The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-06-17


doubled in value. and a copper claim held
by him at Bisbee has proved very fine
property. His known cattle sales last
year amounted to $4,000 and besides ne
had an income from his sheep, rent OF
land and his mining stocks and interest
on his Mexican mortgages.
orc B.anco is about the last community
in the country where one would look Tor
the residence of a millionaire with SO
large an annual income as James Robin
son has. Ii is a mere huddle OF one-story
mud structures dignihed by the name OF
houses They are built on the sun-bakad
earth, and are as primitive as the homes
of the Pueblo Indians. There is moi
wooden floor in the hamlet, and only two
little stores each with saloon adjunct,
and a blacksmith shop are in the locality.
The sparse population is fourth-tifths Mex
lean, and the community is not at all
American in any of its ways. Yet Back
Jim Robinson, as he is known all over the
region, because of his marked swarthi
ness for an American, has made his home
in ORC Blanco for thirty years, and will
probably never live anywhere else. He
came from Poughkeepsie, ". Y, In the
early COS and was on his way in an OK
wagon to the Pacific coast by the Santa
Fe trail, when the possibility of making
money in cattle came to him.
Forthwith he abandoned the emigrant
train 70 California, and has been living in
Arizona ever since. He was blessed with
a wonderful constitution and nerves of
iron. He has been through Indian cam
paigns that would have killed most men,
and has had fights for his life and prop
erty with Mexican vaqueros and with
outlaws that would make hair-raising mar
ratives. All the financial ups and downs
of frontier life have been his, but about
1875 he proved his title to some 40 900 acres
of land roundabout where he lives, and he
settled down to cattle raising as an in
dustry. He has prospered wonderfully
aud, despite the fact that he has lost some
tens of thousands. of dollars by his own
ignorance of commercial principles and in
dealings with shrewd purchasing agents
for the great beef concerns in the West,
he has made a fortune.
For twenty years Black Jim Robinson
has been having an average net annual
income of S45, 000, while he and his family
have been living on less than $500 of it
each year. He has Mexican wife, whom
he married thirty years ago when pale
faced women were few in this region of
Apaches Pimas and Marlcopas. There are
four young men and five young girls in
the family, but only three of them remain
at home. Ali the others have married in
TO Mexican families and gone out TO live
in shanties and mudhouses among the cat
tie along the border just like The sons
and daughters of the poorest cowpunch-
ers and sheepherders in the region. The
mud home Of this millionaire from New
York would be dear at $3.50. All the fur
niture and household effects in ii could
be replaced for $500. The floors are of
hardpacked adobe, the windows and
doors are Of the cheapest, crudest pattern,
and a drop of paint was never applied in
side or out. The children in this rich
cattlements family have always slept in
hunks, and tables and chairs have been
made for them of pine by the Indians.
Dozens OF articles of furniture that the
Eastern household deems absolute neces-
saries have never been so much as dream
ed OF in Jim Robinson's home at Ora
Blanco.
While hundreds of thousands of dollars
have been pilng up for the Robnsons,
their mode of life has never been altered
from the early days when they brayed
living in the Indian country. The old
couple dress In the same coarse, rude garb
as of old The old man wears overalls
and a Bingham shirt all the time, except
occasionally when a buyer for Chicago
or 4 Kansas CITY packing house comes
from Nogaes railroad station, thirty miles
across the hot, dusty plain, to talk over
a $50 600 or $4,000 cattle transaction in the
kitchen of the old mud house Then Mr..
Robinson may put on a threadbare and
faded coat that he bought twenty years
ago in Tucson. There Is not a book In the
house but a "Catteman's Guide" and a
volume of recipes for curing horse and
cattle diseases This milllonaiFes family
never takes a newspaper, buys no furni-
tuie never tastes such things as ice
cream, candy. fish or fancy groceries.
The Old man saw a banana for the first
time year ago when he was in Nogales
His only luxury Is plug tobacco. He and
his wife have mot been 100 miles away
from -Oro Blauco IN years When the
time comes to get his pay FOR his cattle
ana TO receive his money from his copper
properties and the interest on his mort
cages, he rides behind a jaded mule over
TO a Nogales bank, where he has hired a
bank clerk TO do all his figuring and letter
writing. He says he had dozens of near
relatives living along the Hudson river,
when he left there in 1850, but he has
never communicated with any OF them
since he settled IN Arizona. He is about
as ignorant Of the affairs Of the world
as Il he lived at the South Pole Two of
his boys cannot read or write, so closely
confined have they been with the herds
among the foothills and canons all their
boyhood days. The Robinson daughters
who will some day inherit Sl50,000 apiece.
are only a little above their half-brea
Mexican associates IN Intelligence and
have married vacqueros who earn $40 a
month and live in canons out among the
cattle many miles from any one but In
dams.
Patrick Driscoll, who owns four of the