CHAPTER IX.

LIFE OF JAMES G. FAIR.

ANALYSIS OF CHARACTER-PHYSIQUE AND FEATURES-WIFE AND CHILDREN -PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD-JOURNEY TO CALIFORNIA-PLACER-MINING KING OF THE COMSTOCK-THE BONANZA FIRM-ABILITY AS A MANAGER -THE COMSTOCK BONANZAS-SYSTEM OF SUPERVISION-UNITED STATES SENATOR THE WHEAT DEAL-WEALTH-CHARACTERISTICS.

MEN often disagree because they do not know wherein they differ. If this were not so, there would be much less controversy in the world. Facts concerning those things the knowledge of which is definite the discussion of all other things is mere speculation-inay be stated with such precision as to render more than one conclusion from them impossible. Why, then, have we conflicting opinions in regard to the same thing; why do not our estimates of the same person coincide? There can be but one reason for such disparity of judgment; either the student enters upon the inquiry with his mind prepossessed or else he fails to familiarize himself with the subject. In other words loyalty to truth is the beginning and end of philosophy. Therefore let us, reader and chronicler, examine men under the light of the best evidence to be had, and then without fear or favor, judge him in accordance therewith.

C. B.-IV. 14

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We are too apt to place the possessors of great wealth all upon the same superlative plane, without regard to any other consideration than that of mere money. As wealth, in popular esteem, is the one paramount gift of the gods, however forbidding the recipient may be in mind and character, he is raised out of the category of common, and given a seat among the nobles of the land. Yet as millionaires are becoming every day more plentiful, the necessity of comparative analysis is forced upon us, the necessity of weighing one rich man by another rich man, if rich and poor cannot be balanced in the same scale.

A fortune is a good thing, but it may cost too dear. Great wealth is worth the travail only when with it the man preserves his manhood; not when his soul is shrivelled thereby, with a name the synonym of money, and the body hastening to early oblivion. One rich man may be worshipful; another may be more despicable than the dog of Diogenes. To be wealthy is not always to be great. Money is great and powerful, but not always the man. He alone is great who can do as well as be; whose thoughts occupy that higher sphere into which it is not easy for every one to ascend; he is great who makes for himself an exalted place and occupies it. Numskulls can inherit; fools can win at gambling games.

The power of intellect is immeasurable, irresistible. In its sway over nature it approaches in its character almighty power, the maker and preserver of all; and thence from its exalted altitude it descends in the scale of humanity to the border of the brute creation; so that among men, as among gods, there is every quality and degree of this self-conscious and intelligent force; but never numskull or fool achieved large and legitimate wealth through his own unaided efforts and as the result of years of self-application. Hence it is that rich men who have honorably acquired their wealth, not by robbing others, but by creating it, are entitled to our profound respect as superior beings, as

men not of the common mould, but as the exemplars of a progressive race.

In studying the life and character of James Graham Fair, this feature stands out preeminent, that not all was a fortune's wheel whirled for his adventuring, but that he made some of the circumstances which made him. True, he did not create the silver and the gold; no genii of the mine arose to tell him whether in this quarter or in that, if at all, lay hidden a bonanza; but none the less he fell upon the mountain's secret, and through his scientific sense he placed his finger on the spot, and with courage and constancy struck there the blows which finally opened to him the wealth of ages.

And if wit and pertinacity were essential to the securing of a fortune even on scientific principles, amidst fortune's rapidly revolving wheels on the Comstock, how much more wisdom and circumspection were necessary to keep it. How many of those who regarded themselves rich in 1865, were bankrupt in 1875, some having in consequence destroyed their own lives? Large fortunes quickly made are the most difficult of all to hold; it is not often that they are the work of skill or invention, but rather of chance, and hence, unsubstantial and flitting; the fruits of years of anxious labor are not so willingly parted with.

During the marvellous half-century development of our westernmost civilization, wherein half a continent of wilderness has been transformed into gardens and fruitful fields, with highways and cities, manufactories and universities, and all the paraphernalia of high intellectual and material unfolding, how few there were who rose superior to the destiny they invoked, how many were crushed beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut car of progress! And again, how few by their own merits have risen; how many through their own faults have failed! Merit is not the true and invariable measure of success; the gods do not