed. He ordered me to write in his style, which I could not do, and for that matter nobody could except himself. He said he would fire me, which was a bluff. It sent me with my trouble to Uncle Billy Cramer, senior of Cramer, Aikens & Cramer, owners of the Wisconsin and also of a big job and ready print business that made them rich. Uncle Billy was as deaf as a big collection of adders and nearly blind also. His other senses were unim- paired and the story of his marriage some time after this incident was a raw morsel among the boys. I think my nerve in bracing him personally appealed I DEIVE A COAL WAGON 75 to him. Anyhow, Mr. Gardner went on an extended leave for his health, and upon returning became an edi- torial writer. The Chronicle had been unloaded on Tom and Jim Somers, democratic lawyers who wanted an organ. They got one. Frank Flower came over on the " Wis- conse " to take Gardner's place as city editor. The old paper took on more life than a doped race horse. I was permitted to run an astounding scandal of the county farm, involving the big German chairman of the county board of supervisors and a crippled moron girl. The county chairman threatened to kill me on sight. A. H. Schattenberg, clerk of the school board, warned me of my danger and, as it was against the law to carry concealed weapons he gave me a hatchet to defend my- self with. I wore it openly in a belt, and Judge Mal- lory, of the Municipal Court, said it was all right. Julius Meiswinkel, clerk of the court, and Alvin Wie- bers, his assistant, gave me a duly signed permit to carry a hatchet until I elected to bury it. This began to make me a marked reporter. Also I never walked. During the time I was in Milwaukee I always ran wherever I went. Oftentimes I beat other reporters who went in cabs and besides I saved the cab hire. The libeled person took a new tack. He had Uncle Billy arrested for criminal libel and had me arrested on the same charge. It was the first time on record that an attempt was made to fasten such responsibility onto an employee. John J. Orton, the regular Cramer, Aikens Cramer attorney, and W. H. Ebbitts, a noted criminal lawyer of the time, defended us. We were put in jail for a short time for the dramatic effect. On the very same day a German youth named Her- 76 THE IKON HUNTER man Hilden murdered his stepfather. The Chicago Tribune got the thing mixed. It carried a Milwaukee dispatch to the effect that I was arrested for murder and Hilden for criminal libel. As the Tribune had a large circulation at LaFayette my bad reputation thereabouts was further fortified. We had the goods, so nothing came of our prosecution except an uplift of my local reputation. The Chicago Tribune asked me to take charge of its Milwaukee bu- reau, which I did. Also I got quite a string of outside papers and began to make money as I looked at things. The Chicago Times' man in Milwaukee both Trib- une and Times had Milwaukee bureaus then was a booze fighter for fair, and I had the good luck to pro- tect him in his job for quite a long time. One day Herman Hilden broke jail with other pris- oners. John Rugee, of Durr & Rugee, had become sher- iff. Fat office those times. He offered a reward of three hundred dollars for Hilden. A clever girl friend of mine, a telegraph operator at Appleton, reported to me that she thought she had spotted Hilden. I followed up the clew, located him and told the Milwaukee sher- iff. I waived all claim to the reward, but saw that the girl got her share. My position in the matter, which seemed to me was a simple one and right, made me a very lion for a time. Sheriff Rugee gave a big dinner for me and presented me with a huge, gold-headed cane which quite floored me. I did not any more know what to do with that cane than I would with an elephant's trunk, if one had been tied to me. Its destiny was to be broken over a dog that snapped at our first baby. At the Rugee din- ner it was discovered that less than a year before I had been a lumber piler in his yard, and it made quite a hit. I DKIVE A COAL WAGON 77 Soon afterwards a big wholesale Jew clothing house was burned. John Black, assistant fire chief, told me the owners had done it. He took me from floor to floor and showed me piles of kerosened clothing that had not completely burned. It was a great story and when I told Frank Flower all about it he let it go. Of course, it created a tremendous sensation, which was felt in the office as well as outside. The owners started a libel suit. It looked like a bad fight, and while we of the city staff were hot for it, our wealthy bosses were not so keen. Two days later occurred Milwaukee's greatest trag- edy, the burning of the Newhall House and one hundred and eleven persons. This swept the boards of the pub- lic mind clear of everything, including our threatened libel suit. Parenthetically, the insurance on the clothing stock was never paid. The night the Newhall House burned I was in that fated fire trap until after midnight, looking up inside stuff about the failure of Dixon & Co., grocers. I can see Tom Thumb yet as he reached up his cue to his eyes while playing billiards. After watching him for some time I left. All the way home, for now I was married, I had one of those feelings that are unexplainable. Gamblers call them hunches. Spiritualists call them warnings. I was certain that some big thing was about to happen. It was the first time I had sensed anything like it enough to be impressed. The Newhall House was a fire trap. Everybody predicted it would burn. I had been in it for some hours just before and wander- ing through its narrow hallways, had dwelt upon the fire butts and dried and wrinkled reels of rotten hose. Maybe that had a lot to do with my feelings. 78 THE IKON HUNTER I lived on 21st Street on the West side near Grand Avenue, and had reached the corner of 18th Street on that stately thoroughfare. About I faced and started downtown. Just as I got to 16th Street a fire alarm sounded, quickly followed by a general alarm. It was January. I ran as swiftly as I could go and just reached the scene in time to witness the ineffaceable spectacle of the jumping of waitress girls from their sixth-story attic rooms into the alley below. Some of the guests leaped into the telegraph wires and broke their fall. My old employer, Uncle Billy Cramer, lived at the Newhall. I soon discovered, to my gladness, that he had been led out quite safely. Tom Thumb received injuries from which he subse- quently died. Billy Dodsworth, of the American Ex- press Company, arrived just in time to see two of his best friends, Mr. and Mrs. Joslyn, jump to death. Mr. Joslyii was prominent on 'change. With his wife he oc- cupied the third floor corner rooms of Broadway and Michigan. Mr. Dodsworth had influenced them to put up a private fire escape, but in their panic they forgot it. I have had and have witnessed a good many tragic things in my life but nothing so appalling as the New- hall holocaust. The men I saw dying at the siege of Constantinople had a chance and were not caught like rats in a trap. Jesse James was operating up in Wisconsin then, and the Williams Brothers, of Dunn County, were supposed to be a part of his gang. Every detective or would-be Vidocq in the West and a lot from the East had lurid dreams of rounding up the James outfit or some of it. Old Bill Beck, who had a piece of his jaw shot off, leav- ing an ugly, facial scar, was the first chief of police I knew in Milwaukee. He was a war time, secret service I DKIVE A COAL WAGON 79 detective and typical. Under bis direction quite a de- tective force incubated. Some of tbeni were too funny for anything even then, but Janssen and Riemer, Billy MeManus, John Hannifin, and Smith and Sheeban did good work from the first. John A. Hinsey had charge of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad de- tectives with headquarters in Milwaukee. That was before the offices were moved to Chicago. Alexander Mitchell and S. S. Merrill were directing the master- ful contest waged against the Chicago & Northwestern for control in the new Northwest. William C. Van- Horne was general superintendent and was making his record as a lieutenant that resulted in his being drafted by the Canadian Pacific promoters. Fred Underwood, afterwards president of the Erie, was a brakeman. His home was out at Wauwatosa, where his father was a dignified minister of the gospel. Tom Shaughnessy, afterwards Lord Shaughnessy, was dealing out candles and wicking as a clerk in the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad storehouse, and his father was a faith- ful, Third Ward policeman, with a brogue like over- cooked mush. James J. Hill and Donald Smith, the latter after- wards Lord Strathcona, were beginning to appear in the horizon of the Northwest. The United States had just failed to see and take advantage of a chance to pur- chase nearly a million square miles of Hudson Bay Ter- ritory, which would have given us an unbroken domain to the North Pole, including the now famous hard wheat belt of the North. The vast Northwest had begun to sizzle as the fires of settlement and commercial desires moved up to it. One could tell the story on and on for they were making men in Milwaukee then. 80 THE IRON HUNTEE Well, as I was saying, all the sleuths were after Jesse James. A deputy sheriff named Jim Greding had more imagination and less sense than any one person I ever saw. He thought he was a detective. Laboring under that delusion he did more odd things than could be told in a tome. Once he came to me and told me in a whisper that would burst the listening ear of Diony- sius in the latomia of Syracuse, that he had located his quarry. I followed him over to Grand Avenue. He stealthily approached the salesroom of the Singer Sew- ing Machine, where an inoffensive citizen named Beach was planning further raids on the Wheeler & Wilson. " That's him ! " said Jim. It was hard to keep my face straight, but I sicked Jim on until Beach nearly broke every bone in his body. This didn't feaze him, for one day a rube named William Kuhl came to town and Jim at once marked him for the desperado Loii Williams. He really got Kuhl into the coop and finding a scar on his toe that tallied with Williams, they spirited him to Dunn County for final identification, which was so success- ful that it proved conclusively who he was not. But Jim had us all fooled for a while. I had myself locked up with the pseudo Lon, and so eager was I to believe Kuhl to be a villain for the story there was in it, that I had no difficulty in doing so. It was a great les- son to me. I learned how easily one can be misled in the direction he would like to proceed. CHAPTEE VIII MAEBIED ON CREDIT I GIVE MY BRIDE A FIVE CENT BOUQUET AND WE TAKE A WEDDING TRIP ON A STREET CAR THE best act of my life was performed in Milwau- kee when I fell in love and married. I do not know how any one could be more deeply in love than I was, unless I am now, and I think I am. My sweetheart was seventeen and I was twenty. I was refused a marriage license on this account. The mo- ment we became of age I secured the license and we were married by the Reverend F. L. Stein, pastor of the Grand Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, in the par- lors of his parsonage, Saturday evening, May 7, 1881. I gave my bride a five cent bouquet from the German market, paid the preacher two dollars down and three dollars on the installment plan and paid Gluck, the tailor, for my wedding suit in the same way. We joyously took our bridal tour on one of Washing- ton Becker's street cars drawn by horses, and spent the evening with Observer Mueller of the United States Weather Bureau and Mrs. Mueller. If any bridegroom was ever happier before or since it is because of his greater capacity for emotion. I had wedded the most beautiful and the bravest girl in the world, and I know this now better than I thought it then. There never has been a time in African jungle or any other place demanding courage, when my wife has not been the braver of the two. SI 82 THE IKON HUNTER I made many friends, and one of the dear ones, Col- onel J. A. Watrous, was directly responsible for my go- ing to Florence as told in a previous chapter. My char- acter began to take form in Northern Wisconsin. I wished to provide for my wife and family and be a good husband and citizen. That was an undertaking big enough. Conditions at once compelled me to make a decision between the outlaws and the little Presbyterian Church. At that time I did not formally join the church, but I did enlist for the aims of the church. It is nearly true but not quite exactly the case that it was put up to me to be a horse thief or a Presbyterian, and I chose to be the latter. At Florence I had my first real initiation into the politics of the times. Hiram Damon Fisher, a good- hearted, canny Green Mountaineer, born at Vergennes, Vermont, was the big man of the place in everything. He was the discoverer of the adjacent iron mine that made the town possible. Mr. Fisher had " entered " from the Government most of the environal land to the extent of thousands of acres. His plan was to secure the minutes (descriptions) and take them to the capitalists to be purchased from the public domain at one dollar arid twenty-five cents an acre. Generally one quarter interest, but sometimes only one-eighth and infrequently three-eighths would be given the cruiser, or whatever person supplied the chance. In this manner much of the best of the valu- able public domain fell into a few hands. All sorts of things had fallen to the lot of the father of Florence before he got his start. He was a sailor on Lake Winnebago and Fox River, connecting that water with Green Bay, where his finer character was shown by saying " jeeswax " instead of the profanity A WEDDING TKIP ON A STREET CAR 83 that was more plentifully charged with haemoglobin. Book peddling carried him into insurance, and while thus engaged he met Emily, the beautiful daughter of Joseph Keyes, one of the pioneers of Wisconsin. Boss Keyes, a son of Joseph, was a political power and for a long period dominated in Wisconsin. Joseph Keyes came to be registrar of the United States land office at Menasha. Young Fisher got into the atmosphere of the office instinctively, as well as into the good graces of the majestic daughter. He camped at the Keyes. Woods cruisers would come in with the information gathered after long and adventurous trips. Oftentimes they were only con- cerned with certain specified parcels of land, but in going to or from that location they would incidentally gather much information about timber, rocks, soil, fur, game, Indians and what not. Very often they would race with other woodsmen for some rich stake, nearly always pine timber. Thrilling canoe trips in summer and great hikes on snow shoes trailing toboggans in winter were common. The time Charley LaSalle lost his trapping " pard- ner" up on Lac Vieux Desert in the middle of the winter and froze the corpse until spring, when he pain- fully and laboriously trudged out with it for some hun- dreds of miles, was a chiefer tale, and the fellow who did not know all about it was the worst of lob-gobs tenderfeet. When these couriers du bois were at the land office, and some of them were there every day, Damon Fisher would cultivate them. A drink here, or a plug of to- bacco or a present of a pipe and the jolly young Yankee was their bosom friend. Then they would tell him everything, even the se- 84 THE IRON HUNTER crets they hoped to capitalize in the nebulous some day. In this manner he learned of places where the compass would turn a complete circle because the magnetic at- traction was so strong. Every little while a cruiser from the Lake Superior region would fish out of his pockets a specimen. Nearly all of them knew iron ore when they saw it. They were not very good judges of percentages of metallic iron, but that was relatively unimportant. Sometimes they would have jasper and at other times lean magnetite, resembling what they had known as loadstone. One day a cruiser showed Fisher a small piece of sparkling specular hematite. That settled it. He had married Miss Keyes, but that did not prevent his de- cision. The woods were a terra incognita to him, so he interested George Keyes, who was a cousin of his wife, and a good woodsman named Nelson Halsey. This trio made trip after trip up into the wilds. They could go as far as Green Bay by rail, and then they had to attack the brush. Each man carried a pack. They took a light cotton tent, one blanket apiece, frying pan, tin tea pail, three tin cups, knives and forks some- times, plenty of flour and pork, tea and salt. No sugar ; no luxuries. Their food range was as important as a seafighter's coaling radius is. Tea, grill ades and galette for breakfast and supper, and cold dough-god for lunch made up the woods fare of all who deserved the name of cruiser. It was wear- ing upon the young prospector's bank account, which had not been a big one to start with. There was a lonely wife and baby in a little cottage in Menasha. Fisher just would not give up. He ex- hausted his means so completely that he would borrow five dollars to buy flour with, arid when pressed would A WEDDING TRIP ON A STEEET CAR 85 borrow of another in order to pay the original loan. In this way of high finance he kept himself and his little crew in the woods. But there must be success or an end to it all. Anybody who ever had confidence in him had lost it. So it came to the third mid-summer's prospecting. Halsey and Keyes were looking for a corner in order to locate themselves. They were in a dense cedar swamp between two small lakes. Fisher wandered about quite aimlessly and got away from his men. Coming to the edge of the swamp he climbed a hill, so that he might get a birds'eye view of the country if possible. But it was too thickly timbered at the hilltop. Then he hal- looed to his men. No answer. " Lost ! by jeeswax," he soliloquized. He sat down and took out his small exploring pick. Sticking it in the ground at haphazard, as one would idly play mumbletypeg alone, he pulled it out and be- hold ! The point was red. He had stuck it into hematite just beneath the leaf- mold. Feverishly he scraped away the leaves and plied the little pick. There was iron ore. Restoring the original appearance Fisher's next task was to find his men or have them find him. The work of anxious months was at an end. Thus was discovered the Menominee Iron Range. Not even telling Halsey and Keyes when they came together, Fisher started for Menasha just as soon as he was certain of the section his find was on. The land was entered. More weary years ensued before John H. Van Dyke and Albert Conro of Milwaukee, and A. C. Brown of Marinette, and Henry Pattern of Menasha and other rich bankers were interested. The railroad followed, and then development and 86 THE IKON HUNTEK riches. To secure all this Fisher had to give up to capital three-fourths of his discovery. Two lakes may be seen from the denuded crest of Florence Mine hill. The one to the southwest is called Keyes and the nearer one, which is southeast, is called Fisher. On the banks of the latter, in a beautiful lo- cation, is the mining village of Florence, named for Mrs. N. P. Hulst, of Milwaukee. It was Mr. Fisher who came to have a drag on the town weekly, as a quite common result of loaning to it small sums of money. I went north in response to a wire from him to Colonel Watrous. The Colonel, a most generous and brave man, saw me climbing the stairs of the Wisconsin building with a series of jumps. Peck's Sun was on one floor and the Sunday Telegraph, published by Calkins & Watrous, on another. He asked me if I would like to go into business for myself. I answered, " You bet ! " without a moment's thought of capital. That was four o'clock, P. M. I left on the six o'clock train, two hours later, and did not return. Mr. Fisher asked me how much money I had. I told him eighty dollars. He asked me how much I could raise. I told him all that was necessary. " Where ? " he queried. " You," I replied. " All right," he said. I signed notes for two thousand, five hundred dol- lars, at ten per cent., all to be paid in a year. It took sixty dollars of my eighty dollars to bring up my wife and babe and our scant household truck. I did not know there was a great depression in iron, and that the mine was idle. A small force was working A WEDDING TRIP ON A STREET CAR 87 two miles away at Commonwealth. There was some lumbering. Over the Michigan line there was a good deal of exploring in the region of Tobin Lake, and along the Paint and Iron rivers, where the towns of Crystal Falls and Iron River were just starting. Small mines had opened at the Delphic and Mastodon locations. Edward Breitung, of Negaunee, was doing some work at the lower Pine River falls, and Angus Smith, of Milwaukee, had an exploring crew on the Menominee, near Bad Water Indian village. The Lake Elwood sec- tion, between Spread Eagle and Pine River, was also attracting attention. Norway, Quinnesec and Iron Mountain were flourishing new towns. Keel Ridge mine had caved in and killed a number of men, the first big tragedy of the range. The Breens and others had done some work in the vicinity of Waucedah, which had been abandoned as beyond the extension of the productive iron formation. There was much excitement in the Metropolitan and Felch mountain regions and the Chicago & Northwest- ern built a branch in from Narenta, but the ore bodies turned out to be a shallow blanket, and large sums of money were lost. To say that I worked night and day is the only de- scription of my activity. I loved the wild new country. It brought into play everything that a soul and mind and body possesses. Nearly all the pioneers were young. The pace demanded youth. Jim Knight had a paper at Norway. I think they called it the Chronicle then ; now his paper is the Current. Boulders Bennett was a feature of it. Jim Russell, then a bellicose tyro, since become an able and dignified penologist, had just joined A. P. Swineford in the Marqueite Mining Journal. George 88 THE IKON HUNTER Newett, always a man and now famous for his tilt with Colonel Roosevelt, ran the Iron Agitator now Iron Ore, at Ishpeming. C. G. Griffey was plugging away with the Negaunee Iron Herald. A fine fellow named Devereux seemed out of the world with the Portage Lake Mining Gazette at Hough- ton, and he gave it a tone that was high and distinctive. Fred McKenzie was at Calumet, where he had a pos- ter affair much like his own pudgy self. Alfred Meads, father of them all and a credit to everything he con- tacted, was the pioneer publisher of the Ontonagon Miner. Colonel Van Dnzer, a veteran of Sherman's army, published the Escanaba Iron Port, and the way the splendid old hero " marched to the sea " every issue was good for contemplation. I have mentioned this press personnel because these men had more to do with developing the social and civic structure in their respective communities, that were in turn interwoven, than all the acquisitors whatsoever. Every one of them waged a battle for equality and de- cency every minute and it was a prideful thing to know them. The Mining Journal, of Marquette, and the Green Bay Advocate just about controlled things in the new field I had entered. It was my business to drive them out, which I did. I could do it only by appealing to local loyalty and meeting their competition. I started departments in my paper for Iron River and Crystal Falls and at last, when forced, I printed papers for these towns, that were set up and run off at Florence. CHAPTER IX I UNDERTAKE THE STUDY OF IRON ORE AND ENGAGE IN EXPLORATION AND PROSPECTING MY newspaper work and its involvements did not give me enough to do so I began a systematic study of iron ore exploration in all of its prac- tical and scientific phases, an enjoyable life's work which I still keep up and which has attracted me to every country in the world. Woodcraft and surveying are as necessary as anything else in a new country. The government survey of Northern Michigan and Wisconsin was made between 1850 and 1860. Mostly it was well done but not always. Townships six miles square were measured off north and south from an ar- bitrary base line and east and west from a range or meridian line. These townships were subdivided into thirty-six sections one mile square, and the sections were quartered; later to be divided into forty-acre lots by county surveyors. The section corners and the points midway between them, quarter stakes, were marked. Great care was given to marking the section corner. Whether the monument was a cedar stake, or of some- thing else, charcoal was buried at its base. Then bear- ing or witness trees, four when possible, were gouged with the legend of the location. Accurate location by distance and direction was made on the field notes. Ob- servations of topography and geology were also written on the field notes, making them very valuable. The 89 90 THE IRON HUNTER government survey by the United States is a creditable public achievement. It was impossible to survey the magnetic fields in the region of Lake Superior with an ordinary compass. Necessity thus led to the contrivance of Burt's solar compass which has been developed now into the dial compass, a still more useful instrument. It was a memorable day when Mr. Fisher, at my re- quest, took me into the woods and showed me for the first time an unmarred section corner and three wit- ness trees. Another lesson was to walk along the section line two thousand paces to the next corner, locating the quarter stake enroute. I held a compass straight in front of my body, waist high, as I took sights along the line. At noon we had a bouillon made of a pileated wood- pecker. I had never before seen this beautiful bird. Mr. Fisher called it a wood cock and informed me that it was a fine game bird. It is just as good to eat as any woodpecker and no better. They are rapidly dis- appearing and are even more scarce than their southern rival, the ivory bill. I have never permitted the killing of one since that day except for alleged scientific pur- poses, and not many with that now poor excuse. By evening Mr. Fisher said he could teach me no more ; that all the rest of it would have to come by the experience that would attend keeping at it. The Gogebic and Mesaba ranges and their extensions were little known and undeveloped. Charles Wrifrht, geologist, had made what is yet the best map of the Me- nominee range. The Brotherton boys, of Escanaba, doing the practical work, and John M. Longyear, the clerical, for the Lake Superior Ship Canal Railway & Iron Company, had THE STUDY OF IKON ORE 91 made valuable land grant selections along what has been developed since as the Gogebic range. While doing this work Mr. Longyear laid the foundation for his great fortune by securing money backing and taking up lands adjoining, utilizing the Brotherton information for the purpose and obtaining a quarter interest in everything thus entered. The entire Lake Superior country was overrun by agents of rapacious interests of one kind or another. Homesteaders were struggling for a share with no inten- tion of making a home. Unearned land grants were being fought for. It was a Golcouda and greed was after the diamonds. Beneath it all was a current flow- ing that was certain to purify everything. One had but to glance below the murky surface of the present. Before I left Florence N. I). Moore and others were working in the Gogebic region and with the coming of the railroad the Colby mine was opened. My first year at Florence witnessed the payment for the little paper. Three years more of work there brought more than a living so that when I sold out early in 1887 I had nearly ten thousand dollars and the world by the tail. Mr. Fisher, egged on by Boss Keyes and a natural tendency, took part in all the politics from the township " corkis " to the state convention. In fact, he was the political entity of the county and aspired to go to the legislature some day. In order to facilitate this and de- fine more clearly his realm, he had Florence County cut out of Marinette and erected. When there was any kind of a convention he would send for me and we would together write out a list of names of delegates, issue their credentials and sign them, and that was all there was to it. I have no idea 92 THE IRON HUNTER that I would have been consulted if it had not been necessary to have some one sign as secretary of the con- vention that was never held. At first I thought it was a trifle irregular, but as I did not know anything about the proper form, a brief conversation with the well-intending local boss caused me to have no qualms; and, in fact, I am certain that Mr. Fisher was conscientious in also believing it to be all right. They all did that way, he told me. The candidature for congress of Mr. Isaac Stephenson, a Nova Scotian lumberman at Marinette, reputed to be nearly a millionaire at a time when those common- places were uncommon, was announced. His district was the Ninth Wisconsin. Sounds like a military com- pany, does it not? It included Florence County. We were entitled to two delegates and whom else could we appoint but ourselves ? There was no other thought in our minds even if others might have had them. Soon after our popular selection as delegates a most confounding thing occurred that stumped me com- pletely for a while. Mr. A. C. Brown, of Marinette, a lumbering partner of Mr. Stephenson, came to Flor- ence and actually called on me. I was boyishly glad to be recognized by Mr. Brown, who really was a fine gentleman and rich. My legs were almost removed from perpendicular connection with my body when he pulled out a fifty dollar bill and handed it to me. I had never seen one before and my first idea was that it might be a millionaire's calling card, indicating his status, and only to be taken and returned. So I took it and searched it minutely and then offered to give it back. He waved it aside with an imperious smile, as if to convey that he had more of them than could be loaded into one of his Brule River batteaux. THE STUDY OF IRON ORE 93 " But what is it for ? " I asked. He seemed stuck for a second and then replied, " For subscription to the Mining News." And I thought it was ; cross my heart. So I ran over in my mind how long Mr. Brown would have paid in advance at two dollars and fifty cents a year, or whether he might not wish it to be divided among names he would furnish? It made no difference to him, he said, and after visiting a while he got up to go, remarking that he would see me at the convention where we would be certain to land Stephenson all right. I was also certain, because Boss Keyes was for Ste- phenson ; A. C. Brown was for Stephenson ; Stephenson was for Stephenson ; Mr. Fisher was for Stephenson, and whom else could I be for, and I did not know the other fellow if there was one. There was no need of scattering money all over the district the way they did, except for the observation of the same good form that makes a fellow set 'em up again who has had a drink with some one buying for a bar- room crowd. And yet the money smoothed the way to Congress for Uncle Ike just as he iced logging roads, or as a ship's ways are greased before launching. Before I left Florence a revolution against the pre- vailing political methods occurred and conventions and caucuses were really held, but a few interested persons pulled the strings and manipulated things just the same. CHAPTER X MY FIRST TRIP INTO THE TRACKLESS WILDS OF UNEXPLORED CANADA ISOLD out to advantage at Florence and moved back to Milwaukee and took a position as city editor of the Sentinel. Together with Harry My-. rick, Mel Hoyt, Henry Legler, Sandy Dingwall, Curt Treat and Will Anderson, all newspaper men, I started a trade paper called the Miner and Manufacturer, which we had King & Fowle print. The Gogebic range was booming. Milwaukee went iron mad. Iron mine stocks were traded in by the pub- lic speculatively for the first time in America in 1887. As usual fortunes were made and lost, and the start was made of many spectacular careers, such as that of Ferdinand Schlesinger, that took even banks up and down. I had a few stocks and sold them, but did not buy any nor speculate. It got to be noised around that I was an expert iron ore man. This was based on the fact that I had been underground in nearly every mine and exploration in the Lake Superior ranges, and had writ- ten mining dope that was given wide publicity. I did not intend to pose as an expert. In fact, iron ore ex- ploration was then done by guess and b'gosh by the best of them. No one person seemed to be able to see much farther into the ground than another. Anyhow, I was consulted and I think I was honest. 94 THE TEACKLESS WILDS OF CANADA 95 One day a man came to me and told me a syndicate of Milwaukee and Chicago men had been formed to make some examinations of the Echo Lake region of Canada, and he asked me if I would take charge of them. I had no more idea where Echo Lake was than the man in the moon. We did not discuss that, but came to terms upon the general proposition, and I engaged to go. My pay was five hundred dollars a month and expenses, and I was to have a quarter interest in anything I found worth taking hold of. If I had asked any less during that boom they would not have thought me an expert at all, and as it was they thought I was too cheap, as I afterwards learned. As for myself, I was in much doubt of my ability to earn my wages. But I did and more. Four active years in the woods of the Menominee range, during which I had repeatedly visited and stud- ied explorations and formations from one end of the range to the other, had given me something. The woods had loaned to me some of their secret craft, and the lakes and rivers had yielded experience in rowing, paddling, poling and sailing. I was somewhat equipped for work in the wild coun- try that my quest was partially to introduce me to. I had walked from Lac Vieux Desert to Lake Superior and had interested Milwaukee acquaintances in entering several thousands of acres of copper lands, covered with good hardwood and scattering pine between the Black and Presque Isle rivers. On that cruise I had a pack of eighty pounds and wore my improper footwear down to sore and bleeding feet. The geography of Echo Lake locates that beautiful mountain-shored basin in Canada, between Sault Ste. Marie and the mouth of St. Mary's Straits. Its inlet 96 THE IRON HUNTER comes down from between the Garden and the Abina- dong and its outlet debouches into Big Lake George, on the old channel east of Sugar Island, called a long time ago St. George's Island. I was instructed to start in there and follow up any leads I might get as to iron ore and likely formations. No railroad reached Sault Ste. Marie. To reach that classic town, older than Plymouth Rock settlement, one took stage in winter and boat in summer. It was to me a passage into paradise. I had never breathed such air nor drunk such water. Pure as nature was the entire Northland. At Crystal Falls I had known a temperamental pigmy named Fay G. Clark, who was known as Racketty Clark by his woods acquaintances. I asked a Canadian French woodsman one day why they called him " Rack- etty," and he knew : " Cause she hant pak rite in her 'ead, maybe." Racketty had gone into the Sault country the year before and finding that nearly every Indian had speci- mens of iron ore he sent out wild stories that were taken hold of at once that wildest year. He wrote interest- ingly and convincingly to one who wished to be con- vinced. I searched him out and found him the evening I ar- rived at the Sault eating a big brook trout at Mother Churchill's restaurant. He told me at once about kill- ing the trout at the Little Rapids just below the Sault. It weighed more than five pounds according to his tell, and he could not decide which was the better; such a trout or the iridescent, sweet and hardmeated whitefish, that the Indian descendants of the old Bawittiwiniwags scooped out of the rapids. Now and then a bone would shuck out of the corner of Racketty's mouth, which was a perfect boning ma- THE TRACKLESS WILDS OF CANADA 97 chine. He told me much about the Sault as he ate and ate: about Gizhe Manido and how that Indian deity had pursued the great beaver, father of all the beavers, first out of his dam at the Little Rapids and then out of his main dam at the big Sault, destroying them par- tially and thus forming St. Mary's Falls. When he finished I engaged him to go into the Cana- dian wilderness with me. I directed him procure as good an Indian as he could find and one just as old as he could be and handle himself. It was desirable to have as much cumulative redman lore as one individual could hold. We spent the entire summer along the massive ranges that lie between the Georgian Bay arm of Lake Huron and Batchewanna Bay, Lake Superior. I found a strong iron formation clear across. Now and then it was cut off by extensive igneous flows. It was easy to connect roughly the sedimentary zones containing fer- ruginous quartzite, marble, limestone and porphyry with boundaries of pegmatite, granite gneiss, syenite, norite, diorite, diabase, basalt and other fire rocks. Quite often we found good float ore, mostly a semi- specular hard hematite. I thought it ought to outcrop, but could not find where. Up and down mountains, through swamps of spruce and tamarac, along stream valleys and around lakes, tramping and eating our gril- lades and galette as we drank copiously of bitter boiled tea, we spent a wonderful season until the snow came and drove us out, because one cannot prospect the sur- face when the snow covers everything. I carried a pack that weighed something over ninety pounds at the start; the Indian's weighed exactly one hundred and eight pounds and Racketty's sixty-five pounds. We used from Minabog's first because it was 98 THE IRON HUNTER heaviest. Our packs were not bags but pack sheets of awning cloth made up with tump line or misery strap in Ojibway Indian fashion. We carried no tent, so that we could increase our sup^ ply of pork and flour to the limit, and nothing else but salt and tea. No firearm, not even a revolver, was per- mitted to take the place of grub. A trolling hook and line that we whirled and threw from the bank of a lake almost always won a walleyed pike. Many of the streams had brook troiit. We cooked the fish by run- ning a stick through the body from mouth to tail and placing it perpendicularly before the fire, giving it a twist now and then to expose all sides. If the fish had scales they would easily come off with the skin when cooked. As for the viscera it dried up in a ball and practically fell out when the fish was opened. For fruit we had nothing except a few wintergreen berries that are horribly lacking in acid, until other ber- ries would ripen. Then our craving for something sour would be satisfied with luscious shadberries and blue- berries such as do not grow elsewhere. Sometimes we mixed the plentiful Labrador tea (ledum palustre) with our tea to make it go farther and once a week we made tea of the tender tips of the spruce, a perfect antiscorbutic. Best of all, late in the season, were the high bush cranberries (viburnam opulus or guelder rose) that were very sour and juicy and clung to the bush tenaciously. At night if it were clear we would not bother with a covering, but would roll up in our blankets and perhaps pull over a pack sheet, ample and practically water- proof. Flour mixed with water into a stiff dough and fried in hot pork grease makes dough gods very accept- able to woodsmen when eaten hot, but deadly enough to . V f K IJ THE TKACKLESS WILDS OF CANADA 99 any one not living in the open and not working hard. I think they even hurt the ironclad cruiser in the long run. The same dough baked in the frying pan makes a nourishing, unleavened galette. On these rations I lived for many years during the season between the going and the coming of the snow, one year walking and packing two thousand two hun- dred miles and several times exceeding one thousand eight hundred miles. The most interesting particular region we searched was the valley of the Abinadong, a tributary of the hurt- ling Mississauga. These streams on the Great Lakes' side of the height of land are wicked in their fury to get down to their vent and their erosive power is enor- mous. They rush madly through the firmest dykes, cutting contracted canals, forming polished gorges, and forever roaring and shouting when they are not tickling pebbles into song as they loiter on some nearly level stretch. The Mississauga is such a typical river. Not so rough in its moods as the Abinadong. Its valley is less rocky. There are sandy savannas. Low, elmwooded islands are quite numerous. They possess good soil and vegetation grows lush. Some- times brakes as high as one's head would be encoun- tered, and beds of delicate, black-stalked maiden hair ferns higher than our knees. In June the banks were lined with Indian roses, making a canoe promenade of pink. A little later these were succeeded by the plenti- ful white blossoms of the northern wild clematis, the fastest growing climbing plant in this region. Nowhere before or since have I seen so much wild life. Moose would stare as dully at one as oxen, and red deer knew no fear. Rabbits and squirrels would play about our feet and were a nuisance because they 100 THE IRON HUNTER would steal our dough gods at every camp. Caribou were not really wild. Wolves and foxes would scuttle away, but bears showed neither sign of fear nor much concern about man things. The pileated woodpecker was our barometer. His rain call never misses. Once I heard a pileated wood- pecker and a raven talking to one another. It did not take much imagination to conclude that they were argu- ing about the weather. Anyhow the pileated kept on shrieking his raucous zee cruck, zee cruck, but the raven did not join in until a day later. It rained. The pileated woodpecker is the wisest bird in this part of the world. It will even come to man to be saved. Justice Steere, of the Michigan Supreme Court, relates that once when he was in a forest a large hawk assailed a pileated woodpecker. The bird of the royal red crest flew to the jurist and was saved. Otter, beaver, mink, marten and fisher were much more numerous along the Abinadong than is usual. It appeared that this tranquil valley was a perfect game sanctuary. That is just what it was. I had much difficulty in inducing Minabog to ascend the river at all. When we came to the mouth he said, " No go up." And he stuck to it until I threatened to desert him. This brought him to time and caused him to tell me the secret of the river. It is the land of the Windigo; belongs to it as its home. No human ever trespasses. Hundreds of years ago, according to tradition, the Ojibways tried repeat- edly to trap along the river. Some of them never re- turned ; others came back and were mad murderers and cannibals and had to be killed by the tribe. Then the Abinadong was given over to the ghosts that lived along it. No Ojibway can tell you just what a Windigo is. THE TKACKLESS WILDS OF CANADA 101 John Tanner, who lived with them thirty years, never found out exactly; nor did the . observing and accurate Alexander Henry, nor Schoolcraft. The Windigo is not the devil and is only an evil spirit when his hunting ground is invaded or he is molested in some other way. He has power to turn men into eaters of human flesh and is quite as subtle as the werwulf or the loup garou. The most horrible thing he does is to eat away the base of the tongue or the inside of the eyeball or the lining of the upper nose and inner ear, to an extent not to be fatal, but worse. Among the Chip- pewas the fear of the Windigo is supreme. That is why the Abinadong is a paradise of wild life to this mo- ment. It is the home of the ghastly Windigo and I hope it will be forever, because I imagine the whole thing is a story devised by the wise old fathers of the redmen so that a place would be preserved where game, so necessary to them, might propagate in perfect safety. White men ought to set up several Windigo places as game sanctuaries. I reported nothing of value to the syndicate that em- ployed me. It was a disappointment. It seems that I was expected to find something whether there was any- thing or not. Such was the speculative excitement that a good story could have been capitalized to big advan- tage. Next year they sent in another person who sup- plied the desired report, upon which more than a quar- ter of a million dollars were expended and lost. CHAPTER XI CHARMED BY THE BEAUTY OF SAULT DE SAINTE MARIE AND FASCINATED BY ITS ENVIRONS I CHOOSE IT AS A HOME FOR LIFE THE Sault country fascinated me as it had many another and always will continue to do. Mazy summers of life and pure joy. Winters of stim- ulating majesty by which men, women and children are made robust or driven away ; no colorless middle ground. Mel Hoyt had recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin as a lawyer, but had taken up newspaper work and was already compelling. His rapier mind was reaching and strong. I told him the story of the north. He was as enthusiastic as Tom Moore was when he mused the Hyperboreans. And parenthetically Moore was an instinctive poet. He only knew the Greek legend of the peopled north and was not aware that moderns have proved the North Pole to have been habitable, and not unlikely to have been the incunabu- lum of the human race, at least as the race is now known. Mel and I bought the Sault News, a struggling, under-dog, weekly paper in 1887. I had enough money to make the deal a cash one and as I had formed the attachment for my partner that has only grown richer between us all our lives, it was a keen delight to carry him for his share. We went at the thing hammer and tongs, and it was not long before we had our paper on a paying basis and our competitor on the run. The 102 A HOME FOE LIFE 103 Sault was booming. Goose pastures were being sub- divided. The whistle of the work train on the coming railroads could be heard. The trail to Hudson Bay, which had been one of the passages to and from the big world, would be side-tracked. French habitants were made over from muskrat hunters to millionaires in a day, in their minds. Many a palace with pink body and blue trimmings was started and some were built. An artificial atmosphere contaminated the Northwest wind for a while and then blew away, taking on its wings some of the adventurers and undesirables. Good people found their way and started legitimately to build a city in one of the most attractive locations on earth. Our ambitions took fire with the others. We took in Sandy Dingwall as a third partner and planned as avidly as the best or worst. Sandy had been a clerk in the Wisconsin Fire and Marine Bank, of Milwaukee, for which George Smith laid the foundation and Alex- ander Mitchell, David Ferguson and John Johnston erected the superstructure. The Northwest was a New Scotland until the Germans and Scandinavians came to compete. The Sault grew until its country trousers did not reach its ankles. It had to have a new suit cut by up- to-date tailors. That meant city organization. We were tremendously interested and took a very active part. There were ordinances to print and other fat takes, and it was our business to get them. I am posi- tive that not one of us had an ethical thought. We were young fellows with eager hopes and no tangible ideals. My own boyhood and young manhood makes me think that vital youth is a thinly disguised barba- rian, or was in my time. Election day came. The village had been democratic 104 THE IRON HUNTER if it could be said that there were partisan conditions. Really