Williams news., 1903-06-06
SENATOR CLARK
 OF MONTANA
Some of the Early Experiences of the Great Copper King as
 Related by Companion.

 in a smoking-room of an Atlantic liner, as short, rather insignificant looking bearded man left the room where he had taken a quiet Scotch and soda.
 "Why, that is Senator Clark" said western man, "the hero of many senatorial battles, a strong and not unsuccessful combatant of the Amalgamated Copper Company (owned by the Standard Oil peo- ple), and a self-made multi million aire. Really, he is the first half dozen of successful western mining men. Of old Scotch-Irish ancestry, he was born in Pennsylvania, but at an early age came as far west as Iowa. This, however, was not close enough to the setting sun, and, inn pelled by the excitement over the strike near where the Gregory mine now is in Central City, he came, with thousands of others, to Colo rado. For several years he worked as miner. 1 remember him we'll then. He was intelligent, not so abstemious that you could notice it, but always with a business head, and was aided by saving disposi- tion in which his ancestry helped. The Scotch blood made him thrifty, while the Irish made him imagina- tive enough to see chances and en- ergetic enough to seize them. Per sonally, I did not like him. I was fond of making jokes, and his Scotch blood prevented him from seeing their points.
 "After time he found mining life unattractive and returned to Iowa, where, if he had not done so before, he studied law to certain extent, but his restless ambition sent him back to what he consid- cred broader field, and it was not long before he harnessed up a string of mules and drove to Virginia, Montana. He opened business here as grocer, his capital being ob- tained from placer diggings in Mon tana Gulch. Prices were high, owing to the great cost of freight, but Clark, having his own team, was able to distance all competi- tors, as he earned a profit in both directions. One of the earliest cor ners in the west was organized by him. Tobacco ran high, and as nearly all the miners chewed or smoked, prices went up. Clark saw the opportunity. In spite of the blizzards of remarkably cold winter, he went to Salt Lake with his team, bought all the available tobacco in the place and brought it back in time to net an enormous profit. The capital acquired made him of some importance, and from the beginning as small, but suc- cessful merchant, he became a banker and mine-owner. His first experiments in mines were not so successful as those with the Colusa mine. Parrot and others in Butte with which he has been identified, but still, on finding that copper had some value, he managed to ac- quire considerable area of ground, which afterward proved highly pro- ductive.
 ''It is said that he was always a student, and had taken a course in mining at some eastern college. Personally, I do not know this, but at any rate, he has made more money than any educated mining engineer in the country, so that, in his case at least, what education he had in that respect has done him no harm.
 "His reduction works in Butte were successful, and he established a prosperous bank there, which he still controls. The rates of interest in mining camps are always high,