Crittenden press. [volume] (Marion, Ky.) 1879-1907, 1907-01-24

After they had arrived At mans cs-
I tate and made money ont of timber. the
/ brothers and three ucphcws began the
work of exploring and mapping the
Nesaba. The supplies that they needed
! they carried on their backs. fifty and
eighty miles into the wilderness; horses
could not be got through the dense
growth They endured countless hard
ships for years, and, perhaps harder to
bear, the SOOTHING of all Duluth, firm in
the opinion that there was no iron ore
in Desaba-that the Merritts were
merely trying to unload a lot of worth
less stock on the public
Every possible obstacle to the develop
ment OF the property was thrown in the
way OF the seven indomitable men.
known as the Merritt brothers Finally,
however. they managed to build a fifty
mile railroad connecting with another.
giving them an outlet to the ore furnaces
OF the world. and, in 1892, they triumph
autly brought ont from the Mcsaba their
first trainload of ore The world woke
up TO the fact that the Merritts were i'm
possession Of mineral property worth
millions of dollars.
The next year was the beginning of
the last disastrous panic in this country
In developing their property, the Mer-
ritts had moved too fast, and with
money hiding away, they failed, Then
It was that John d. Rockefeller, James
]. Hill and others got their clutches on
,se Mesaba, swelling their fortunes BY
millions OF dollars And when every
thing was Strengthened out the Mer-
ritts, instead of possessing millions, had
only few hundred thousand dollars be-
tween them.
Wonderful are these and other ro-
mances connected with the mining OF
copper and iron, gold and silver in
America; but the most wonderful OF
all the romances is that of the Bonanza
kings-Flood, O'Brien, Mackay, and
Fair.
At a time when il was the general
belief that the Comstock lode was play
ed out, Mackay, the practical hard
headed miner OF the trio. was OF the
strong opinion that the lode was yet 10
know its richest days-that it was the
biggest bonanza in the whole mining
world He convinced his partners that
he was right. and they began to buy up
llllC dilNl ll4lllt ol lllC leQt, III spite OF
the fact that most of the mines that had
made the lode famous were dry holes
While the rest of the world jeered,
the partners went steadily ahead drilling
deeper and deeper into the core OF the
Everybody had concluded
that the four men were fit subjects for a
lunatic asylum, when rumor began to go
about that in long deserted drift and
at great depth, the partners had struck
gold and silver of unheard-of richness
A few days later, when the rumor had
been verified and the last doubt Of the
public dispelled. the rush to get stock in
Virginia Consolidated was so great that
i has not been surpassed to this day
The mining and speculative world sim
ply went crazy, and their state of mind
was not improved when the partners be
gan taking five million dollars a month
out OF the lode aud counting their
monthly profits at three-quar,ers of mil
lion apiece. In little over half a dec
lde they took out three hundred million
dollars worth of ore
To find their bonanza at a depth OF
Twelve hundred feet, they had spent a
half million dollars without the culver
Of an eve lid. Their faith in them
selves had been sublime. Their reward
even their most golden
dreams by millions on millions