the Trempes, or the Ryans or the Browns, or an arrangement between them, usually controlled things. A short time before they had been shocked by Charley Chapman, a newcomer, who had been made village presi- dent without asking permission of the old regime. In the ancient days that were declining a few barrels of pork and some of whiskey carried every election. At the first city election in the Sault there was a crazy quilt of corruption, and not a soul raised a warn- ing or even an objecting hand. Political morals were as unknown as if the country had never been discov- ered. I saw the unclean hand ungloved, hard and bold, for the second time. Uncle Ike and A. C. Brown had exhibited a marked refinement compared with the meth- ods in the Sault. I do not suppose that worse ever ex- isted the darkest practices before the dawn of re- form. Political lines were drawn taut. Otto Fowle, a banker, had been nominated for Mayor by the Repub- lican local leaders, among whom William Chandler, Joseph H. Steere, George Kemp and Charley Spalding were prominent. There was no clash between the old and the new among the Republicans. The Democrats were not so lucky apparently. Billy Cady, also a banker, was nominated by the Democrats controlled by the new element. Hoyt, Dingwall and I were as busy as three live young fellows could be. The open sewers ran whiskey, and drunken Indians staggered through the knee-deep spring slush in all directions. It might have been safe for a woman to have appeared on the street, but not one did. By ten o'clock we discovered that the Democrats were paying a dollar apiece for votes in addition to A HOME FOR LIFE 105 free whiskey. At once the leaders on our side armed their workers with a good many more dollar bills than the voting population of the town numbered, because the votes were coming in from Sugar Island, Sault Town- ship, the Canadian Sault and even from the Indian Mission on Waiskai Bay and as far as Whitefish Point. It was not a question of morals with anybody concerned ; the problem to be solved was whether they could get to this purchasable human commodity and had enough money to get it away from the other side. Nobody went into an alley or behind a barn unless it was to keep the other side from penetrating whatever strategy there was. Fist fights were going on all day, and as my partners and I rushed from one polling place to another, we could not avoid them nor did we try to do so. Finally the day wore through. Soon the polls would close. The fight was furious. At the Fourth Ward polls oc- curred the astounding thing of the day, even as I now view that ollapodrida of strange experiences, proving that a condition is a condition and that morals have no stable standards and are really a matter of inner growth. Very evidently the leaders had either no inner growth or nothing else to go by, and everybody else was in the same boat. About ten minutes before the polls closed, a thrifty citizen drove up with a team bearing twelve drunken Indians, an even dozen. Mike O'Day began to negoti- ate for them at once for the Democrats. A Republican pushed him aside and they roughed it a little, when, realizing how short the time was to buy those votes and get them in, they got to work again. It became a mat- ter of open bidding as in a slave mart or auction of any kind. Dollar by dollar they raised each other. O'Day bid twelve dollars a head. Both leaders knew the elec- 106 THE IKON HUNTER tion was close. The Republican raised his bid to four- teen dollars. It was more than O'Day had. The Democrats were all in. The Republicans got the votes twelve count them at fourteen dollars each, open auction. Otto Fowle was elected by seven majority. Will you say that public morals have not improved since then ? Improved is not meanirgful enough. There has been a complete transformation, except in cities like Detroit, where the so-called good citizen is too often a silk-stocking derelict on election day. And my morals have improved. I thought of nothing wrong when I took part in that unclean election, and I wish to be charitable with those who may not have had a chance to see and know better and who still besmirch the ballot. About that Sault election even the preachers knew everything and said nothing, and the candidates were Honorable men. Not a word was said before or soon after about the influence of money and whiskey and pork and their use. It was not long before the scales fell from my eyes and I saw the heinousness of it. To atone is one of the reasons I have fought for clean politics and honest government ever since. A number of candidates appeared for the Sault post- office after Cleveland's defeat. There was a good deal of friction. The office was offered to me as a compro- mise, but I declined. However, while I was upon an expedition in the woods I was appointed. About the same time the business bubble burst. Hoyt, Dingwall and I jeffed to see who would keep the Sault News. We had made up our minds that there was not room enough for three in the business. Mr. Hoyt was a strong man and until very lately was the successful ed- itor and publisher of the Milwaukee Daily News and A HOME FOR LIFE 107 one of the able men of the Nation. Mr. Dingwall be- came a millionaire play manager in New York, of which he gave signs when as a boy he had the dramatic column in the Milwaukee Sentinel. I lost, as we thought, as it fell to me to keep the paper and remain in the Sault, where my life has been so satisfactory and my friendships so happy among a people with no supe- riors, that it turned out that I won richly. Before our debacle I had made plans for systematic exploration in Canada and had started the work. To the North from the Sault is a beautiful sky line of un- broken hills. Sometimes they wear a rich blue haze. At other times they are dressed in the gorgeous reds and golds of autumn. In the summer these hills are green and in the winter pure white. They are the oldest things in the world if geological chronology means any- thing. Stretching away from Cape Canso to Queen Charlotte Sound without a fracture they are more the back bone of the North American continent than are the Rockies. Between them and the North Pole there was nothing of man in those days and there is not much yet. Behind those hills lay the greatest and least known wilderness in the world. It drew me like a human loadstone. Something lost behind the mountains ; " lost and wait- ing for you, go ! " If I had not gone something in me would have busted ; now I don't mean burst something ruder than that. I knew that such little exploration as had been done followed the rivers. Along the rivers were trails and canoe routes. Fish lived in the waters ; fur lived on the fish ; Indians subsisted by the fish and fur, and the Hud- son Bay Company exploited the Indians. Hence the one way of things along the streams. Drainage of this 108 THE IRON HUNTER half the continent was south from the height of land to the basin of the Great Lakes, and North from the same great divide to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. Almost no attention had been given to minerals. Pine was coming in, and furs had been the golden fleece for two centuries and fleece is right. My idea was to conduct reconnoissances across the country. This meant packing supplies on the back al- most altogether and hard work. It also meant seeing country that even the Indians had not seen. I was eager to pay the toll. It was something of the spirit that had driven and coaxed my grandfather across the Alleghenies. While I was in the wilderness the Sault News was expected to subsist my family. It was my permanent dock where I tied up my hope of sustenance and it did not fail. Critical conditions arose ; most of them dur- ing my four-year term as postmaster. As I anticipated would be the case, a good many older citizens resented my selection. I was too new. Then, as postmaster, I was consulted by the state and national party machine. This also brought its conflicts and embarrassments and compelled me to attend at times very closely to my knit- ting. Booms bring to towns a regular riffraff of things, more good than bad, no doubt, but it takes only one rotten apple in a barrel to foul all the rest, and a whole barrel of good apples will not cure a rotten one; just got to throw it out. I undertook the throwing out game and took on no end of tough enemies. Two factions fought over variant plans for the water power development. One was for the old LaCrosse and Milwaukee Cargill-Elliott crowd and the other favored certain big promises made by Alexander Hamilton I 02 A HOME FOE LIFE 109 Gunn, for an alleged English syndicate. The enter- prising townspeople had already gone down into their own pockets for a bonus of one hundred thousand dol- lars to start the thing and they were pyrographically concerned. As usual in such things, politics poked in through the doorway of a desired franchise. I took sides with the tangible proposition made by Cargill and his associ- ates. A popular local manufacturer named Lewis A. Hall, of Bay Mills, ten miles up the shore, became in- terested. In order to influence the council, ground was broken for the huge, paper-making plant, which after- wards became the Niagara Pulp & Paper Company at Niagara Falls. The segregated judgment of the people is ever a prob- lem. In sufficient mass with adequate interest involv- ing almost life or death, the people invariably go right ; in local cases, wherein momentary passion obscures, they are just as apt or apter to go wrong. After a bitter recriminatory contest the Sault re- jected the bird in the hand for one that was said to be in the bush, but was never seen. It plunged the town into commercial gloom sooner or later, thus compelling a penance of years for the mistake. During this fight another opposition paper was es- tablished, making three in the field too many. I had been roasted until I was getting hardened to it, and had been hung and burned in effigy, all in the way of supplying me with experience that would entitle me some day to join the veterans' corps of those who become immune to such shafts. My continual war against the gamblers, tough saloons and West End prostitutes always made it possible for my enemies to mobilize a strong force against me. At least once they started to 110 THE IRON HUNTER march to my home to mob me. The common knowl- edge that I had a half a dozen rifles and could and prob- ably would shoot, made the gang listen to those who advised giving me a wide berth. A coterie of citizens, respectable enough outwardly, but willing to lie in with the worst element to achieve a result, organized for the purpose and boasted that they would drive me out of town. I have had two such fights in Sault Ste. Marie, run- ning over several years. My frequent absence from home seemed to make it easier for my enemies to undo me. Sometimes, when I would return they would have a warrant awaiting me and would serve it on a Saturday night so as to keep me in jail at least over Sunday. Always some good friend would find out their plan and would have everything ready to circumvent it suc- cessfully. The favorite charge brought against me was criminal libel. I have defended nineteen libel suits and have been successful every time, because I tried to be in the right and was able to assemble a sufficient de- fense. Even now I cross my fingers and touch wood. Once while I was postmaster my enemies charged me with overcharging an ignorant foreigner for a money order. Inasmuch as I had never issued a money order in my life, it was easy to disprove this. In fact, my enemies have generally, in their blind bitterness, over- done their attacks. Such a life of civic and social warfare made for me many golden friends as well as unpleasant enmities. I learned that character may be good enough to be malice and slander bomb proof, and I tried to build such a one. " If you don't do it you can't be caught," was my motto. A HOME FOR LIFE 111 That was a selfish thought at first and only gave way with years and growth to my guide of later years : " Eight because of Right." I will not try to convey the impossible idea that I was always right, because I was not. I was forever doing something and I made mistakes, but I never committed another criminal act after the Indian vote buying, re- lated in a previous chapter. Perhaps I might go fur- ther and state that I have always tried to do right and hope that fifty-one per cent, of my acts have been of that character. At least I learned that life cannot be a bluff or a four flush, actions must square with words, and habits and associations must harmonize with aspirations. The hour never appealed to me and only those who know me least would designate me as an opportunist. My Uncle William Osborn was one of the best men in the world. He said to me once: " Nephew, where does the trail of life you are on lead to ? Every man's life is a trail ; it is as long as he lives. There are many blind bypaths leading off. Some of them go nowhere ; others lead to quagmires and precipices. The chart of the trail is the bible; the lights on the way are Christian efforts. If you get off the trail go back to the last point you were certain of and start again. Don't be afraid to back up when you are wrong and don't be afraid to go ahead when you are right. Carry your own load and help those who are not as strong as you are to bear their burdens. Show your colors. If you are not with a church you are against it, or worse yet, an agnostic, living in the twi- light zone of individual cowardice. The average trail is three score and ten years long. Yours and every man's will land him safe if he uses his conscience as a 112 THE IKON HUNTER guide and his better desires as a staff. Where are you going to fetch up at seventy? Read ' Pilgrim V Prog- ress.' My uncle's sermonette made the deepest impression on me of any advice I ever received. " Where are you going to fetch up at seventy ? " So the halfway houses have not held me very long and the jack o' lanterns have not dangerously enticed me off the main trail yet. For this I am thankful to God as the way to go has been very dim at times and hard to follow, and there have been rocks in the way and I have stumbled. But I always got up, put my jaws to- gether, smiled to myself and went on. If I were asked the secret of success and happiness I would say applied energy and poised growth. CHAPTEE XII I AM USED AS A POLITICAL FULCEUM BY JAY HUBBELL TO PRY OUT SAM STEPHENSON ONE day William Chandler, of the Sault, came into my office. He loved politics and no sooner had Joe Steere landed in the Sault to recover from an attack of Lenawee enteric, than he was placed on the circuit bench to succeed Judge Goodwin. The Chandler and Oren families were mixed up with mine back in the old Ohio days. I had gone to school with Mrs. Chandler at Purdue, and had been taught by her very superior mother. Mr. Chandler asked me if I would like to go to Congress. I was only a little past thirty and had not thought of any office, let alone Congress. I had been in so many fights that my opin- ion was that I could not have been elected dog catcher, and I told Chandler so. He scarcely listened to me. Ours was the twelfth district. It had been formed geographically in various ways. Just then it com- prised the entire Upper Peninsula or about one-third the area of the entire State, divided into fifteen counties, and had a population of about two hundred fifty thou- sand. From Canada to the Montreal River east and west, and from the mouth of the Menominee to Kewee- naw Point north and south, inclosed a formidable re- gion. Its interests were lumbering, iron ore mining and copper mining. Now agriculture, then just begin- ning to be seriously considered, forms an important pur- 113 114 THE IROJST HUNTER suit, with prospects of ultimately yielding more than all the others. There were lines of political cleavage between the various interests. Sam Stephenson, of Menominee, was our representative. He was a brother of Uncle Ike, and their fraternal ambitions could not be carried in the same basket, as one lived in Michigan and the other in Wisconsin, separated by the Menominee River. It was good for them to be so near together, because they each nourished a proper desire not to be outstripped by the other and they could keep tab on each other. They were wholesome men of their type and period. Only one way was there to get anything and that was to buy it. Hence their life could be summed up: get money and buy what you want They were honest according to prevailing standards, generous when they could see what they were getting for their giving, profane in lan- guage, chin likely to be a nicotine delta, canny in a trade, forceful in business, crude and rude and uncouth in matters, manners and education, endued with homely horse sense and enough courage. They were both rich and getting richer sawing pine lumber and selling it. I have never been able to determine the place of such men. Mostly I have thought they performed a needful function and occupied a legitimate sphere. They got their timber from the Government directly or otherwise at small cost, almost nothing. They cut it ruthlessly and the waste was scattered everywhere they lumbered, and allowed to burn and destroy great, uncut forests and even villages and lives, as witness Peshtigo and many other places. There was a need for economical house material all over the growing nation. It was thus adequately sup- plied. One cannot have his cake and eat it too ; nor can A POLITICAL FULCRUM 115 he have trees and wheat in the same field. Greater care and selection in lumbering would have increased the cost of home building during a critical period, and would have delayed farm development. Consequently, I do not join with those who curse the Stephensons and their congeners. Sam Stephenson had just bought a seat in the House of Representatives, just as he would purchase a plug of tobacco or a bottle of bone liniment. It did not mat- ter to him whether Henry W. Seymour, of the Sault, had occupied it only a brief few months since the un- timely death of Representative Seth Moffatt, of Trav- erse City. It just "belonged to the feller that could git it," was the way Sam sized it up, so he turned his labial nozzle on Mr. Seymour and injected a stream of tobacco juice in his eye, after the manner of squids. When that benign gentleman got through rubbing his eyes he could not find his seat in Congress. It was not a gentlemanly thing to do perhaps, but Sawlog Sam got what he was after, which is the object in life a great many have. Now it appears that Mr. Seymour got in because Mr. Chandler and other friends were able to tie the tails of the copper and iron and sawlog cats together, and throw them over the district political clothesline. Down in Chippewa County we were in the minority and flocked with nobody. Our only hope was in a scrap by the others. Jay Hubbell, of Houghton, who was called " Two per cent." because of his dextrous assessment of post- masters for campaign purposes while in the House of Representatives and chairman of the Congressional Campaign Committee, hated Sam Stephenson plenty. I do not know the origin of the feud, or whether it ex- 116 THE IKON HUNTER tended beyond political boundaries or not. Hubbell was a strong man, educated as a lawyer, resourceful and the foxiest politician in the district. I did not know that he had ever heard my name. But he had, and just as horsemen have their eye out for likely colts, he had his at the political periscope. Down he came to the Sault and deposited a bug in Mr. Chan- dler's ear, where it was to abide until it could be trans- ferred to mine. I wore no ear laps in the summer and they got me. Mr. Hubbell had no use for me. He did not tell me so; nor did he exactly tell Chandler that he had not. But he was not delicate about admitting to the latter what he kept from me, and that was his master hunger just then was to beat Sam Stephenson. The scheme was to have favorite sons in enough counties to split things up, and thus make Stephenson's renomination impossi- ble. I was to carry my home county of Chippewa and possibly Mackinac and Luce, and even might keep things stirred up in Schoolcraft. Carl Sheldon was brought out in Houghton County. John Q. Adams, of Negau- nee, and Colonel C. Y. Osburn, of Marquette, were can- didates in Marquette, the heart of the iron region. Trouble enough I made for all hands. I did not know that my part was to be only that of a tool. So I went at the thing slambang. I was familiar with the campaigns of Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln. Their districts were not wilder nor larger than the one I had to cover. In fact, bears and wolves and wildcats were thicker in our part of Michigan than they were in Kentucky in Henry Clay's time. Schoolhouses were as far apart. Trusty rifles hung on many-pointed antlers, and there were thousands of Indians who only went on whiskey war paths. A POLITICAL FULCRUM 117 I determined to campaign every school district in the Upper Peninsula. How else could I win without money to buy my way? It was the first campaign of the kind ever conducted in this way in our part of the State. My knowledge of hunting and woodcraft and my life on the Menominee range gave me certain advan- tages, and I made the most of them I could. Quite quickly my candidature developed from an in- cident to a menace. At first Uncle Sam gave no sign of knowing of it ; then he roundly haw-hawed and then he sent out agents and money in plenty to head me off. I really liked the people, especially those in remote set- tlements, and some of them liked me. The old system obtained. Caucuses began to be held and I was suc- cessful in more townships and counties than anybody had estimated. Sometimes when our side won, the more bitter and resourceful would send contesting dele- gations. This was particularly true in Delta and Iron counties. Every political trick known, running the gamut of money, bulldozing, cajolery, lying and prom- ises, was resorted to. Our side might have been as guilty as the other if we had been supplied with the same weapons. We did not use money because we had none to use. Jay Hubbell and his schemes were lost sight of in the curiosity that was aroused by the queer campaign I was making. I walked and worked night and day, attended socials in churches for which Uncle Sam had donated the principal part of the building fund ; went to coun- try dances and called at hundreds of houses where a candidate had never been before. Came the Congres- sional Convention. It was held at Ironwood, a victory for me because Gogebic County was for me and the local atmosphere would be favorable. I had carried, 118 THE IKON HUNTER or claimed to have carried, eight of the fifteen counties and had that many delegations on hand. That did not give me a majority because the larger counties, such as Houghton, Marquette and Menominee, were against me and had candidates of their own. It was while the convention was being organized that I discovered the real part that I had been expected to play. The old bosses, such as Hubbell, Duncan, Parnell, Maitland, Walters and others, were willing to beat Uncle Samuel, but they did not want me by a jugful. In fact, if it came to a show down between Stephenson and me, they would have been for gruff old Uncle Sawlog, who at worst was one of them in being a part of the " inter- ests," only then they did not call them that. I had more votes than any other candidate and was permitted to organize the convention, or at least to think that I did. Voting started. Once I came within four of the nomi- nation. That was my high water mark. Report was made to my floor managers that John, Duncan, of Houghton, really preferred Uncle Sam to Carl Sheldon, their home candidate. In fact, the fight was not the field against Stephenson any more than it was the field against me. I was consulted and decided that the Duncan report bore earmarks of truth. We threw my support solidly to Sheldon, and he was chosen. I had gone into the hall at the rear and stood behind Sheldon, who was seated in a chair. When the lid blew off, as Sheldon was nominated, I gave a big, bursting, boyish yell of victory and grabbed Sheldon's hat, as I thought. Waving it in the air I somehow got sight of it. Not a hat at all, but a wig. His toupee had burst its shoe wax moorings. Snatched as baldheaded as a billiard ball, there he sat in a gold-mouthed, glowering rage, caring nothing about his honor and only seeking A POLITICAL FULCRUM 119 the return of his thatch, which I had waved aloft like the banner of the beard of the prophet at Goek Tepee. We had nominated a man not only with solid gold teeth, like the Sultan of Johore, though not set with dia- monds, but one who wore a wig. I was responsible for this. Would the common people stand for it ? Our district was as strongly Republican as though it had been politically pock-marked. There was no doubt of Sheldon's election if he could be kept at home. He was. It transpired that he had no such native ability as Stephenson and was not as effective as a representa- tive. As for myself, I became a political factor, not by vir- tue of either ambition or design, but only because I al- ways went with all my might at whatever my hands found to do, and this had not been an exception. There are no bitternesses quite equal to local ones, no matter whether political, religious or of other kinds. They come near to one; there is immediate friction which is aggravated by being seen as well as felt. The source is always within striking distance and that makes for frequent striking and multiplied inflammation. One has to learn to joust and like it; to hit hard and also take blows and to discharge the whole matter as soon as it is over. Not adopting such a philosophy the participant is either knocked down and thrown into the discard, or is made into a grouch, whose very temper becomes his undoing. " Be just as good an anvil as you are a hammer," was the tabloided advice given to me when a boy, by a veteran of many a battle, who had not a mean wrinkle in his heart and then of course not in his face. It was a good thing for me that I learned this, because I have been pounded incessantly from youth until the 120 THE IRON HUNTER present, and really I think I have improved all the time in every way. While leaving me very far from the unattainable on earth goal of human perfection, I have enjoyed going on the way. CHAPTER XIII THE SACRIFICE OF GENERAL ALGER TO APPEASE POLITICAL BLOOD HOWLERS THE Hispano-American War broke. I was in Spain when the Maine was blown up. Proceed- ing almost directly to Egypt I found there John Hay and Dr. James B. Angell. I was not of their party, but went to Damascus at the same time that they did and also up the Nile. When I returned to Cairo I found a letter from General Alger asking me to re- turn home and on the way to obtain, if possible, certain information in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and par- ticularly in England. Our Government had reports from its officials upon phases of conditions in those coun- tries and wished the views of others and facts they might gather to use in checking up. I found everywhere I went in Italy a profound and natural sympathy for Spain. In Germany I found the people and many officials friendly to the United States. In Spain I was to ascertain what might be their ability to sustain the war, and reported great internal weakness, both of physical power and political harmony. Her colonies had drained Spain of her honor and her young manhood until to lose them was welcomed. Their gov- ernment had been used as a means to political debt pay- ing, and the feeling was that nobody higher up went to the colonies except to feather his nest. I did witness a funny incident in Huelva. A story 121 122 THE IRON HUNTER teller was entertaining a big crowd talking about the war. He told them that America was about the size of Andalusia and that the people were all shopkeepers; rich, dishonest, cowardly and soft-handed. One big warship they had, he said, and upon it they would sail forth to battle with the Spanish navy. In just a little bit their blood would flow like the juice of a crushed grape, and the war would be over, and Spain would have America in her possession again as she did before it was stolen from her. The crowd cheered this recital with sharpened screams. My surprise was complete in England. So far as I could determine the government was diplomatically friendly, but the people sympathized with Spain. I talked with hundreds of them of all strata. We had no friends among them so far as I could find. On the English steamer, upon which I returned to America, I canvassed every passenger and did not find one friend. They hoped the Yankees' swelled heads would be re- duced and freely predicted final victory on the sea for the Spaniards. Proceeding at once to Lansing I offered my services to Governor Pingree. He tendered me commissions at three different times and on one occasion he was sup- ported by General E. M. Irish in urging me to accept. I had received some military training in the College Ca- dets at Purdue under Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, as captain, and I was eager to go to war. Just as I was about to accept a commission, William Jennings Bryan became a colonel. Thereupon several of my friends, who by ridicule and otherwise had been endeavoring to dissuade me from going, remarked with disgust that every cheap politician in the country was grandstanding the war. Somehow or other that shot struck home; not that I SACKIFICE OF GENERAL ALGER 123 thought of Mr. Bryan as a cheap politician, but I knew the place offered to me was earnestly sought by several better equipped than I was, and it began to impress me. So I refused the commission, but offered to enlist as a private. The Governor, who was a practical soldier, told me the time might come when I could do that with propriety, but that just now I could render better serv- ice at home. As a result, I became active in organiz- ing and assisted in raising two companies, the officers of which the Governor consulted with me about before he named them. Quickly the war was over. There had not been a bat- tle severe enough to attract public attention from the minor discomforts of war : sickness in camp and quality of food. Some one found a can of Chicago corned beef that emitted gas when it was punctured for opening. It was one of the few cans that did not stand the sub- tropics. A round robin was hatched in Cuba. Once started there was an epidemic of criticism. There had to be a scapegoat of the administration. General Alger, of Michigan, was Secretary of War. He was a Civil War veteran with a brilliant record, had subscribed thousands to the McKinley campaign fund when Mark Hanna was raising it, and was really possessed of solid ability and sound sense. Although he wrought himself into a sick bed and continued to work when unfit and endangering his life as much as upon a battlefield, the storm settled upon him. Every result of the ante- bellum carelessness, inefficiency, insufficiency and unpre- paredness was charged up to him. One day soon after the last private staggered off the transports at Montauk Point, I received a telegram from the Secretary of War asking me to come to Patterson, New Jersey, where he was to spend a week-end at the 124 THE IRON HUNTER home of Vice-President Hobart. I proceeded there at once. General Henry M. Duffield, of Detroit, had been summoned also. He was not only a friend but an inti- mate political adviser of General Alger, and a depend- able, influential and intellectual gentleman. It did not take us long to ascertain that President McKinley had yielded to the pressure and had made up his mind to dump his Secretary of War as a sacrifice. He had asked Vice-President Hobart to break the news to Gen- eral Alger, and that was the object of the week-end con- ference. When Hobart told Secretary Alger the lay of the land, the General's care at losing his place in the cabinet was as nothing compared with his personal dis- appointment in McKinley. It was the only time I ever heard General Alger swear and it was rather pleasant to listen to him as he relieved his feelings. " Why, it was as late as Thursday that the President put his arms around me and told me not to pay any attention to the attacks of the press," he said, sadly and bitterly. Continuing, General Alger said the President told him of his confidence and admiration. " When I offered to resign, which I did in good heart," said Secretary Alger, " the President would not hear of it, and professed to be pained and embarrassed by the idea and asked me as a favor to say no more about it and not to think of leaving the cabinet." Vice-President Hobart told me that the President had made up his mind some time before that he would have to feed General Alger to the clamorers, egged on in doing so by Senator Hanna and all the administra- tion advisers, but that it was only on the previous Thurs- day that he had asked Hobart to get Alger out smoothly the same day the President had caressingly assured SACRIFICE OF GENERAL ALGER 125 the General of his confidence, affection and support. Of course, Vice-President Hobart told General Alger all the facts. It made him so angry that he decided not to resign, but instead to make all the trouble he could. General Duffield and I permitted time enough to elapse to cool General Alger's fighting blood, and then we ad- vised him to resign, and to return to Michigan where the people loved him and trusted him, and we predicted that they would vindicate him by sending him to the United States Senate. Always amenable to reason, General Alger looked at the matter as we did and decided to re- sign. I asked him what, in his opinion, caused the bitter attacks of the New York papers to center upon himself, when the editors certainly possessed the knowledge that he was not to blame for the natural hurts of years of loose departmental administration, and poverty of imag- ination and anticipation. General Alger replied that he was certain about what caused it. Bids for trans- porting to Spain the Spanish soldiers captured during the war were asked for. The shipping trusts submitted exorbitant figures. A Spanish steamship company pro- posed to do the job for much less and got the contract, in spite of threats made by the robbers. Thereupon certain of the New York press discovered that General Alger could not be controlled and at the same time de- cided that he was not competent, and would have to go. It was the McKinley campaign fund talking and its speech was effective. NOT did it matter whether such a trifling thing occurred as the destruction of a man's reputation. Upon my return to Michigan I saw Governor Fili- gree and Secretary Stone and others, and arrangements were begun for the big homecoming reception of Gen- 126 THE IKON HUNTER eral Alger, that was soon given to him by Detroit. Nothing could have been easier. General Alger was Michigan's most loved citizen. They sensed the mi- justness of his treatment and resented, as a quickly gen- erous people would do. Then followed the working out of the plans to send General Alger to the Senate. He sent for me and re- quested me to be his campaign manager. There were many reasons why I could not do so; chiefly I knew that it would be necessary to use all the Pingree organ- ization that existed, and I did not control it. General Alger would not hear to my objections. My appeal was then to Henry B. Ledyard. When I told Mr. Led- yard my reasons, and informed him that in my opinion William Judson, of Washtenaw, would be the best man that could be obtained, he agreed with me, and got Gen- eral Alger to consent. Judson conducted a shrewd campaign against the McMillan-Ferry combination and was able to defeat D. M. Ferry, though not easily. CHAPTER XIV MY ASSOCIATION WITH HAZEN S. PINGREE PLUNGES ME INTO POLITICS DEEPER THAN EVER IT was the age superlative of riding on people's necks. The strong rode the shoulders of the weak night and day, and the rich seemed only to regard the poor as beasts of burden. Nor did it matter, as in mule packing and horse use, whether the collar galled, or the girth fit, or the saddle was on right, or the pack was properly cinched or whether the work animals were properly watered and fed or given rest or taken to a blacksmith or veterinary or turned out to pasture. They just threw the diamond hitch on man and never took off the load. There were more men than mules, and they were easier to get; the supply was unending. Social reformers were anarchists. A disciple of Karl Marx and Rudolph Engels was crazy. Any one who agreed with Henry George was a moron. Herr Most and Emma Goldman should be hung. Nevertheless, things could not always go on as they were. 'No thought to speak of had been even given to the idea that the despotism of wealth should ever be benevolent. God works in a mysterious way ; yesterday, to-day, forever. Man with brief authority and enlarged stomach, containing all the coarser passions and desires, has deluded himself with the conceit that he was doing things, when all the time he was contributing to the 127 128 THE IRON HUNTER plan of Providence. Man has exactly the same relation- ship to the vast thing defined as Universal life, as the microscopic cells of the human body have to the life of that body. He is a microcosm of the macrocosm. He is a cell and his intracellular and intercellular activities cause him only to be conscious of action. There is no such thing as inertia or he would know that. There is no such thing even as physical death : it is only disintegration in order that more perfect reintegration may occur. How wondrous the periodic law, the ele- ments of Mendeleeff, the triads of Dobereiner and the octaves of Newlands business of the three entities : matter, energy and ether, and business going on all the time and, aided by oppression and repression making for localized power, men popped up everywhere who rep- resented something that just would not be poohed aside and so had to be reckoned with. Hazen S. Pingree was one of this sort. He was an extraordinary ordinary man. Out of the Green Moun- tains he came, a shoemaker. Grandfather in Revolu- tionary War, father in Mexican War, and he a private in the Civil War. Fighters. In Detroit he became quite rich manufacturing shoes. They ran him for mayor. No one knew him as a great humanist ; he did not even know it himself. Elder Blades told him about it, and John Atkinson told him more. Charley Joslyn was one of his young adherents who showed symptoms of humanity that might develop, if he were permitted to run free and unhaltered. When Pingree began to find out how things were in a social and political way, he began to raise the dickens. This marked him as a troublemaker and undesirable by the machine. James McMillan was a United States Senator of Michigan, and chairman of the Republican HAZEN S. PIXGREE 129 State Central Committee. He was a rich, Scotch Ca- nadian, whose money had been gleaned from public land grants, and playing the game as honestly as it was played in that time by the big fellows and those who parroted them. Anything was legitimate during that epoch, that would not land a man in the penitentiary, and the function of lawyers was to steer their clients so that they could do business and keep out of jail but do business. Senator Stockbridge had died in office with the peaceful consciousness that he had had Schuyler Olds pay for all he got. John Patton had been ap- pointed by good Governor Rich to the vacancy, and, being in advance of his time in morals and ethics, he had to be displaced, because his fellow citizen, Blodgett, a lumber king, decided to buy the place for Julius C. Bur- rows. The railroads, and principally the specially chartered Michigan Central, at the head of which, under the Vanderbilts, was the master mind of Henry B. Ledyard, exercised a large political influence in the State, often secondary, however, to the McMillan in- fluence. Mr. Ledyard and Mr. McMillan were too strong individually, and had too many clashing inter- ests, always to work in harmony. General Russell A. Alger, with a disposition as sweet as a good woman's, brave when he knew where and how to strike, cherishing a high desire to be right and do right, clean as a man could be and be in big busi- ness in those days, was a friend and ally of Ledyard and also was Tom Platt's agent in Michigan. This is a partial mirror of political conditions when Hazen S. Pingree began to horn down the shelves of the china shop. There had not been a big man in the pub- lic life of Michigan since the passing of Zach Chandler. Big occasions make big men; just mean money grab- 130 THE IRON HUNTER bing does not. The Pingree crowd, and it was as crazy a crowd finally of irresponsibles as ever was permitted to gather around a man whose greatest weakness was his inability to judge men, could not work with any ex- istent political entity. So it worked alone. Pingree wished to be governor. It was natural for a lot of reasons that he should. Many of the sycophants nearest to him wanted to use him as such. Others who believed in him were certain he had a mission. Such modernists as Captain Gray, of Glasgow, and William T. Stead spurred him honestly. And the " Old Man " himself had his fighting blood at boiling point. Every newspaper in Detroit was against him. He had to put up bulletins in the city hall in order to se- cure any kind of publicity. Not one of the papers could be induced to mention him for governor. Among the old liners he was either a rattlesnake or crazy. Al- bert Pack finally lined up with him. Pack was to suc- ceed Burrows as United States Senator if things came out right. Pingree started on a tour of the State with O. C. Tompkins, who later, as warden of Marquette Prison, shot off some fingers of Holzhay, the Gogebic bandit. Very few outside of Detroit had any crystal- lized convictions about the man. Perry Powers, of Cadillac, while president of the Michigan Press Asso- ciation, had made a fight for my appointment as state game and fish warden by Governor Rich, which I had clinched by waylaying the Governor between three and four o'clock one morning. This had introduced me into state politics. Consequently I knew Mayor Pin- gree, and I had some idea of what he was up against. When he came to the Sault to see me I at once enlisted in his cause, and agreed to bring him out for governor in the Sault News, which I did. It took some scoring, HAZEN S. PINGKEE 131 but he finally won. I was continued in the office I held ; in fact my term was for four years, and I had two more to serve when Governor Pingree was inaugurated. He began many reforms and had a knock down and drag out fight every minute with the legislature, while it was in session. The notorious " Immortal Nineteen " lined up against him in the senate and headed him off at every turn. So it went for two years. When he came up for re- nomination we hoped to get him through on a truce. Prospects were not good. I went to Washington and had a number of sessions about the matter with Senator McMillan, during which I made the discovery that there was no reason to be afraid of a United States Senator; that even the strongest of them are not supermen. Decision was made that Governor Pingree had so intrenched himself that he could not be successfully opposed without more of a fight than was worth while. I had a good many reasons for desiring to be a factor in the second Pingree convention. Principally I de- sired to secure the nomination of Horace M. Oren, of my home town, for attorney general. The idea was put into my head by Fred A. Maynard, whose time had come to retire from that office, which he had ably filled. There was no fight on Pingree, but there was plenty of opposition to everybody else. I succeeded in organizing and controlling the conven- tion, and our slate went through, of course including Oren. I did not know then that the attorney general has a fat lot of state law business to give out, with the consent of the Governor. It was, and still can be, one of the most productive sources of graft. Eli Sutton, a son-in-law of Governor Pingree, seemed to have his ear and his confidence to a greater extent 132 THE IRON HUNTER than anybody else. Others of the kitchen cabinet were Bill Judson, of Washtenaw, Sybrant Wesselius, John Atkinson, Arthur Marsh and Charley Joslyn. Now and then Oren and I would be invited to the " meetings," but I was not often taken into the inner circle. Whether it was because they were going to " bunk " the Old Man or do some dirty work, I do not know, but they were careful. Personally, I do not think a single one of the intimates of Governor Pingree was dishonest intentionally. Some of them had supported him on principle and others, who were outside the political breastworks, picked him as a hundred to one shot. The kitchen cabinet was in disagreement. Wesselius seemed to lead one wing and Eli Sutton the other. Button won out. Wesselius was commissioner of railroads ; a big, able, unpoised man. To my surprise that place, about the best in the gift of the Governor, was offered to me. I did not want it. But I had come to know and love and trust General Alger. So I asked his advice. He was emphatic in telling me to take it. There was some de- lay, not serious, in my confirmation. Then the office was turned over to me. When I walked through the door I thought that about all the equipment I had for the job was acquired when I was one of the Chicago & Northwestern construction gang. Mr. Wesselius and his friend, Fred Britton, one of the best of Michigan newspaper men, were the only occupants of the office, and I was alone, so simple may be the investiture of authority. Some commonplaces were exchanged during which I observed that I hoped to administer the office in the interests of all the people, but with no unfairness or injustice to the railroads, whereupon Wesselius snorted : " Young feller, you pray to God and ask him to look HAZEN S. PIXGBEE 133 out for you and the people; the railroads will look out for themselves." Now I was commissioner of railroads of the State of Michigan, with more authority, positive and negative, if exercised, than any one man should ever have. As long as I occupied the office Governor Pingree never crossed its threshold. He sent for me the first day and told me that he had promised that Senator Frank Westover, of Bay City, an able man, should be appointed deputy commissioner. That was exactly the time for a show down as to whether I was commissioner of railroads or a dummy for the Governor, or much worse perhaps, for some of his advisers. I told him that I did not know Mr. Westover, that I had nothing against him, that I did not wish to thwart him as gov- ernor and even would help him carry out his promises when I could adjust actions to public interests. Then I told him 1 would resign, that there would be no feel- ing and that he could appoint Mr. Westover as com- missioner. Secretly I think he liked my straight talk and re- spected me, but outwardly he sniffed and snuffed air through one side of his nose, and we never became inti- mate. I did not know then, nor until long afterwards, that I had been appointed really because General Alger had asked Governor Pingree to do so, and Mr. Ledyard had asked General Alger. Not another request was made of me by the Governor, nor did General Alger or Mr. Ledyard ever ask a favor that had any bearing on my official acts. Governor Pingree had Ealph Stone as private sec- retary. Then the position of secretary carried the title of major. He was even then, though a young man, pos- sessed of superior attainments of heart and mind. 134 THE IRON HUNTER While with the Michigan Trust Company at Grand