The Magnate by Hermann Hagedorn
The Magnate by Hermann Hagedorn
Biography of William Boyce Thompson, copper mining magnate and founder of the Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum and the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research
Thompson died in 1930 and The Magnate was published by Hagedorn in 1935. It has been a while since I have read anything written in the 30s, so I can’t really put Hagedorn’s writing style in context: suffice it to say that it is florid and overwrought to the point of being baroque, and it took me a while to prune back the verbal shrubbery and get through to the essence of each sentence. Even after this effort, the book reads more like a hagiography than a balanced biography, but I’d say it was worth it to learn about this fascinating character.
Thompson was born in the placer gold camp of Alder Gulch-Virginia City, Montana in 1869, grew up there and in Butte and cut his teeth on the mining business working for his father, suppling and running mines on the rough-and-tumble frontier. He was schooled at Exeter, New Hampshire and the Columbia School of Mines and he began a career in New York as a broker and promoter of mining stocks and ventures, especially of the copper variety. His first major success was the Shannon Mine, in the Clifton-Morenci district, but he was involved with the early days of a remarkable number of mines I’ve worked around, including Robinson and Yerington, Nevada; Inspiration and Magma, Arizona. He founded Newmont first as a brokerage house (for NEW York and MONTana) then as company to hold his natural resource interests, probably his most enduring business legacy. He became a fan of science and devoted considerable time and money to botanical and agricultural research, founding the institutions enumerated in the lengthy subtitle of the book. So far, not so different from the Morgans, Rockefellers, Guggenheims, William Clark, Augustus Heintze, Marcus Daly or the other late 19th/early 20th C robber barons who were his partners and competitors in many ventures and who, like him, often turned to philanthropy toward the ends of their lives (repentance?).
What made Thompson different was Russia. Near the end of WWI, in 1917, he accepted a commission as a member of an American Red Cross mission to Russia. The Czar had fallen and the Kerensky government was teetering, the allies wanted the Russians to keep fighting on the German eastern front to avoid their being able to concentrate their forces on the western front. The Red Cross had a dual mission: aid the Russians as best they could, but also assess the situation and try get support for whichever of the feuding factions could get the army to keep fighting Germany. Thompson quickly became de facto leader of the group, a supporter of the revolution and of Kerensky’s and an implacable enemy of the aristocracy, which continued to scheme against Kerensky and try to regain power. At heart, he clearly sympathized with the Russian peasantry, whose simple demand for their own land resonated with Thompson, a rural Westerner with frontier roots. He also recognized that the soviets, traditional consultative village groups who held much of the real power after the fall of the monarchy, were fundamentally democratic organizations and he realized that the fate of the revolution and of the country was really in their hands. He pushed for a rapid propaganda and educational campaign to turn them away from the Bolsheviks and towards Kerensky. He put in $1mm of his own money to get this started, while he and his associates (esp Raymond Robbins) lobbied the US gov’t for more. Unfortunately, Woodrow Wilson snubbed and ignored them, the Bolshies won over the soviets, ousted Kerensky and the rest is history. Even then, while he did not like their radical economic policies, he believed that with time and western influence these could be mollified, that the Bolshies were the best option for the masses and could ultimately be allies of the democratic West. Again, Washington ignored his pleas (though he got a sympathetic hearing from Lloyd George, the British PM).
His support for the Revolution and engagement with the Bolsheviks made him a controversial figure upon his return to America. The press accused him of financing the Reds and Washington shunned him. He got back to business and Republican politics (anti-Wilson, as much as anything), but ultimately was bored of the former and became frustrated by the latter. He retired from public life, returned to his early interest in science, and founded the aforementioned plant research institutions. He was just over 60 years old when he died of pneumonia in 1930.
While not a great book, Hagedorn’s biography is worth plowing through to get a look at a rather unique turn-of-the 20th C capitalist and mining man who left a legacy still valued by stockholders (Newmont) and Arizonans (the Boyce Thompson Arboretum), most of whom I’m sure have no idea how unusual Mr. Thompson actually was and what a difference he might have made in 20th C history if only Woodrow Wilson had listened to, and acted on, his insights into revolutionary Russia!
