Page 250 - Cornelius Hedges Story

237 The Cornelius Hedges Story

develop and work. The owners unable to pay, he had to take
the property. He then made a careful study of working mines and
made a success of it. In all his adventures in buying and working
mines he has depended on his own judgment after personal
inspection. It was his rare sagacity in judging of the value of
mines that brought him success and wealth. No mining promoter
could deceive him as to the value of a mine. He ascertained the
value for himself and he bought mines to work and not to sell.
It is said that no one can see into the ground to tell the value of
a mine but Brother Clark came as near as any man ever did in
disproving this statement. He was honorable in all his dealings,
liberal and considerate in his treatment of employees, accurate
in his judgment of men, but however much he trusted others, he
was master of every detail of his business and trusted chiefly
to his own judgment. Some men can manage small affairs well
but utterly fail in larger ones, but Brother Clark grew with his
business and understood it from the ground-floor up. But all his
successes and accumulations came after he was Grand Master.
Some of our brethren think that out of his superfluous wealth
he should endow us with a Masonic Home. That the subject has
been in his mind, we know, but in this as in all other matters
he thinks we are not ripe and ready for one, that it would be
an unprofitable burden upon us to maintain it, in fact that all in
present need of a Home can be better provided for without one.
That we shall have a Home as soon as it is really needed and
Brother Clark will be a generous patron and benefactor towards
it, we have never doubted. His judgment as to where, when,
and how, as in other things, may be relied upon. His Masonic
administration was able and successful.”566

The following letter was Senator Clark’s response to
correspondence from Cornelius Hedges during the controversy
of Clark’s’ 1899 Senate election.