Rapids, Major Stone acquired valuable business experi- ence to supplement his academic law training at the University of Michigan. At the 'Varsity he had been an independent and a leader among the " non-frats." This was due to a deeply set humanity, probably in- herited from a sensitively organized father, who at that time was a Unitarian preacher in New Jersey. Be- tween Major Stone and the purely political crowd there was always friction. The secretary was constant in his endeavors to protect his chief from the wolves. More than once he tore up wild speech manuscripts that had been supplied the governor, and wrote addresses to re- place them. Very much credit for the many concrete achievements of Governor Pingree's administration be- longs to Ralph Stone. I always found it a satisfaction to cooperate with him, and early I was impressed with his clean and clear and courageous thought processes, his poise and good judgment, and his common sense and kindliness. He had deeply at heart the welfare of the masses with no desire to make political capital of his sentiments. And yet, when he sought employment after leaving the executive office, he found that capital regarded him as a dangerous socialist, if not an an- archist. This made his ladder climb to the presidency of the Detroit Trust Company a trial of his manhood and principles. Ralph Stone was one of the first to demonstrate the reasonable and human tendency in modern business. Governor Pingree made enemies in phalanxes. They dogged him everywhere, as always is the case when men in public or private who are worth while, assail the established order, no matter how bad the established order may be. Pingree fought back bravely. The HAZEN S. PINGKEE 135 Detroit Free Press, which has had a history of malig- nancy unsurpassed since the days it hounded Lincoln, and was the organ in London of the rebel Knights of the Golden Circle, set its spies on his track and after all of those who were a part of his administration. As is often the case, internal conditions proved fatal when external attacks are easily resisted. There was crookedness in the Governor's official family. Probably the acts were not more dishonest than many past prac- tices, but always higher standards are being erected by which public acts are judged, and no one had done more than Governor Pingree to improve conditions in this respect. One evening I received a hasty summons to come to the Executive Chambers. Assembled was every friend of the administration that could be reached. The mil- itary scandals had been unearthed. Then occurred a demonstration of the wonderful, though blind, personal loyalty of Governor Pingree. He would not believe a single charge made. It was the work of his personal enemies who, because they could not " get the old man," were determined to ruin any or all who were his friends. And in this view he persisted to the last, finally pardon- ing those who pleaded guilty so as to give him an op- portunity to do so, rather than to trust their fate to a succeeding governor. While the grand jury was in session, nearly all the Governor's appointive heads of departments took to the woods. No one molested me, because there was nothing that could be tortured into a dereliction. They hounded me though, and I enjoyed it, because I have never feared that a clear case could be made out against a man unless he had left himself open somewhere, either by carelessness or dishonesty. In every way I had 136 THE IRON HUNTER taken my public work seriously arid had tried to do more than the law required me to do. It was not enough for me to do what the law specified. I tried to carry out anything and everything within my power in the in- terest of the public, that the law did not forbid. Very little time elapsed before I discovered that the strong have a way of sending special representatives to a state capitol, and that the weak and unorganized are not rep- resented at all, unless public officials constitute of them- selves their especial guardians. That was my view of public duty. One of the first things I had to decide was whether I would accept passes and permit my subordinates to use them also. In the past it had been the practice of all public officials I knew anything about, who could get passes, to take them, use them and charge up their railroad fare to the State just as though they had paid it. There was no commoner graft, and while petty in one, it amounted to a big total when all did it. There was no law then against accepting a pass on anything. It was easy to determine that the passes were sent to me as commissioner of railroads, and not personally. So to each railroad and other transportation company that sent a pass, I wrote the following: " Received as a courtesy extended to the State of Michigan, to be used as such." And of course I did not charge, or permit to be charged by subordinates, to the State, any railroad fares. The saving thus made was considerable in four years, but it was much greater in principle, because it was an index of that right performance, which made it im- possible for the many who subsequently delved into my record to " get anything on me." CHAPTER XV I BECOME A CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR TO SUCCEED HAZEN S. PINGREE AS the Pingree second term waned the question of a successor to him began to seize all concerned. The political pendulum had been pushed by Governor Pingree as far as it would go in the reform direction and was already starting on a reverse oscil- lation. The McMillan machine had received a jolt that made it rickety. The railroads, between which and the McMillan bund there had been a partial truce, always sufficient in effect before the election of Governor Pin- gree to protect the transportation interests in the legis- lature and control the appointment of the railroad com- missioner, had been badly shaken up. At the same time, the Pingree organization had been flawed by the state militia exposures. It is always the case that polit- ical chaos produces numerous candidates. The mixed conditions during the last year of the second term of Governor Pingree did not prove an exception to this. Probably the McMillan machine showed the most vi- tality and best cohesiveness. While it failed to beat Alger with Ferry it easily defeated Albert Pack for United States Senator with Julius Caesar Burrows. Senator Stockbridge, who died in office, was succeeded by John Patton, of Grand Rapids. Governor Rich often showed signs of independence, and this appoint- ment of Mr. Patton was an instance. When the brief 137 138 THE IKON HUNTER term served by Senator Pattern expired, his place was taken by J. C. Burrows, of Kalamazoo. This result was a perfect mirror of existing political conditions. John Patton was a citizen of unusual strength. He was a lawyer, a man of culture and force, independent and courageous, desired only the best and acted upon well considered convictions. Naturally, he could not be handled willy nilly. The politicians and interests had no manner of use for him because they could not use him. Politics appeared to be a question of profit of some kind for nearly everybody. Some one more bid- able than John Patton was wanted in the national Senate. Mr. Burrows, then for some time in the House of Representatives, was selected as the man. Delos Blodgett, a wealthy lumberman of Grand Rapids, for- got the amenities that are supposed to subsist between fellow citizens, in the desire that submerged him to have some one who would vote right on the lumber tariff and other things. Mr. Blodgett sought and ob- tained the McMillan vehicle, which was not difficult, because James McMillan, the senior senator, did not look pleasantly upon a junior senator of superior cul- ture, who would not play second fiddle to him. The machine worked so well that Mr. Patton got the guil- lotine expeditiously. It worked quite as well against Albert Pack, who had lined up with the Pingree forces and tried with their aid to beat Senator Burrows, after his first term. I had impotently supported both Patton and Pack. With these scalps in their belt the McMillanites quite confidently trotted out D. M. Ferry, of Detroit, as a successor to Pingree. Aaron T. Bliss, of Saginaw, had the Alger-Ledyard railroad support. I was offered the support of one wing of the Pingree following, including A CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR 139 that of Justus S. Stearns, of Ludington, then secre- tary of state. It was not long after he had urged me to become a candidate for governor and had pledged his support to me, before he decided, as was his right, that he would be a candidate himself. This was the result of influence upon him by the Pingree wing that was not for me. It was the mercenary gang, and was stronger than the other following. Nevertheless, inas- much as I had made my announcement, I stuck to my colors. James O'Donnell, of Jackson, a newspaper man of standing and ability, who had been in the house of rep- resentatives and also had been a candidate for governor several times before, announced himself. Lastly, the commissioner of insurance under Gov- ernor Pingree, Milo D. Campbell, of Coldwater, be- came a candidate. This made six candidates for gov- ernor to succeed Pingree. Three of them, Bliss, Ferry and Stearns were by reputation multi-millionaires. The other three, O'Donnell, Campbell and myself were comparatively poor men. I was youngest of all and, as I view things now, I was not qualified to be governor, although I am, even after sixteen years, unconvinced that I was not as well equipped as any of the others, which is not an immodest tribute to myself. There ensued the wildest use of money in politics that had ever occurred in the State. Such a fight as Ferry, Bliss and Stearns put up had never been wit- nessed before. The serpent of corruption made a slimy trail all over the State, and debauched and debauchers could be tracked by the spoor of dollars. When the thing got hot, delegates were offered three thousand dollars for a single vote, and perhaps more. Friends of mine witnessed an offer of two thousand, five hundred 140 THE IKON HUNTER dollars to a delegate favorable to me, and saw him refuse in anger. That honest man is Oilman M. Dame, since then for a time chairman of the Republican state central committee of Michigan. That act explains the origin of my friendship for him that began then and has subsisted without a break to the present time. I made a red-hot personal canvass as far and as fast as I could go. With no money to spend I was not tempted to spend any. O'Donnell and Campbell were in the same moneyless boat so far as concerned ability to compete with Ferry, Bliss and Stearns. My stock in trade was my political and administrative record up to date. As state game and fish warden I had done my best at every turn and had really gotten results. As commissioner of railroads I had enforced two-cent pas- senger fare laws for the first time in the history of the State; had clung to a policy of grade separation con- sistently and doggedly, only to see it die when I went out of office and remain unresurrected to this time and had done all the law required and quite a good deal more. My grade separation work had just been tragically emphasized by an accident at Flint, in which Major Buckingham, Mrs. Applegate and Mrs. Humphrey had been killed. Application had been made for a certain grade crossing at Flint. The hearing was attended by a large number of citizens of that town, including Major Buckingham. That gallant gentleman had abused me roundly when I decided against those who desired the unopposed request. Special legislation was sought and obtained, reversing my decision in effect. The grade crossing was put in, and within a short time afterwards Major Buckingham and his guests were killed upon it. A CANDIDATE FOB GOVEKNOK 141 The grade crossing policy caused more friction than anything else during my administration of 'the railroad commissioner's department. It was an active era of electric road construction. Very frequently indeed there was trouble over crossings between steam and electric roads. I was called upon almost continuously to grant hearings, at which appeared the best lawyers of the State and many capitalists. One incident dis- covered to me how the situation might be made extraor- dinarily profitable by one so inclined. I had made a decision requiring six grade separations to cost ten thousand dollars each, a total of sixty thou- sand dollars. The electric road builder who would have to do this work called upon me in my office early one forenoon, before the separation orders had been issued. After preliminaries he said he had come to "lose thirty thousand dollars under the carpet of my office." For just a moment I really did not understand him, but in the next half second it flashed to my mind that he was trying to bribe me. It was probably the play for me, according to the story books, to be insulted and knock my tempter down and throw him out, or do some such dramatic stunt. But I only saw the humor of the thing and told him that if the money was lost under the carpet, the janitor would find it after a while and return it, but he would lose his interest. Disgusted with what he appeared to think was my stupidity, he soon departed. It was the only time in my life that I have been offered a bribe. He was going to split fifty-fifty with me and not separate the grades. A lot of money to me was thirty thousand dollars, but it required no acces- sion of honesty to refuse it; in fact it was not even a 142 THE IRON HUNTER temptation, and I did not seem to get for myself from it any real measure of my true character. The charm of the governorship campaign was the attitude towards me of certain personal friends and particularly of my home town and county, and the entire Upper Peninsula. I had every Upper Peninsula county behind me except Luce. The two delegates from Luce County were controlled for Stearns by Con Dan- aher, a fellow lumberman. In the Lower Peninsula I did not have much support, but it was more than enough to offset the loss of Luce. The convention deadlocked, but not for long. The Ferry forces decided early that they were beaten. They caucused. Their leaders saw they might dictate the nomination by throwing to O'Donnell or to me. In a vote between us I lost by two. If the Ferry delegates had come to me I would in all probability have been nominated, because I had a large second choice fol- lowing, that would have come to me on the break that followed. Power above man pilots destiny. Bliss was nominated. I have always thought that James O'Donnell joked himself away from serious consideration. He was a fine man. In public he was a monologist, and came to be regarded as a funny entertainer. This threw a curtain over his solider merits. Ecclesiastes : " Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor ; so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor." Defeat for nomination as governor at the Grand Rapids convention did not in the least discourage me. On the contrary it opened my eyes. The three con- testing millionaires had spent three quarters of a mil- lion dollars. Disgust was written as large in the State A CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR 143 as shame had been. It is as though the individual is a phagocyte and sustains the same relation to the great body politique as that bacillus does to the human body. When a sickness threatens death they are stimulated as never before to work to save it. I shared in the common desire for better and cleaner things. This was intense enough within me to cause me to decide that I would get out of politics and remain out until I could participate as an independent. There were only two ways then, and that is all there are now, by which a man could become a candidate. One was as the creature of interested persons, and the other was upon one's own initiative as an independent. In fact, the latter way offered the only possible chance for freedom in public service. I could not see how a poor man could be wholly independent under our polit- ical systems and conditions then, and cannot now. The thing then for me to do, I decided, was to make enough money to be independent and to make it by methods so honest that I could not reproach myself, or be assailed by an opponent or an enemy. It took me twelve years to do it. My next decision was to reenter politics, or at least to offer to serve, and particularly to expose and oppose all forms of political corrupt practice. My happiness was not to be found in holding office, but in work of any kind and in any and all directions, so far as my power went, that would help mankind. Nor could I convince myself that I was unselfish, because I soon found that there is more joy in offering to serve and in conscien- tiously doing one's best when opportunity comes. I was after that sweetness. Upon all sides I saw the hardness and the misery and the discontent of wealth. Strong men would phle- 144 THE IKON HUNTER botomize everybody they could, and then in an anguish of remorse, seek happiness as professional philanthro- pists through channels of belated restoration, only to gather disappointment and increased bitterness. Somewhere between too much and too little is the economic Utopia that Solomon quotes Agur, the son of Jakeh, as praying for when he asks : " Give me neither poverty nor riches." That also became my prayer. I was thus, I think, prevented from having an incurable case of money grubbing. When my possessions got to the fairly cer- tain value of two hundred fifty thousand dollars, I di- verted all my strength to public service in any way that gave me a chance. CHAPTER XVI THE POETRY, CHARM, ROMANCE AND USEFULNESS OF IRON ORE FOK a period of years Indian after Indian brought me samples of ore: iron, copper, nickel, silver, gold. I paid no attention to any but iron. It is as staple as wheat. During the period of no snow I searched the wilderness of the North from one rock zone to another, and always and ever east to west across the continental formation. In the winter I traveled. My idea was to know my own country first hand. I found it did not cost any more to travel than to remain stationary. In fact I was able, by increased knowl- edge, to earn more by traveling than if I had stayed at home. It appeared to be just as easy in traveling to have my wife with me, as to leave her alone at home, and we were both benefited, and it made us more con- tented and happy. Searching for further justification for travel, I happened to hit upon the rather lugubrious fact that the world does very well without all of us, so far as we know, after death, and if so, it, or any portion of it, ought to spare us handily during life. Very early I discovered that in order to get the most good from travel, it was necessary to have clear-cut ob- jects and purposes. So I decided to visit all the places in the world, if possible, where iron ore is produced in commercial quantities. A big undertaking. Natu- rally that involved a study of other lands, their resources 145 146 THE IKON HUNTER and geology. Even that was not enough, so I added the study of government, and particularly the methods of Colonial government adopted by those powers chiefly engaged in colonizing the world : Great Britain, France, Eussia, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Holland. At one time or another, those peoples, possibly except- ing Teuton and Slav, have ruled the earth. From the study of modern government it was an easy step to interest in the history of the yesterdays, and in dramatic personages such as Tsin, Akbar, Attila, Alaric, Timur Leng, Genghiz Khan, Alexander, Xenophon, Cyrus, Xerxes, Napoleon and other first-class map- makers of the world. As a result I found myself travel- ing and studying the world in the winter and threading a trackless wilderness in the summer. It was an ideal and also a selfish life, which I was determined to desert as soon as I had visited every country in the world that had its own autonomy, and every suzerain state and colony of any importance. This my wife and I com- pleted to our satisfaction in 1013, after more than thirty years of travel. Before we left our own country, we went into every State and to Alaska and also visited our insular possessions as rapidly as they were secured by the United States. There is a romance about iron that has always fas- cinated me and it holds me yet as a magnet attracts. I wonder if the courageous men who seek it in the bowels of the earth realize their big part in the life of the world ? Do the brave, bare bodies, that reflect the furnace light and the gloating glow of the smelter, do their work because of a subtle subconsciousness of the fact that the wheels of the world and civilization would stop if they stopped? Iron ore and steel are of greater importance than USEFULNESS OF IBON OEE 147 wheat, because there are many good substitutes for wheat. There is none for iron ore. It has a glory of usefulness all its own. Those who are associated with its production should know of the dignity of their call- ing; should realize it and then their hearts and souls would fill their big bodies until brawn and spirit are one, as an instrument of the joy of existence in the keen sense of service. There would be a brotherhood of iron that could not know strife if the totality of performance could be shown to the eyes of all those who inhabit the world of steel. Nor would its boundaries be smaller than those of the earth, for it would tie together the best developed American iron worker and the lowliest African. If the miner who blasts or shovels or trams a pound of iron ore could follow it to its destinations and uses, he would at once conclude that he is one of the most valuable and important factors of society. This is the truth. The same is true of the furnaceman and the foundryman, the worker in the steel mill, and the artisan of keen eye and trained hand who fashions the products of iron ore with mind and heart. True also of the master captains, who have organized the armies of the age of steel and iron, and who are really learning that their industrial soldiers give up their lives even more bravely upon the battlefields of constantly applied human effort, than those who rend each other at the can- non's mouth. From this realization it is only a step further to the practical conviction that they are entitled to even more consideration; to continuous employment (what kind of an army would it be that did not keep its soldiers constantly, but depended upon picking them up, helter skelter, when needed), to a minimum wage, to old age 148 THE IRON HUNTER insurance and pensions, to adequate compensation for injury and death resulting from the risks of their work, to sanitary housing and moral environments. Menaces such as saloons are being removed. All of these things are of the moment. At first they were adopted because it is good business. Already they are reaching the deeper and finer source of their cause in the hearts and souls of mankind; in taking intimately home of the law of laws: I am my brother's keeper. And this must comprehend social kindnesses as well as economic guardianship. When industry was young, master and servant com- posed the family. There was friendship and acquaint- ance and sympathy. When growth reached such an extent that the master could not know his many servants and feel for them deeply, labor troubles began to beget. With the advent of artificial masters, corporations born by the law, marblesque and lacking human responsi- bility, the hiatus between master and servant widened almost unbridgeably. The cure is coming; is on the way ; has already arrived sporadically, in the re-human- izing of industry. Only can this finally be achieved by the master thinking as the servant thinks, and the servant thinking as the master thinks. There will then be no master and servant as now defined. Rather there will be such a mutualization as will make for leader and led; for helper and helped. Famished are the masses for want of human recog- nition and consideration. They unconsciously resent arrogance and overlordship with its coldness and auto- cracy; even the benevolent despotism of money. In America this is more true than it is in other countries. Hunger for freedom, for equality, for opportunity, USEFULNESS OF IKON ORE 149 for escape from the oppression of false human pride has milked the best of the earth into our national pail. Here they swiftly obtain and ravenously cherish the wholesome idea that one man is as good as another. To believe that way ; aye, to feel it in their heart of hearts, is why they have come here from the valleys and moun- tains of the earth. Then when they see Old Man Slobson's son Andy throwing on dog, chest swelled, elephantiasis of the cra- nium, hard of voice and glassy of eye, bossing them around like dogs, running over their children in his automobile and running over them in his manner, the very devil in them is aroused. They have known Old Man Slobson since boyhood; worked underground and on the surface with him, and they know that Andy is no better than they are. But he is stronger, he can drive them; yes, and he can also enrage them. The artificial master without heart or conscience has set Andy up over them to grind their bodies and their souls. As an emolient to passion they do build libraries and clubs and schools, and gym- nasia and such things, and these are all very well, but they mean nothing at all in the way of removing the sharp instruments, pride and power, that are digging away at the tender spots in labor's manhood. Everything physical may be supplied to those who work under bosses, good wages enough and all, and they will remain discontented and rebellious until the human touches are supplied: love, fraternity, association, kind words and deeds from the heart and not from the pocket book ; real interest transcending commercial concern. There never has been labor trouble where there has been personal understanding, personal acquaintance, and personal friendship, regard and respect between em- 150 THE IKON HUNTER ployer and employee. I know, because I have been an employee with pick and ax and barrow and shovel, and many a time I have felt like smashing the head of an arrogant boss, not because I was hungry, but because I was not treated as considerately as I would have been if I had been a brute. I guess we got off the iron ore trail, but not far, for it leads into the hearts and minds of men, as well as into their arms and backs and purses. There is war, that leveler of society ; the great master surgeon of nations, operating upon the earth as the in- dividual surgeon operates on the body. The knife is guided by the same unerring hand, directed by the All- seeing eye, and as the layman cannot see and know the mysteries of the hospital operating room, just so we cannot comprehend the purposes of the Great Surgeon of the universe. Into cannon and into the surgeon's knife enter iron ore. The bellowing death of one and the delicate life- saving of the other, involves the use of steel. They were a lump of iron ore yesterday. Great locomotives made from iron rush over rails of iron ore, performing missions of peace and war. Harvest fields are gambo- gian in their ripeness and renitent until the reaping machines come. Then they lie down peacefully with that child of iron ore. When the Crusader dreamed and gave his life to recover the land of Christ, the sword that gleamed with the glory of heaven and the zeal of deep desire was a thing of iron ore. The bread we eat is baked in pans made from iron ore, in ovens made from iron ore. Our span of life is ticked off by springs of iron ore in clock and watch. Huge pumping engines, made from iron ore, handle USEFULNESS OF IKON OKE 151 water through pipes of iron ore for all the purposes of life. Ocean steamships, made of iron ore, throb with a life that is more than artificial. Giant cranes, made from iron ore, move about in Gargantuan majesty. One can look nowhere and think nowhere without en- countering manifestations of iron ore dug out of the earth and handled purposefully by real men. There is iron ore in our blood and body. It is the age of iron ore. Let those who produce it hold up their heads with dignity and walk erect among men. They give to it their lives that it may serve man- kind. No wonder the sewing machine and the auto- mobile and the locomotive and the ship and all the things made from iron ore are so human. They are human, in that they have cost myriads of lives while making. A workman's average working life is twenty years. Many labor for a longer time, but few are at their best for even twenty years. A prize fighter's life is ten years. The same forces are employed by the prize fighter and the skilled mechanic. Of course the latter applies them to higher purpose. He hammers some- thing into useful shape, while the pugilist is hammering something into useless shape. The heart beats seventy times a minute; forty-two hundred times an hour; one hundred thousand times a day; sixteen million times a year, and as many times sixteen millions as a person lives years. Each time the heart beats it lifts nearly a half pound of blood, and all of the twenty to thirty pounds of blood in the body are forced through the heart and lungs every minute. Each heart beat represents a punctuation of death. Just as the tick-tock of a clock tells off a measure of time that will never be again for you and me, so does each heart 152 THE IKON HUNTEK beat reduce the total heart beats. The moment a child is born it begins to draw upon its bank account of ex- pectant heart beats and expend them. A third of life is utilized in preparation for that portion of the span that is useful in a creative sense. Every time an iron worker, or any other, lifts his hand or bends his back, just as many heart beats as oc- cur during the time required for these physical demon- strations are expended, and the worker has given of his life in the proportion that they bear to all of the heart beats he will be vouchsafed. In this way may be had some idea of exactly how men and women give their lives in labor. It may be imagined, if not yet quite proven, that their lives enter into their productions affecting the character or quality of the article that is made. It is well known that the work of prisoners never makes for perfection. The more deeply one is in love with his work the better the product, and the happier the performance. All great inventions have resulted from freedom of effort ap- plied with love. When we think in this way we are not unreasonable if we think we can detect man's life in all those things that are commonly called artificial, just as we may so plainly see God in everything. In order to do the best work it follows that the worker must love to work and be loyal to self and to employer, whether the employer is yourself or some other. This feeling is possible in any degree of purity only when the spirit of the worker is permitted to flow freely, without being dammed by resentment and bitterness. CHAPTER XVII IRON OBE BACTERIA THE origin of iron ore is a mystery just as all things are a mystery, unless one has faith enough to find the cosmic cause in God. Iron is present in some form in almost everything. Economic geolo- gists know a good deal about how it has been gathered and deposited as it is found in the earth. Also there is a good deal yet that they do not know, which makes their work all the more interesting. Iron present in solution in the subterranean hydro- sphere has been deposited upon impervious basements. Sometimes there have been lithospheric and atmospheric actions causing mechanico-chemical alterations that have won the iron ore. The most interesting and most modern discovery is that iron ore is made by bugs. European physicists have known for some time of the existence of what is called iron ore bacteria. Now the fact is commonly accepted in America. E. C. Harder and R. T. Chamberlain, well-known American geologists, mining engineers and investi- gators, attribute the great iron ore deposits in the Ita- bira district of Minas Geraes, Brazil, to iron ore bac- teria. With great respect for the basic flow theories of Van Hise and Leith, and equal regard for the similar ideas 153 154 THE IKON HUNTER of igneous influence held by T. C. Chamber lin and Salisbury, they did not find sufficient evidence of vol- canic intrusions in Brazil and were compelled to look further for a source. Referring to the Itabira forma- tion Harder and Chamberlain say in the Journal of Geology, Vol. XXIII, Part I, No. 4, May-June ; Part II, No. 5, July-August, 1915 : " The Batatal schist represents a slackening of sedimen- tation from the rapid deposition which characterized the laying down of the sands composing the Canaga quartzite. This slackening of clastic sedimentation continued until the close of the Batatal epoch, when very little clastic material was being washed into the sea in the region con- sidered. The land presumably had become so low as to yield very little mechanical sediment, and with the lowering of the land surface there was probably combined a gradual re- treat of the shore line. Simultaneous with the great di- minution of mechanical sediment deposited in the area under consideration, there commenced a precipitation of ferric hydroxide from solution, materials in solution being probably carried beyond the border of the region of clastic sedimentation. This precipitation may have been due, either to purely chemical reactions taking place in the sea, or perhaps to the operation of the well known iron bacteria, which cause the deposition of ferric hydroxide from waters containing ferrous carbonate in solution. These iron bac- teria are said to possess the peculiar property of utilizing as food, the carbon dioxide locked up in very dilute solu- tions of ferrous carbonate. Ferric hydroxide is left behind and is deposited as a sediment. . . . Not having much con- fidence in the hypothesis that the iron oxide was precipi- tated directly from sea water by ordinary chemical means, we prefer to turn to the iron bacteria as perhaps forming .a better working hypothesis. . . . Xt is now known that much of the bog iron ore being formed in lagoons at the present time is the result of the activity of a certain group of bacteria known as the iron bacteria. The iron bacteria include many individual species, of which the thread bac- IKON OEE BUGS 155 teria Chlamydothrix, Gallionella, Spirophyllum, Crenothrix, and Clonothrix, and the coccus form Siderocapsa have per- haps been most carefully studied." Van Hise and Leith do not claim that all iron ores are deposited or concentrated by fire action. They only suggest that the great iron ore bodies in the Michigan and Minnesota ranges of the Lake Superior region have come from associated basaltic lavas, either from the magmatic waters or from chemical reactions between the hot basic lavas and the ancient sea waters. Iron bacteria live in either standing or running clear waters that contain iron compounds. Turbid waters, and those containing much organic matter, do not offer them asylum. So active are iron bacteria in making for conditions that leave ferric hydroxide behind, that water pipes of cities where the water contains ferrous car- bonate have been known to be completely closed by them. Sheaths of dead iron bacteria have been found in multitudes in limonite deposits. Enormous deposits of several kinds of iron ore are known to result from the work of iron bacteria. It is believed that the vast Brazilian deposits, among the most extensive known, were formed with comparative rapidity. Winogradsky offers a chemical formula in explanation of the methods of iron bacteria. Little enough is yet known about them. It is not beyond reason that they are at the very threshold of life origin, and work as mitosis and metab- olism, one set of bacteria performing anabolism, and another katabolism one building as the other tears down. So much for the bugs that make iron ore. They are closely akin to the enzymes that seem to be every- where and in everything. What mostly is of importance is that iron ore exists 156 THE IKON HUISTTEK and that it is distributed all over the earth with fine reference to economic convenience. Another thing is known to be a fact and that is that James J. HilFs statement that there would be an exhaustion of the world's supply of iron ore within a few years, is inac- curate. There is enough iron ore known of to supply the world for centuries, and not a tithe probably of what exists has been discovered. The fascinating truth that iron bacteria are manu- facturing new deposits all of the time is not of great importance in bearing upon supply, for while it is be- lieved that ore bodies are created with greater rapidity than was formerly thought, it cannot be hoped that na- ture is now keeping up with man's demands. It is interesting to contemplate that the greatest oper- ated deposits of iron ore in the world are located in arctic and sub-arctic regions, or in zones where nearly half the year is winter, as in the Lake Superior country. This may be partially accounted for by the potentiality of and volume of commercial activity in the colder re- gions, for there are extensive iron ore formations in the tropics and sub-tropics. Remember also that iron bacteria live in clear water and are not at home in impure water. In the colder regions water is most likely to be pure ; in hotter zones it is most apt to be impure. Along the isothermal of half a growing year and half a resting year life is intense, as the period of inertia is perfect rest. Consequently here Nature seems to do more work than in the tropics, and of a bet- ter quality. This is proven by the extreme tilthfulness of certain sections of the Lake Superior region and of Siberia. There are several kinds of iron ore if consideration is IKON OEE BUGS 157 given to close technical classification. For the practical purposes of the explorer and prospector it is almost enough to know iron stone from other stones. Next he learns that magnetic ore or magnetite attracts the com- pass needle and that hematite ore does not. By " heft- ing " it in his hand and by scrutinizing the texture he can give a close guess to its percentage of metallic iron content; can come quite close to it by weighing it in the air and in the water, so as to learn the relative spe- cific gravity of the specimen under examination. If there is much sulphur it is indicated by a showing of iron pyrites. Phosphorus is a disturbing component and can only be determined by analysis. Titanium is worst of all and cannot be detected without an analysis. It is al- most never formidably present in hematite. Upon be- ing powdered, hematite shows reddish, hence its name. Magnetite powder black and limonite, yellow. It is not important to recognize martite independently. In America better ores rendered siderite valueless for a time, although it is profitably mined in Austria and also in Canada. Once it was supposed that all iron ore deposits of sufficient size to be commercially valuable, showed an outcropping somewhere. This idea has been abandoned for the more accurate one that all iron ore formations, near enough to the surface to contain reachable enrich- ments, show somewhere upon the surface. Where they dip below the top of the ground they may be traced accurately nearly always by the use of dial compass and dipping needle; preferably the former. All magnetic ore formations are easily mapped. Zones of hematite, taconite, siderite, itabarite and some others, can be de- pended upon to have formational attraction that can be 158 THE IRON HUNTER utilized very satisfactorily in mapping. Limonite, mar- tite and kindred bog ores, may possess no associated magnetism and consequently, if covered by much over- burden, their discovery is accidental, through the chan- nels of excavations and erosion artificial and natural. Where igneous flows intrude sedimentary rocks, the iron hunter looks with greatest care. CHAPTEK XVIII READING THE STOBY OF THE STONES AS PRINTED ON THE PAGES OF THE EARTH^S SURFACE IN general iron ore reconnoissances where much ter- ritory must be covered and frequent long marches made, little attention is paid to anything but out- cropping rocks. In this way alone it is possible almost beyond a doubt easily to determine whether a region contains an iron ore formation. This statement is pred- icated upon the fact of a reasonable frequency of rock exposures. In a land of tundra, and stream and glacial drift, more care must be exercised. Such a section is not attractive to the ordinary pros- pector. Sometimes it is the case that glaciers have cut off and picked up extensive iron ore lenses and trans- ported them for hundreds of miles. When the travel has been for a long distance, the ore is lost amidst the other glacial cargo or dissipated by water action upon lateral or terminal moraines. It may be possible that in some instances the ore may be carried for only a short distance and dumped in large pockets. Some keen geological observers contend that the iron ores of Michigan and Minnesota have been carried from the Lake Superior north shore in Canada in this manner. Interesting speculation if nothing more. When an iron ore region is found, more careful work 150 160 THE IKON HUNTER is necessary in order to define the length, width and di- rection of the iron formation. Still more care must be given in order to find the richer concentrations that do not extrude obviously. To learn the boundaries of the iron formation, the territory may be cut into sections, roughly mapped and then gone over expeditiously with eye for outcrops, and the dial compass and dipping needle for under-ground evidence. The search for " shipping " ore, that is ore that can be marketed to a profit, is most compelling, and in its prosecution hundreds of millions of dollars have been expended. The prospector does much preliminary work, which is sometimes rewarded. He follows every creek and even searches the river shores and especially at gorges, where rock formations are exposed. Ravines, gullies between hills, and every depression that is touched by running water may yield rich returns in knowledge. Cavities left by the overturned stumps of trees and the material clinging to their roots, may give up secrets never told before. A windfall in a forest in an iron ore country may expose as much ledge and formation as could otherwise be done by the expenditure of thousands of dollars. Classification and study of the pebbles in a stream bed should not be neglected. I think the greatest charm of prospecting is not the hope of finding wealth ; it is the life in the clean, unhurt out-of-doors. God is in the lakes and streams, in the sky and stars, in the hills and valleys, in the throat of birds and even in the ululations of wolf, owl and frog, in everything, of everything Everything. Time after time I have come upon a little lake set as a jewel in the hills that adorn nature's wedding ring to heaven, the circle of the horizon. No human eyes, THE STORY OF THE STONES 161 i perhaps not even those of the stream-Haunting aborig- inal north man, had ever beheld it. Then always I would kneel down on the escarpment and whisper a word of praise to God, or I would raise my eyes to heaven, drop my tump line to my chest, lift my hat and let my soul pour out in mute and helpless thanksgiving. I wish I could tell just how I felt at such times ; better yet, I wish every one might feel the same thing. No poet's ecstasy or musician's rhapsody could be half so sweet, it seems to me, unless they are much the same. Lying at night on the rocks with only the starry heavens above me I seemed sometimes to hear with Pythagoras the music of the spheres. Prospecting in the north country is hard or easy, de- pending upon the prospector, his thoughts, his desires, his heart, his whole being. If he is so constituted that he can see and feel the divinely raptured solitudes, his life will be biggened and he will develop within him- self those rich things of spirit, that are worth more than even all the iron ore in the world ; also he may find the iron ore. I do not think I have reminded you, as having a bear- ing upon the selfish side of the proposition, that the iron ore of the world is worth more in dollars and cents than the combined value of all the diamonds, gold and silver. After manufacture, it possesses a greater money value than all the wheat in the world. But it is so big and common and near that it is not appreciated particularly any more than are pure air and sunlight. I am writing these things down because of my pre- viously stated belief that more iron ore exists and will be discovered in the future, than has been found in the past. North of us lies the vastest unexplored territory 162 THE IRON HUNTER in the world. I refer to the Dominion of Canada. It is rich, and where it is untouched by man, it is clean. There is not a drop of unwholesome water nor any poisonous insects nor reptiles between Lake Superior and the aurora borealis. In summer there are mosqui- toes, black flies and noseeums, but these are only trifles to the real man. Even the poor Indian and Esquimo become immune to them, and then why should not the white man with his alleged superiority, if he really has the goods. To young men of courage and resource the limitless North offers the cleanest fight in the world, and if you win, the fruits of victory are plenteous and satisfying. This cannot be said of Michigan, Wisconsin and Min- nesota, where exist the largest and richest iron ore deposits in the world, and where much ore will be found that is not known of now, because the possible districts are nearly all held by private owners. The great iron and copper companies have had visions, and have bought extensive holdings wherever there is a chance that values exist. I suppose there are two sides to this state of affairs, but I must confess that I think it is all wrong. Even the lumbermen, who bought the public domain for a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, reserve the mineral rights when they sell. Undeveloped wealth of this kind has been easy to hold so far. Frequently it has paid no tax at all and it never has paid enough. In Minnesota, before the Mesaba Range was discovered and even afterwards before the range had been mapped with any accuracy, lumbermen cut off pine and then abandoned their timber lands to the State. In quite a few instances valuable iron ore has been discovered upon these lands, from which the State receives a very considerable income in royalties. Author in typical primeval jungle on the Hudson Bay height of land .V f K \l THE STORY OF THE STONES 163 When the United States Government survey was made in the Lake Superior country, any mineral values that were in evidence along the survey lines were faith- fully reported. There was not much value then to tempt them not to do so, because the country was new and without transportation facilities and generally un- developed. Since that time a great deal of important geological work has been done by the Government, and by the States of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota and others. This work has had particular economical pur- poses. Such distinguished names as Douglas Houghton, Brooks and Pumpelly, Charles Wright, Irving, Smythe, Lane, Winchell, Chamberlain, Seaman, Van Hise, Leith, Hotchkiss, Merriam, Allen, Coleman, Miller and others are familiar to those who are interested. At a time when most of these men could have turned their knowledge into money, they have been ethical to an extent that is most praiseworthy. I do not know one of these who took advantage of his chance to make a profit ; not a single quack among them. Dr. R. C. Allen was the state geologist while I was governor