Michael Hodder and Q. David Bowers
The Expansion of an Empire: the United States Smelting, Refining, and Mining Company
To remedy the refining deficiency, which prevented control over all phases of his business, in 1903 Bert Holden purchased the DeLamar Copper Refining Company, located in Chrome, New Jersey. This company was founded by Joseph R. DeLamar, a mer-chant captain on the New York to Bermuda run, who owned mines in Georgia in the East, and Colorado, Idaho, and elsewhere in the West. In 1895 Captain DeLamar took options on claims in Bingham Canyon, which showed vast reserves of copper, but when called upon to exercise them, he shied away as he felt the purchase price was too high. The options were then picked up by a company formed to exploit the reserves, Utah Copper Company. Later, Utah Copper was sold, forming today's Kennecott Copper Company.
The new acquisition was renamed the United States Metals Refining Company, offered on the Boston Exchange, and capitalized at $3.1 million. Ownership was held jointly by United States Mining, Bert's company, and Aron Hirsch und Sohn of Halberstadt, Germany, who were Bert's overseas sales agents. U.S.M. held 75% of the stock.
United States Metals operated a copper refinery in New Jersey and a lead refinery in Grasselli, Indiana. The works were completely renovated from 1903 to 1906, with a further upgrade to increase monthly capacities effected in 1911. Blister copper (i.e., partially refined ingots) from all Bert's mines was shipped to the New Jersey plant for refining into pure copper. The electrolytic furnaces there could process 18,000 tons of blister copper per month, the excess capacity being devoted to refining other customers material. Trace gold and silver left over in the copper from the smelting and reducing plants in Utah were extracted in special cupel furnaces. The lead refinery plant in Indiana included the first electrolytic refinery for lead erected in the United States and could process 2,000 tons per month. United States Metals employed 875 workers in its two plants.
With new smelters, reducing works, and his own copper and lead refineries, Bert Holden was more than able to process all the raw ore his mines in Utah were capable of extracting. In addition to processing other customers' products, Bert began looking around for additional mining properties he could buy. His academic training at Harvard came in handy.
Bert personally inspected several mining sites up for sale, walking the underground galleries and surveying the surface features. On at least one occasion he took his young daughter, Emery May, underground with him. She remembered being hoisted onto her father's shoulders, handed a miner's pick, and being told to knock off an ore sample from the ceiling of a gallery which was too high for Bert to reach unaided. After some searching, in Utah, Nevada, and California, Bert decided on his next property, the Mammoth Copper Mining Company.
Bert financed the purchase by issuing 60,000 shares of United States Mining Company stock at $25 par value each. The Mammoth site incorporated 1,400 mountainous acres located on little Backbone Creek near the small town of Kennett (in Shasta County, California). In 1903, the year Bert bought it, the company employed 50 men in the copper mines. Nine years later 1,200 men worked the mines. Access to the underground deposits was gained through shafts started from the tops of the high hills on the site. Orewas brought to the surface in iron carts pulled up the steep galleries by mule and man power. From the mine openings the raw ore was carried on a three-mile long aerial tramway downhill to a smelter Bert erected as soon as he bought Mammoth. The tramway moved 1,600 tons of ore daily. Later, in 1906, a ground-based tramway was added paralleling the aerial one, increasing the flow of ore to the smelter below. From the smelter the tramway carried the blister copper ingots to a spur line of the Northern Pacific Railroad for shipment to Bert's New Jersey refinery.
The first smelter on the site, built in 1903, processed 750 tons of copper-bearing ore each day, but it could not keep up with the amounts extracted from the mines on site. It was enlarged in 1906, at a cost of $500,000, to handle 1,000 tons daily, but when the smelter went on line it was found it could process 1,800 tons per day. When the new smelter started up, its five furnaces made it the second largest in the state of California. Its pollution control equipment, installed at a cost of $250,000 in 1910, was as advanced as the system Bert had earlier built for his Bingham Canyon smelter-Bert had learned his lesson well. Although Mammoth paid local farmers $50 to $100 yearly for "smoke easements;' as a legal precaution against complaints, California courts found the emission controls adequate and its smelter was the only one allowed to operate in the state. The Mammoth mines were the largest producers of copper in California until 1920; by then, reserves were almost exhausted, but the property had served its purpose.
The only mining company he bought that did not realize the potential he saw in it was the Eureka-Richmond Mining Company. The Eureka Consolidated Mining Company was one of Nevada's oldest, originally formed in 1869 to mine silver. Bert bought the company in 1905, merged it with the smaller Richmond Mining Company, and capitalized the new company on the Boston Exchange at $3.6 million. The chief mines were located in Eureka, Nevada, at the end of a narrow and twisting spur line of the Eureka and Palisade Railroad (E & P) that wound through the mountains. The other end of the E & P was connected with the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific railroads. The mines produced silver for Bert's Utah smelters until 1910. In that year the E & P was washed out in a spring flood. After the line was rebuilt the owners raised their freight charges, which made the low-grade silver ore the mine extracted unprofitable to ship. Expecting an eventual reduction in freight costs, Bert retained ownership of the mine, but the works remained idle for many years afterward.
Overseas Expansion
Much as he liked to explore potential new mining sites Bert Holden could not afford to stay in the field for very long at any one time, or his larger business interests would go unsupervised. Consequently, he formed the American Exploration Company in 1906, capitalized at $500,000. The company was charged not only with exploring for possible new mining sites, but also with running its own, small, gold mines in New and Old Mexico. The surveying company was immediately successful, and on its findings Bert expanded his interests outside his country's national borders.
In 1906 Bert was advised that a Mexican company, the Compania de Real del Monte y Pachuca, could be bought. This was a famous mining operation, as the Real del Monte was the oldest silver mine in Mexico, first opened by the Spaniards in 1553. Bert bought the company (the purchase price has not been preserved), and under his management production of silver and gold bullion tripled in three years. He built cyanide plants at the Real del Monte and Pachuca mines, to concentrate the ores. The former plant processed 1,000 tons per day, while the latter could handle 1,800 tons daily. The silver and gold bullion was exported to the United States. The company was located in Hidalgo State. During the 1916 Revolution in northern Mexico, Pancho Villa is said personally to have ordered his forces to preserve the properties intact, forbidding looting or damage on the threat of execution. General Villa is further said to have met, and befriended, Bert Holden before the latter's death, and the memory of their friendship saved Bert's investment later. Most other North American owned mines in the northern Mexican states were expropriated and plundered by the various armies in the field in 1916.