Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-07-07
NEW MIllIONAlRES
How They Found Their Wealth in
the Arctic E.dorado.
FROM POVERTY TO sl75,0OO A YEAR
Their Different Tastes in Spending
Big Incomes.
GOLD PRINCE IN LOG CABIN


SAN FRANCISCO, July 1. 1900
More interesting and uncommon million
aires were probably never known than are
most of the men who are these days leap
ing from dire poverty into great fortune in
Alaska and the Klondike. The biographies
OF nearly all the suddenly made Dives of
the Arctic Eldorado as absorbing as
anything in adventurous fiction. and the
veracious stories of how some of the dis
couraged, tattered. unkempt and horny
handed soldiers of fortune in the frozen
north have achieved undreamed-of wealth
almost IN day, are as orfentaIly unreal as
Arabian Nights tale. There are eleven men
In the Klondike and Cape Nome whose
aggregate wealth three years ago was less
than s37OO. Today their total wealth is
between 81 500. 600 and Sc 100000. The most
interesting things l found during my recent
tour OF Alaska" said ex-Congressman
Fisher the other day. were not the gold
bearing sands. the spontaneous, mad rush OF
excited humanity to the new d1ggings, or
the geological wonders, but the men up
there who were pitifully poor and dis
heartened two and three years ago and now
have incomes of 100000 and Sl3O,UUO and
even $4,000 year
The richest man in the Cape Nome min
ing field Is Rev. Matthew NJ. Anderson.
For eleven years. until the fall of 1888, he
was a Lutheran missionary among the III
NUTS (the Eskimo natives) along the Yukon
river and the Boring sea, at an annual sal
airy of about 500. Today he has over $780,.
900 deposit In a San Francisco bank.
He has declined to sell his four placer
claims on Anvil creek at Nome for $3.50. go,
and he owns real estate that has risen in
value from $500 to over SI5,pS in thirteen
months. Rev. Anderson is a Scandinavian.
His youth was spent in poverty. He work
ed in dozen different mental ways in sew
eral eastern cities, and got his own educa-
ton largely from public libraries. At Min
neapols he helper in bake shop,
and while he saved every possible cent, he
read and studied to the end of becoming
missionary for the Lutheran Church. The
church helped him finish his education, and
when he left the theological school he was
sent to labor among the benighted Alas
kans. Rev. Anderson could fill big book
with the story Of his hard desolate, soll-
tary life on the uttermost verge Of civiliZa-
ton and wind-swept hamlets of debased
and ignorant natives in the arctics. Its
wonder that he survived his fierce hard
ships and grim prtvations. Every winter
for seven eight months at stretch he
was isolated from all the busy world by
OF icebergs and thousands of square
miles of snow. He SubSisted on repulstve
Eskimo food and dwelt in an apology OF
cabin. while he ministered to the spiritual
warts OF the natives. in caves dug in the
hillsides or in foul abodes made of ice and
dirt. For weeks at a time his sole assoc
ciates were the filthy. ignorant and bestial
Eskimos of the Boring sea coast 1t
a dreadful life for any white man. but
the Lutheran missionary dutifully stuck 10
1t.
Finding Earthly Treasures.
In the fall of 1895, when Rev. Anderson
was about to make his winter camp IN the
old whaling camp OF St. Michaels. near the
mouth of the Yukon. a native told him of
the Eskimo finds of golden nuggets on Cape
Nome. The missionary hastily got together
q marty of his friends AT ST Michaels and
sailed with them to Cape Nome. They
were the original white gold miners there.
They had amp.e time to locate claims 10
the richest gold-bearing benches along the
creeks. Then the pioneers settled down 10
spend winter on hiGeously bleak. barren
Cape Nome. while they guarded their placer
mines against other claimants. and made
ready 70. a season Of gold washing when