of Michigan. I asked him why he did not endeavor to trace the Gogebic Range across the Wis- consin boundary southward. To the west across the Montreal River, the Gogebic Range takes the name of the Penoka. It has not yet been very productive of commercial ore bodies. I thought that to the south or southwest of Sunday Lake and Wakefield there might be values. Dr. Allen had been thinking along the same line and had even done a little work. He went into the field work there more eagerly. Soon he was approached by Chicago land owners 164 THE IKON HUNTER who had the title to a wide area under examination. Dr. Allen came to me at once and asked me to advise him what to do. He greatly wished to see such drill- ing done as would expose the formation, hut he did not wish to engage in private work for others while em- ployed by the State ; nor did he desire directly or indi- rectly to give data that belonged to all the people of the State to these few persons, in advance of his reports, which would convey the knowledge to the public. I told him to talk the matter over with the land owners and see if he could not get them to do drilling that would be of value to both the public and them- selves. He succeeded in this. The same question must have come to other state geologists many times. Their uniform attitude of un- selfishness and fidelity has impressed me deeply, and has helped me to higher planes of thought. Their fine character has not been known or appreciated by the public at large. CHAPTEE XIX GREAT LEAN OUTCROPPING OF IRON ORE UNSEEN UNDEB THE VERY EYES OF THE WORLD THEEE is not in the whole world a shore line more interesting than that of the north coast of Lake Superior. Black and brown and green and gray and red cliffs guard there with as much im- portance as though they were true continental shelves. At intervals crowning peaks, like Cape Choyye and Noble Promontory, stand up like titanic watch towers. Choyye and Garganiua, as they are called commonly by the few fishermen and Indians alongshore, supply a clew to the classical types of men who gave them name. Choyye was Capuchin, and the other was Rabelais' monster. Behind Gargantua is Pantagruel, never men- tioned by the habitants. Just above they are better ac- quainted with Menebozho and his wife and two dogs. Never passes an Indian, whether Majinutin, Wauboosch or Nishishinawog or Bill Waiskai's grandfather, who does not place tobacco on the stone lap of the Indian god, next in power to Kitchee Manido. I have seen them do it ; sometimes hungrily and regretfully, because tobacco is tobacco among them. But if perchance co- incidence would note some evidence of the pleasure of the Chippewa Sphinx, such as the lessening of a gale, or the arrival of a breeze after days of doldrums, the stoical visage of the devotee becomes almost a smiling mask, 165 166 THE IRON HUNTER The waters of Lake Superior are the coldest and the purest in the world, not even excepting Lake Baikal, in Siberia, and in their clearness, that must be seen to be realized, they offer the greatest possible contrast to the murky, sickening, hot infusorial waters of Victoria Ny- anza, the only body of fresh water that rivals it in size and that only in surface area. Rivers and creeks hurtle down from the height of land, which is from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty miles northward, as though glad to escape from the salt demons of Hudson Bay and Arctic Ocean. These rivers supply natural hatcheries for brook trout. This has given Superior, from Nepigon to Batchewaung, a bepurpled reputation among sportsmen everywhere. In the streams and along the rocks the trout fishing is unsurpassed. Perhaps the rock fishing offers the best sport. Little jagged bays filled with talus make shad- owy places where the shy fishes may hide. Benches of rock drop off into many crystal fathoms, and in their blackened cracks lurk old speckled kings that rise to flies eagerly, and would rather fight than eat. Olivines and epidotes make floors of verde antique, and pegmatite shows red as blood above and also beneath the waters. Columnar basalts, some lying like corded wood and others erect as the Giant's Causeway, occupy what were once crevasses in the granite gneiss and syenite before the molten lava filled the world-making mold. Beach line upon beach line, terraced, mark the recession of the contents of the earth's greatest basin of sweet water. Underneath the boulders of these beaches icy cold streamlets, from some spring or nearby rocky pool, flow into the lake with much gurgling glee. Sometimes these unseen laughing waters are boisterous, and one is called Noisy River. The last ice belt disturbed many of the OUTCROPPING OF IRON 167 ancient beaches and pushed the boulders into heaps, at right angles to the lake, like so many lateral moraines, which they are not. There is not a house along hundreds of miles of shore. It is a wild bright land in the summer; death on all sides in the winter. Rock-embraced harbors are at intervals of twelve to twenty miles. Moose and car- ibou and red deer, bear and wolves and wolverines, beaver, otter and sable are in the hinterland, and birds and hares and little red squirrels and a few singing gophers. Summer companions are black flies and mosquitoes and midgets. Banksian pine on the slopes, spruce and balsam in the valleys, high bush cranberries, sand cherries, blue berries and Indian plums (shad bush berry), white birch, mountain ash, pinus strobus, tamarack, black currants, red raspberries, pin cherries, skunk berries, juniper, yew, seven bark wood and a lot more vegetation grows, and berries ripen in the fleeting period between snow and snow. It is a wild race between summer life and winter death. Ice does not thaw in the woodland lakes until June. Tripe de roche decorates the barren rocky tumuli and is sought by caribou, and when famine shows its bony clutches man also uses this rock tripe lichen for food. Some day no traveled person will be content until he Has seen the north shore of Lake Superior. Now only a few fish boats ply there, and to visit the region, one must either take these or fit out an Indian Mackinac boat and crew, or have his own yacht. Inaccessible as it is, the north shore is visited by a good many eadh season, and sometimes thousands go to the often-crowded Nepigon. The best stretch is the long one between Nepigon Bay and Bachewaung Bay. An ideal way is 168 THE IRON HUNTER to coast along the shore in a Mackinac boat, camping and fishing at the mouths of the many rivers, or where attractive coves lure one. Rock fishing is the most luxurious and artistic way to take trout. The rod must have plenty of backbone. A two and a half to a four ounce rod will give satisfac- tion on a stream, but off the rocks of Lake Superior a rod weighing from five to six ounces is better. Seated in an Indian boat of good size and plenty of free board, because summer squalls are fierce and sudden, with one Indian to row, and a parmacheenee belle leader and Montreal dropper, the gods of joy are awake. The In- dian, a Chippewa and probably from the tribe at Bache- waung, rows slowly and you cast towards the rocks. The water is as clear as plate glass and you can see the fish; see them dart into dark places under the rocks when they are frightened, and also see them plainly enough when they tower toward the surface, not unlike a swallow sweeping in midair, as they rise to the fly, swooping off if unhooked, or making such a gamy fight if caught. Artfulness is necessary, and one must be prepared to make a cast of forty to sixty feet and drop his flies as lightly as falling moth wings that do not splash. I have traversed every foot of the Lake Superior shore clear around. Rock study on the north shore is more interesting than fishing. I am going to tell you of two interesting shore exposures. If you are young and ambitious perhaps you will look them up and trace out their meaning. I know of only three other persons, one of them Justice Joseph Hall Steere, of the Supreme Court of Michigan, who know them by name, and they have their information from me. This, notwithstand- ing the fact that these rocks have been seen by thou- OUTCROPPING OF IRON 169 sands. Dozens of times I have rowed past them with the late Alfred Noble, who was an engineer of the Pennsylvania tunnels and subways at New York, and who was largely responsible for the decision to make the Panama Canal a lock canal and not a sea level canal. Mr. Noble was one of the most able of Americans. He was a charming camp mate and most observant. Time after time we visited one of these rocks together be- cause it is on a famous fishing stretch, and he often went to it alone and with others, but he never recog- nized it. Each season I was determined to tell him, and then I would be tempted to wait and permit him to have the satisfaction of discovery. I went off to Africa and Madagascar for a couple of years, and while I was away Mr. Noble took the long rest. Those who fish the north shore know Brule Harbor and Indian Harbor as well as they know their own back yard, if they possess a back yard. Just below Brule Harbor debouches Old Woman's River in a bay, the bottom of which is covered with small boulders toward Brule, and sand carried out by the river on the other side. The boulder patch offers fine trout up to four pounds and on the other side of the sand, where the cliff rocks begin, and where for years lay the wreck of the Golspie, a well-known tragedy of the shore, trout of five and six pounds may be killed. Noble Promontory, with a simian's face when caught in right alignment, exults the landscape. About halfway to Indian Harbor is majestic Cape Choyye, and the fish- ing all the way is unsurpassed. There is not a harbor, even for small boats, between Brule and Indian Harbor. Just after leaving Choyye, bound down, quite a deep bay sets in. On the lower side a well defined sand spit, covered with stunted birch and conifers, makes a con- 170 THE IEO1ST HUNTER trast to the miles of frowning headlands on either side. At the bottom of this bay, just above a shelving beach where Justice Steere and I were once wrecked by a tidal wave, a little river flows in. It is the outlet of a chain of pretty lakelets. Exactly opposite the mouth of this stream, and concealing it from the view of a person rowing by, is a big, picturesque red rock. It is simply called the " redrock " and is a landmark. Standing more than a hundred feet high and some hundreds long and wide, it is as interesting as a Magna Mater when you recognize it as hematite iron ore. That it is very lean, so far as percentage of metallic iron content is concerned, is true, which does not detract from its inter- est and even value too, when considered as evidence. As one faces down stream on the right wall of the creek, a short distance from this hematite exposure, one can see a big showing of carbonate of iron siderite. The district near these has not been carefully examined. Eor years I have hoped to find time to do so, and only tell of it now as my contribution in part payment for what I have learned from unselfish geologists and sur- veyors. Somewhere not far distant should be found valuable deposits of iron ore, so convenient for trans- portation as to be unusually desirable. Proceed with me down shore to Indian Harbor, on around the point and among the islands, whose water- worn caverns contain agates, chlorastrolites, thompson- ites, calcites and amethysts to be had for the gathering, to Gargantua. One passes within a foot of Menebozho and his wife and dogs if he cares to. Sail on past the hidden harbor that marks Gargantua, the entrance to which is closed by an island like a cork in the neck of a bottle. There is a lighthouse on the island. A couple of miles below the lighthouse one comes to a red shore OUTCKOPPING OF IKON 171 line. It is prominent for a mile or more perhaps. I have never measured the distance. All these reddish " rocks " are lean hematite ore. If they were to be found on the American side it would cause a sensation, and long ago they would have been owned by trusts. I cannot easily account for the reason why these really wonderful outcrops are not known. I took Kirk Alexander and Tom May, of Detroit, to see the big red rock first described and told them about it, and showed them the siderite in the creek. Only Justice Steere has been with me when I visited the meaningful iron ore shore line below Gargantua. Once he sailed past it with Michel Cadotte, a north shore guide and now in the Happy Hunting Grounds. Michel said, " See rocks, not rocks, different from rocks." He tried to tell the Justice something but did not succeed, and it was my pleasure to impart the secret to him. It is not unreasonable to expect that there are richer concentrations near in a region of such extensive lean ore exposures. An iron formation skirts the Lake Superior north shore for hundreds of miles. Not much work has been done along it because it is in Canada, where the mining laws act as both guardian and deterrent. Also interest in this field has been small because upon the American side there has been enough ore to supply the demand; ore of fine quality and attractive economic location. Two shipping mines on the north shore, the Helen and Magpie, near Michipicoten, have proved valuable. Quite a little is known about the Antikokan range in the Port Arthur district, and enough exploratory work has been done at different places to warrant the belief that the north shore will be highly productive. 172 THE IKON HUNTER Another iron ore region of the north shore that is lit- tle known comparatively, lies adjacent to the Pukoso River, a half day's row above the Michipicoten. A lit- tle work has been done along the Pukoso by Indians, trappers and lumberjacks, which is as good as saying that not much has been accomplished. There is an ex- tensive formation here of banded magnetite. Some of the bands are quite wide and rich. One day these ores will be won by electric concentration as at Moose Moun- tain, Dunderland and Lulea. Here the land may be staked. Most of the few claims that were taken along the Pukoso have been forfeited because of failure to ful- fill the requirements of the Canadian Mining laws. Even more attractive than the Pukoso country is the hinterland at Otter Head and above and below. I have seen good-looking surface showings over quite a wide stretch of country in this region, and believe confidently that the future will reveal iron ore and other mineral values. And so on I could tell such a long story of the attrac- tions and prospects of the Canadian north shore. It is a way that every age has, wherein young men contem- poraries sigh and state that there are not as many op- portunities now as when their fathers were boys. For- ever will this be true. The young man alert with in- dustry and ambition will have more chances than he can take advantage of; the other kind would not know it or avail himself if he were thrown among a million oppor- tunities. I would not urge the young man to money grub who is not compelled to; rather let him give of himself to society in some useful way as Theodore Roose- velt has done. All of us cannot be Roosevelts, but all of us can do our best, which will be something anyhow. To the young man who has not and must have, in OUTCROPPING OF IRON 173 order to steam himself up, the north is calling ; the west is beckoning; the soil is coaxing. Everywhere masters are in search of trustworthy, energetic, loyal youth. Never was there such an era of plenty to be plucked by all who will bestir themselves out of the common ruts of sloth and indolence. What a measure of boys I have gotten when I have had half a hundred of them in the wilderness with me, and have offered a reward to all who would beat me to the bathing place in the morning. Out of fifty not more than one or two would race with me to the creek or lake near camp. When we had to break the ice in the late autumn in order to bathe fre- quently not one boy in a hundred would do it. For near forty years now I have lived in the robust north and in winter I have taken a run naked and rolled in the snow every morning before breakfast, when in the woods, say at four o'clock. In all that time I have known of only one young man who would follow my ex- ample, without being ridiculed into it or compelled in some way. There are only two driving forces: one is necessity and the other is love, and the latter is best. One may have love of work without necessity, and the effort is noble that is thus made. Necessity and love together beget twice-born offspring. CHAPTER XX INTO THE HEART OF THE ARCTIC LAPLAND WHERE THE MYSTERIES ARE ATTUNED TO THE MUFFLED FOOTFALLS OF SILENCE ONE winter near the close of the last century, I found myself alone in Europe engaged in visit- ing iron ore fields. I started in the United Kingdom and then proceeded to Spain, where I found the old Bilbao district of consuming interest. I did not tarry long in Italy but proceeded into Germany and on into Russia, and over the Urals. Doubling back I went into Finland at Helsingfors. North to Uleaborg I found good enough railroad conveniences, with women for sleeping car attendants. At Uleaborg I decided to travel on north to Tornea, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and around the gulf to Lulea in Sweden. As usual, not two persons told me the same distance. The map route measured about three hundred miles, but there was no road, and all the way until we reached Haparanda a direct course would be impossible. My destination was the Gellivare, Kirunavaara and Luosa- vaara iron districts in Lapland, all within the Arctic zone. It would have been easier and quicker to have doubled back to Abo, thence to have gone across the Bal- tic through the beautiful Aaland Islands to Stockholm, and north through Upsala to Lulea and Gellivare by rail. But I had a chance to go among the Lapps and traverse an Arctic region that is visited almost never 174 THE HEAET OF THE AKTIC LAPLAND ITS in the winter, and seldom enough in the summer. It was middle February. The weather was below zero all the time, and some of the time far below. There was plenty of snow. I engaged several Lapps and enough reindeer to draw me and them, having at the time no idea how many would be required. To my com- plete surprise I learned that men, women and children would all go with me. It was interesting. Rarely will Lapp families permit themselves to be sepa- rated. When they get down to brass tacks the women are the rulers. I made all of my arrangements with a squat, fat, little head man or chief, but I noticed that he engaged in frequent consultations with his wife. The greater number of them are Lutherans and good and kindly, but an exceedingly independent people. Resembling the Esquimo in physique they possess a bet- ter intellect, and temperamentally are more like the Ka- chins of Upper Burma or the Thibetans. I am just about six feet tall. There was not a Lapp in my party that could not walk erect under my arm extended hori- zontally. Men, women and children are fat and greasy, and as they seldom bathe they are, in a sense, dirty. Such habits of life as they have could not endure in a land less clean and wholesome. In all Lapland there is not an unclean thing except the Lapps, and really I soon forgot to think of them as being dirty, even with the contrast they made to the sweet air and the immaculate snow. As a people they are rich and independent. Their government is tribal, and to a considerable extent it is communal. There had been a famine in the north Baltic and Bothnian regions, and zealous persons, who too often make it their profession, had been collecting money 176 THE IKON HUNTER from liberal countries for their relief. None of this was desired by the Lapps or accepted by them. There was no poverty among them, and while their standards of living are not high, they never are in want of neces- saries. Property is not held in common exactly, but may be used in common in case of need. I saw one chief Lapp of whom it was said that he owned twenty thousand reindeer. He was a Lapp millionaire but did not conduct a reindeer trust. Wealth in Lapland is measured in reindeer. They are everything, and when compared with gold they take on a warmth of value that is appealing. The Lapp drinks the milk of the reindeer, eats its flesh, makes clothing of its skin; weapons, implements, furniture and harness of its bone. He even uses its hair for many purposes and the sinews and viscera are very valuable. Fancy being able to do this with a chunk of gold. A drink of milk of gold would be a mockery, and if you do not believe it just take a swallow of the delusive German goldwasser beverage. The yellow metal is only a convenience. It has no real value and is only a meas- ure of or representative of value. It is a necessity, no doubt, but it is also concentrated selfishness, and givee people an incurable disease that permits a few to con- trol the wealth of the world to an extent greater than is for the good of mankind. Robinson Crusoe could do nothing with gold, but he could have done famously with a reindeer. The Lapps almost worship them, but do not treat them with the demonstrations of endearment that a Bedouin lavishes upon his she camel, only because that is not their nature. In the winter they feed their working reindeer on rock lichens or reindeer moss. They are kept in the lowlands and valleys in the winter. Dur- THE HEAET OF THE ARTIC LAPLAND 177 ing the short season of summer they are herded at an elevation that insures cool, if not cold weather and even snow, for they die off if subjected to warmth. In this respect they are like the llama that will not thrive in most of the Andean lands below an altitude of two or three thousand feet. The Lapps themselves fare better in the highlands in summer and there they go. Christmas is their great feast day. It is also their funeral season. They bury their dead once a year. Preserved in snow and ice during the year, corpses are disinterred from their frigid temporary mausoleum at Christmas and given a ceremonial, final burial. A reindeer sledge is quite exactly like a Hoosier hog trough. It is hollowed out of a log about four feet, sometimes four and a half feet, long and rounding, log- shaped on the bottom. This causes the thing to roll over if given any kind of a chance. To acquire the art of riding in one is a similar experience to learning to ride a bicycle, and something like learning to swim. A six-foot body crumpled into a four-foot sledge and calked with furs is at first a clumsy arrangement, but it is possible for it, as I found, to become a part of the sledge when the feat of balancing comes to one. It does come, for all of a sudden your mental gyroscope is automatic, and you do not know how you have done it. A sledge may be drawn by one, two or three reindeer with spare and bare animals trotting behind or along- side. There was never less than two hitched to my sledge. This was done by fastening a reindeer thong, a Boer would call it a riem, to the bow of the sledge, passing it between the legs of the reindeer and tying it to a names at the breast of the base of the neck and below. These hames were made of reindeer ribs and fitted snugly. They never seemed to gall. The second 178 THE IRON HUNTER reindeer was attached tandem by fastening the single tug to the first one, just behind the hames. And so on the third would be tandem also. Headmen at ceremo- nies sometimes have fifty or even more reindeer in a tandem team, and then it is not uncommon for several sledges to be tied together, one behind the other. The food and its preparation was very interesting. The headman had several pots of iron and tin. Pot hooks of bone and bone spoons were common to all. Quite a few of them, both women and men, carried crude, home-made knives; there were also skinning knives of bone. My headman had a little, solid silver, home-made pipe, not much bigger than the Japanese use. He kept this going with a mixture of coffee and tobacco. Everybody smoked, mostly bone pipes, if they had the " makings." These pipes, and particularly the silver ones, would get very hot, but the Lapps seemingly were unmindful of this. The chief's cooking was all done in pots. Fuel had to be carried and was scant. Some of the others cooked, or rather heated their meat, by placing hot stones in birch-bark buckets con- taining water. No stop of any kind was made without boiling the coffee pot. It was carried by hand, and as its contents were water and milk and coffee, it was han- dled carefully. For seasoning the coffee the Lapps use salt and pepper instead of sugar; not much salt, but plenty of pepper. All hands drank out of the coffee pot, using it as a loving cup. There was always plenty of hair in the coffee. This kept it from slopping out as it was carried, and also compelled one to strain it through his teeth in order to drink with comfort. The Paraguayans have a better way in taking their yerba mate. They suck it through a stem to which a little woven wicker sieve is attached. THE HEAET OF THE AETIC LAPLAND 179 We also had raw, frozen fish for a delicacy. The raw fish made me sick finally and I gave it up, since which time I have been unfriendly even to sardellen and kindred preparations. I do not like to be finicky about eating, because I have always thought that it is a measure of mental breadth and elasticity. Notwith- standing, I do not like raw fish. Bah ! For bread we had unleavened cakes made from flour and the ground bark of the dwarfed popple and birch. I thought I could tell the popple cakes from the birchen cakes by their greater bitterness. These cakes had been baked for a long time ; weeks, months or years before, I do not know which. At night they would erect skin tepees if it was stormy ; in fact, almost always we put them up. If the wind blew hard, snow would be piled around the bottom. I have only occupied an igloo a few times, but I have an idea that they are warmer than the reindeer skin house used by the Lapp. Sometimes I tried to sleep in my sledge, but I would get cramps and would have to dig out and stretch. During the day I often walked for a change. Always while so doing I would be chagrined because I had to make an extra effort to keep up with the stride of the reindeer, and the goose waddle of the Lapps. There were seventeen in the party, including me. The Lapps were of all sizes and sexes. There was no sex false delicacy, but social morals are rigidly observed. The snow-covered wastes were like almost level plains and the hardened surface made walking easy. We had fourteen sledges and ninety-one reindeer. Some of the animals were too young to work and some of them were used only as milk cows. Forage made up the most of the cargo. Fuel too. We had no vegetables of any 180 THE IKON HUNTER kind. The Lapps and Eskimos seem to be immune to scorbutical attacks. We met with no un surmount able obstructions. Mak- ing short cuts across fjords brought us up against wind- rows of ice and snow sometimes which forced detours, or made negotiation more or less exacting. The weather much of the time was clear and cold, and in morning and evening and at night the air would contain fine ice particles. I had seen the same conditions in the Lake Superior and Hudson Bay regions. We were follow- ing the Arctic Circle at about 66 north, varying. Our course was at first north, then northwest, then west and then south. In the middle of the day the sun was warm and dazzling, and I had to protect my eyes from snow blindness. The Lapps were not bothered with anything. We had a few pairs of skis, but had no use for them until we reached a Lapp town or winter encampment between Haukipudas and Pudasjarvi. They were pre- paring for a big hunt on skis for wolverines, the great enemy of the young reindeer and the subject of intense dislike by the Lapps. If I could have done so, and I could not, I would not have told them that they call the people Wolverines where I lived. Probably they would have dumped me in a snow cave and speared me with a dull bone spear and left me. I wonder why they call Michigan folk Wolverines ? They are not gluttons, and that animal was never nu- merous in the State. My party joined the wolverine hunt. A great cir- cle was formed and the contraction of it was achieved in good order, with much guttural yelling. A lot of wolverines were rounded up, some of which escaped the steel and also bone pointed spears. Twenty-nine were THE HEAET OF THE AKTIC LAPLAND 181 killed. This was enough to warrant a celebration and feast. Much peppered coffee was drunk and reindeer meat consumed. There were ski races, reindeer races and spear-throwing contests. It was good to note the complete absence of alcoholics. Not even the headmen had guns or pistols. I noticed that a good many of the Lapps from farther north had a dangerous-looking weapon made from a stone tied with a thong like a sling. The rock was not supposed to leave the sling when thrown. They use it in capturing ptarmigan and for several hunting purposes. I could not tell very nearly how far we traveled each day. Some days we seemed to make good marches and upon others we would not go as far. I think the least distance covered in a day was ten miles and the great- est probably thirty, with an average perhaps of sixteen. We did not go into Haukipudas where I had expected to check up. There were several camps en route but they were movable and temporary. I managed to recognize Simo and also Kemi and I estimated that we should soon arrive in Tornea. In this I was mistaken, and the first thing I knew we had passed it and arrived in Ha- paranda, from which point there is a marked road to Lulea by way of Nederkalix and Tornea. Tornea is at the mouth of the Tome Elf, which flows out of the arctic lake Torne Trask, and I had hoped to see it. At Tornea our road, much of it so drifted as to be totally unrecognizable, intersected a road between Lulea and Gellivare. We had crossed a number of rivers, called johi in Finland and elf in Swedish. They are considerable streams, as the Bothnian drainage basin extends eight- tenths of the way to the Arctic Ocean, leaving only a comparatively narrow strip between the height of land 182 THE IKON HUNTEK and the ocean. There are low mountains between the rivers, and thinly interspersed are fringes of scraggy, dwarfed trees, mostly birches, none of them exceeding a height of ten or twelve feet. Their crooked, gnarled, scarred boles suggested gnomes or little, old, dried-up Japanese men and the dwarfed trees they delight in cul- tivating. I did not see much evidence of life, but there was more than I expected to find inland. There are Arctic hares, foxes, wolverines, polar bear (not many), wild reindeer or caribou, ptarmigan and two large gallinae, something like blackgame. The bigger one of these edible game birds weighs ten to twelve pounds. They are not plentiful. The only hardship I suffered worth considering was the food, and I think that I would not have minded that much if I had not been made sick by the raw fish. At first I did not know a word of Lappish, and not one of my Lapps knew a word of English. It took forty-one days to make the trip. Every day I learned several words, and it was not long before I could get along very well. One also becomes an expert pantomimist. I was glad to reach Lulea. After an inspection of the successful electrical concentration works, that refine the Gellivare magnetite, I was ready to proceed to the source of the ore at Malmberg, near Gellivare. A rail- road built to haul this iron ore to the sea offered a very good passenger service. I think it was the first rail- road to be built in the Arctic zone anywhere in the world. At Gellivare I found the manager of the mines a most engaging and hospitable gentleman, who had visited the Michigan iron mines. He was gracious in every way and made my visit to Gellivare pleasant and memorable. THE HEAET OF THE ARTIC LAPLAND 183 I studied the ore and iron formations there for a few days and went on to Kirunavaara and Luosavaara. The railroad was being continued by the Swedish gov- ernment to these great ore fields, and in conjunction with Norway across the Riksgransen to an Arctic open seaport, now called Narvik, on Ofoten Fjord. Before leaving for Kirunavaara I climbed the Dun- dret, a famous mountain near Gellivare, to see the mid- night sun. It is scarcely worth while to do this if one is to remain long in the " Land of the Midnight Sun," because no special trip is necessary to see it. I stopped for a day at Boden, where I witnessed the work of construction upon quite a formidable fort Swe- den was building to protect that portion of the boundary, and especially the new railroad, from the dreaded Rus- sians. Wherever I went in Northern Sweden I found a shadowy fear of the bear's claws, and well-informed Swedes seemed to be certain that in the long run the new Arctic railroad would fall into the hands of the Russians. In the more populous portions of Sweden the polit- ical topic most discussed was the strained relations be- tween Norway and Sweden. There was more agitation in Norway over this than in Sweden. It was freely predicted that Norway would secede from the Scandi- navian Union with Sweden, and that perhaps there would be war. Upon my return to the United States I was roundly abused by Swedish-American newspapers for a statement of my belief that the Union would not endure much longer. The only thing that prevented actual hostilities when the break came was the courage and preparedness of Norway, the Norse reputation for valor, and the conviction on the part of Sweden that Norway could neither be conquered nor coerced. CHAPTER XXI DEPOSITS OF IRON ORE AND BEDS OF COAL UNDEB THE SHADOW OF THE POLE CROSSING the Arctic Circle anywhere the route on north is a bleak one in the winter. Snow fields, bare, cold, gaunt, rocky ridges, almost no sign of vegetation or animal life, make a region that would repel anything almost but selfish or needful men. Infrequently I saw Lapp winter camps. It is a lone- some world. All visitors to the far north notice the oppressive stillness : " the muffled footfalls of silence," as quiet as a noise too great to hear. The Kirunavaara-Luosavaara iron ore fields contain the most extensive deposits of magnetite known in the world. It may be that they possess a greater tonnage than any, even more than the Mesaba of Minnesota, or the Itabira, of Minas Geraes, Brazil. They are located in the northwest part of Swedish Lapland, well within the Arctic Circle, and not far from the boundary be- tween Norway and Sweden. The region had not been thoroughly explored when I visited it in the last decade of eighteen hundred, but enough was known to warrant expensive measures to get the ore into the markets of the world. Since the first attack upon it much more has been learned, until there remains no doubt that there is a most remarkable ton- nage. The ore is a magnetite. It runs as high as 184 UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE POLE 185 sixty-nine per cent, in metallic iron. I was assured that cargoes averaging as high as that could be shipped. Some of it is low enough in phosphorus to make it a Bessemer ore, which process is impossible to ore con- taining more than one-thousandth of one per cent, of phosphorus to one per cent, of metallic iron, unless, of course, that ore higher than that in phosphorus is mixed with an ore much lower in phosphorus. Sulphur in the Kirunavaara ore varies. The per- centage is always rather high, but not enough to be pro- hibitive of treatment. The most objectionable ingredi- ent of the ore is titanium, which is present to as great a degree as one per cent. It was generally considered among metallurgists that so much titanium as that rendered ore unfit for use and valueless. They had as yet discovered no way to flux titaniferous ore. It would become sticky and mushy and would not flow freely. Inability to handle such ore, because of lack of knowl- edge, caused a condemnatory report to be made upon the titaniferous iron ore range north of Port Arthur in Canada, that has kept that region undeveloped to this day. It nearly operated in the same way with the Kirunavaara field. Now methods are employed that do away with the objections to the presence of titanium up to one per cent., or even in greater quantities. At the time of my visit the Kirunavaara range had been traced for sixty miles. Where the railroad touched the range and the first mining was begun, practically an uninterrupted outcrop of iron ore extended for more than five miles. Some places it was seven hundred feet above the surface. At one point it dipped under a small lake and had been cut with a diamond drill operated 186 THE IRON HUNTER upon the ice. Even with the lower wages prevailing, the cost of getting out the ore was greater than upon any of the American ranges. Coal was a problem and I was told that a cargo of iron ore had been sent to Can- ada in exchange for a return cargo of coal. Since that time, John M. Longyear, of Michigan, has opened coal measures upon Spitzbergen, and the fuel question has been solved in a measure. From Kirunavaara to the ocean at Narvik the rail- road is a series of snow sheds and tunnels, requiring superior courage and engineering in construction. Nar- vik was just being built. The ore docks, pockets and trestles were of steel and plans for an important port had been made. Since then, I am informed, that as much as fifteen million tons have been shipped from Narvik in a year, more than half of it going to Essen, Germany, where the great Krupp iron works are located. At Narvik I visited the cod fisheries among the Ofo- ten or Lofoden Islands and formed a new aversion to that efficacious remedy codliver oil. Also I saw the famous maelstrom, caused, as is well known, by the tidal waters choking between rocky islands. A portion of the wild ocean is forced through with roars and hisses and churning and foam. Sometimes the maelstrom re- minds one of the great tidal bores that are to be seen in some of the rivers on the China coast. The twisting, charging, convulsive waters eddy and swirl, and require little imagination to look wicked and justify the demon stories told in Norse by Skald and Saga, from primitive times down to the present. They could easily have wrecked the Viking ships, which were not ships at all but only big, clumsy, mostly open boats, very similar to UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE POLE 187 the little traders and fisher craft that dodge in and out along the rocky, saw-edged coast to-day. I found good coastwise steamers and had a comforta- ble and pleasurable trip to Tronisoe and Hammerfest. It was not so easy to get to North Cape and over to Spitzbergen, about four hundred and fifty miles from the mainland. West Spitzbergen area about fifteen thousand square miles ; North East Land, about four thousand, and Edge Island, about two thousand five hundred square miles, form the No Man's Land group, known as Spitzbergen. They are between seventy-six and eighty-one north lati- tudes. West Spitzbergen is nothing more than a rock- girt ice house. A central plateau of ice forces glaciers down to the sea through giant rifts. All around the coastal belt one may hear roaring, splashing, rumbling, cracking, as the huge ends of ice rivers break off into the sea, fractured by their own ponderousness, and float off as icebergs. Tourists generally visit the west coast where a hotel has been built in connection with a weekly, in summer, steamer service. The Dutch are credited with the discovery of Spitz- bergen in 1596, but no nation claims it. If anything it is American, because an American company, led by John M. Longyear, of Michigan, is mining and ship- ping coal from there. They have a shaft down through frozen material more than one thousand two hundred feet, the deepest ice shaft in the world. It is reported that these mines have recently been sold to Russia for thirty million dollars. Many interesting fossils have been exhumed, mostly of a tropical nature, proving the polar regions once to have been warm before the tilting ice cap and precession 188 THE IRON HUNTER of the equinoxes caused an axial shift. Huge palm fronds have been dug out and vast quantities of im- bedded fossil coprolites have been encountered. In summer the sun glare and reflected heat on the interior ice fields is trying. Over one hundred species of au- tochthonous flowering plants and ferns have been classi- fied. Rabot and Sir Martin Con way have done some ex- ploration, but really little is known about Spitzbergen. By the time of my return down the Norse coast the headlands, black-bordered shore and shadowy fjords were compelling, and kept one's senses alert and emo- tions stirred. I could easily see how the hardy folk were content to remain the thralls of such environment. Every color that sky and sea could assume was present; the fjords were Rembrandtian bins of gloom with all arrangements of chiaroscuro from arrows of sunlight to pitchy dungeon depths of darkness. Over the cliffs poured silvery streamlets fed by melt- ing snow, making a black and white barred coast line and even suggesting troops of white horse cavalry con- cealed over the top of the escarpment, with only their straggling white tails hanging in view over and down. The deep green of spear-topped tannenbaum amidst snow formed a fairy background. Altogether the scen- ery in April and May along the north coast of Norway is indescribably fascinating and beautiful. Flocks of water fowl took wing, fishes broke through the water to the surface, the clumsy eider duck quacked to its nesting mate, and spring in gnomeland was in the nostrils. On the way down the coast I found Throndjem and its ancient cathedral and hall of the Vikings worth some hours. UNDEK THE SHADOW OF THE POLE 189 I worked my way inland to the famous older iron fields of Sweden, and finally arrived at Stockholm after a fine canal trip. One must be charmed with Stockholm with its sing- ing Malar and its intrusive water roads, so much sweeter than those of Venice, if not quite so romantic and colorful. In these days the Swedes give one the superficial im- pression of being sensualists, living only to eat and drink and unrein their passions. There was a deeper side than that in evidence at the smorgos board and the puntsch table, that told of more serious things and higher ideals. The culture that starts at Upsala may be traced in its admirable diffusion if one takes the trouble to do so. The Swedes are democratic, but not so much so as the Norwegians, who have no superiors as a worthy and fine people. CHAPTEK XXII A STARVATION HIKE TO HUNT FOB A HIDDEN RANGE OF IRON ORE IN" the course of my years of summer explorations in Canada I heard repeatedly of an iron dam on the Vermillion River, north of Georgian Bay. Grad- ually I worked in that direction. A Mr. MacCharles, who had been employed by me temporarily to do some work for my newspaper at the Sault, had gone to Sud- bury in 1889. The nickel deposits had been attracting attention to the Sudbury district. Rumors of gold had sent prospectors as far afield as they could get into the wilderness and feed themselves. Gold will cause more excitement and turn more people crazy than anything else in the world, not even except- ing diamonds. This has been true of man since Jason and his argonauts went in search of the golden fleece. There is always a pot of gold for somebody at the foot of a rainbow, and the rainbow chasing for gold has caused war and woe, sickness and sorrow, heartache and horror, hardness and hunger among men, from the be- ginning to this day of engulfing strife in Europe. There is gold in the Vermillion River valley of Can- ada. It is strewn in fine particles through the sand everywhere, but nowhere has it paid for its winning and perhaps never will. Searchers for the mysterious " mother lode " that is supposed to be the source of all 190 A STARVATION HIKE 191 placer gold, have not been successful in the Vermillion country. MacCharles wore a tarn o'shanter on his head, whis- kers on his chin, a Scotch haggis dialect in his throat and had brains. From time to time he kept me in- formed as to the gold and nickel activities around Sud- bury. I as repeatedly told him that I was not inter- ested in gold and nickel, but would sit up and take notice if he had any iron ore clews. The fact that I could be interested in iron ore and not in gold, nickel or copper was too peculiar for his thought processes to follow. Nevertheless he was persistently in touch with me and one day told me about an iron dam on the Vermillion River up behind Sudbury, well towards the Height of Land. I had heard of something of the kind before but had gotten no details ; in fact, had not previously arrived at a point where I was prepared to look into the thing. Now I was ready. I went to Sudbury. It was October. The Vermil- lion was too low to permit of ascending it in canoes. I got a couple of men who told me they had gold claims near a certain falls on the river, where I had been told were the exposures of lean iron ore. They did not know iron ore when they saw it, but said that the rock at the falls in question was black and heavy, and where worn by ice and water showed a polish like steel. These men had never gone up river except when the stage of water permitted canoeing. However, they claimed to be woodsmen, and I was told they were reliable. Just at this juncture I made the only mistake of the kind that I have ever made. An arrangement was entered into by which they were to pack for me and show me the falls of the iron dam. I directed them to outfit for a trip of a month, which 192 THE IKON HUNTER they said they could and would do, and I trusted them and did not check over the supplies. This was an in- excusable omission that had a justifiable, if uncomfort- able sequel. In the office of the Balmoral Hotel at Sudbury there hung a rough and ready Canadian Pacific Railway ad- vertising map. I glanced at it rather carelessly, but noted with some particularity the general course of the Vermillion River. It was not a very purposive map, but it was the only one I had seen. In fact, the region north of Sudbury had only been surveyed for a few miles, and that work had been done since the nickel ex- citement. We started north, three of us. A short cut took us in a day to the Vermillion at Indian Dump. Crossing here we plunged into the trackless wilderness, and within three days more were beyond all signs of human life. I had figured that with any kind of luck at all we ought to have arrived at the iron falls in five days. On the eighth day out I became convinced, from sev- eral apparent signs, that my men were lost so far as get- ting to our objective was concerned. When I put the matter to them flatly they admitted it. They discovered to me the more embarrassing situa- tion that our grub was running short. Then for the first time to my chagrin I realized my carelessness. These men had been accustomed to traveling with ca- noes ; they were not old packers and woodsmen as I had been told, and were really tenderfeet away from a river that would float a canoe. Instead of taking flour and pork and tea, they had loaded up with a lot of impossi- ble canned stuff, and even had some loaves of bread and crackers. It was necessary at once to go on short rations, and A STARVATION HIKE 193 might have been the part of wisdom to have turned back. I had never done such a thing as turn back, and it did not even occur to me. The men said they could locate themselves if they could get to the Vermillion. That seemed easy. We were west of that river. I took a course a little north of east and held to it, except where detours were forced by lakes, miry swamps and now and then a talus-footed range of low, rocky mountains. On the third clay after