The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-06
THE END OF AN oID MINER.
The Death of Jim Rule, Once the Super
 intendent of the Comstncf.

The Death of Jim Rule, Once the Super
 intendent of the Comstnck.
 From the San Francisco Examiner.l
 Jim Rule, known wherever there is a miner on the Pacific slope, is dead.
 Rule came to the coast in the early days with a number of Cornish miners. Like many others his experience was with the pick and shovel He drifted into Brown valley and began working the famous Pennsylvania and Keystone mines. There he began developing those talents for underground mining that afterward brought him fame and welth. Water on the lower levels forced the owner to abandon the Brown valley levels, and Rule wentsacross the mountains to the Comstock lode, of which he had heard so much.
 At first he worked with pick and shovel till some astute mine boss" per- ceived that the man had talents for bet ter things. He rapidly passed from Shift boss" to foreman and then to superintendent One of the first mines he directed was the Lady Bryan, owned by his brother John Rule, and William O'Neil. When the Lady Bryan was laid to rest in the graveyard of wild cats" Rule found employment with Sen ator John P Jones. Jones owned a lot of mills on the Comstock The mines offering them ore were rapidly going to l wreck. Jones saw an end to his profit able milling unless he could stir up business. He conceived a way out of the trouble in leasing the mines and paying the directors 50 cents a ton for all theore he took out. In arranging for this work Jones employed Rule as underground superintendent. It was was while engaged in this work that Rule acquired his extensive knowledge of the intricate lower levels of the Con- stock lode. There, too, he gained pos session of information that he used afterward to his advantage.
 | Under the contract he uncovered a number of ore bodies. Jones made a I barrel of money, and mining stock shares recovered and began to jump about almost as lively as in the great days of the 70's.
 Jones and Rule parted In anger. Rule claimed that he had not been fairly treated. Just before he quit he got an | inkling that there was a body of valu- able ore in the mine, and went away without saying anything about it. l About a year later Jones gave up his contract, claiming that he had not made anything out of it.
 1 In the sos the Comstock mines were again paralyzed for want of ore finds" Consolidated Virginia was selling for 25 cents a share, with twenty-cent as- sessment paid. While the market was in this condition Rule made a proposi- ition to develop a body of ore in the l Gould & Curry mine for a share in the proceeds. He was given the chance, but it transpired that his body of ore was not in the Gould & Curry, but in | the Savage mine, just over the bound ary line. The find was enough for the most disgruntled operators, however, and stocks began to jump.
 After that Rule turned his attention to gold mining. He was very successful with the Hurley mine, in Calaveras county, a claim that had long been worked unprofitably. He remained 1 there off and on until the fall of 1893, when the lifelessness of Comstock min- ing shares again attracted his atten- tion.
 He began to talk of a body of ore that he knew of in the Consolidated Virginia mine; he went into the details of his row with Jones and the reasons why he had never mentioned the dis covery before. After several confer ences the directors agreed to pay him S4OO0 month for six months and ten per cent on the value of all the ore he discovered. The bonus, however, was
 not to exceed $10,0OO no matter how
 large any one body of ore discovered should be.
 Jim Rule went to work with the eyes of thousands of stock 'chippers' and spectators on him. The market took
 an upward heave on the report that
 Jim Rule had gone up to Virginia City
 under contract to find another bonanza