THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY 245 



became millionaires, like Flood and Mackay, or remained poor 

 men, derived from it a splendid education. Subsequently they 

 spread all over the west, and everywhere they proved them- 

 selves men of ready resource and strong character. Many 

 of them became managers of large mines and presidents of 

 mining companies. They are to be met with to-day in every 

 important mining district, and most of them can be recog- 

 nized at once by their quiet, authoritative way of doing things. 

 They can keep their finger on an army of ignorant Hungarian, 

 Swedish, and Italian workmen as if they were children. It is 

 a sort of magnetic power the} T appear to have acquired 

 through sheer force of governing. However turbulent and 

 unruly the men might be in weaker hands, they recognize 

 strength and dominant will when they feel them. They also 

 know when a firm hand is on the reins, making it useless to 

 kick or grumble. 



Managers and mining captains of that stamp are all born 

 organizers. Likewise they are as a rule competent experts in 

 their special line. As such they know their business from 

 beginning to end. To them it is a huge machine, every wheel 

 of which they understand and every movement they can antic- 

 ipate. The writer has met in the far west several notable 

 examples of this class of manager — the organizing expert. 

 He has a vivid recollection of one in particular — a sinewy 

 silent Cornishman whom he encountered one day on the 

 Mesaba range. He had two mines in his charge, the second 

 being twenty miles away on a different iron ore formation. 

 Both were turning out six or eight hundred tons of ore per day, 

 and employing about six hundred men. Chance threw us in 

 the way of the silent but keen-sighted manager as he was 

 going his daily round of the shaft heads and the various work- 

 shops. 



He drove up in a strong but light bugg}^ without any 

 groom or attendant. First he had a look at the ore wagons 

 coming up the shaft to see what kind of ore was being taken 

 out. From them he passed on to the " breakers" at the pit 

 head, where the ore is broken, sized, and classified. Thence 

 to the engine house, the machine shop, the air compressor, 

 and finally to the offices. In each place he walked quietly 