I became the guide we arrived at a stream that they said was the Vermillion. Further- more they agreed that we were below the iron dam, which they thought we could reach in one day's march upstream. We checked over our grub carefully and found it distressingly low. I was carrying the cover- ing for all of us, three blankets and a light shed tent done up in a pack sheet, with a tump line or misery strap, which will cut your hair better than the average barber if you wear it outside your hat. Without delay we proceeded upstream and, to my en- thusiastic delight, we came within a few hours to a falls and series of rapids that proved to be the ones I sought. At a point quite a distance before reaching the falls, I came upon iron-bearing rock of fine texture resembling an olivine gabbro, and nearby I saw outcroppings of lean, magnetic ore. We camped at the iron dam that night. As soon as day broke next morning I began clambering over the rocks. With my little hand pick I freshly fractured hundreds of projections. All of the exposures on both sides of the river were of lean magnetite, carrying about thirty per cent, of metallic iron. At one place I found a large boulder of rich iron ore in the dry river bed. Samples from it analyzed later gave seventy per cent, metallic iron. 194 THE IKON HUNTER I climbed the hills near by, traversed the ravines and dug under every fallen tree and upturned stump I saw. At one stump I dug out a small, rough-edged chunk of magnetic iron ore, showing by its unworn edges that the solid ledge was most likely near at hand. Grub was nearly gone, but I slept two nights at the iron dam. If one had been nervous I think he must have been lulled to sleep by the music of the falling waters, as they broke over the magnetic dyke abruptly, or sang from cascades or parted bubblingly around dor- nicks into vitreous pools. I needed no lullaby, and even did not awaken when a moose walked over my protruding limbs in front of our little shed tent. The nights were frosty, and some snow fell from time to time. There was enough snow the second morning to exhibit the tracks of a big bull moose that actually strode over us during the night. Nearby the majestic animal horned several twining maples and must have cracked brush and made a lot of noise, but I slept on uncon- scious of it all. I had not learned very much more than that an at- tractive and hopeful iron formation existed here and then the low grub supply forced me to fly. All the packs were lighter. The grub was nearly gone so that the men could take a portion of my load. I took the lead. We struck out on a bee line for the C. P. E. Railroad track. Anxious about food and feeling the full force of cha- grin on account of my own carelessness, I tried to go as rapidly as possible. Our short rations had begun to tell on us, and I think we were all nervous, which made it worse. We had no firearm or fishing tackle. That night we ate the last of our supplies. A greasy A STARVATION HIKE 195 soup and thin really seemed to do us more harm than good. Next morning I rigged a noose of fine string on a pole about twelve feet long and gave it to Dunk, the younger man, to carry. He was instructed to slyly pass the loop over the head of a spruce hen, if we saw any of those beautiful and toothsome Canadian grouse. Unlike the ruffed grouse, they have dark plumage and dark meat and are stupidly unafraid of man, especially where they have net been hunted. About ten o'clock all of us saw one at about the same time. Chuck and I performed in front of it so as to engage its attention. It was perched on the limb of a banksian pine about nine feet from the ground, and sat near the bole. Dunk got the tree trunk between himself and the bird. Projecting the noose end of his pole very, very slowly and carefully up he passed the loop over the bird's head, gave a yank and we had our break- fast. One was not enough to satisfy us but it helped out wonderfully. There were more but all of them perched too high. During the day Dunk gaffled two more so that it looked as though we would not starve. Next day we saw a lot of spruce hens. Nearly al- ways they were on the ground, and when they flushed would fly up too high to reach with our snaffle pole. The only way to get them was to throw a missile. Chuck killed three in three throws with a club and then he started to boast. He said that when he was a boy he could beat any Indian throwing a tomahawk. Just about as he had satisfied his own ears with self- sung song of prowess, we came upon several spruce hens. Before when Chuck had thrown so successfully he had muttered after each victory, " God loves his own." It was not so much reverence as it might have been, for 196 THE IKON HTJNTEE now he gave such an exhibition of bad throwing and profanity as would make one's hair curl. The tantaliz- ing grouse just ran and dodged. He never did make it fly. Sometimes Chuck would get up to within four or five feet of it and then he would throw over its head. Finally I killed it with my hand pick as it ran by me within a couple of feet. This gave us four and we lived on them that day. The third day after our grub was gone we saw noth- ing to eat and ate nothing. By evening we were a lit- tle weak, but I think if we had not been nervous the ex- perience would not have been disagreeable. I had been caught out once before without food, but in an excusa- ble way. However, I remembered that I was so shaky that I missed a perfectly easy shot at a deer just because I wanted it so badly. Chuck and Dunk were becom- ing disagreeable ; not so much to me as to each other. Just after dark I was certain that I heard the sound of an ax. The men could not hear it. I lined it up carefully with my compass. Next morning I started in the direction of the sound of the ax I had heard the eve- ning before. At first Chuck and Dunk would not fol- low me, but as I strode on without stopping a moment to coax or parley, they came along, now angry at my seeming indifference. A little after eight o'clock we came to an old lumber camp and found two men in it. At first they objected to dividing their supplies with us. I told them our story and wound up by the calm but determined statement that we were hungry and des- perate and three to two, and would have food if we had to fight for it. This, with the promise I made to re- place the grub we ate and took, made them assume a different attitude. We ate our fill and rested a day. The camp was one of the best I ever saw. It had been A STARVATION HIKE 197 used very little and why it was abandoned I did not know, because there was fine standing white pine in the vicinity and very little evidence of cutting. The cruis- ers told us that their principals expected this pine to be placed upon the market at public auction soon, and they were to be prepared to bid on it intelligently. There was not a nail or piece of iron in the entire camp. Even the hinges were birchen. Peeled pine logs, clean and beautiful, made. the walls. A scoop-roof made by adzing logs until they are hollow and then laying them like tile, thus, ^^^A^/^ , makes a better covering than the clapboard roof of the South or the cedar shake roof of the North. In the center of the camp was an oblong mound of earth ten by sixteen feet in size. The dirt was held in place by side logs staked. Overhead a hole in the roof, fitted with a hanging, inside, shake chimney, carried off the smoke. This arrangement is called a " camboose," but why not a fourneau, by the Canadian French, I do not know. In some parts it is called a " caboose," but in this part of Canada it is a " camboose," and a camp fitted with one is known as a " camboose camp," and is popular because of ventilation and consequent health- fulness. Ordinary lumber camps are not much better than black holes of Calcutta, and the Canadian lumberjack was hard to wean away from the camboose. The cook prepared his meals by it as before an open fire, and baked the sweetest and best bread in baking kettles that he buried in the hot coals and ashes. I can taste it as I write. At night the men would sleep in a circle on the hewn log floor, with their feet towards the warm camboose and their heads away, and their torrents of stinking breath passing up the hanging wooden chim- 198 THE IKON HUNTEK ney. With such a place to sleep and plenty of beans cooked in the ashes, and fat pork and thick black strap molasses, the Canadian lumberjack of yesterday was a master workman in the woods. As soon as I got to Sudbury I engaged two reliable packers and sent with them back to the camp probably ten times as much grub as the cruisers had supplied me, for grub and life are the same in the big woods. Chuck went with them. It was a kind of fool experience, the whole thing, but it did serve to establish for me a credit in the woods of that country that stood me in good service several times in the future. It was too late to do anything more that fall, so my wife and I went off to the South Seas, Samoa, Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia and up through Torres Straits to New Guinea and on to the Dutch Is- lands, the Philippines, China and Japan. This took us until late in the following summer. Home again I organized a party and inaugu- rated a thorough surface search and survey of the re- gion north of the Sudbury nickel zone, from Wahna- pitae Lake on the east to, and even beyond, the Ahnap- ing chain of lakes on the west and well over the height of land to the north. This work and the activities flow- ing from it consumed several seasons. As soon as I had made enough headway to be certain that it was warranted, I decided to have a careful mag- netic survey made of the region. In order to have this done to the very best advantage, I went to Dr. Charles R. Van Hise, then at the head of the Department of Geology of the University of Wisconsin, and until his recent untimely death president of that great institu- tion .of catholic learning. A STARVATION HIKE 199 So far as I knew then and believe now, Dr. Van Hise was in a class by himself as an economic geologist. In fact, he had done much to help to create that branch of geology in America. He advised me to engage Ken- neth Leith, one of his assistants and now Dr. VanHise's successor in the department of geology at Wisconsin. Leith at once organized his crews, and I think while employed by me he did the first dial compass surveying and mapping ever carried on in Canada. Not much, if any, had been done in America. So thorough was he and so competent were his young college assistants, that the magnetic iron ore formation was mapped in a com- plete, highly satisfactory and practical manner. Dr. VanHise was the consultant in this work. It did not extend the boundaries of the possible ore zone much differently from my own first rough work, so far as staking claims went, but it proved up and made every- thing more certain. During a considerable period my time was entirely taken up in securing title to the ore lands and in financ- ing the enterprise. The most embarrassing condition was caused by the fact that a portion of the region adja- cent to the Vermillion River had been run over by gold prospectors who had staked a lot of claims, some over- lapping others and making for a confusion that de- manded care in unraveling. All of these were revived, so far as possible, with the idea that the claimants would get something out of them, and especially as against a Yankee contestant. My policy rather took the wind out of their sails. I could find only a few who had performed the require- ments of law and had acquired a title. But whenever anybody claimed anything and was not disputed by other prospectors, I would purchase his alleged right. 200 THE IRON HUNTER If I found a claimholder who really had any rights my practice was such as to cause him to doubt my san- ity. Having given the claims up long before because of insufficient gold values, the prospector would be con- scious of no value so far as his knowledge was concerned. Consequently, he would be very apt to feel that if he could get one hundred, five hundred or one thousand dollars for nothing he would be just that much to the good. Imagine then his surprise when I would settle with him for from double to twenty times what he asked. My reasons for doing this were twofold: conscience and policy. I was willing to pay for values that I knew of, that the other party was ignorant of, because I thought it was right, and also because I expected that whoever developed the properties would have their way made easier and clearer, than if the local woodspeople were squeezed to the lowest cent that would be likely to cause them to think they had been robbed. But I nearly ruined my reputation for sound judg- ment. It was necessary to have a good many of the lands cleared of all possible lispendens at Toronto. My legal work was well done by Hearst & McKay and by Hearst, McKay & Darling, of Sault Ste. Marie, On- tario. Mr. Hearst became premier of Ontario, and Mr. McKay became an able and respected Canadian judge. It was apparently the policy of every Canadian law firm to have one member a conservative and the other a liberal. I had heard that nothing could be obtained at the governmental departments at Toronto without paying for it ; that from top to bottom there had to be bribery. I saw nothing of the kind during years of experience and I do not believe a word of it. The fees of Hearst & McKay were reasonable, and they told me that they A STARVATION HIKE 201 never thought of paying any " grease " money or per- mitting graft. In legislative circles there was and is the same turpitude that discolored some American public characters and acts, and especially was this true there and here in matters involving land grants and the pub- lic domain. My business relations in Canada, cover- ing a long period and comprehending considerable trans- actions, were always agreeable. Where I slept in the little open shed tent, and was unawakened by the moose that nearly stepped on me, there is now a flourishing mining town reached by a branch of a transcontinental railroad. They did not develop there without much hard and enjoyable work. CHAPTEK XXIII FATHEBLY 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 finan- cial 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 in- terested. I learned years afterwards that during the luncheon hour he had wired to the late Joseph Sellwood, of Du- luth, asking if I knew what I was talking about when I talked iron ore. Mr. Sellwood was one of the most suc- cessful 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 202 GATES AND MITCHELL 203 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 conse- quent political unrest. All of rny 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 di- rector. 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 human- ist. 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. Chi- 204 THE IKON HUNTEK cago insistence would not be thwarted. Mr. Gates de- clared 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 build- ings," 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 conven- iences." Joseph Chamberlain took the advice. Mr. Garrett thoroughly rebuilt the Birmingham plant, and the un- dertaking was speedily justified by the increased earn- ings 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 associ- ate of Mr. Gates ; Blair & Co., New York bankers, and GATES AND MITCHELL 205 Joseph W. Sellwood. The agreement we had made ob- ligated 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 con- ditions and requirements relating to financing and de- veloping the properties. I was made president and treasurer of the company. Just as soon as I was given my quarter interest, I di- vided 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 com- monly 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 206 THE IKON HUNTER 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 pleas- ure 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 intro- duced 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 GATES AND MITCHELL 207 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 pub- lisher 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 con- victed. 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 cour- age and his desire to serve the public unflinchingly. Of course such things travel far, so that a man's only fun- damental 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 pub- lic 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 be- tween 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 208- THE IRON HUNTER 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 at- titude that I shall always remember with gratitude. It was in Mr. Gates' 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, arid 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 J. Mitchell, one of the first bankers of America. I had already seen President Shaughnessy, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, about building in from Sud- bury, 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 GATES AND MITCHELL 209 Canadian Northern. Also I had had a number of the best mining men of Lake Superior visit Moose Moun- tain with me, including Messrs. Helberg, Sutherland, Walter Fitch, arid also Professor Seaman, of the Michi- gan College of Mines department of geology. All of them were enthusiastic. Doctor Miller, Ontario Pro- vincial 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. CHAPTEK XXIV AT THE MOOSE MOUNTAIN CAMP ALL of us had moose meat throughout the year. The unwritten law of the unsurveyed country did not make a closed season. The only demand upon us was that nothing should be wasted, and that nothing should be killed that was not used for food or fur. Black bears were a nuisance. As camp robbers they became unbelievably bold. So we had traps out for them all the time. A French youth was our most expert bear trapper. He used pens, deadfalls, pits, steel traps, hooks on trees and sharpened spikes so driven into the open end of a pork barrel, that the bear could crawl in and lick the honey or maple sugar or burnt molasses bait on the bottom of the barrel, but could not crawl out. When the bear would start to back out the spikes would run into him and very soon Jacques would have a frantic bear cavorting around with a barrel on the forward two-thirds of his body, that held to him, and muffled his growls and roars. It was not very humane and I ordered them to kill a bear as soon as they caught him in a barrel. I am afraid that always they did not obey this. We also had in our crew an American boy named Harold, about the same age as Jacques. They did not get along well together and several times they clashed, only to a draw. Jacques insisted on flying a Canadian 210 EATING MOOSE MEAT 211 English beaver flag over the camp, and Harold would haul it down and run up the Stars and Stripes. Then there would be a fight and no flag at all for some time, when Harold would run up Old Glory and Jacques would pull it down, and another drawn scrap would be pulled off. Finally one day Jacques turned up missing. There was no one at the camp except the two boys. All hands had gone out to celebrate Dominion Day, July 1, or for some other reason. Harold searched for Jacques just as faithfully as though they were bosom friends. Finally he heard cries for help and discovered Jacques fast in a steel bear trap. The boy's hand was caught and his fingers crushed. He had stoically suffered and had hallooed for help, but now that Harold was there he would not ask any favors. He afterwards said that he thought, as a matter of course, that Harold would release him at once. The Yankee boy had no such idea. He made the French youth promise to be good and allow the American flag to fly over the camp. When he had settled everything he got a birch lever, and pressing down the huge springs that clamp the ponderous jaws of the bear trap together, he released his rival. There was great friendship between them forever afterwards, and the way Harold took care of Jacques 7 maimed hand was good to see. The boys at camp, as boys in the woods always do for entertainment and relief, and by boys I mean all hands young and old, played harmless, though some- times disagreeable, tricks upon every visitor that they dared subject to their fun. A prominent Chicago doc- tor was a guest. He shot a young moose. It was late in August and the two-year-old bull was fat and juicy and just the thing for camp. But it was too good a 212 THE IRON HUNTER chance for the boys to have some fun for them to over- look. So they sent word to Sudbury and had the doctor arrested by fake constables, not only at Sudbury but at several towns between there and the American border. Even after the August moose-slayer had gotten out of Canada they had a telegram for his arrest sent to the American Sault. By this time it had gotten on his nerves, as he had spent nearly two hundred dollars in fees, tips, bribes, eats and drinks, and had obtained the impression that the Canadians are the biggest lot of crooks in the world. To escape further persecution he hid in a cellar, and left town towards Chicago on a freight train. It was a long time before he discovered that he had not seen a bona-fide Canadian constable, which did not prevent him from continuing the story he had been telling of how he had escaped from the Northwest Mounted Police, when he had not been within a thou- sand miles of where that fine body of men operate. Upon an afternoon in early November Donald Mann's private car was sidetracked at Sudbury. He had not then given into the British exchequer enough to have been made a knight, so he was just plain Dan Mann, a big, wholesome, industrious, brave, enjoyable person. I met him at the railroad and took him to Moose Mountain. By this time I had gouged a road into the wilderness and had taken in drills, boiler and other machinery. The road was not a Via Appia by any means. It clam- bered over rocky kopjes and ascended a great norite dyke, that may form the northern rim of a huge volcanic crater that, according to the conjecture of some, includes the entire Sudbury nickel formation. This wall of rock gave us a wonderful view that EATING MOOSE MEAT 213 strained the vision to the sky line. Not a soul lived, or ever was, where the sweep of eye ranged from hill to valley and lake. Pointed conifers looked like so many green serpent tongues or earth spearmen march- ing up to attack the hosts of Jove. Winding over plains and across muskeg marshes, where the corduroy floated like pontoons and the horses should have been shod with driving calks, the blind worm trail drew us on. My companion speculated upon the agricultural and timber value of the region, and has had his roseate prophecies already justified. We crossed several creeks arid rivers and came to a long, flat stretch of gold-bear- ing sands carried down by the old ice, and by the west branch of the Verraillion. Upon this peneplain grew banksian pine arid blue berries and trailing arbutus. At early springtime the air is laden with the smell of heavy sugars of blos- soms. I never pass a sandy stretch similar to this one that I do not especially marvel at the chemistry of nature, and ask where does the floweret growing in the white sand obtain its sensuous breath of sweetest garden love, rare enough to make the wild rose marry the wood violet if God's nature police would permit. I told Mr. Mann about a close call I had one early morning in this garden of cpigaea. I had left camp long before daylight. Just when the sun made the iri- descent dew drops clinging to the arbutus sepals look like little fairy soap bubbles, I entered this dry a die stretch. I drank the morning fragrance in all its moist freshness. It seemed to me that I could taste it and I believe I did. All at once my senses refused to function, or else everything took on such a dead average of delight that I could neither distinguish nor record it. Greedy for 214 THE IKON HUNTEK more of the nectar I got down upon my hands and knees, and crawled among the lush flowers, sniffing and sniffing deep rhinal drafts from the acres of pink and white emarginate clusters that carpeted the earth. Pine needles bore up the hairy vines and waxen leaves, and I did riot make a sound. What is it tells us of the presence of the unseen ? A subtle something registers mysteriously and is vaguely communicated to our senses, whereupon we uncon- sciously look up and around. This happened to me while, like Nebuchadnezzar, I was on all fours. Horror! an Indian stood with leveled rifle pointing at me. I gave a whoop and he gave one too. Then he started to run away. I ordered him to stop and he obeyed. He managed to make me under- stand that he had taken me for a bear, and that he would have shot before only I kept on moving, and he waited for a standing shot to make it sure. When he saw me as a man he was greatly frightened because of the Indian superstition that a bear, and also some other animals, may turn into a man. The bear is nearly always an Indian avatar. Nor was the Indian aware of the presence of a white man in that country. It was a close call indeed. I was glad. The Indian was glad. I gave him all of the tobacco I had and we parted good friends. Some time later I saw him on the Abitibi. CHAPTER XXV SIB DONALD MANN PROPOSES TO USE DOUBLE-BITTED AXES AS WEAPONS IN A DUEL WITH A RUSSIAN COUNT I ENJOYED Dan Mann all the time. He was as open as a full moon and looked as honest. Our first night together in the big woods was spent like boys who had not seen each other for a long time. That was the way it was with us, for we had never seen each other before except that all real men are always boys and very much alike; it is only when there is something the matter with men that they are queer and different. We talked nearly all night. He told me quite fully the remarkable story of his life his inter- esting association with McKenzie, their very modern financiering and much of the business minutiae, the mastery of which is by some standards of judging supposed to make men great. Both McKenzie and Mann had started as poor boys in Canada. Mann did not go to school. He had to work or starve. In the winter he went to the woods as a lumberjack. One winter he spent in Cheboygan County, Michigan, making ties. He became a fine ax- man and expert in swinging a broad ax. From the woods and the ranks of a common section laborer he developed in early middle life to be a wizard of industry, and a transcontinental railroad builder. The McKenzie and Mann policy, bv which they con- 215 216 THE IRON HUNTER structed disconnected portions of railroads across the country, and obtained many small land grants and bo- nuses without attracting the opposition of the powerful Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk giants, is a story unexcelled of clever business and political strategy. When they got ready they just connected a lot of blind termini and lo! a transcontinental fabric. When it was too late the enemy awakened. There is room for all of them. I think it was our second night together in the woods when I asked him about a duel he had in China, ac- cording to a story told me in Tien Tsin by Captain Rich, then American railroad engineer for the Chinese government. " It was such a fool thing," he said, " and I was scared to death and could not see any humor in it then. A lot of us had gone to China to obtain railroad fran- chises. The railroad building world was represented: Americans, British, Germans, Belgians, French, Rus- sians and so forth, in Shanghai. We were the only Ca- nadians and the foreigners never knew whether to class us with the British or the Americans. The Chinese government had decided to build railroads. They were determined thus to connect Pekin with Canton, via Hankow on the Yangtse. Captain Rich of Minneapolis had charge of things for Li Hung Chang, who was then at his zenith of power, the old rascal. There was much delay. We were making our headquarters at Shanghai. " Some of us combined our interests and finally there were several pools working, one against the other. In the evening we would gather at a place on Bubbling Well Road, which as you know runs back from the bund to the country near the International Institute. " Here we would play a stiff game of poker, drink DUEL WITH A RUSSIAN COUNT 217 Scotch whiskey and josh each other. I had it in my head all the time that a Russian, with a title, who was always eager to sit in, was crooked. I watched him. One night, near twelve o'clock, when several were woozy with booze, and several were not who pretended to be, I caught Mr. Russian holding out cards. Ho wasn't as big as the Slav average, and when I slapped him for calling me a liar he nearly went down. There was some commotion, which soon passed over, and I went to my room in the Astor House. Hotels all over the world were named in those days for the old lower Broadway Astor House of the forties. " Next day I received a challenge to fight. It made me nervous enough. Not being what is called a natural born gentleman, I was all the more anxious to conduct myself becomingly. I had never had a pistol or a sword in my hands, and I felt squeamish in my abdo- men whenever I thought about it. Nothing to do but to go to a Shanghai friend. He asked me what weapons I knew how to use and told me it was my privilege to choose. I told him I had never had any practice with anything except a pick, shovel and ax. " My friend advised me to select double-bitted axes as weapons. " I knew I could easily cut the Russian's head off with an ax and I fancy he thought so too, because his agent said they would not even consider a fight with such weapons ; that they were vulgar and did not come within the code duello. " My friend told him that in Canada the ax was a weapon of chivalry; that it was classical to speak of burying or digging up the hatchet, meaning a small ax, and that it was the sword that was vulgar, citing that they used it to cut corn with and butcher hogs. 218 THE IRON HUNTER " There was much parleying. We stuck for the ay and the duel was off. As the Russian backed off I got very blood-thirsty, and pictured myself constantly as swinging at his neck just at the collar button with a five-pound, double-edged ax. Perhaps he had a wart on his neck. If so I would split it clean through the center." Going over Moose Mountain lands seemed to be a more or less perfunctory work for Mr. Mann. He was large and heavy, and had been riding in a private car too much for the good of his wind. I showed him the biggest outcrop, a veritable mountain of ore it looked, and took him to several exposures I had stripped, and also showed him many diamond drill cores. " What's the use ? " he puffed. " That first big show- ing is enough and to spare if we can agree on a pricei, and all the rest is velvet. 77 I did not know that a visitor from Paris that I had entertained at Moose Mountain for some days, and who seemed deeply interested, was really an expert for McKenzie and Mann. They wanted the property for financing purposes. With it they could make a strong showing of the wealth surely existent in the unknown domain. Cobalt was just beginning to make known its fabulous riches in silver. It would be easy to make an exhibit that would enable them to obtain all the money they desired. In this way I sold my Moose Mountain interests for enough to insure a modest independence, and to per- mit me to live such life of study and readiness for public service as I might choose. McKenzie and Mann built many miles of railroad by way of connecting their transcontinental links, and in doing so they opened this great mining region. A DUEL WITH A RUSSIAN COUNT 219 branch to Key Inlet, on Georgian Bay, gave them a harbor and place for ore docks and water shipment. Mr. Mann volunteered to name for me the town that would grow at Moose Mountain. Mr. Sell wood de- sired the honor. I did not know this. To me it was a small matter indeed. When Mr. Sell wood broached it to Mr. Mann, the latter remembered his promise to me. "That's nothing," said the former, "let's play a game of seven-up. You represent Osborn. If I win the town will be given my name; if you win, call it Osborn." Sellwood won and I am glad of it. He has a good many monuments and deserves them all. My first thought when I received the money from Moose Mountain, was of my wife. She had stood by valiantly from twelve dollars a week and wolves, until now we had quite enough to enjoy life with; not that life had not been enjoyable all the time, because it had been. I made and carried out plans to help all our relatives who needed help. This included the happy privilege of insuring the comfort of my mother for the remainder of her wonderful life of suffering and service. I also made provision for continuing the care of two brothers, who were entirely dependent upon me because of com- plete invalidism. There was neither disinclination to do these things, nor self-praise for the performance. It seemed to me to be a clear and pleasing duty. I had been blessed with means and health and they had not. Perhaps God had given me some for them and made me a trustee. I thought He had, and that I owed it to them. Then, too, I could not tell why I was not in their place 220 THE IRON HUNTER and they in mine, so I was determined to treat them as I would have wished to have been treated if our condi- tions had been reversed. My youngest brother William, possessing an alert and acute intellect, has been completely bedridden for years and has suffered severe pain. Throughout all of it, and the prospects no better for as long as he lives, he has been a cheerful Christian with the best personal phi- losophy I have ever known about. From time to time I have given things to my home town, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, which has always shown me a sympathy and friendship and support that would be a sufficient reward for any man, no matter if his deserts were easily much greater than mine; and an inspiration as well. In return for its attitude I loved the town and all its people, and nurtured always in my heart a desire to do things for it. I could not give it much, but I could do what lay within my power to show my appreciation. Early in my travels I began to select curios for the fine Melville museum in the high school. Once in Japan I procured the first stone torii ever sent to America and also several Shinto me- morial lanterns. These artistic things are in the gov- ernment park at the Sault. In Bucharest I saw a bronze lupa di Roma, the she wolf that gave mothering care to Romulus and Remus. It was given by the city of Rome to the city of Bucharest to commemorate the conquest of the Dacians by Trojan. I had a duplicate cast at Naples, which now occupies a place in the city hall grounds. It symbolizes the tender relation between animals and mankind, and their inter- dependence. Italians at Sault Ste. Marie at once par- ticularly sensed its classical bearing. A miniature rep- DUEL WITH A RUSSIAN COUNT 221 lica of this wolf in gold was recently given to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson by the city of Rome. When Etienne Brule came to Sault Ste. Marie in 1618, he found the majestic river bank flanked by great elms, indigenous here. Long ago almost all of these paid tribute to the axmen, who might easily have spared these noble trees, but did not. To restore them, and also cure a treeless city, I gave a thousand young elms. Several hundred are growing finely and in a few years will change and improve the appearance of the town. As a tired boy in Milwaukee I often slept on Sunday morning, in a room near St. James Episcopal Church, until the chimes of St. James would awaken me. Then I would lie and listen, and half awake I would dream things. My room was in a cheap tenement, back on Clybourne Street. St. James is on stately Grand Avenue. It was then the church of Alexander Mitchell and other millionaires. Across from it was the Mitchell mansion, and near to it on the east was the rich home of James Kneeland, with well-kept grounds and swans, and ducks with red mandibles, floating in a miniature mirror lake. It was then all another world, and I felt awed by it. This did not curb my dreams. Some day I would give chimes to some town, and they would be heard by other poor boys whose hearts would be made glad and light by the songs of the bells. Better chimes than those and better played, and more and larger bells eleven in all hang in St. James, of Sault Ste. Marie. That is how I, a Presbyterian, came to give the bells to an Episcopal church. Not more grand would they peal forth for any name or creed. 222 THE IRON HUNTER How are we moved about like checkers on the board of life. My dear friend, the rector of St. James of Sault Ste. Marie when the bells were hung, is now, as I write, the rector of St. James of Milwaukee. But the pride and power of yesterday are gone for St. James of Milwaukee, and it is a better and more useful church. I love it for those chimes of long ago. CHAPTEK XXVI WORLD WORKERS IN IRON IN ALL AGES THERE is no way of telling much about the be- ginning of the age of iron. Kitchen middens and heaps of flint chips tell the story of the service of bones and stones all over the world where primitive man has left his wild kindergarten marks. Copper implements were used at a very early time, and there were copper shops at many places about Lake Su- perior where the native metal was beaten into knives, spoons, pans, pots and other utensils. One of the largest single discoveries of prehistoric copper imple- ments was made at Sault Ste. Marie, at a place once an island in St. Mary's River, but now an esker-like ridge of stream-washed gravel and boulders that marks the topography of the town from west to east. I have my modest home on this old ridge. Such finds as this one of well-made articles that seemed to be harder than the native metal have given rise to the common but er- roneous belief that the ancients knew how to temper copper, an art lost to this age. The outer surface of the beaten copper is somewhat harder from pounding and water and air hardening. But almost never is anything of iron found with the stones or the bones or the copper. This is not because iron was not wrought, but because it is more perishable when exposed to oxygen, either in the air or water, even 223 224 THE IKON HUNTEK than wood under some conditions. There is reason to believe that iron-making was the first work in metals done by mankind, because the art is advanced beyond any other among the wholly uncivilized tribes of Africa and in other parts of the world where primitive man ex- ists to-day. From Somaliland to Zululand in Africa I found iron hoes and iron assegai points common among the wild natives. The making of these gave employment to con- siderable numbers of persons. There was a distinct class of iron workers in every tribe of any size, except among such lowly ones as the pigmy Dokos or others of their undeveloped kind. The art was handed down from father to son, and while methods were similar, there was variety in them and also a difference in skill. They smelted ores, and do so yet, except where scraps of iron can be procured. Some workers used stones for hammers and bark-tied, hardened wood for tongs; others had iron hammers and tongs quite well fashioned. Stone anvils are used, and the smith usually sits at his work. Sometimes hollowed sticks of wood were used to hold the cold end of the piece of iron that was being wrought. Bellows are most often made of the hide of an ox or some other animal, often of goat skins. In one corner of the bag thus formed is a wooden pipe about a yard long and bound in air tight with rawhide thongs. The other end of the skin bag is fastened to pieces of flattened wood forming a mouth that shuts quite tight when the bellows is being operated. This was done by hand, the smith's assistant holding on to rawhide handles above and below on the wooden jaws. A stone weight on the wooden pipe holds the bellows down quite firmly. Two bellows are used. By working them al- ternately a steady blast of air of considerable force is WOULD WOEKEKS IN IRON 225 secured. A clay tunnel connects the wooden pipe outlet of the bellows with a charcoal fire built in a rude forge in the ground. For smelting iron ore a larger number of bellows were employed. Very often I found abandoned ant houses utilized for a furnace and the natives even drive out the ants and use their formidable formicaries not only for furnaces, but also for grain bins and even for human dwellings. Their native hoes contained good enough iron so that a gun maker at Birmingham made an Enfield rifle out of some that Livingstone sent to England. Abbe Rochon, of France, member of the Academies of Sciences of Paris and Peter sburgh, Astronomer of the Marine, Keeper of the King's Philosophical Cabinet, Inspector of Machines, Money, etc., was in Madagascar in 1768. Referring to iron ore he says : " Iron mines of an excellent quality are dispersed in great profusion all over the island, and very near to the surface of the earth. The Malegaches break and pound the ore and place it between four stones lined with potter's clay; they then employ a double wooden pump, instead of a pair of bellows, to give the fire more strength (blast) ; and in the space of an hour the mineral is in a state of fusion. The iron produced by this operation is soft and malleable : no better is known in the world." Abbe Rochon was a wide traveler as an official and scientific observer. In his opinion the ancient Malag- asy iron furnace was peculiar to that people. Inci- dentally he also tells an interesting story about an ad- venturer in Madagascar who buncoed Benjamin Frank- lin. Poor Richard gave Benjowski letters of recom- mendation which he used in America to organize an ill- fated expedition for the seizure of Madagascar. Ben- 226 THE IKON HUNTER jowski was killed by French marines. I was interested in seeing the spot where he came to grief. All African travelers report seeing iron ore and iron workers, so it is certain that it is distributed all over that continent. I found big outcroppings of iron ore near to both coal and limestone. Blue hematite speci- mens that I brought out and had analyzed turned out to be of fine Bessemer quality. There is no iron manu- facturing in Africa except the rude native operations, but it is entirely possible and even probable that Africa will supply the world with steel, as it surely can do. Even now there is a considerable shipment to America and Europe of chrome iron ore from the mines near Selukwe in Southern Rhodesia. The only other large production of chrome iron ore is from the French mines in New Caledonia. In every one of the eighteen provinces of China as well as in Manchuria there are deposits of iron ore. I have visited many of these. Some of them have been worked for centuries in a small and clumsy man- ner, not much better than the Africans did. Lack of pumping facilities kept them on the surface, but even if pumps had been available they would not have been used on account of feng shui: their fear of offending the earth demons. Both men and women work as miners. The men are paid an equivalent of four to five cents in our money and the women two to six cents for a day of eight hours. In addition some rice and a vegetable called miso are served. A little while before he died Li Hung Chang estab- lished a steel plant near Hankow, the first one in China. It was a kind of junk affair at first, but has been im- proved. Iron working in China is an ancient art and at some WORLD WORKERS IN IRON 227 periods reached a high state of perfection. In Chinese collections I saw fine coats of mail for man and horse made of delicate woven wire, so as to be light, elastic and effective; also lances, shields, chains, traps and other things made before guns came into use. There are great iron ore deposits and coal measures in Shansi, Chi-li, Shantung and Yunnan. In fact, there is more or less iron ore in all of the Chinese provinces. The iron district in Shansi and extending beyond is one of the largest in the world and will some day be a source of world's supply. At the present time very little is being done. I visited a number of surface workings in Shansi, where the methods are crude in- deed, although they do produce an engraving steel of unexampled hardness. A great many persons were employed in iron ore mining and in iron making. Their condition of life is very miserable and their pay is less than two cents a day in our values. Ignorance and superstition seem to be instruments of conservation in China, just as avarice is the cause of feverish destruc- tion in our country. Some day the world will turn to China for iron and coal and the vast untouched quan- tities there of these twin necessities will be appreciated. During 1916, 1917 and 1918 Japan has made large loans to the Northern Chinese government, taking as security vast mineral concessions comprehending all of China's known iron ore fields. It is even charged that Japan took advantage of the world's engrossment in war to exploit China. If the Northern forces are vic- torious in the civil war in China, a final title may be obtained by Japan. But if the Southern armies win, Japan will get nothing; nor is she likely to profit by a compromise that seems probable between Canton and Pekin. Japan's attempt is a gamble in iron ore. 228 THE IKON HUNTEE I spent several months following the tracks of Abbe Hue in China, and the trails of Marco Polo not only in China, but in other countries of Asia. Polo began his travels in 1260. In that age his tours were a source of world wonder. He brought back to Europe informa- tion of incalculable value about the work of mankind in the Orient where in every channel of activity there was higher development. Men in the Orient were thinking better and working with their hands better than the people of the West. Europe was just begin- ning to see the dawn of a new day after centuries of decadence and obliteration. A great many pronounced Polo an impostor and discredited his reports. Others believed in him and through these Europe was to have the benefit of Polo's travels and learning. It is aston- ishing how many of the modern arts in their develop- ment in the western world can be traced to a period coeval with the post-Polo era. Before that the use of coal was scarcely known, if at all, in Europe. Iron making was nearly as primitive as it is in the wilds of Africa to-day. In China, Persia, Arabia, Turkey and India Polo learned by hearsay or actual contact and ob- servation of vast deposits of iron ore and of most won- derful handicraft in steel of the finest texture. Con- cerning these things in the kingdom of Kerman, then recently conquered by the Tartars, Polo reported " plenty of veins of steel and ondanique ; the people are skillful in making steel harness of war, swords, bows, quivers, arms of every kind, bridle bits, spurs, needles, etc." The " steel " mines referred to are probably the Parpa iron mines on the road from Kerman to Shiraz, called even to-day M'aden-i-fulad (steel mine) ; they are idle now. I saw old Kerman weapons, daggers, knives, stirrups and other things made from steel, of exquisite WORLD WORKERS IN IRON 229 workmanship and more than justifying all of Polo's praise. It is not quite certain what is meant by Polo's " ondan- ique." Ramusio, of Venice, often asked Persian mer- chants who visited him about it. They agreed in stat- ing that it was a kind of steel of such surpassing excellence and value that in the ancient days a man who possessed a mirror or a sword of andanic or ondan- ique regarded it as he would a precious jewel. The sword blades of India had a great fame all over the East and I heard them referred to as having been made by workmen now extinct, with whose passing