CHAPTER XII.

LIFE OF HORACE AUSTIN WARNER TABOR.

A FOUNDER OF THE COMMONWEALTH-ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND EDUCA TION-LIFE AT QUINCY-A MEMBER OF THE KANSAS LEGISLATUREREMOVAL TO COLORADO-AT THE LEADVILLE MINES-IN DENVER-THE TABOR BLOCK AND OPERA-HOUSE-OTHER ENTERPRISES-DOMESTIC RELATIONS-POLITICAL CAREER-CRITICISMS AND REMARKS.

BEFORE touching on the mining annals of Colorado, I will first present the career of one of her leading citizens, one who, beginning life as a stone-cutter's apprentice, has done more than any other to develop the resources of the centennial state, and to build up the fortunes of her metropolis, now seated and enthroned as the "queen city of the plains." It was in the summer of 1859 when a young Kansas lawyer, named Horace Austin Warner Tabor, first set foot in Colorado. Since that date it has been transformed from wilderness primeval into one of the most flourishing among our western group of states, and that to Mr Tabor is largely due this transformation is the all but unanimous opinion of those who have observed his career.

"The voice of the people is the voice of God; there is much that is true, much that is wholesome in this saying, yet I apprehend that its greatest force rests in the fact that it is accepted generally without question. To discuss it is to arouse argument and antagonism, which, if you are contrary, places you at a disadvantage. Yet it is held by all special students

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that the popular judgment has not always been correct. It has devolved upon them, for the sake of truth, to break down now and then judgments of a general or perhaps of universal acceptation which embody popular error. They have been required to take up the cudgels against the mighty hosts arrayed in the army of the sovereign, Precedent; but they have been strengthened by the spirit and inspiration of devotion to truth. What I propose here, however, is not so much to exhaustively analyze or to conclusively demonstrate the contrary impressions or convictions that I entertain.

The field in which I am at work is special to a very large extent. I am not only to deal with extraordinary conditions and environments-a new country and new things-but with men who partake, to a greater or less extent, of the character of the extraordinary developments in which they participate. But more than this, and above all, I have to deal with men who, though differing in some respects from all others of their kind in any other part of the world, form a class which has been recognized and defined from the beginning of history. Nowadays they are called business men, men of affairs. In the older countries generally they have not been consideredand perhaps have not been, to any great extent, controllers, rulers, or creators of government in its material forms or abstract construction.

They have not been, in the older civilizations, looked upon, unless in cases of exceptional individuality and genius, as entitled to the privilege of growing, by actual merit, into places of extraordinary distinction and honor; they have been out of the realm of the aristocracy; they have been called plebeian, and as mere tradesmen they have not enjoyed any of that divine right which is the property of kings, without which artificial title, I fancy, that not a few among those who have been called rulers, and have enjoyed the nominal functions of rulership, would have been any

thing but kingly. In other words, I feel that it is my province to deal with kings actual, with affairs actually kingly; to discuss the beginnings, the growth and establishment of empire; to analyze the work and the character of the men who have been in a substantial sense empire-builders. I am not unaware that in doing this, professing to have always in view the strictly historical idea, I am apt to excite at once the hostility of precedent, and to contend against the law of routine, in this department of literature. Men of war, explorers, scientists, poets, et id genus omne; are commonly thought to occupy exclusively that claim to the attention and study of their fellows which I hold to be at least equally the right of such men as, for the most part, I am engaged in studying.

As I look back through the dim light under which we get our first record of mankind, and run along the outline of history to the present day, I observe, somewhat to the prejudice of that recognition which I desire for what I am doing, and which, nevertheless, I confidently expect to win, by reason of the substantial worth of my theme, and my labors, that the actualities of life, things in which the physical and mental capabilities of men have taken form, and have been preserved only outside of books, in experience, and, perhaps, by hereditary transmission, have been largely ignored. What, then, has been chronicled? In answering this question I have merely to point the student to the early annals of any nation; poetic forms, philosophical essays, the moral precepts of the wise have been pretty much the beginning and the end of the record of men's doings. So it is up to the present, and perhaps it may so continue indefinitely, that the man who does something which is conspicuously grand, something that strikes upon the sensibilities, or deeply stirs the emotions, will be considered primarily great, while the poet or historian who devotes his powers to portraying that luminous character will be considered also great. I would not

for a moment disparage the man who achieves on the field of battle brilliant results certainly not so if he fight in a good cause-nor would I underestimate the art of the pen fitted to describe and preserve the picture with truth and graphic color. But is this all of literature? Is there no genius outside of the usually recognized limits of belles-lettres? The orator, the poet, the physicist, the philosopher, the mathematician-do they alone contribute to the progress and enlargement of men's ideas, and the material advancement of society? Is commerce to be eschewed? Upon what energy have nations risen-by a misapplication or a waste of what energy have nations fallen? I may say, with history in full view, that the substance out of which the foundation and the superstructure of nations are composed, is the materializations of that which is ordinarily so little appreciated in letters because so little studied-the affairs of commerce. And if this be true, if it is, as it seems to me, a proposition that must be accepted directly by all who are not the slaves of form and precedent, then what may we not premise regarding the size and weight of men who have engendered, broadened, and controlled, in its various intricate, perplexing, and problematical forms, the commerceof a community?

I do not mean to exclude from the signification of the word "commerce" a department of industry which it very largely involves-that is to say, agriculture. I heartily accept, in all its phases, the old adage that "He is a benefactor of his race who causes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before." In fact, this is the body and blood of my research and writing. I deal with those who aggrandize, who, as this word originally meant, enlarge; who, in solving the growing problem of great, comprehensive, individual life, expand the resources and add to the wealth and civilization of the community of which they are an integral part. If there can be a more substantial, a more useful, a more actually noble factorship among

men, one demanding stronger intellect or more subtle ingenuity, I confess that I am not able to appreciate it. I speak without regard to philanthropy, which, in its broader scope, is impotent without the means of beneficence which are acquired by those in whom are combined both a keen and eager ambition for selfpreferment, and a strength of mind and character by which they are enabled to reach a certain position from which to dispense benefits. I take it that philanthropy, as commonly understood, that is to say, the act of going about and devoting one's life to the amelioration of suffering, or the distribution of alms, is rather an incident, and that it is hardly worthy of consideration as a rule of human action. I look upon men who have broadened and contributed to the wealth, intelligence, safety, and comfort of a town, or state, or nation as benefactors of the first importance, benefactors by virtue of their own lives. Hence, while it is interesting, I do not consider it essentially important, on the ground of expediency, into which every motive is more or less finally resolved, to look into the history of men's lives to any greater depth than is necessary to determine their historical contribution to the welfare of others. Yet it is a pleasing feature in my study of the great controlling spirits of the western United States to find that, in their successful struggle with the elements of nature, human and material, they possess the milk of human kindness in characteristic abundance.

Thus I conclude the suggestion which I desired to make first; which is, that the men and the affairs with which these Chronicles deal, by virtue of themselves and of their acts in giving body and spirit to their times, in being the makers of the history of a most peculiar and most important section, whose annals are charming already, and whose possibilities for the future dazzle its most enthusiastic statistician and friend, are entitled to enjoy a prominent place in literature, in the midst of their work.