Year: 1875




ried, for how long Ralston had run the
bank on his honor after it was hopelessly
bankrupt, cannot yet be told.


The collapse has come, and with it the
fictitious share in fictitious mines, in
which men have been accustomed to
reckon their fortunes by hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Ralston's suicide
finishes it at one stroke. Had he lived
there would yet have been expectation
of his ultimately coming out all right.
But his self-destruction destroys all such
hopes, and the feeling is that the worst
is yet to be known. And what enter
prises besides stocks will be found to be
collapsed, can only be conjectured. The
bank was concerned in everything, and
where it will end, who knows? There
is the Spring Valley Water Works,
which furnishes the water supply for
this city, and which Ralston was endeav-
oring to unload to the city for ten mil
lions there is the California Theatre
Property +; the Palace Hotel, which,
though sold by Ralston to Sharon, may
still be involved, as Sharon was Ralston's
right hand man in all the bank opera
tions of late years there are hundred
other interests extending throughout
California, Oregon and Nevada, the ex-
tent of which is but matter of conjecture.


Personally, Ralston was no less re-
marlable a man than his operations
would imply. Each morning at the
bank he received hundreds of visitors
men who had projects to promote, men
who wanted to share in his ventures,
men who wanted his endorsement of
their schemes, who come to him for ad-
vice, to borrow money, to consult about
tie politics of California, Ore gon or Ne
vada, in all which he took active part,
making and unmaking candidates, Con-
gressmen, Governors and county officials
and to all he gave quick, rapid atten-
tion, exhibiting marvellous mastery of
details; determining with astonishing
rapidity, and acting almost as soon as
he had determined. His rejection of a
project was almost invariably fatal to it,
his endorsement almost as invariably
seemed to insure its success, until his
mere commentator itself was taken as
certain augury of profit. Among his
most potent agencies was the press. AS
often as a new paper was started on the
Pacific slope the advertising card of the
bank was inserted, and, of course at the
highest rates, and kept standing the
year through. He knew how to reach
the press of this coast, too, and has
welded it almost wholly until very re-
Gently, when the ring operating against
him secured it's organs and forced the
fight on him vigorously. 4r


But at the close of business hours his
business for the day was ended. No
matter what great operations were de-
pending in the balance, on leaving the
bank he gave himself up wholly TO the
entertainment of the guests with which
his palatial residence at Belmont was
ever filed. In that oft described pala-
tial establishment, in the maintenance
of which he is reported to have spent
$50, 900 per month, there was no carry
ing of the shop into the parlor He was
a splendid host, entertaining like q
prince in most princely fashion. His
table was furnished for forty guests dali
ly. There were sixty elegantly fitted
up guest chambers in the palace at Bel
mont. All the appointments and sur
roundings were on scale of Oriental
magnifcence, and the spacious grounds
lighted with colored lanterns from hun
dreds of gas jets at night presented the
appearance of some fairy palace. Thith-
er he invited every notable who visited
California, and as well as every one who
came to him with letter of introduce
ton, or who had the smallest claim upon
his hospitality. Everything about the
place ut Belmont was princely, and
there, in princely fashion, Ralston en-
tertained all who came with the same
quick tact in matters social that distin-
guished him. in his business operations.
He was man Of princely tastes, and en-
sjoyed to the full princely living. But
there was none of the brutal coarseness
of Fisk about him. His residence
was piece of magnificent display, but
in all about it, though in many things
ford, there was nothing actually vulgar.
He was a man of some culture, too, and
was always vain of the society Of literary
folks, and no correspondent of a news
paper ever visited California who was
permitted to escape Ralston's hospitah-
ties, even if he would. In business
sense, too, this wholesale entertaining
was an important feature in Ralstons
operations. He took to his house every
capitalist who visited California every
prominent politician whose influence
might be worth having every newspa-
per man whose letters might affect pub
lie opinion, and, with the innumerable
schemes which the bank had on foot,
this vast entertaining was a vast lobby
ing continuously kept up. The tragic
termination of his career is in some sort,
according to the California point of view,
a fitting final to the whole. It viii dis
arm criticism, and, in the years to come,
old Californians will cherish his memory
as that of &c a genuine trump" who was
game to the last, and when the game
was up, passed In his checks