also was lost an irrecoverable art. At Teheran I learned that Indian blades and considerable fine Indian steel had been imported until quite recent times. Ctesias mentions two woncferful Indian swords that he got from the King of Persia and his mother. It is not unlikely that this fine Indian steel is the ferrum candidum of which the Malli and Oxydracae sent one hundred talents weight as a present to Alexander the Great. Indian iron and steel are mentioned in the Periplus as imports into the Abyssinian ports and to this day may be seen fine steel spear heads and imple- ments at Dire Doua and Addis Abeba, perhaps relics of those ancient imports. Ferrum Indicum appears among the Oriental prod- ucts subject to duty in the Roman tariffs of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Salmasius notes that among the rare Greek chemical writings there is a metallur- gical paper " On the Tempering of Indian Steel." Edrisi mentions that excellent iron was produced in the " cold mountains " northwest of Jiruft. In the Jihan Numa, or Great Turkish Geography, is the state- ment that the "steel" mines of Miriz, on the borders 230 THE IKON HUNTEK of Kerman, were famous. Teixeira substantiates this, Says Edrisi : " The Hindus excel in the manufacture of iron and in the preparation of those ingredients along with which it is fused to obtain that kind of soft iron which is usually styled Indian steel. They also have workshops wherein are forged the most famous sabers in the world. It is impossible to find anything to surpass the edge you get from Indian steel." Arabic literature contains many references to the fame of the sword blades of India. Even the ancient poets sang of them as may be read about in Freytag's translation of Hamasa's collection of old Arab verse. Timur used Indian blades, and had for his own use a Hindu sword of matchless fineness. In the accounts of the Mohammedan conquest of India and on down through the reigns of Akbar, Shah Jahan and other Mughals, the Hindu disbelievers' execution is referred to as being sent to Jihannam with the well- watered blade of the Hindu sword. The sword is consequently personified as a " Hindu of Good Family," according to the idea that a dead Hindu recalcitrant was the only good Hindu, the origin no doubt of the American phrase as applied to the American aborigine, " A good Indian is a dead Indian." Throughout the Malay Archipelago I found primitive iron furnaces such as were used thousands of years ago in Arabia and India, suggesting that they were per- haps inducted by Arab traders. In Madagascar I saw a different type of furnace that seemed to have been originated by the Malagasy. Indeed work in iron has been a dignified art and distinctive industry all over the world for multiplied centuries. Chardin says of the steel of Persia : " They combine it with Indian steel which is more tractable and held in WOELD WORKEKS IN IRON 231 greater estimation." Dupre, a hundred years ago, writes that he had thought that the famous Persian sabers were made from ore from certain mines in Khor- asan, but that he had discovered himself in error in that there are " no mines of steel " in that province, and that he had learned of the use of steel disks imported from Lahore. Kenrick suggests that the " bright iron " mentioned by Ezekiel in chapter xxvn as among the wares of Tyre, must have been Indian steel, because mentioned in connection with calamus and cassia and other exports from India. Pottinger enumerates steel among the imports from India into Kerman. Elphinstone the Accurate, in his Caubul, tells how much Indian steel is prized in Af- ghanistan, but that the best swords are made in Persia and in Syria. In his " History of India " he calls at- tention to the fact that the ancients sought steel in India and that the oldest known Persian poem contains praise of it; that it continues to be the material used in the scintillating scimitars of Damascus and Khorasan. An old Indian officer in the British service found no common knowledge of steel-making among the people. He tried to tell a native, who claimed that steel ore and iron ore were separate and distinct materials, how steel was manufactured. The Indian was disgusted and displayed his feelings plainly by exclaiming: " You would have me believe that if I put an ass in the furnace it will come forth a horse." Paulus Jovius in the sixteenth century speaks of the high repute of Kerman scimitars and lance points. The blades were eagerly sought by the Turks. Such was their unusual reputation for quality that it was a common boast that with one blow a Kerman sword 232 THE IRON HUNTEE would cleave a European metal helmet without turning the edge. Undoubtedly the art of fabricating fine steel and of generally utilizing iron ore was known at the very dawn of history and is even prehistoric. The world has shifted its skill to the Occident. Volumes are required to tell the story of iron ore and its manufacture in Europe, where the Germans, Swedes and English have rivaled each other in methods and production. Now the great industry has crossed the Atlantic to find its highest development in both quality and volume. The United States leads the world in iron ore production and in its manufacture. It is an enviable position, with many interclashing responsibilities. The largest business organization in the world is devoted to the iron industry. As one stands illumined by the furnace incandescence in some vast modern forge of Vulcan, with its wearing human machinery and its ponderous but delicately adjusted cranes, dippers, cars and rolls, all moving as perfectly as watch wheels at the magic touch of subtle electric currents, he cannot escape the wish that man's relation to man might be as perfectly and happily arranged. CHAPTER XXVII CONCENTRATION OF LEAN ORES IN THE UNITED STATES SIDERITE MAGNETITE HEMATITE AT some of the great open pit mines in the Mesaba district of Minnesota, sixty per cent, iron ore has been mined and loaded on the cars for less than five cents a ton, even charging to cost account the outlay for removing forty to sixty feet of overburden that covered the ore lense. When this is taken into consideration and also the added fact that there are adequate high grade ore reserves developed and unde- veloped to supply the world for a hundred years and longer, it is almost amazing that lean ores can be profit- ably used in America. And yet they are. The high grade iron ores known outside of the United States are of uncertain volume, and those in the Scandinavian arctics and in Brazil and China are not advantageously located. Consequently what are regarded in this coun- try as lean ores are esteemed of great value in other iron- making countries. I visited the magnetic concentrating plants in Lulea and Dunderland and found them producing a high- grade ore by concentrating processes that are successful. Far more unusual and interesting is the successful use of lean ores in America, where the high-grade ores are not only plenteous but are located perfectly for both economic mining and transportation. On the Meno- minee Range at Iron Mountain, near my old home at 233 234 THE IRON HUNTER Florence, an ore running about thirty per cent, in metallic iron has been profitably produced at the Pewa- bic mine. This ore is low in phosphorus and high in silica and is an ideal mixing material with Mesaba ores. On a Minnesota range thirty-five per cent, ores are raised to fifty-eight per cent, by washing. The clumsy " grizzlies " used in this process are most ef- fective. At Duluth, Hay den, Stone & Company and their associates have a large experimental plant where magnetic ores containing thirty per cent, of metal are enriched to sixty-two and one-half per cent, by an in- genious electrical treatment perfected by a Hoosier. They treat one hundred tons of rocklike material a day, which is finally transformed into a rich sinter that is in demand. This method alone will make it possible to utilize millions upon millions of tons of lean magnetite that belts Lake Superior like a containing encasement. The only place in North America that siderite is con- centrated is at the Magpie Mine on the Lake Superior north shore in Canada, above Sault Ste. Marie. The siderite deposits there are very extensive. They are located in a wilderness abounding in caribou, moose, bear and wolves and other wildest animals, where I ex- plored for several years. A formidable plant has been erected for the treatment of these ores by a method adopted from Austria, where siderite was largely and successfully refined before the war. The operations have been of especial interest to American miners of iron ore and metallurgists. Although new and most unusual in this country, the Magpie siderite operation presents no complications and is in fact simple. The roasting is done in regular cement kilns eight feet in di- ameter, one hundred twenty-five feet long, inclined one- half inch per foot and rotated once in two minutes. CONCEISTTKATION OF LEAN OKES 235 The ore is crushed to about three inches and fed into the upper end of this kiln. The lower end of the kiln is fired with powdered coal, pulverized so that ninety per cent, will pass a two hundred mesh screen. A single piece of ore remains in the kiln about three hours ; that is, that is the length of time it takes for the ore to work its way from the intake to the discharge end. Ordinary siderite, without any sulphur present in the form of pyrites, requires very little heat for driving off the CO 2 gas and changing the ore into hematite. This is an index of Nature's method. Magpie ore how- ever contains about one per cent, sulphur and eight per cent. lime. As the lime has a strong affinity for the sulphur, it requires a finishing temperature of about 1100 degrees Centigrade to dead roast the ore, that is to eliminate all the sulphur. At the Helen Mine in the same district there is a siderite which runs somewhat higher in sulphur than above. They experimented with this at the Magpie and found that a rotary kiln will not satisfactorily handle the ore containing over two per cent, in sulphur. The roasting drives off the volatile and at the same time reduces the sulphur to a point suitable for the blast furnace. The siderite, together with the other carbonates, oc- curs as a band standing nearly vertical and striking northeast and southwest. This band is broken by fold- ing and faults at several points. The width of the siderite being mined varies from twenty-eight feet to sixty-two feet, the average width being about forty-two feet. The carbonate deposit, as a whole, is a sedi- mentary bed lying between a series of acid and basic flaws and tuffs of volcanic origin. The wall rock on the south is talcose schist with well defined schistosity, while on the north it is an ellipsoidal basalt showing very 236 THE IKON HUNTER little schistosity. The contacts are not well defined and are not clean, so that much care is necessary in mining to make sure that no ore is left on the wall and that no rock is broken into the stopes. Underground the schist on the south wall has very much the appear- ance of the ore, but the drill cuttings from the holes give a good indication of when the wall is reached. The body being mined has an approximate length of 1350 feet. The carbonate band is very much longer than this but narrows down on either end so that it is not found profitable to mine the ore except in this area. In roasting the siderite at the Magpie there is a loss in volatile of about thirty per cent, by weight, so that nearly three tons of ore have to be mined to produce two tons of finished material. Taking this into considera- tion, together with the fact that the actual roasting op- eration costs are considerable, it was necessary to devise a very cheap mining system in order to make the opera- tion as a whole commercially successful. Several min- ing methods were studied and approximate costs worked out, but before any method was definitely chosen, it was decided to sink the shaft and open up drifts on two main haulage levels to definitely determine the nature of the ground and the material to be mined. The shaft was therefore started on the north side of the ore body about sixty feet from the north contact of the ore. The shaft is twenty-four feet by eight feet in the rough, and is timbered with twelve inch by twelve inch sets, so that the inside dimensions are twenty-two feet by six feet. It is divided into four compartments, two skip compartments for balanced Kimberly skips, one cage compartment and one ladder and pipe way. The shaft was sunk two hundred and CONCENTRATION OF LEAN ORES 237 five feet to the second level. It was decided to use eighty-foot levels and to leave a forty-five foot floor pillar to surface. A crosscut was run on each level from the shaft to the south contact of the ore, and drifts started from here in either direction, these drifts follow- ing the south contact as nearly as possible. The nature of the ore passed through in these drifts was closely ob- served and samples taken and analyses made for each ten-foot section of the drifts. No timber was necessary in any of the drifts, but it was noted that the ore showed a great number of slips or cleavage planes. These slips have no general direction but intersect each other at all angles and are extremely smooth. In scaling a new drift, large wedge-shape pieces will fall out from the first blow of the scaling bar, but when a drift is once thoroughly scaled, very little material loosens from later blasting. On account of this feature of the ore, it was necessary to determine on a method of mining which would always keep the miners close to the back and under cover. It was therefore decided to use the sub- level stoping system in mining this deposit. The ore body was blocked off into three stopes longi- tudinally, divided opposite the shaft by a fifty-foot shaft pillar, and four hundred feet west of the shaft by a diabase dyke, one hundred feet wide, which cuts the body at right angles. This gives three stopes on each level, approximately four hundred feet long. To de- velop these stopes, a raise is put up at each end of the block and a sublevel run to connect the raises. The first sub is eighteen feet above the level. The other sublevels are twenty-three feet from floor to floor. On the upper levels, three subs are used between levels, but below the second level four subs are used, making the distance between levels one hundred and three feet. After the 238 THE IRON HUNTER stopes have been developed in this manner, the raise at the end of the block nearest the shaft is made into a permanent ladder and pipe way. Air lines are run along the floor of the subs to the far end, and mining commenced. Machines are set to work breaking down around the raise at the far end of the block and this opening is enlarged until the stope is completely cut off. The first sub is then drawn back about fifty to sixty feet. By keeping the first sub back this distance, the muck does not run into the face. This also gives the men working on this sub a chance to hand blast a proportion of the larger pieces which break from the upper benches. Most of these drop so that they can be reached from the first sub. Those dropping in the open stope have to be blasted as they come down into the chutes. After the stope has been cut off from wall to wall, section cutting is done on each sub. At first it was the intention to carry the subs step fashion with the upper subs overhanging the lower ones, but the ground was found to be so full of cleavage planes that these over- hanging benches fell when blasting out the section cut, so that now all the subs, except the bottom ones, are carried back together, the face of the stope being ver- tical. In section cutting the stope, the machine is set up in the sub and an eight-foot bench blasted off. This requires five holes, two in front and three behind. These holes are about seven feet deep and break to the bottom. Very little mucking is necessary for the next set-up and little scaling as the back is only eight feet high. This section cut is carried from wall to wall and the stope holes are drilled in the bench below from the same set-ups. The back holes are drilled with stopers after the section cut has been completed. The CONCENTRATION OF LEAN ORES 239 whole face of the stope is then blasted off with a battery shot. Very little powder is required, either in the sec- tion cut or in the stope blast, as there is always an open face to break to. When a stope on one level has been drawn back to the starting raise, the chutes are taken out, rails and pipe lines removed and the main level used as a sub. In this way all mucking is avoided. The ore remaining in the bottom of one level, which will not run out of the chutes, is dropped to the level below. On the bottom sub no back holes are used, ex- cept in the corners of the stope, as this sub is carried higher than the rest, thus leaving a thinner space be- tween it and the second sub. The rail and pipe lines, removed from the level which is drawn back, are used on the lower level in the development work, so that very- few new pipes or rails are required. On the main haulage level, crosscuts are run off the main drift at twenty-five feet intervals. Raises are put up from these crosscuts so that the raises are space'd about twenty-five feet center to center each way. These raises extend only to the first sub. Ordinary round timber chutes are used in these raises, with three inch round birch stoppers. A large amount of blasting is necessary in the chutes at times on account of the benches coming down in large pieces, but otherwise no trouble is experienced in loading cars. All tramming is done by hand, two-ton cars being used on a grade of one per cent, in favor of the loads. They have done away with cross switches for spotting cars at the shaft. In place of them they use a truck running on rails in a shallow pit transversely across the station arid about twelve feet back from it. Cars can be run onto this track from any track and spotted for either skip track or the cage track as may be required. All out-bound loaded 240 THE IKON HUNTER cars come up the main crosscut on the one track. The lead for No. 1 skip lies with this main line. Cars to dump in No. 1 skip come up the main, cross the mack- inaw onto this lead and dump directly in the skip. Returning they are backed onto the mackinaw, which is then spotted for the return track, through a spring switch out onto the main line and back in again for loading. This spring switch is the only real switch on the level. Under ordinary conditions, trammers dump their own cars, but when for any reason it is necessary to speed up the hoisting, a gang of dumpers (two men), are put on at the shaft. Trammers coming out leave their cars on the main line and go back with an empty from the return track. The gang at the shaft handles cars on the mackinaw, dumps them and shoves them down the return track. Working in this way, four hundred to four hundred and fifty skips can easily be sent up in a shaft. The siderite, as a whole, in the Magpie ore body is the usual light colored ore with a slightly pink tinge due to the manganese carbonate rhodochrosite, but on either side of the diabase dyke, cutting the body, the siderite is changed to a dense black ore much re- sembling fine grained magnetite. In the white siderite, the volatile runs about thirty-two per cent., but this volatile gradually decreases near the dyke until it is as low as twelve per cent. The carbonate here contains considerable magnetite and the iron content of the ore is higher than in the light colored ore. The black ore is exceptionally hard, so hard in fact that a three and one- fourth-inch piston drill will drill only from five to six feet of hole per shift. The character of the ore changes gradually as the distance from the dyke increases, so CONCENTRATION OF LEAN ORES 241 that at about one hundred feet from the dyke the siderite is all white. The ore is hoisted with two balanced Kimberly skips, which have a capacity of two tons each, and dump directly into the crusher. The hoist consists of a six foot drum, coned at each end and geared to 150 H.P. wound motor, three phase, induction motor. This motor is remotely controlled and automatically protected against overloading. It is only, of course, when hoist- ing from the bottom level that the cone on the drum is of any use, but the motor has no difficulty in starting a loaded skip from any of the intermediate levels, even though no chair is used and the full load is hanging on the rope at the start. The full load speed of the motor gives a rope speed of seven hundred fifty feet per minute. The signal to hoist the skip is given to the hoistman by a bell which can be rung from one level namely the one from which the most tramming is being done at that time. A skip-tender is stationed there and the other levels ring to him when they want the skip, or when they have finished dumping their car, and he re- lays the signal to the hoist man. The crusherman feeding the No. 8 crusher also has a switch by which he can ring the hoistman in case trouble with the crusher occurs and he wants to stop the skip before it dumps. This switch also gives the same signal to the skip tender, so that he knows that the skip has been stopped at the crusher. This stopping for a minute or two is fairly frequent, as a big chunk of ore often has to be broken with a hammer before it will go into the crusher. The skips dump into a No. 8 gyratory crusher, which breaks the ore to about six-inch rinse. The black ore 242 THE IKON HUNTER from near the diabase dyke is exceptionally hard, so hard that in fact the cast iron spider, which is prac- tically always supplied with these machines, was not strong enough to withstand the strain and had to be re- placed by a cast steel one. Below the No. 8 crusher, the ore passes over a set of grizzly bars and then to two No. 5 gyratory crushers. These are set to about three inch, and from these the ore is carried on a twenty-four inch conveyor belt to the storage bins in the roast plant. The roasting kilns are eight feet by one hundred twenty-five feet long and lined with nine-inch hard fire brick. The fuel used is powdered slack coal which gives a temperature of about 1100 degrees Centigrade for about twenty feet in the kiln. This is not hot enough to make the ore sticky and is sufficient to drive off the C0 2 and nearly eliminate the sulphur. After passing through the roasting kilns, both the light and dark colored ores have the same appearance and are not distinguishable in any way. The finished ore is nearly black in color, and comes out of the kilns in a very porous condition, in rounded lumps about two inches in diameter, the large pieces breaking up when passing through the kiln. This finished product has the following composition and is admirably suited for the blast furnace both on account of its physical condi- tion and its chemical composition: Fe 50.00 Phos 013 Silica 9.60 Manganese 2.75 Alumina 1-24 Lime 7.69 Magnesia 7.75 Sulphur 196 Loss on Ign 000 CONCENTRATION OF LEAN ORES 243 So here an elaborate and relatively costly mining and roasting system enriches from thirty to fifty per cent, an ore never before used in America, and it is done profitably. I have gone into rather technical details because the entire operation is a unique innovation in America. It will be at once concluded that American ore reserves will be sufficient for many centuries. In- asmuch as the late James J. Hill predicted exhaustion in a couple of decades, this furnishes a satisfying con- trast. America manufactures nearly three quarters of the steel and iron used by the world. That this will continue almost without limit as to time and always disproportionately increasing in favor of this country does not admit of reasonable doubt. CHAPTEE XXVIII ACCIDENTAL FORTUNES FROM IRON ORE THE tale of how fortunes were made by many men in the Lake Superior iron ore ranges is a story of fortuitous happenings. An iron ore forma- tion surrounds Lake Superior north and south. The first discoveries were made in Michigan. Later the Mesaba and other ranges opened in Minnesota placed that State in the leading place in iron ore production in the world. Almost without exception the iron dis- tricts were in regions covered by great forests of virgin white pine pinus strobus. These trees in instances grew to great proportions. Some of them measured more than six feet in diameter at the base. So light and perfect in texture were these big trees that they were called cork pine. Driving streams threaded the pineries on their way to the Great Lakes. These sup- plied transportation to navigable waters for the logs. Naturally these forests early attracted the attention of lumbermen. When the pineries in Maine began to be exhausted, hardy Yankees of character and courage from the Androscoggin came to Michigan after their idea of a golden fleece. They " took up " vast tracts of land from the Government along the Saginaw, the Tittabawassee, the Shiawassee and other Lower Penin- sula rivers. Most always these lands were " entered " at a dollar and a quarter an acre. Bolder spirits forged to the northward into the valleys of the Tahquamenon 244 ACCIDENTAL FORTUNES 245 and the Menominee, and on westward to the Wisconsin River country and then into Minnesota. When the tim- ber came into the market it was logged, floated down stream to sawmills and cut into lumber. Only the very choicest, and that nearest streams making a short haul, was cut at first. Piles of skidded logs were left in the woods amidst the resinous tops and limbs. Fire would get into the waste jungles and cause direful loss of life as well as of property. Hundreds of lumber towns have been wiped out and thousands of lives sacrificed on the pyres of carelessness. Even to this day death- breeding forest fires occur in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Just as soon as the pine was cut off, the lumbermen would let the scarfed lands " go back " for taxes, recognizing no other values. Some of these lands are now most fertile farms. On others iron ore was found. When the land was originally purchased the buyer had nothing in view but the timber. If iron ore was known to exist in a certain region, some wiser land owners would hold on to their possessions and pay the low taxes. Others would not. Almost never did they do anything to develop the lands. Prospectors would come along and ask for an option to explore on a lease and royalty basis. They would develop a mine and the land owner would have a fortune he had not turned his hand over to earn. In many cases before or after the timber was cut the owners of land when making trans- fers would " reserve " the mineral rights on a gamble. These reservations have never been taxed and are still permitted to be made according to law. Not infre- quently the original owners would have died and their heirs would be surprised to have a request come to them for an option to explore on lands now owned by others and to which they had no idea they had any claim. The 246 THE IRON HUNTER lap gods just dug into the earth for them and filled their pockets with dollars. A great many rich iron mines in Michigan and Minnesota are on lands once purchased from the Government for pine timber. Perhaps the Wellington Burt fortune, of Saginaw, is a typical in- stance of how the economic symplegides opened to people who were blind so far as iron ore was concerned. There are dozens of other cases just like the Burt one, and some of them have an annual income amounting to upwards of a million dollars from accidental royalties. Government land grants, honest and dishonest, earned and unearned, conveyed billions of dollars worth of iron ore from the public to private owners. Notable examples are the Lake Superior Ship Canal Railway and Iron Company, the Great Northern Grant, and there were many more. Perhaps the accumulation of the pyramidal Longyear fortune is as legitimate a case as any. John M. Longyear was a bright, rather physi- cally weak young man of alert vision and fine character. He was sent to Marquette, on Lake Superior, as the agent of the Lake Superior Ship Canal Railway and Iron Company. This company in selecting the lands allotted in its grant engaged the services of the three Brotherton " boys " of Escanaba. They were the very best land lookers and iron hunters in all the Lake Su- perior region. Upon their reports all the Canal Com- pany's lands were chosen. These had to be alternate sections. Mr. Longyear had all the information sup- plied by the data gathered by the Brothertons. He se- cured financial backers and bought the lands lying be- tween the Canal Company's property. It just so hap- pened that most of the mines found turned out to be on the Longyear lands. The fortune that was won in this way runs into the multiplied millions. ACCIDENTAL FORTUNES 247 The story of the big Chapin mine on the Menominee Range presents facets of exquisite humor and at the same time illustrates how little significance was at- tached by owners to early land holdings. The Chapins lived at Niles, Michigan. They entered the Chapin Mine forty at a dollar and a quarter an acre, equaling fifty dollars. A wedding occurred in the family. To the officiating preacher was given a deed for the forty acres in question. The guileless dominie did not even record the deed and paid no attention to it whatever. A few years later the big mine was found. It has pro- duced ore worth more than twenty million dollars and still has rich reserves. A wide-awake young lawyer heard of the preacher and investigated the story. He had a hard time finding the minister, but finally trailed him to the Pacific Coast in an obscure little town. Suit against the Chapins was begun. After hanging fire in the courts for a more or less tedious time, a compromise was made with the preacher for a cash con- sideration of two hundred thousand dollars. This was divided evenly with the lawyer and the Chapin mine lawsuit was heard of no more. Just a little time ago a title to a valuable mine was traced to a Russian servant maid who had returned to Warsaw. The able young lawyer who ferreted it out was sent to Europe by a big mining company. He found the girl, with the assistance of a kindly priest, paid her well, got her relinquishment and came home. The company gave the lawyer a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, paid all of his expenses and gave him a high place in their law department. This recital re- fers to Raymond Empson, attorney, of Gladstone, Michi- gan, and to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, of which William G. Mather, of Cleveland, Ohio, is president. 248 THE IKON HUNTEK In all of the dealings there was only one desire upper- most in the mind of Mr. Mather and his managing vice-president, M. M. Duncan, and that was to give the poor girl her just consideration and to treat the young lawyer fairly. This is coming to be the policy of modern business and it will go a long way to retard bolshevism. I could go on almost endlessly writing of the romances of iron ore. Stewart Edward White charmingly tells the story of white pine in his popular " Blazed Trail." There are a thousand blazed trails in the adventures of the iron ore hunters. CHAPTEK XXIX DISTRICT THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN VERY early in its development I visited the Mesaba range many times. At the commencement of every epoch of great importance, or rather while the parts are being mar- shalled for the making of history, many of the more minute things are lost sight of, and thus the era starts blunted and its history is incomplete. So it is with the discovery of iron ore in Minnesota, and more particu- larly that portion known as the Mesaba range, the most productive iron ore region ever known in the world. The original discoverers of iron ore in Minnesota are unknown. The Sioux Indians knew about the ore ma- terial and associated rocks but did not know what they were or how to use the raw material. In this they were more backward than African aborigines. In the writ- ten relations of .the Jesuit Fathers, who were the first missionaries to these red men, allusion is made as early as 1660 to the existence of economic minerals in the Lake Superior country. Writings by LaGard in 1636, by Pierre Boucher in 1640, Fathers Raymbault and Jogues in 1641 and Claude Allouez in 1666, tell of the finding of considerable quantities of iron ore in the several localities that are now defined as the mineral ranges of the Lake Superior basin. In 1668 Father Jacques Marquette traversed the northern wilderness 249 250 THE IRON HUNTER and paid particular attention to its economic geology. To the unremitting interest of this venerable priest, the Lake Superior country owes the deht due for its primal and practical discovery. The first references to the Mesaba district found in literature concern the parts of the district immediately adjacent to the canoe routes offered by the rivers Mis- sissippi, Prairie, Swan, St. Louis, Pike and smaller streams. The first official description was given by Major Z. M. Pike in 1810, and the veteran explorer, Henry E. Schoolcraft was there in 1832. In 1841 J. ~N. JSTicollet published a map of the hydrographic basin of the upper Mississippi, on which the Mesaba range, called " Missabay Heights," was for the first time de- lineated, by hachures, although very imperfectly. In 1866 Colonel Charles Whittlesey reported on explora- tions made in northern Minnesota during the years 1848, 1849 and 1864, mentioning Pokegama Falls, near Grand Rapids. Mesaba, which is spelled in half a dozen different ways, to suit the fancy of the speller, is the Chippewa word for giant, and the name was given the granite range of hills to the north of Hibbing. The early explorers used the word Mesaba to cover the ter- ritory now embraced in the regions known as the Mesaba and Vermillion ranges. In 1868, Henry H. Eames, the first state geologist of Minnesota, reported the finding of iron ore at Embarrass Lake near Biwabik. In a sec- ond report, published in the same year, Mr. Eames was more explicit, and referring to the general elevated area of the northern part of the State including the Mesaba Range, said: " In this region are found also immense bodies of the ores of iron, both magnetic and hematite." From this time on desultory exploratory work was done along MESABA RANGE IN MINNESOTA 251 nearly the entire length of the range from Kanges 12 to LaPrairie River. There is considerable doubt as to who was the first actual explorer to penetrate the wilds of the Mesaba Range, but from all that can be gathered it would seem that the honor belongs to Peter Mitchell. The first examination of this range by a mining expert with particular reference to the occurrence of iron ore in merchantable deposits was made in 1875 by Pro- fessor A. H. Chester, of Hamilton College, New York. In this report, published in 1884, may be found this ref- erence to an earlier occupation of the land : " In the northwest quarter of section 20, in township 60, north of range 12, west, the most important of the work- ings of Mr. Peter Mitchell, the first explorer of the range, was found. This was a pit six feet in depth, and from it was said to have been obtained the best ore he brought back. This old pit was cleaned and sunk to a depth of eleven and two-tenths feet." Professor Chester is generally given the credit of hav- ing been the first explorer on the range, but we have his own words that Mr. Mitchell was ahead of him, possi- bly two or three years. Between the time of Professor Chester's examination of the range and the publication of his report nine years later, Professor M. H. Win- chell, state geologist, noted the range in two of his re- ports, mentioning the existence of iron ore on the east end. Up to that time, while it was readily conceded that iron ore existed there, it was not generally believed that the ore was of a merchantable grade or in sufficient quantity to warrant development. In fact, well up to 1890 the range had been looked over by numerous min- ing experts sent in there by the larger interests, and the reports were not favorable. The portion of the 252 THE IEON HUNTEE range examined particularly by them was the extreme eastern end, where exposures of magnetic iron are nu- merous, but even up to the present time no body of ore of workable dimensions has been located at that point. The fact that the range had been turned down by the several mining experts did not deter the hardy pioneer explorers, to whose faith and purpose are due the de- velopment of the Mesaba. They believed that rich iron ore in paying quantities was to be found in the district and they continued working diligently, breasting the untold hardships that meet the pioneer in a wild coun- try. The more persistent of the early explorers were the Merritts Lon Merritt, Alfred Merritt, L. J. Mer- ritt, C. C. Merritt, T. N. Merritt, A. E. Merritt, J. E. Merritt, and W. J. Merritt of Duluth, and their faith in the range was the first to be rewarded. On Novem- ber 16, 1890, a crew working for them, under charge of Captain J. A. Nichols, struck iron ore in a homestead claim embracing the northwest quarter of section 3, 58- 18, just north of what is now known as the Mountain Iron mine. The Merritts. were not discouraged by the adverse reports made by the experts and the numerous failures of other explorers. The Mesaba was an at- tractive and promising field, and their faith in it was never shaken, even though their money was spent and two years of the hardest kind of labor remained unre- warded. All who applaud the pioneer are glad to know that these pioneers who were so unresting in their search for iron ore have been richly repaid and that those who remain of the family are enjoying lives of ease due to the early toil that tried their fiber. The next discovery of importance on the range was the Biwabik property, by John McCaskill, an explorer, who found iron ore clinging to the roots of an upturned MESABA RANGE IN MINNESOTA 253 tree. The Merritts explored the tract. It is interest- ing to note that the first two iron mines discovered have proven the largest shippers from the range. The output of the Biwabik mine up to the close of navigation in 1917 was 4,05 3', 731 tons, while the Mountain Iron mine had made in the same period the stupendous production of 7,254,201 tons. With the discovery of these mines it may be said that the range was fairly recognized as a mining district of commercial importance, and there followed a rush of explorers to the scene of action. Finds of large bodies of ore followed, and mining towns sprung up all along to give attention to the needs of the throngs of people that flocked in. It is generally believed that Frank Hibbing, of Duluth, was the first explorer to shoulder his packsack and push his way through the trackless wilderness to the point where now stands the modern city of Hib- bing called the "Gem of the Mesaba," but E. J. Longyear preceded Hibbing to the territory by at least a year. Mr. Longyear cut a road into what is now the Hibbing district and it was he who broke the seal that bound the hidden wealth that has been brought to light since that time. Frank Hibbing was really more of a prospector than Longyear. He located a number of promising prospects and acquired interests in lands along the range. Mr. Hibbing was a man without means, but so encouraging were his reports that he soon interested A. J. Trimble, then fresh from many suc- cessful ventures on the Gogebic range, in Michigan, with him, and the Lake Superior Iron Company was formed. John M. Longyear, of Marquette, and R. M. Bennett, of Minneapolis, secured options to explore Mesaba Range lands and sent E. J. Longyear with an exploration outfit to give the lands a test. Mr. Long- 254 THE IRON HUNTER year was then fresh from the Michigan College of Mines, and was one of the first class that graduated from that splendid institution. In the summer of 1891 Mr. Long- year arrived at Swan River, on the line of the old Du- luth and Winnipeg Railroad, now the Great Northern, which was the nearest railroad point to the land he in- tended to explore. He followed the old Wright and Davis tote road to a point about a mile and one quarter west of what is now Nashwauk, and from there began cutting a road through to what is now Hibbing. Having made a passable road, Mr. Longyear established an ex- ploring camp one-half a mile north of the present Ma- honing mine, and the old camps are still there, a mute reminder of the earliest work on that end of the range. Mr. Longyear prosecuted exploratory work with a dia- mond drill without finding ore in paying quantities until February, 1892, when he found a large body of ore in the northeast quarter of section 22, 58-20. The body of ore, said to measure eight million tons, remains unde- veloped. A few years ago it became the property of the old Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines Company and was taken into the holdings of the United States Steel Corporation upon its organization. Mr. Long- year's next find was the Pillsbury mine. This was the first iron mine opened in the Hibbing district, though it did not make a shipment until 1898. The first mine to ship ore from the district was the Sellers, in the spring of 1894. The next mine to be opened in the district was the Burt, followed closely by the Hull, Rust, Sellers and Day mines, in which Hibbing and Trimble were in- terested, and then the great Mahoning. The finding of the great Mesaba beds of iron ore opened the eyes of the eastern furnace men, and they met and formed an organization to locate iron proper- MESABA KANGE IN MINNESOTA 255 ties on this range. W. C. Agnew was chosen as the most suitable man to conduct the work. Mr. Agnew accepted the proposition and arrived with a working crew in the summer of 1893. He started exploratory work on lands where the Mahoning mine was found, one mile west of Hibbing. Mr. Agnew discovered this mine and superintended its development. The Mahoning presents the largest single body of iron ore ever discov- ered in the world. Imagine an elliptical opening in the earth half a mile long, a quarter of a mile wide and nearly two hundred feet deep, and you will have some idea of what the great Mahoning open pit presents to- day more than forty acres of solid iron ore exposed to view. There yet remains eighty acres of ore uncovered. The first shipment from the Mahoning was made in 1895, and up to the close of navigation, 1917, the total output was 4,791,651. The possible year's shipment out of this mine is to be limited only by the capacity of the railroads for carrying away the product. After the first excitement of mine discovering sub- sided somewhat, a financial depression occurred and ex- ploratory work nearly ceased until better times re- curred. But at no time was the range and its immense possibilities lost sight of by the financial interests of the country. In 1900 there was a revival of exploratory work, and from that time on there has been a steady increase in ore development and the end is not in sight. After the organization of the United States Steel Cor- poration, there was a rush of independent mining men to the Mesaba to secure holdings before everything fell under the control of the big organization. The result is that while the Minnesota Iron Company, a subsidiary branch of the Steel Trust, owns heavily of the iron prop- erties, the tonnage of independent concerns holding in- 256 THE IKON HUNTEK terests in that district is probably greater than that of the trust. The independent mines include among others the Stevenson and Jordan, owned and operated by Cor- rigan, McKinney & Company ; the Laura and the Wini- fred, by the Winifred Iron Mining Company; the Albany, Utica and Elizabeth, by the Crete Mining Company; the Longyear, Columbia, Leetonia, Pearce, Morrow and Croxton, by the Sellwood-Drake-Bartow in- terests; and the Agnew, Shenango, Kinney, Sharon, Grant, Leonard and Susquehanna mines, all in opera- tion. So it will be seen that the Steel Trust has very healthy competition. Up to the close of navigation 1918, to which period production is usually tabulated, because almost all of the ore is shipped by way of Lake Superior, the Mesaba Kange had sent forward a total of 486,319,826 tons. The production of all the Lake Superior districts in 1918 was 63,164,341 tons, of which 43,359,107 tons came from the Mesaba and other Minnesota ranges. It is estimated that by the end of the season of 1920 the first billion tons of iron ore will have been produced by the Lake Superior district. CHAPTER XXX CONSIDERATION OF CHARLES EVANS HUGHES, WOODBOW WILSON AND OTHERS IN SEARCHING FOB A SUC- CESSOR TO JAMES B. ANGELL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PUBLIC work came unexpectedly for me to do, just as it will come to all who will try to fit themselves and be willing. In 1908 I was tendered by Governor Warner an appointment upon the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, to suc- ceed the late Peter White, of Marquette. Really to de- serve to be a regent of the university and to do the work measurably well is, to my way of thinking, the greatest honor to be had in Michigan. Any old dub may be a governor or a United States senator, and several have been, but generally the regents have been high grade, well-equipped men. Almost al- ways they have been chosen from the alumni of the university. Consequently I assumed my new duties with proper humility and not without misgivings. Where I lived as a boy in Indiana, such is the prestige of the Uni- versity of Michigan, that a house where dwelt a man who had graduated at Ann Arbor was pointed out to all as a famous landmark. With such a man for president as the late James Burrill Angell, there was not much for a board to do but back him up. But he was grow- 257 258 THE IKON HUNTEK ing old and wished to retire and was entitled to consid- eration. To find a successor to this wonderful man was to be a task that devolved upon the regents. Dr. Angell was the most constructively aggressive man in his inimitable way that I have* ever known, and yet to all he was one, of the sweetest and most peaceful of human beings. He had a way of having others do the fighting. A wiz- ard could not have measured men better. This one was selected for the very thing he could do best and that one for the same reason. When he had made his assign- ments, he would look on with the face of a calm god and rarely did his man fail him. Best of all, the person selected for an especial work seldom realized it ; almost always he would think that he had originated the matter in hand. Dr. Angell never took off for a moment his armor of benignity, but behind it always there was the force of a big man. It was because of his remarkable method of using men and delegating work, that he was able to remain efficient to an age much greater than most men are permitted to retain their faculties, or even life itself. During the winter after he was eighty-seven years old he had a severe sickness, largely caused by his insistence upon acknowledging in long hand hundreds of loving letters received upon his birthday. His relatives were summoned and all concerned expected the long call. On the nights of February 29 and March 1 it was thought that he would not see the morning. I was in the office of University Secretary Shirley Smith at about half past ten o'clock the forenoon of March 2. A telephone call came from Dr. Angell's brother. Secretary Smith's face was long and mourn- ful, then it lighted up with both gladness and humor. SUCCESSOK TO JAMES B. ANGELL 259 Instead of the dreaded news, the brother asked the secretary if Dr. Peterson, of -the medical college hospi- tal, would not loan a wheeled chair for