Page 307 - Cornelius Hedges Story

For This And Succeeding Generations Gardiner 294

Besides making an impassioned speech against the report I went
personally to my friends and urged a reversal of this verdict. A
reconsideration was moved and on a vote of yeas and nays the
committee was sustained by a vote of 44 to 34. The case was too far
gone before I knew anything about it. But I always thought a great
injustice was done.
Without opposition on the part of Helena, Virginia City was selected
as the place of meeting and Bro. William A. Clark was elected Grand
Master. He was not as well known then as now, since he has become
the wealthiest man in the country and United States Senator.
The Fourteenth Annual Conclave was held at Virginia City, where
the organization took place in 1866, October 1, 1878. Grand Master
William A. Clark presided. This Brother is pretty well known now
since he became famous for his phenomenal wealth and his long,
heated controversy with Marcus Daly for a seat in the United States
Senate. We have known him well and sometimes intimately, almost
from his first coming to Montana. He was an active, exemplary
Mason, a sagacious, successful business man who made his money
as honestly as any man could. He was first a merchant and early
established himself in banking at Deer Lodge. He became interested
in the Butte mines by having advanced money to 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