the use of Dr. Angell. It transpired that just when they thought he was nearest death he rallied, raised himself in bed, and complained of being hungry. He was given a break- fast of coffee, toast, a cereal and an egg, which he actu- ally enjoyed. Then he insisted upon getting up into a wheeled chair. A few weeks later he peacefully crossed the threshold of eternity. He had nourished his vital forces all of his life upon kindliness of heart, tranquillity of spirit and life in an atmosphere of youth. Once he told me that to live long one must be temperate and keep his heart youthful and alert. No wonder he was so much of a factor in causing the University of Michigan to become one of the greatest of the higher educational institutions of the world. He was loved by everybody and most so by the students. It was this great man that a worthy successor had to be secured for. There were many applicants. Of course, not one of them applied directly, like a hungry man in search of a job. Some of them were just as eager, no doubt, but all went through the form of being proposed by their friends. Many of those who were urged in greatest volume were the most unlikely and unfit. Serious consideration was given to the name of the then Governor of New York, Charles Evans Hughes. Mr. Hughes had been a member of the Cornell faculty and was looked upon, not only as a big man, but as one who was also an educator. The two qualifications do not necessarily dove-tail. The place of president of the University of Michigan 260 THE IKON HUNTEK was tentatively offered to him by a committee of regents appointed for the purpose. Governor Hughes com- posed the usual gracious, and often meaningless, phrases of regret, and gave as his reason that he had a life's work of reform in the political arena of New York State. Otherwise he would have been made happy by taking up the direction of the parent of all popular uni- versities. Within a few weeks he permitted himself to be side- tracked, even shelved, so far as political reform activi- ties were concerned, by an appointment to the United States Supreme Court. In the light of what he had uttered in such a Parsifallian spirit, I was shocked, and in my eyes Mr. Hughes has worn a broken halo ever since. Some one proposed the name of David Jayne Hill, United States Ambassador to Germany. He looked like ideal timber. I went to Berlin to look him over. It is proper, I think, to state that I paid my own expenses. Accuracy, at the expense of elegance, requires me to record that I reported to the board of regents that Mr. Hill had taken on too much weight of all kinds. One of the most interesting candidates, for we were caused to think, at least I was, that he solicited the posi- tion, was Woodrow Wilson. At the very first most of the regents jumped at the shining lure of surface bril- liance. I do not mean to state that Mr. Wilson is not a profound scholar; only that more than most men of erudition he possesses an exterior luminescence that is distinctive. More sober consideration threw another light upon the retiring president of Princeton. There was a consensus of opinion that he had done good work at Princeton, but that whether he had done more good SUCCESSOE TO JAMES B. ANGELL 261 than harm was a question that could not be so easily answered. He had gone to Princeton with the unanimous support of the managers of that college, and left it with scarcely a friend among them. Practically, it seems, he was dismissed. His gratuitous quarrel with Grover Cleve- land was analyzed, and a decision was come to that Dr. Wilson was tactless. The University of Michigan depends for its financial life upon the people, and the Legislature of a Kepublican state. It has always had the respect, affection and gen- erous consideration of its State. How long would it take a southern Democrat of Mr. Wilson's peculiar type to destroy the delicate relations that subsist between them ? That was the danger that lurked in him. Good enough, the people have said, to be a two-term President of the United States, but the regents did not decide that he was good enough to be president of the University of Michigan. It was a happy solution of the problem to select Dr. Harry B. Hutchins, dean of the University of Michigan Law College, to be president. I opposed his appoint- ment for an unlimited term. In fact, I was not very enthusiastic about Dr. Hutchins, and I proposed that the place be given him for three years, in order that the board might have time to look around without the dis- agreeable and hurtful consequences of not having a president. Some of the regents, who knew him better than I did, proposed that I be appointed a committee of one to in- terview Dr. Hutchins and come to terms with him. This they did, with the suspicious twinkle in their eyes of a ruminating rhinoceros* They expected fire- 262 THE IKON HUNTER works. If they could have been within hearing of the session between Dr. Hutchins and myself they would have considered themselves enjoyably justified. I found the Dean a much bigger and stronger man than I had supposed him to be. In fact, he rapidly devel- oped presidential size, in my estimation, as we sat vis-a- vis and fought back and forth. We shouted at each other and pounded the desk that was between us. Fi- nally I said to him : " For goodness' sake, don't act like you are behaving ; you remind me too much of myself ! " This, he has said since, uncovered his humorous senses, and we soon had a rational discussion. At first he felt it as a reflection upon him to be offered a limited term. I told him just why we had insisted upon a definite period and I placed the good of the university above everything. The people of the nation only gave their President a limited term, and why should he, in the face of such an exalted example, object to being placed upon the same footing? That was not what appealed to him. It was the good of the university that won his willingness to do anything that would con- tribute to such an object. I suggested increasing the term to five years, and we agreed, whereupon the board of regents ratified the decision, and Dr. Harry B. Hutchins became president of the University of Michi- gan. It is only due him to state that his work as the head of the university has more than justified the expecta- tions of his chiefest admirers. While I was a regent, a kind of thing came up that must arise continually in the life of every university. Professor R. M. Wenley's philosophical lectures had taken such a wide and free and bold scope, as to attract a SUCCESSOR TO JAMES B. ANGELL 263 great deal of attention which was not confined to university circles, but pervaded the State and farther. He was admired as a man of profound thought and high courage by those who were big enough and sufficiently fair to see him as he is and measure his work. Those who did not like his methods, and some of the faculty who were unquestionably jealous of him, formed a potential opposition to him that took form in a deter- mination to drive him out of the university. One day Wenley delivered a lecture so Christless and so heart- less and so platonic in their estimation as to stir his enemies to extreme action. They interviewed a regent who came to me with the matter. This regent was one of the oldest and best men on the board and an alumnus. He was all wrought up and managed to communicate his feelings to me. I agreed to support a resolution dismissing Professor Wenley from the faculty. We had votes enough pledged to pass it. But before it was voted upon all of us came to our senses. The truth seemed to stalk before me unguided, as the truth needs no guide. It seemed to say : " What right have you to do this thing? Is this a university or a penal institution? Will you strive to give wings to thought and then kill it when it tries to fly? How are you going to combat error if it is not exposed ? Do you not know that the fearless teacher presents every facet of the intellect in action ? Next time you oppress an intellectual process it may be the death of a great truth. Where are you going to draw the line inside the demarcation of com- plete freedom of thought and speech ? If the truth can- not withstand the competition of error it becomes error, and error becomes truth." 264 THE IKON HUNTEE Then the disgraceful resolution that I had helped to father I helped to kill. Wenley still shakes things up, and I have come to have a large respect for his work without yielding an iota of my Presbyterianism. CHAPTER XXXI TOM MAY'S KERRY PHILOSOPHY A SOCIAL THERMOMETER I DO not know when I began to learn that the only warrant for a public career is a desire born of a willingness to serve ; to give back to society some of self in payment for the great benefits social order grants to the individual ; or when I had my first realiza- tion that a republic cannot endure, and civil and reli- gious liberty will not have a collective instrument of protection unless men and women offer themselves freely. In my early forenoon of life I saw only the selfish side and purpose of both private and public activity. To win was the thing; to take; no thought of paying back. One night I was guiding Tom May, my cartoonist friend, through a Lake Superior jungle to our hunting camp. It was more than a quarter of a century ago. He had learned something that I had not even thought of, although we were born the same year 1860. " Hold on there, old man," he called from behind. " This isn't a Marathon, is it ? " I replied that it was already so dark I could see the compass needle with difficulty and that we must strike the trail a mile farther on if we were to have com- fortable going after the night cover all settled down. Swish ! Tom gave a yell. " I suppose that brush would have cut off my head 265 266 THE IKON HUNTEK if you hadn't held it back ; as it was it only snipped off my nose and one ear and took a chunk out of my game eye, blast it ! " " But, Tom, I have told you a thousand times, which should be nearly enough for an Irishman, to walk far enough behind so that the switches won't hit you." " That's all right and whan I do, you get out of sight and a wolf bites me trousers. Gimme the switch ivery time." Tom always dropped into the soft, sweet, Irish brogue that his soul loved whenever he was not at a city-tension. On the trail we took our time and visited. Tom said he wondered why rich men did not remember while going through life that there are no pockets in shrouds. " And they just take and take and grab and scoop and grub to get it, only to hope to square things when they are on their death beds by giving it away. They can't do it. Tickets to heaven are not on sale at a box office, and there are no special reservations for millionaires. And most people are learning that God's books are kept day by day just like the street car companies'. Five- cent fares make big totals. Little daily deeds count up big in life's long run. The fellow who gives most is going to get most in the end, not the fellow who takes the most from others without any thought of paying back, or dividing until the fine old gent with the scythe and long whiskers gets his big spectacles focused on him." Thus we strolled to camp as Tom preached in big- hearted, Kerry style. It made a deep impression upon me. At another time some years later, obedient to the woods' muse, he said : " Notice our friends Carnaygie and Kockefeller are TOM MAY'S KEKKY PHILOSOPHY 267 having a goose race giving away money. Andy is a shade the more anxious and has a wild Scotch glare under the brush that grows over his eyes. Ye see he has a Homestead riot and dead children and women and frinzied men trampin' on his soul. Kocky hasn't anything like that. Maybe he will be able to make a long drive through the pearly gates, but I'll bet Andy will slice or top the pill." All of this indicated the coming of a new era in pub- lic thought. There was a hunger for heart and soul growth. We had only stomach growth up to then or not much more, and we, as a nation and as a people, it would seem, were hunchbacked in front. Demagogues were vying with honest men in their eagerness to make hay. There was a grasshopper plague of fake reformers in every State and some of them drew the eye of the nation. It was difficult always to pick out the spurious. In fact, I doubt if a good many of the political disciples of the new era could tell just how much they were for self and how much for what they advocated. Men were reformers, insurgents and progressive until they got into office, and were active enough to attract the attention of the fat boys. Only then they dried up like a desert spring or became conservative. CHAPTEE XXXII I AM ELECTED GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN THERE was much dissatisfaction with the state of public affairs in Michigan. Higher ideals of government began to he asserted in many places. A man, perhaps worthy enough, but who was regarded as being very ordinary, had been elected Governor for a third term. The State was bankrupt. At least one of the state institutions, Jackson prison, was notorious for its mismanagement and worse. The state treasurer, Glazier, was discovered short several hundred thousand dollars in his accounts. He had been closely identified with Warner, personally and polit- ically, and had carried large deposits in the bank in which Warner was a stockholder and officer. The warden of Jackson prison, Armstrong, had been con- victed of crookedness in prison affairs and sentenced to a term of confinement. The air was filled with dis- trust. Charges and rumors pursued each other in the public mind. Consequently when the Warner admin- istration proposed to perpetuate itself by the nomina- tion and election of Patrick H. Kelley, who was Lieu- tenant-Governor, there was an upheaval of opposition. This took form in several counter movements. A number of my friends urged me to become a can- didate for Governor. They called attention to the con- dition of affairs only too apparent in the State. Fur- thermore they stated that the Upper Peninsula had 268 ELECTED GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN 269 never been given a governor. Naturally, they reminded me of my experience in state affairs. I was not per- mitted to forget what they had often heard me say, that I thought every citizen was obligated to serve his country at any time he was needed, in peace or war, and should hold himself in readiness to do so, and should freely and frequently offer. I had not thought of being a candidate but it was not difficult to persuade me to be. Perhaps the one thing that had most to do with my decision, after the duty that I held to be involved, was the possession of an independent tempera- ment, that did not seem to permit a consideration of the countless cautions that come so frequently to all per- sons in public place. It really seemed that a person so constituted might render valuable service at this very time. I had in mind a number of things that I thought ought to be given state attention. One of these was a workmen's compensation law. I was heartily in favor of woman suffrage, and though I could not be called a prohibition- ist as the term was defined then, and was not at that time a total abstainer, I was opposed to the saloon and to commercialized booze. I knew that it had the larg- est control of state and local politics, not only where its interests were involved, but extended its dictation far beyond in a meddlesome way just because it had the power. I proposed to take a shot at this social hyena if I got a chance, and in order to get a shot I decided to stalk it. Moreover, I was in a position of economic independence, with sufficient means so that I did not have to depend upon a public income, nor upon persons who might subscribe to a campaign with the hope and purpose of controlling me, and yet I did not possess so much that my interests ramified in directions where I 270 THE IRON HUNTER might suffer injury from those who control the money affairs of the country and destroy the credit of any who oppose them, which is a way they have if one falls into their power. I became a candidate for Governor. There were three other candidates : Patrick H. Kelley, of Lansing ; Amos Musselman, of Grand Rapids, and Justice Robert M. Montgomery, of the Supreme Court of Michigan. At the start it looked as though Mr. Kelley would win easily if the Warner opposition, general as it was, was divided among three. The best-equipped candidate of all, in some respects, was Justice Montgomery. He was a distinguished member of Michigan's highest court and had friends in every part of the State. He had the backing of the Supreme Court, which at that time did not hesitate to sit into the game of politics, and it knew how with the best of them. There is a constitutional provision in Michigan pro- hibiting a circuit judge from being a candidate for a political office while on the bench and for one year after retiring from such service. I did not believe that Mr. Montgomery had considered whether it was right for him, as a member of a court whose duty it was to en- force this law, to do that which was a violation of the very principle he was obligated to compel others to ob- serve (nor did Mr. Hughes search his soul deeply in this regard). I was certain he had no moral right to be a candidate and I even questioned his legal right. Against the counsel of all my close advisers, I addressed an open letter to him setting forth the claim that legiti- mately and ethically he had no right to be a candidate and ending by demanding his withdrawal. I was de- termined at the outset to be open and aboveboard in all of my actions and utterances as a candidate, wherever ELECTED GOVEKNOK OF MICHIGAN 271 the welfare of the State was concerned. My state- ment caused a sensation in political circles. It made the friends of Justice Montgomery very angry, and they were swift to call attention to the act as proof of my backwoods' crudeness and my unfitness to be Governor of a great state. Also for a time, Justice Montgomery was as angry as his friends. Finally, his high sense of honor, his keen, intellectual appreciation of the justness of my position, and his ethical standards caused him to view the situation differently. He was big enough finally to achieve self-mastery. He sent me word, in fact told me personally, that if I would let up on the matter he would retire from the field if a graceful way was presented. At once, I took the matter up with the real friends of the Justice. The result was that he re- tired from the gubernatorial contest and accepted a place on the newly erected intermediary court at Washington. This left three candidates. The nomination of Mr. Kelley was freely predicted. He was a cheery, genial, lovable person, who carried the serious things of life lightly and radiated good-fellowship. As a political campaigner he was supposed to be invincible. His friends said hopefully and warningly : " Just wait un- til he gets that man Osborn on the platform and watch Kelley clean up on him." I quite agreed with them that Mr. Kelley might do things to me, but even in secret I was not afraid. I had gone into the fight hammer and tongs, and had made up my mind to give as hard thrusts as I could and take smilingly all the enemy gave to me. While yet a boy I had been taught that in life a man must be just as good as an anvil as he is as a hammer ; take blows as well as give them. There were the usual Lincoln Club, Chandler Club, 272 THE IRON HUNTER McKinley Club and Washington Birthday political ban- quets that are quite peculiar to Michigan where they have been developed to the nth potency. Musselman did not seem to be much in evidence at these feasts. Kelley and I were invited to all of them. At first the attrac- tion was what Kelley might do to me. Afterwards the curiosity centered about what I might say about the Warner-Kelley machine. I had to hook Kelley up to the Warner odium, which was not hard to do, because his generous disposition had influenced him good- naturedly to tag along after Warner. There was a great deal of distrust felt between the two peninsulas of Michigan. The people of the Lower Peninsula thought of the Upper Peninsula as being controlled by a coterie of mining autocrats who were political despots, possessed of a determination to dodge their taxes and duties and milk the State of its rich re- sources with no return, or as little as possible. The Upper Peninsula, and especially the people of the min- ing regions, regarded their Lower Peninsula fellow- citizens as being a lot of hayseeds and rubes, who were not fit for free government and impossible of compre- hending the merits of the northern portion of the State. My opponents used this prejudice and fanned it per- sistently. The population of the State was about two and a half million people in the Lower Peninsula, two- thirds of the area, and about three hundred thousand in ike Upper Peninsula. The northern section was over- whelmingly Republican, and had been known, espe- cially when General Alger was beaten in the lower sec- tion, to reverse the Democratic decision below the straits. Such fealty had its reward from the Repub- lican managers just to the extent that was thought ELECTED GOVEBNOK OF MICHIGAN 273 essary to keep it in line. It had never been accorded a Governor and many wise ones predicted that it never would. I do not think there was a time during the campaign when my best friends in the Upper Peninsula thought I could win. I did not worry about that, nor was I deeply concerned about the issue of the contest. I decided that the battle ground was the Lower Penin- sula and there I went, going from county to county, most of the time by automobile. I did not make a speech in the Upper Peninsula. I enjoyed the cam- paign. It was hard, but it gave me a chance to see and talk to the people which I did with earnest bluntness and direct conviction. I visited every county in the Lower Peninsula and made speeches in all of them, often ten or fifteen in a day, many of course being only a few minutes in length, and many of greater length. When the campaign was at its height as many as thirty automobiles would follow me through the county, as upon a triumphal tour. Bands, banners and enthusi- asm made an atmosphere, and the audiences were certain to be good. For the most part I did not talk politics. It was safe to assume that the voters understood. They did. I promised to clean out the Warner gang that had wrecked and disgraced Michigan. That seemed to be what they wanted. Just before election day Amos Musselman encouraged the editor of the Escanaba Journal to make an attack upon my honesty. Thousands of copies of the paper were circulated over the State. The enemy saw that the libel was reprinted wherever possible. They hoped that it was too late for me to defend myself. I had the editor arrested at once and started suit against Mussel- man and others. I felt within myself that if the peo- 274 THE IKON HUNTER pie could be fooled by an eleventh-hour move of this kind, there was no way to prevent it. Knowing my in- nocence I trusted to the good sense of the voters. At the primaries, I was successful by the following vote: Osborn, 88,270; Kelley, 52,337; Musselman, 50,721. My vote in the Lower Peninsula was the big surprise to the dopesters. Below the straits it was 69,479 and 18,791 above. As soon as the matters could be forced to an issue, the editor who had libeled me was convicted, and Mussel- man, in humiliation, made public admission that he had done wrong, and the case against him was dropped. As showing his fairness and good citizenship and his real- ization of his responsibilities as a publisher, I may say here that in 1918 when I was a candidate for the nomi- nation of United States Senator, this editor was one of my strongest supporters. The state campaign that followed was not as much of a contest as the primary had been, but it was a fight. The late Lawton T. Hemans, of Ingham County, was nominated by the Democrats. Hemans was a strong man. He had been a candidate for Governor before and was well known and respected. As a lawyer and local historian, he had covered much of Michigan cred- itably. It was a mid-year campaign, between the presi- dential contests. There was nothing to prevent inter- est from centering upon a state campaign. Republican dissatisfaction and insurgency were in the air. The Taft administration program of blunders was just becoming known. Only seven States in the Union were carried by the Republicans. I received one of the largest majorities given a Republican Governor that year, 1910. The vote on election day was Osborn ELECTED GOVEKSTOK OF MICHIGAN 275 202,803; Hemans, 159,770, or a plurality for me of 43,033. During the campaign the Democrats had combed my record with particular care, but found nothing they could use. CHAPTER XXXIII I STABT A FIGHT AGAINST THE SALOON THAT KEEPS UP TO THE END AFTER election in the autumn of 1910 I retired to Deerfoot Lodge where Justice Steere, the Hon- orable Roys J. Cram and I have kept open house during the deer season for nearly a quarter of a century. It is a beautiful spot in a primeval forest of maple, birch and beech. Pine plains furnish a change in one direction, and deep swamps flank the hardwood and give lair for bear and wolf and lynx. Shadowy hemlocks, with limbs bedecked with old man's beard, like Spanish moss, and red-berried yew shintangle as carpet make a wild garden where the fawns hide in spring, and bucks snort, paw and horn trees in autumn. Here I wrote my inaugural message on some rough scraps of paper; no library but my thoughts, and no reference book but my heart. Deerfoot was then only a modest log shack of one room, where friends came and rolled in on the floor, and roughed it in a way to take the city stiffness out of body and spirit. Here I wrote down briefly my views upon the liquor question for my message as follows : Temperance is a matter of personal discipline and is more of a moral and social problem than political. The regulation of the liquor traffic is largely a political func- tion. The upheaval and interest in Michigan and over the country along these lines are, in my opinion, aimed more 276 A FIGHT AGAINST THE SALOON 277 at the liquor traffic than at the temperate use of alcoholic beverages. It appears that temperance is handicapped un- less those who believe even in rationalism become excited and militant. The saloon of to-day is a social saprophyte. Always it has been a breeding place of lawlessness and a culture ground of vice. So arrogant had it become that government by saloon and rule by brewery was the practical condition. The candidate who did not bow to the joint keeper and the local official who did not recognize the po- litical power of alcohol, as manifested through low grog- geries, were in for a fight all of the time to save their political lives. Breweries were not contented with a dis- tribution to such saloons as might naturally exist. So they entered upon an artificial policy of starting saloons at all convenient places where the consumption of their product would be increased. There is intense competition between brewers for the installation and control of saloons. Con- ditions became intolerable. The people broke out in con- tagious rebellion, all invoked by the exaggerated commer- cializing of alcohol. A desire for better conditions exists in the heart of every good citizen. The average man does not wish to be fanat- ical or intolerant. He does not wish to apply sumptuary laws that abridge personal liberty beyond the point of pub- lic good. But government by saloon and brewery must go and artificial stimulation of the traffic in beer and whiskey must be discontinued. In a degree it is true that the sa- loon is the poor man's club. But the rich man's club af- fects only the more or less useless few, while the poor man's club, if low in character and degenerating in influence, in- jures the useful many. Society can stand crumbling at the top, for that is the natural spot of decay, but it cannot survive necrosis of its foundation masses. The local option policy is good and out of it can come improving condi- tions. In communities where saloons exist there should not be more than one to a thousand population, and breweries should be divorced from their ownership. The license should be higher but more attention should be paid to the character of the saloonkeeper and the conduct of the saloon than to the amount of the license. I would' suggest a law prorid- 278 THE IKON HUNTEK ing for fuller state supervision of saloons. The State dis- pensary system is ideal, but proved a failure in South Carolina. In Kussia, where alcohol is a government mo- nopoly, the dispensary system is fairly commendable. In Pennsylvania the courts regulate the liquor traffic, give and revoke licenses. In Canada the hotel system prevails. I would like to see the question studied for Michigan by an honorary commission to be composed of some of the most noble, courageous and unselfish citizens of the State. This is an age of stimulation. The physical tensity of our civilization makes for it The quantities consumed in this country alone of alcohol in various forms, opium, co- caine, tea, coffee and tobacco are startling and transfix with horror when contemplated, commanding the interest of every person concerned in the welfare of society. Over stimulation is the source of disease, pauperism and crime. In the long run these conditions can be corrected only by going to the foundation of things. Man must not drive man so hard. Conditions of life for the masses must be bet- ter. Rest for the weary, food for the underfed, entertain- ment and respite for those whose monotony of life is caused by over-work must be provided and finer human fellowship must come to prevail. While these ideals are working out, proclaiming the com- ing some day, of the superman, the State must see that selfish and careless individuals do not over capitalize the appetites of man. Wholesome regulation cannot grow out of fanatical intolerance or exaggerated extremity. Op- pressive rule by majority is only another form of the appli- cation of might. The greatest good to the greatest number should be succeeded by the aim to accomplish the greatest average good for all. This will, I believe, be your inspira- tion for suggested corrective legislation. I had stalked within range of the most deadly thing I knew of and was to take this shot at it. No recent Michigan governor had referred to it. The subject was politically taboo. I knew that it would bring to me 3,11,, the trouble -the whiskey makers .and whiskey sellers A FIGHT AGAINST THE SALOON 279 could oppose me with. There was no halfway realiza- tion of it upon my part. The effect of this and other things I proposed to at- tempt to do was to arrive at the decision that I would not be a candidate for a second term. All of my ad- visers endeavored to dissuade me from making such an announcement, and especially at the outset. But I could not be deterred by their convincing arguments that it was not good politics. I was not playing poli- tics, had not been and did not intend to start. That was the trouble with everything in public Michigan. Everybody had been playing politics every minute until things had reached an impossible mess. The one thing I hoped to convey to the public was that I had no per- sonal political object in view as a result of any act; nothing but the public good. It seemed to me that the only way to start fair was to make an honest one-term decision, announce it and stick to it. Down deep within my being I knew the danger to my plans that lurked in a desire for a second term. So insidious are the operations of desire that it may almost be said of it when it exists that no act of a man's life is independent of it. He may be as honest as is hu- manly possible and as unconscious, but his acts will be influenced. So I burned all bridges behind me and felt better when I had done so. There was very much to do, and I did not wish the handicap of trimming or playing politics for a second term. CHAPTEK XXXIV FIGHTING FOE THE LIFE OF MICHIGAN AGAINST THE HUMAN BLOODSUCKERS THAT SUBSIST ON SOCIETY EVERYWHERE THE first of January, 1911, I was inaugurated as Governor of Michigan. In order to devote every energy to the program of accomplishment I had outlined, I had determined that I would leave the office at the close of my two-year term and would not be a candidate for reelection. There was much to do and I realized that I would have strong opposition to the passage of the measures I advocated. The political or- ganizations of Detroit were powerful at the state capi- tal. Detroit control had passed long before into the hands of a local Tammany that would stop at nothing. The organization, unwritten, but understood, included men in both the Republican and Democratic parties, grading up from convicts to semi-respectables and con- nected with men on both sides occupying positions of trust and prominence, but ready at all times to profit by their political relationship to this tong, and just as ready to be parties to questionable political practices that they might not think of resorting to if proposed in their professions. This gang was " The Vote Swap- pers' League," named such by E. G. Pipp, manager at that time of the Detroit News. Most of the men had double standards of practice; one for politics and an- other for business. Most of those who aided the crooked 280 FOR THE LIFE OF MICHIGAN 281 league in the work were well known. The Republicans were even worse than their Democrat partners, because they presumed to hold their heads a little higher, cloak themselves in a bespotted mantle of respectability and patronize the town clubs and the golf links, and even go so far as to identify themselves with a church if it served a purpose. These fine bucktails divided the of- fices among their faithful, controlled the Council, boasted of their standing in the several judicial strata and most thoroughly removed the political viscera from any reformer or citizens' movement that started any Taiping revolution. I had to decide whether I would serve Michigan or the Vote Swappers' League. I chose the flag of Michigan. The word was passed to the De- troit gang that I could not be controlled. This started a war upon me that has gone the length of bitterness. The fight was staged first in the Legislature. I found myself as Governor at first unable to secure a majority for anything for which any credit or responsibility at- tached to the Governor's office. Gradually the legisla- tive opposition wore down. Finally I had a certain majority in the House and soon after in the Senate. The failures in legislation were few and only of meas- ures that required a two-thirds majority. A multitude of things came up in the executive office. I had succeeded an administration unfriendly to me, and things were not made easy for me, which did not alarm or dissuade me. I had been accustomed to long hours and there was keen delight in putting them in now. The very day I was inaugurated a plot was discov- ered to blow up Jackson prison with dynamite. The warden was new and there was much nervousness. De- pendable guards were not known from the ones in league 282 THE IKON HUNTER with the convicts. I counseled with Warden Russell, of Marquette prison, and Warden Fuller, of the Ionia Reformatory, both officials of long experience and high ability. I succeeded in getting a line on the bad men in Jackson. I had them brought to the executive office one at a time and between two and four o'clock in the morning, so that absolute secrecy might be secured. I succeeded in obtaining enough information to locate and remove quantities of high explosives, and to break up the convict gang, distributing the members among other prisons. While at this task I learned many other incidental facts. My greatest surprise was caused and my indignation was particularly aroused by the indis- putable knowledge that a traffic in pardons and paroles was going on. I forced at once the resignation of the Board of Pardons and a new Board was appointed. I appointed a complete, new bi-partisan Prison Board of big men. I learned that one of the Tax Commissioners of the State was also the retained attorney of a big manufac- turer of automobiles. Of course the lawyer could not serve two masters for conflicting interests. I asked him to resign and he did so. Another Tax Commissioner gave very little time to the work and his performance was very unsatisfactory. In fact, the Commission was in a rut. I asked this man to resign. The epidemic phrase was " Go to hell." This fellow applied it and I removed him. This removal made completely new three important boards. I cleaned out every vestige of the old administration that seemed to be necessary to wholesome state administration. In doing so I only kept faith with the people. It was what I had prom- ised them I would do. When I became Governor a deficit existed in the FOK THE LIFE OF MICHIGAN 283 state treasury of about a million dollars. I was deter- mined to wipe this out. Many economies were inau- gurated in the management of state institutions. In this work I was aided by every institutional superin- tendent in Michigan and by all the appointive heads of departments. It was easy to save the State's money if one managed with anything like the same care with which private business is conducted. The new constitution of Michigan gives the Governor unusual fiscal authority. In fact, it imposes in him the power and responsibility practically of financial man- ager. The Governor can veto all or any part of an ap- propriation bill. I carefully went over every bill with those interested in it. As a result I cut out nearly enough to pay the state indebtedness. This financial use of the veto constitutes a precedent. But it was in saving through economies introduced everywhere that the big results were obtained. At the conclusion of my administration the State was out of debt and the treasury contained a surplus of more than two million dollars. This was achieved and at the same time more money was appropriated for good roads than the estimate and more for the state university than ever before. The tax rate was also reduced. Also this sav- ing improved the conditions at all state institutions, be- cause the very care that made economy possible nat- urally conduced to improvements in every detail of serv- ice. The regular session of the Legislature adjourned. Early in 1912 I called a special session and followed it immediately with a second special session. Under the Michigan constitution the Governor is empowered to summon the Legislature in extraordinary session. At such only those measures submitted in message by 284 THE IEO1ST HUNTER the Governor may be considered. The effect is to com- pel legislative concentration and to focus the eyes of the public upon important measures. At a regular session there is pulling and hauling and trading and confusion, until the public is lost in a muddle of vexatious circum- stances and the legislators are nearly as badly off. Very near to my heart I had the matter of a work- men's compensation law. I had given the subject con- siderable study in Germany and England and had talked it over often with my intimate associates and many others. The Legislature in regular session had em- powered the Governor to appoint a commission to study the question and draft a form of a bill embodying a suit- able law. The commission appointed, serving without pay, had given earnest attention to the important sub- ject and had submitted a report of indubitable value. To obtain action upon this was my chief first purpose for a special session. Also I wished to utilize this meri- torious measure to further define and stiffen partisan lines in the Legislature, so that I might feed in good measures that otherwise would not carry. The work- ingmen's compensation act passed. The Legislature empowered the Governor to appoint an Industrial Acci- dent Board to administer the law. The success of the new law might largely depend upon the practical foun- dation laid for it in its earliest application and inter- pretation. I secured for the board the only two mem- bers of the commission that framed the law who could be secured for state service. By virtue of the understand- ing and administration of this law by the first board, it came to be recognized as one of the best compensation enactments in America. It has been copied by many other States. Gradually it will undoubtedly be brought nearer to perfection. A press cartoon. 1910 FOE THE LIFE OF MICHIGAN 285 Police Commissioner Croul, of Detroit, an official of rare courage and capacity, had told me that of some sev- enteen hundred saloons in Detroit quite twelve hundred were owned by brewers and distillers. It was their practice to start a booze joint on every likely corner they could obtain and especially near factory doors. Brewery-owned saloons were the worst of all. I saw to it that a bill was introduced making it illegal for brew- ers and distillers to own or encourage saloons. Forth- with fell upon me the liquor people. The Royal Ark, an association of saloon keepers in Detroit, endeavored to intimidate members of the Legislature. Conditions of much bitterness arose. But the bill became a law. I found the Michigan Bonding Company to be the most hurtful and the boldest source of evil in the State. It was organized under a law that gave it the practical control of all the saloons in the State. If a saloon keeper did not obey its behests, his bonds were refused. It charged big fees and was strong financially. It had one or more agents in every county and cleverly selected them from among the best-equipped attorneys. By means of a retainer it secured the services of lawyers who would not naturally line up with it. Thus equipped, the Michigan Bonding Company became a dangerous entity. Of it men were afraid. It was the core organization around which was built the opposition to woman suffrage, prohibition and all related reforms. I asked the Legislature to repeal the law giving it exist- ence and I made a fight against it that was nearly suc- cessful. The fight at Lansing while these bills were pending became a vicious one, with enough bad feeling and per- sonal passion almost to obscure reason for a time. I received as many as ten letters in one day threatening 286 THE IKON HUNTER my life. To these cowardly messages I paid no atten- tion. They only indicated the feeling that existed among the whiskeyites. Dynamite was placed under my house but it did not explode. My residence was on fire twice mysteriously. One of these fires occurred at two o'clock in the morning. I was attacked on all sides. Throughout all the conflict I did not worry nor lose sleep. My wife stood it bravely but confesses now she was deeply worried and wearied. But only words of cheer and courage came from her then. As for myself, I thought I was right and I think so now when the em- bers of thought are colorless from fire. Perhaps I took on some of the spirit of the crusader. At least I placed my trust in God and calmly asked divine approval and direction. Those who were advocating woman suffrage were not united. Some of them, including most of the women propagandists who came to Lansing, were fearful that a measure submitting the question to the people could not pass the Legislature and that its failure would prove a setback. After discussing the matter with Representa- tive Charles Flowers, a veteran partisan of the cause, and with several others, I decided to present the ques- tion. It carried nicely. Later, when it was submitted for popular consideration, it undoubtedly carried in the State. However, the liquor interests succeeded in ob- scuring and invalidating the result. Its next submis- sion was in the spring, when the country vote is light as compared with that of the cities, and suffrage was then unquestionably defeated. When the returns of the vote began to indicate that the measure had passed at the first plebiscite, those op- posed held back the reports from polling precincts that they controlled, giving the impression that whatever to- FOR THE LIFE OF MICHIGAN 287 tals were necessary to accomplish the defeat of the women would be supplied. There were signs of a sharp practice that was used by the vicious elements to obtain a momentary end. Apparently the only ade- quate redress for such is an aroused public that will finally act so decisively as to brook no resistance or trickery. I do not say that all of those who oppose votes for women are vicious, but I do say that wherever I have been familiar with conditions, the management of the campaign against suffrage has been controlled either above the surface or below it by those who are inclined to lawlessness and who make it their instinctive busi- ness to fight anything that tends to improve the public tone or widen the zone of influence of those who would be most likely, in the nature of things, to endeavor to cure those evils that are eating cancerously at the foun- dations of the human family. Women are the matrix of the race. They occupy a sphere that man, a mere fertilizing agent, never enters. Consequently woman knows instinctively when her own is imperiled. Fundamentally this is the raison d'etre of the woman movement. All talk of liberty and equal ity is incidental. Nature, always operating to make life dominant over death, and in ways often most ob- scure and indirect so far as man's vision and compre- hension are concerned, is the author of the activity that has for its purpose the bringing to bear of the powers of woman directly against the jeopardy of her children. The tendency may be delayed or misdirected but it cannot be defeated, any more than the precession of the equinoxes can be controlled by human agencies. 1 ' 'My in'es'sfcges ; to -thfe Legislature, in special sessions, are a true guide to my state of mind, my thought proe- 288 THE IRON HUNTER esses and convictions at that time. I had not yet con- vinced myself that there could not be some compromise with alcohol. I hoped that if there was any good in it that it might be separated from the much that was bad, and the desirable retained and the objectionable re- jected. I had visions of state control that would be more successful than the dispensary experience by the State of South Carolina. It was my nebulous hope that the whiskey traffic might be completely taken out of trade whereby man's degeneracy was made a source of profit. It was a passing dream in which I saw pure whiskey, beers and wines served at cost in temperate quantities in clean environment to those who might be cheered but not poisoned. But I was nearing the time when I became convinced that life and alcohol cannot exist together any more rationally than life and death. I saw the constant struggle of nature against death and all of the agencies of decay ; the finely maintained equilibrium of wild ani- mal and vegetable life; the self-pruning processes of primeval forests and many of the visible efforts of the war of life against death. Because of the limited visual powers of man, there are more invisible activities than those that we can see. But there are also many that we are slow to see because we do not wish to see. So I saw in the world's growing social array against alcohol sim- ply a great movement of life against death. As such it will succeed in spite of man's blindness and opposition, just because of the world-old truth that man is ever the weak proponent and God is forever the mighty dispo^ nent. Michigan voted in favor of state-wide prohibition at the election of November, 1916, and in favor of woman suffrage in 1918. CHAPTEK XXXV MY PART IN THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 THE second year of my service as Governor was a year of presidential campaign. A successor to Mr. Taft was to be selected. Early it became ap- parent that there was great dissatisfaction with Presi- dent Taft. No matter what merit he might have, and forgetful of his great public services in the past, it was plain that a majority of his party would not and did not approve or trust him politically. They could no longer see good in him or in anything he proposed. Because it was a Taft proposition, the proposed Treaty of Cana- dian Reciprocity, a measure of great merit, was bitterly opposed. I was, I think, the only governor in the United States who supported that treaty, at home and at Washington. It was passed with difficulty, after long hearings and delays that aided in perverting the Cana- dian view and supplying fuel for its subsequent repudia- tion across the border. Always in public life and in politics I have clung to certain ideals of citizenship and its responsibilities. Like millions of others I have looked upon Theodore Roosevelt as personifying most nearly these mind and heart types. He was human and made errors, but he was heartful and earnest, courageous and honest. He worked at the job of being a citizen when with another temperament he might have been a loafer, because he never had to work for bread, that great industrial 289 290 THE IKON HUNTER incentive. Always active and giving of himself, spend- ing and being spent, he has the highest batting average of public service in the modern history of the nation. And as such things are usually interpreted his work has been unselfish. In a higher way of thought his labors have been the essence of worthy selfishness for social and individual welfare including himself. First with all good citizens comes the good of the nation ; then the good of those agencies that contribute to the nation ; then the man : Country, party, individual. I cared only in this way. It seemed to me that the Republican party had attracted to itself the greater vol- ume of genius for government. As is always true in a successful party the bad entered with the good. Virtue in party should be and always will be at friction with vice in party. Those who, as participants in or agents for intrenched privilege, believe in government by the few will be naturally opposed by those who believe in government by all for all. Mr. Taft might be nominated by force, but he would be defeated. The midyear's elections foreshadowed that certain result. What was the party to do if it would achieve the success within itself that would pre- serve in control its best element, and continue it in governmental power and direction ? A candidate other than Mr. Taft must be found. This thought was one common to many earnest minds. The field to select from was not large. But there were some good, earnest, courageous public men, and more were being created out of an atmosphere growing from an aroused public conscience. Of these the first and greatest and clearest and most consistent and courageous was Theodore Roose- velt. His own idea, as he had told me and all who talked with him, was to be ready to serve in peace or PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1912 291 war at any time his country, that had so honored and trusted him, demanded. But he would not be a can- didate. He must be drafted and the call must be un- mistakable. Now it is one thing for a king to call and another thing for a people. There may be ever so much ma- terial for a chorus, but it is always scattered, untrained and undirected. A big Roosevelt movement began all over the land. He was unmoved by it. In fact it was so intangible as to be difficult of measurement. No one man or men started it. But it was still in no form to carry convictions of duty and sacrifice to Oyster Bay. Alexander Revell headed the Roosevelt movement in Chicago. Edwin W. Sims was associated with him. Mr. Sims was from Michigan. Perhaps that is why he came to me. " There is only one way that I can think of that will formulate this Roosevelt movement so that it will com- pel him to be a candidate; that is to call a conference of Republican governors and pass resolutions urging Colonel Roosevelt to come out and do his duty." It was the idea of Mr. Sims. It appealed to me. I signed a call for a meeting of the governors. There were not many Republican governors, only nine or ten. The States had fallen like bean-poles before the anti- Taft hurricane. There were eight governors at the meeting. Seven of them signed the call eagerly. The message was carried to Oyster Bay. Colonel Roosevelt became a candidate. The steam-roller national con- vention in Chicago nominated Taft. Then came the revolt. The followers of Roosevelt entered upon the formation of a new party. This I opposed. At the first meeting in Michigan I succeeded in preventing the formation of a progressive party. There was no 292 THE IKON HUNTER progressive principle that I did not and do not believe in and advocate. The thing was to decide what instru- mentality would most quickly secure the adoption and application of progressive reforms in government. I am firmly convinced that the great majority of the Re- publican party was progressive and is so to-day. The only thing to do as I saw it, was to remain in the party and wrest control from the leaders who were abusing it. This had already been done in Michigan and other States, and it seemed particularly unwise to desert and leave behind all the good work that had been done up to date. Suffering from a broken foot, I had managed to attend the Lansing meeting, though on crutches. An inflammation in the injured member prevented me from attending the convention at Jackson where Senator Dixon, of Montana, swept men off their feet who had promised me not to secede, and the Progressives in Michigan were organized. Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson ran. I made it plain that I would remain in the Republican party and would vote for Roosevelt as a Republican, and I advised other Republicans to do the same. I was at Deerfoot Lodge when I got the news that Colonel Roosevelt was shot. In a flash I reviewed the early part I had played in getting him into the fight, A decision to go and help him now that he was hors du combat was acted upon at once. I tendered my services and asked to be sent wherever the committee had difficulty in getting or keep- ing speakers. After several speeches in Chicago, St. Louis and other places in Missouri, I was sent to Okla- homa. My progress in Oklahoma was such that Wil- liam Jennings Bryan was sent to follow me. I closed the campaign in Indiana, too far away to enable me to reach Sault Ste. Marie in time to vote. CHAPTEE XXXVI OFF FOE MADAGASCAR, ASIA AND AFRICA FOR A LONG TOTTR IN THE UNUSUAL PARTS OF THE EARTH MY term of office as Governor was nearing a close. There had been a fight for some good cause every day and I had enjoyed every mo- ment of it. It was touching to me to witness the evi- dence of regard so plainly shown by good men of all parties. It made me forget there had been any such thing as opposition or bitterness. I felt that I was over-appreciated and too well paid. The University of Michigan and Olivet College and also Alma College, had conferred upon me the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. I was the first governor of Michigan to be thus honored ; not the first to deserve but the first to receive. Olivet and Alma are splendid denominational colleges. Their recognition of me could not be interpreted as po- litical by my most bitter enemy. At the end I was given a dinner at Hotel Downey, Lansing. Republicans, Progressives, Socialists and Democrats came to do me honor. It was a thank God thing and I was overcome. The Democratic Governor incoming was present and said he would model his ad- ministration after mine. I had inducted him into of- fice with all kindness, respect and assistance. The speeches at the dinner were of such graciousness as few men live to hear. Reviewing my work as Governor, one of the great dailies of Michigan said editorially : " Throughout its course, the Osborn administration 293 294 THE IKON HUNTER lias been free from the touch of scandal. To be sure it has not been untroubled, but those troubles have been of the clean sort, in which men could oppose each other with honest differences of opinion and without shame. They have been storms rather than embarrassments. But the fact is the troubles of his administration have been brief in duration and inconsequential in effect and may be easily forgotten. " Some of the things Governor Osborn set out to do two years ago have been accomplished. In other things disappointment has been his portion. But in success or disappointment, he displayed in all his official acts and life a spirit which made the fortune of the hour seem a matter of small moment. He met his every de- feat with an attitude that commanded the admiration which usually is the tribute to success alone. In friendly or in hostile sympathy with his administration as one may be, yet the name of Osborn cannot be de- nied place beside that of Blair, the war Governor, and of Pingree, the first insurgent, in the roll of Michigan Governors. " Reflect now on the two years of Osborn's governor- ship, and consider not only the immediate results of it, but the impulse it has given to a finer, stronger con- ception of government by the people of this State of ours. The injury that Osborn has done is solely to Chase S. Osborn's political aspirations if any he has. The good that Chase S. Osborn has wrought is the in- alienable possession of the State." The House of Representatives passed resolutions offi- cially commending my work. My brief exaugural address was well received by the Legislature and by the public. I was deeply content. A LONG TOUK OF THE WOULD 295 There was much I wished to do. I had not finished the earth in travel and study. There remained por- tions of Africa and all of Madagascar. My wife and I left at once for the East and across the seas. We stopped en route in Washington, where I addressed the Michigan Society, upon the invitation of Judge Mont- gomery, with whom I had sometime clashed, but who is so big that he has forgotten it and forgiven me. At the State Department I could get almost no information about Madagascar. This made me decide to proceed to France. Madagascar is a French Colony. France took possession of it one year before the United States acquired the Philippines. It furnishes a splendid op- portunity of comparing the methods and colonial poten- tiality of the two nations. We took passage on the French liner La Touraine, with the same captain who had sent the Titanic a wire- less warning of the iceberg, that was unheeded. Either at the wharf at Havre, or on the train between there and Paris, our trunks and bags were broken into and robbed. I mention this because we have only suf- fered from such depredations while traveling in France, Italy and Spain. One gets the idea that the average of honesty is low among the European Latins. I say European Latins because we have found the South American Latin peo- ples as honest as any others in the world. We have been warned in every South American country to be- ware of thieves while traveling, just as the American traveling public encounters " beware " signs in depots and hotels, at home and on ocean steamers. In thou- sands of miles of travel in South America I have never lost an article, and I grew to be less watchful there than in most countries. Friends liviiiff in South Amer- 296 THE IKON HUNTER ica uniformly tell me that petty larceny and sneak thiev- ing are uncommon there, which accords with my ex- perience. Ambassador Herrick was very kind to us in Paris. He saw that I had access to all official sources of in- formation. I was also permitted a more intimate knowledge of Dr. Alfred Grandidier, the famous biolo- gist, and his work. Grandidier is an authority upon nearly every branch of scientific knowledge pertaining to Madagascar. When he completes the volumes he is writing they will form an exhaustive treatise upon that big and interesting island. We sailed from Marseilles on a stormy day. The Mediterranean was the roughest I had ever seen it and it grew worse. Off Crete we nearly foundered. The storm continued for four days. For two days it was a hurricane and during thirty-six hours our ship just headed into it, and the log did not record a single knot of progress. Mrs. Osborn remained in our stateroom because it was too rough to dress. She was compelled to live in the upper berth on account of the depth of water in the room. Other women were hysterical, and men were down on their knees in prayer, just as they always rush to God in danger and helplessness and so often forget Him at other times. No one was permitted on deck. Even the captain wrung his hands. He had ordered me below a number of times. Finally learning that I was working with the deck hands helping to rig the auxiliary steering gear and doing other things, he made me a member of the crew. During all of it my brave wife was as calm as could be, and only asked me to tell her and give her enough time to put on a life preserver, if it became necessary. Many passengers, both women and men, wore life belts for two days. A LONG TOUK OF THE WOULD 297 We had seen trying storms in the Cape Horn region, in the China Sea, in the North Atlantic and North Pa- cific and in Biscay and the Indian Ocean, but nothing worse than this. The fearful thing on the Mediter- ranean in a bad gale is lack of sea room, which is the great menace also on Lake Superior and the other great lakes of the world. I have seen Lake Titicaca so storm- swept that hundreds of balsas were destroyed. Fancy a storm on the roof of the world in a lake more than two miles up in the clouds. One really feels as if he might be washed into illimitable space. It was our fourth trip to Egypt, but neither my wife nor myself had seen the Sahara as it must be seen to be comprehended. In order to do so I organized a cara- van for the purpose of journeying over the sands that are finer than when they reposed, unmoved, on the vast floor of the ancient ocean that once existed over the Bedouin domain. We planned to go some hundreds miles and also visit the Fayoum Oasis, either outward bound or upon our return. We have the slides to contend with at the Panama Canal. At the Suez, dredges are kept at work con- stantly by the boiling, slipping, flowing ooze that comes in at the bottom and sides. Compared with the Panama Canal the Suez is not much of an engineering product ; nor when compared with the St. Mary's Falls locks, at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where the lock problem was solved for Panama and for the world. CHAPTER XXXVII SOME REFERENCES TO BURMA, CEYLON, COCHIN-CHINA, TURKESTAN, PERSIA IN" Madagascar I was made an honorary member of the Academic Malgache. There are only half a dozen honorary members, including the President of France. The French authorities jealously guard the rare fos- sils that have been found in Madagascar, where so much of the flora and fauna, ancient and modern, belongs alone to Madagascar. They were very courteous to me. I was lucky enough to discover a perfect specimen of the egg of the ^Epyornis Titans, the greatest of the extinct prodigious birds, and was permitted to remove it from the country in order that I might present it to the University of Michigan. Also I obtained bones of the ^Epyornis, flying and amphibious lemurs, and a complete skeleton of the pigmy hippopotamus, a rare fossil. I shot a large modern hippo in Africa to contrast the lilliputian with. They now form a striking contrast in the mu- seum of the University of Michigan. The Colonial geologist and mineralogist aided me in obtaining a complete collection of the minerals and rocks of Madagascar for the Michigan College of Mines. English missionaries have done a praiseworthy work in Madagascar. They went there nearly a hundred years ago. Now out of a population of between three 298 BUKMA, CEYLON, COCHINCHINA 299 and four millions, there are more than five hundred thousand enrolled Christians. At Fort Dauphin we found an American Swedish Lutheran mission establishment of cheerful, wholesome, self-sacrificing missionaries doing fine work. No one could have been extended more consideration and kind- ness than we were given by all the missionaries. The most unusual Consul Porter, British official representa- tive, stationed at Antananarivo, could not have done more for his King than he and his charming family did for us. The United States Consul to Madagascar, a high- grade Negro, Mr. James G. Carter, at Tamatave, was thoughtful, polite and efficient. The color line is not drawn officially or socially and Yankee Consul Carter was having the time of his life. Madagascar is apart from routes of common travel. It is never visited by the tourist class and has not been spoiled. I am referring to Madagascar very briefly here because I am at work upon a more elaborate manu- script concerning it, which I hope to complete for pub- lication. In Ceylon we visited the Anuradhpura district where extensive ruins dating from the golden days of Buddhism are being uncovered and preserved. It is a fever stricken region. Not unlikely this caused the decay of the strong peoples that competed successfully in their time in all the activities of the known world. They were at their best about 300 B. c. One has only to go to Ceylon and read the Ramayana to have both regard and respect for the ancient Cingalese. We reached Burma in time to participate in the hun- dredth anniversary of the arrival of the American Bap- tist missionary Adoniram Judson. He really opened 300 THE IRON HUNTER Burma. The British followed, as they have been often guided by the blazed trails made in remote portions of the world by American missionaries. No river trip in the world surpasses in interest that of the Irawaddy. When we were at Bhamo the Tibe- tans, Chinese and English were guarding their frontier and frequent clashes came. The most productive ruby mines in the world are along the Irawaddy. American drillers have developed rich oil fields just as they have done at Baku. Man- dalay had the plague and three hundred a day were dying from it when we were there. Fascinating indeed is Old Pagan, once the mightiest seat of Buddhism and still showing eight thousand pa- godas and dagobas. When Genghiz Khan appeared be- fore it in the thirteenth century, there were standing thirteen thousand temples of Buddha. The King tore down five thousand to obtain material for use in strengthening his fortifications. The Great Khan cap- tured and sacked the city despite all this and a brave defense. Our English word " pagan " comes from here just as our word " meander " is from the tortuous river that laves the ruined foundation of Diana's ancient Ephesus. In Siam we found an American, Jens Westengaard, of Chicago, living in a palace as adviser to the King, and ranking only next below the sacred white elephant. The story of Westengaard and his splendid work in Siam, and his potential life throughout is dramatic and exhausts the imagination. He is indeed a creditable American. Cochin-China, French China, is well administered. Saigon is a miniature Paris. The French manage their colonies with sympathy, understanding, real interest and BURMA, CEYLON, COCHINCHINA 301 strive for unalloyed justice. The colonial work of the highest and most unselfish character in the world is that done by our country in the Philippines. Next comes France. In Persia we encountered the failure of Morgan Shuster. If he had been permitted to carry out his plans, Shuster might have done wonders for Persia. But it was not in the cards. England and Russia were as determined upon the ravishment of Persia as the latter has been of Turkestan, and the former of India. Mr. Shuster's absolute tactlessness, and complete failure to grasp the situation, only hastened the clenching of the iron bands. All of the countries engaged in the great European holocaust have at one time or another despoiled and op- pressed weaker peoples of the world. One of the most guilty is Belgium. Her Congo brutalities curdled the blood of all who knew them. Do nations reap as they sow ? Like individuals ? I think so. In Turkestan and throughout the " sealed dominions of the Czar " we found, as all must find who go or read, much to engross one and arouse conjecture and imagina- tive thought. Old Maracanda and Merv, and the val- ley of the Granicus, where Clitus saved Alexander's life, only to be stabbed to death by him in a drunken fit a short time afterwards. Alexander did not die of a broken heart because of no more worlds to conquer. There were plenty. He died of remorse, at thirty-three, because he had, while drunk, murdered his favorite general and best beloved friend Clitus, to whom he owed his life. There is much evidence that in a fit of sorrow over his crime he committed suicide. No, Alexander did not die for want of worlds to master. He died be- cause he failed to conquer himself. 302 THE IKON HUNTER The country is bleak along the Perso-Turkestan frontier and much of it a desert. At oases there were nomadic peoples, with home-woven, camel's-hair tents and garments, and many camels, sheep, goats and asses. Most of the shore line of the Aral and Caspian Sea is forbidding, gray and ashen as death. Baku is a busy, but not an attractive city. Krasnovodsk, Enzeli and Resht are as nearly impossible as human hives can be. Resht is a disease-breeding mudhole, considerably below the level of the Caspian. Kiva and Bokhara are just as they were in Biblical times. Once in Transcaucasia all is different. The val- leys contain a people that have spirit. Russia is build- ing throughout with unusual activity, and the work is done to last. Just as much life as in the most exciting boom days of Oklahoma, and in addition everything is done with a view to permanency. Tashkent, in Turkestan, is quite a modern city. Ti- flis in Transcaucasia, is much more so. Between them the space is unfinished. At Geok Tepee, where Sko- beleif captured the beards of the prophet, horsetail battle flags mark the final conquest. In Siberia there is a great development going on. In many ways Siberia is the hope of Russia. Men and women of independent thought and courage were exiled there. Often when their term of exile had finished they remained in their new abode. George Kennan's picture of Siberia is unjust, unkind and untrue. I have been three times across the remarkable domain that the robber Yermak gave to his Czar, and have tried to know Si- beria fairly. It is not as cold as Saskatchewan either in summer or winter, and always they raise more wheat than the railroad can haul. Irkutsk is really the lit- erary and modern art center of Russia, because toler- BUEMA, CEYLON, COCHINCHINA 303 ance in Kussia for the humanities first began there- abouts. Siberian and Russian towns generally are not over- churched. They are classified practically as one church, two church and three church towns and so on. If a community can support one church that is all it is permitted, until it grows to a point where, without great difficulty, it can support two. I am inclined to think that religion in Russia is less an economic burden than in any other country in the world. There seems to be a gradual rapprochement of the Greek and Episcopal churches. Their amalgamation would be a good thing for them and for the world no doubt. It was the early part of the year 1914. Everywhere we saw Russian soldiers moving towards the Austrian and German borders. There is an old Bengali saying that when soldiers are on the move watch for trouble. We had been away from newspapers for many weeks. Nevertheless I concluded that war was going on or about to start. In a few weeks it burst on Europe like an elemental demon, leading hosts of vampires and furies. Rabindranath Tagore, of whom we saw mu,ch and delightfully while in Calcutta, had in conversation pre- dicted, like a prophet of old, that the world would quake with wholesale murder and India would be avenged. He could not have dreamed it would be so soon. I was in his home when the money of the Nobel prize for literature was handed to him. He cared deeply for the generous recognition of the East by the West, but there is no East or West in the world of love and art. But he cared most because he could further endow his boys' school at Bolpur, where he is training 304 THE IKON HUNTER young men who will carry on the dream of his life. That is the restoration of the pure ancient Brahmanism, the first monotheistic religion the world knows anything about. It has degenerated into a depraved animistic Hinduism. To call Tagore a Hindu, as is commonly done, is to call Bergson a disciple of Nietzsche. Through home missionary organizations called Brahmo Samaj, they are endeavoring to convert the bull kissing Hindus. I told Tagore what he was teaching is really Christian- ity. He agreed with me, but added that it was better policy to name it Neo-Brahmanism. It is the spiritual hope of India. CHAPTEE XXXVIII I DISCOVER ANOTHER GREAT IRON ORE RANGE THAT WILL SOME DAY HELP TO SUPPLY THE WORLD WHILE following a Sakalava native trail in Madagascar, just like a Kaffir path in Africa, I came to a stretch where the dust of the path was red. Searching on either side I found bowlders of hematite iron ore. These I traced to a ridge of which they were the talus. I traced this hogback for forty miles and came to neither end. In many places along it I found rich iron ore. Specimens I procured showed a metallic iron con- tent of sixty-four per cent, and nine-thousandths of one per cent, of phosphorus. The analyses were made by a chemist in the laboratory of one of the great iron mines of Lake Superior. It is a new range of iron ore that has never been seen to be recognized by any other than myself. There it lies to supply mankind when busier and nearer deposits are exhausted. It is located almost as conveniently to the markets of the world as the Chilian deposits, back of Coquimbo, that Mr. Schwab is developing, and per- haps more so than the Minas Geraes district of Brazil, where American capital is interested. This new range is in a country where the government is stable and just, and taxation is low. There is an unlimited supply of native, low-cost labor. At present the lands are wild; that is they are owned by the gov- 305 306 THE IRON HUNTER eminent and may be bought for a few cents an acre. I feel that I am quite within the limits of reason when I state that this new iron range is likely to produce as much high grade Bessemer ore as some of the world's greatest iron regions. I am making further investiga- tions. After completing this work I shall inform the world of the location of this discovery. It goes to prove further the statement of Professor C. K. Leith, of the University of Wisconsin, made in his paper on the " Conservation of Iron Ore," at the New York meeting, February, 1916, of the American Insti- tute of Mining Engineers, to the effect that there is no danger of immediate exhaustion of the iron ore reserves of the world. When the late James J. Hill was trading on his Min- nesota iron lands, he was quoted as making a statement that the iron ore of the world would be exhausted in twenty years. It caused much comment. Mr. Hill de- nied making the statement. It bulled the iron ore land market for a time, and increased the standard of meas- urement of values of iron ore in the ground which had been entirely too low. It was during the period of low values and restricted demand that Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller secured their great Lake Superior holdings. CHAPTER XXXIX MANY PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN AGAIN URGE ME TO TAKE UP THE GONFALON FOR BETTER THINGS IN THE STATE WE had been in the almost unknown world for upwards of two years. Much of the time we were beyond reach of civilized communica- tion. Some of the time I was where no white man had trodden before. Now in the spring of 1914 we were entering the alive world again. At Baku on the Cas- pian Sea I received cablegrams from several citizens of Michigan asking me to be again a candidate for Gov- ernor of Michigan. When I arrived at Paris on the way home I found a mass of cablegrams and letters asking me to make the race. It was all much opposed to my inclination. Nothing except a sense of duty could influence me to consent. I was poisoned with malaria and had been bitten by the tsetse flies and was not in good health. That I should make the matter one demanding full and very earnest consideration was the advice given to me by Ambassador Herrick. He was the first American I had seen in more than a year. He said I owed it to my State and to the party to enter the contest. In Paris at the time were several prominent Michigan men for whose character and judgment I had great re- spect. They repeatedly urged me to be a candidate as a matter of duty. On the way across the Atlantic on the Imperator, I discussed the details of the situa- 307 308 THE IRON HUNTER tion several times with J. Sloat Fassett. He was a conservative and I a progressive Republican; Fassett a " standpatter " and I an " insurgent." But I found him always very big and generous and gracious in his personal views and statements. Looking to the welfare of the party in the nation he urged it as my duty to become a candidate. Very clearly in my mind was the wish that I would not find conditions such as to force me to enter the contest. This was my state of feeling when I landed at New York. Equally plain was the determination on my part to do my duty if I could come to see it clearly, and to come to know the way was my daily prayer. At New York a Michigan delegation met me and urged me to become a candidate. I had said that I could imagine no conditions that would make it neces- sary for me to do so. And I deferred a decision. On my way home to Sault Ste. Marie I was asked to stop at Lansing where a reception and banquet had been ar- ranged in my honor. At Lansing the situation was made very plain. There seemed to be a real demand for my services as a candidate. My physician told me it would kill me to go into a campaign in the then con- dition of my health. I told him kill or no kill, I would run. It was late. Other candidates had been at work for months. I went from county to county speaking from ten to twenty times a day. Great crowds came to hear me and to welcome me home. I told them the heart's truth about everything. Every day and often at night I suffered intense pain, but the pain seemed to be a pleasure when borne for a good cause. I enjoyed the campaign and once in it I tried to justify the work of my friends by putting every pound of strength I had into the fight. It was fine. FOE BETTEK THINGS IN THE STATE 309 I won the nomination for Governor, but was defeated for election. I was very happy. To me the interpretation was that I had strength enough to make the fight, defeat certain agencies and sow seed for public ripening and whole- some harvest by and by, but not enough to go on with life's battles until I had rested, recuperated and driven out the jungle poisons that gripped me. Now I was freed so as to be allowed to do this. Wars are not always won by single battles, any more than life's work is done by lone achievements. One very often wins when he appears at the time to lose. In the essences the thing is to offer to serve. There is a heavy load to carry; perhaps a public burden. You offer eagerly, willingly to take it up and bear it. The task is given to another. Therein is the responsibility ; the exaction. The only thing you, who have been re- jected at the time, must do, is to be ready to offer freely and unselfishly again to serve. That the public was slow to believe what was charged against my opponent is to the credit of the people; to their fairness and sense of justice. They really thought, or a great many did, that the stories were libels and pure campaign fiction. Now they know better. I have ever found the public ready to be more than generous and just. Like the wholesome individual, all it wishes is to see the right way and it will take it. Soon after this election occurred, in the fall of 1914, I was invited to speak at many important places in Michigan and elsewhere. Everywhere, including Lans- ing, I was greeted by larger and kindlier audiences than I ever had spoken to before. It was as if it had begun to dawn upon the public that I had tried to render a service and they sought to give me belated appreciation. 310 THE IKON HUNTER That was unnecessary, because Michigan has given me many honors and always has recognized me beyond my deserts. Shortly after I went into Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore, interluding treatment there with quail hunting and pruning pecan trees in southern Georgia where I belong to a little club of close, fine friends and where also we have a bungalow. Much benefit came to me in a physical sense. Then Mrs. Osborn and I started for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, via the Pan- ama Canal. On the steamer, in California and every- where I appeared, I was treated with that generous con- sideration and kindliness that only the truly inde- pendent and spirited American citizenry knows how to show. I was especially pleased with my reception when I spoke at the University of Missouri; the University Club of Chicago; The National Geographic Society at Washington; and the Chicago Geographic Society. When the dissolving ice and snow permitted I again buried myself in the wilds. At Duck Island, in the St. Mary's River, I discovered what all those to whom the matter has been presented, agree is the solution of the mystery of luminosity in fireflies and other animal life. It is produced by enzymes, is one hundred per cent, in efficiency as compared with fifteen per cent, for electricity. It is entirely possible that enzymic light may be developed to be of practical service to mankind and commercially valuable. I am studying the aurora borealis and the aurora Australis. To several scientists I have submitted my discoveries and theories concerning the auroras and they have been interested and encouraging. CHAPTER XL IN CONCLUSION I HAD been widely mentioned for the presidency. The Chicago Evening Post and other prominent high-grade newspapers presented my name for consideration. There was more evidence of comforting confidence and encouraging belief in me given by a public wider than my charming circle of personal friends. In the autumn of 1918 I became a candidate in the primaries for the Republican nomination for United States Senator from Michigan. My war work had taken every moment of my time. I had held over four hundred war meetings, without other compensation than the deep satisfaction one has in actively manifest- ing a desire to serve. I received nearly fifty thousand votes, but was defeated. The younger men to whom I most appealed were off to the war : almost two hundred thousand of them. I felt my defeat not at all, because I had only offered to try to carry a big, spinous load for Michigan. They gave it to another. The reaction of America to the conditions created by the world's war followed quickly a first dim sensing and then a clear perception that the permanence of the social structure builded here by the people for themselves was seriously imperiled. No matter what designation of word or phrase was used to etch this in the composite mind there was a feeling, all of a sudden, that safety and insurance of independent government demanded 311 312 THE IKON HUNTER our participation in the war. To oost people making the world " safe for democracy " meant next to nothing tangible. They instinctively felt that the success of the attempt to impose the German system upon us meant the death of cherished ideals and fragrant hopes. It did not matter to them whether our government is more or less efficient than an autocracy: it is their government, is what they wish and make of it good or had, and there is deep confidence that in time it will be perfect enough for mundane purposes if the people are not molested in progress by the iron hand of a selfishness so singularly personified as to be impossible of coming under their control. Many even realized that in the German Em- pire was an efficiency that permitted a scientific exploi- tation of the people to the last degree; even compre- hending meticulous human care in order to conserve and selfishly utilize their man power. And at the same time they also knew that in the United States there are strata beginning with the economic enslavement of cer- tain workers and ending in irresponsible and lightly bound economic social groups. Perhaps our masses could not have made an analysis and framed a deduction. Their intuition springing from fountains of self-pres- ervation bid them unite against the Germans with co- herent effectiveness. At the bottom of it all the masses in our country feel in terms varying from the nebulous to the concrete that this is their country and that they are responsible for it and that it can only endure if they protect it against foes from without or within. This is the guaranty of intelligent popular will where any of the genius of government is possessed. It will be our protection from the plague of bolshevism and even de- mands that all parties demonstrate an ability to conduct the affairs of government sanely if they are to be en- IN CONCLUSION 313 trusted with it for any long period. Somehow the sense of order and proportion attends this sense of possession. The people see about them in the universe the applica- tion of the laws of order in the diurnal procession, the coming and going of the months, the rising and setting of the sun, the recurrence of moon and stars. Perhaps they could not discourse philosophically upon these beau- tiful phenomena, but they have deeply ingrained the lessons they teach. One average man said to me that the socialists are like a man who is hungry for an apple pie: he has all the materials of flour, shortening, apples, spices, sugar and the fire and a hunger, but he cannot make an apple pie. How true it is. To be able to distinguish those who can perform the services of government safely is the first requisite of a free people and popular government. Uncle Sam is an icono- graphic individual made up of all his hundred million parts ; and there are more parts than this, though not all visible, in the individual unit. Some of the hundred million of Uncle Sam are souls, some are brains, others are lofty urges and sentimental desires; some are legs and arms and spine and heart and soul and liver and spleen and so on; some are eczema and psoriasis; some just waste material. To a degree the individual may elect his part and his function ; all cannot, because some are hopeless, inert derelicts, operating negatively as more or less dangerous ferments. But after all the wholesome parts will protect, defend and keep the body of the nation alive, just as the phagocytes and their aids expel pathogenic germs in the individual and cure dis- ease. In the individual there is a time limit fixed beyond which there can be only disintegration with no hope of tangible physical renewal. In the national en- tity there is complete renewal every thirty-seven years, 314 THE IKON HUNTER which is the average of longevity among our people. In that lies the great hope; the death of the aged; the birth of the new essence. The habe cries lustily at birth as the old man moans his departure. We do not know much about what becomes of us, nor does it matter much to us while in this sphere. It is comforting to know that theologians and scientists are one in pro- claiming immortality. Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, head of the department of geology at the University of Chicago, chief among the cosmic philosophers of the world, in the closing paragraph of his recent book upon the " Origin of the Earth " says : " It is our (Professor Chamberlin's) personal view that what we regard as merely material is at the same time spiritual, that what we try to reduce to the mechanistic is at the same time volitional, but whether this be so or not, the emergence of what we call the living from the inorganic, and the emergence of what we call the psychic from the physiologic, were at once the transcendent and the transcendental fea- tures of the earth's evolution." This is beautiful. It is an admission by a great scientist of the insufficiency of the human mind. Many other intellectuals are brave enough and fair enough and sufficiently without the dominating ego to agree with Professor Chamberlin. Thus are the profound minds grouping to convey the final fact that where man ends God begins. Subsumed with religion it creates a per- fumed hope. And yet man is so human and cowardly at times and superselfish. While the war was going on mankind rushed towards God as in the resurgent days of the Crusades;. peace has come and will man forget God when he is not terrified by necessity for higher help? It has been ever so. To justify the war we must rebuild Ihe world ; nor My father George Augustus Osborn IN CONCLUSION 315 must we hide the fact from view that man's selfishness, man's inhumanity, man's intolerance have created the conditions that have sprung all the wars forever and ever. Is it unkind or unjust or unfair to recall that within the brief cycle of a century Great Britain, Kus- sia, France and Italy, not to forget our part too, have seized nearly two-thirds of the surface of the earth ? Subject peoples in India, Burma, Trans-Caspia, Africa, Madagascar and elsewhere numbering a billion souls have been wrung for head taxes. Just a little time ago Great Britain, at the time of the Sepoy uprising, loaded live Indians into cannon and shot them out for schreck- lichkeit. More recently we gave the Moros the water cure for the same example. Within a half dozen years the inhuman atrocities in the Belgian Congo perpetrated by the Belgian Government, with no madness of war to cause insane acts, shocked the world. Now it would do no good to call attention to these better forgotten blood marks were it not necessary to determine whether an indictment of a present people can be made for the crimes of their progenitors. We of to-day cannot be to blame unless we condone and continue the sins of yesterday. Consequently upon this very day we are called upon practically to decide whether we will per- mit to continue the era of intolerance and antagonism or supplant it with a period of tolerance, justice, coop- eration and sincere goodwill. Platitudes will not be sufficient for the stomach of our people no matter how musical they may sound to the senses. There must be a clear admission that the human derelicts of to-day are the blighted usufruct of the injustice of yesterday ; the economic unfairness. No brighter ray illumes the world's political firma- ment than our policy in the Philippines. We really 316 THE IRON HUNTER seem to have done more in two decades to advance a less apt people there than the British have achieved in India during more than a century. It is not intended that these comparisons shall he odious, for we have done better with our suzerain peoples than with many of our citizens at home. It is surely demanded that we shall do more than talk our best ; we must do our best ; not in spots; everywhere. After all there is progress, even if the world does fall over the edge of the precipice every so often and flounder in what appears to be abysmal despair. It is not satisfying to survey the social growth by decades, but if we will begin with the Java man and his Neander- thal contemporary and carry our vision on to the Cro- naagnon and the Vazimba and then on to Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Wilson and Roosevelt, we can have some food of assurance that the growth tendency will con- tinue until we shall have to scratch more deeply to un- cover the carnivorous cave dweller. It took eras for the eohippus to become a horse and the dodo to become an aeroplane. Perhaps our greatest concern comes from a tendency to regard ourselves and our times too seri- ously. If I were to endeavor to coagulate wisdom into a short sentence it would be : Do your best and do not quarrel with Providence. The dearest hope of mankind lies beyond the horizon of the present. We shall attain it. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OT AMERICA 'HE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. COLONEL ROOSEVELT'S OWN 1 STORY OF HIS LIFE Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography Illustrated, 8vo, $3.00 " The vigor and directness for which he is justly admired show them- selves in every sentence of his book. . . . Emphatically and unmistaka- bly the author has stamped himself on every page of his book, and no reader desiring a better acquaintance with him will be disappointed in this ample autobiography." The Dial. " A book of extraordinary personal fascination. ... A record of Theodore Roosevelt's internal and external life, a survey of his boyhood, his youth, and his manhood. A book of his ideas, his ideals, and his practical outlook on life, a book that reflects his temperaments." Boston Evening Transcript. TWO NOTABLE BIOGRAPHIES OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT Theodore*Roosevelt: The Boy and the Man BY JAMES MORGAN !tlstroted, Itmo, $1.50 " My aim," says the author, " has been to present a life of action by portraying the varied dramatic scenes in the career of a man whose energy and faith have illustrated before the world the spirit of Young America." "The ideal biography of President Roosevelt." New York Times. " It portrays vigorously and with enthusiasm the very dramatic scenes in a life of unusual originality." Philadelphia North American. Theodore Roosevelt : The Citizen BY JACOB RIIS Cloth, izmo, $.60 " It is written from the heart. It breathes sincerity and conviction in every line. 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The material obtained from this source was not, however, of the same value and importance that it frequently is in the case of prominent men. Mr. Hanna was a leader rather than a statesman. The most critical part of his work was transacted by means of private personal conferences, and an account of his life would necessarily be very inadequate which was not based to some extent upon a knowledge of what occurred at some of these conferences. In order to meet this need, all of Mr. Hanna's associates in business and politics were interviewed and statements of their relations with Mr. Hanna obtained. Mr. Croly has made, it his main object to pre- pare a good narrative. Mr. Hanna was a man of action, who was doing things all his life and whose career was a succession of surprises not merely to the public, but to his friends and to himself. 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The murder of Raspu- tin, the political changes preceding the revolution, Kerensky's first steps in government, the first effects of the revolution all these things are faithfully and dispassionately reported. The book is dedicated to the general's heroic wife, who was killed when the Germans shelled a bandaging station behind the French lines. Recollections of a Russian Diplomat BY BARON EUGENE DE SCHELKING , $2.50 Besides being an amazing and stirring story, this is a permanently im- portant historical document. It epitomizes the case of the people and democratic government against government by autocracies and sham- ming chancellories. The writer escaped from Russia by pawning his wife's jewels. He came to Canada and electrified the readers of Amer- ican papers by his revelations of court life in the Balkans. He foresaw the inevitable end of monarchy : there never was a clearer case of suicide. 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