Roger Clawson - Fits-In-Pieces

More than a century after the War of the Copper Kings, a relic of that battle turned up in a New York hospital.

William August Clark was one of three men who fought over the Richest Hill on Earth. When the smoke cleared over Butte, the kings were among the richest men in the world, and Montana was doomed to be run like a colony of Standard Oil.

The relic, Huguette Clark, was found when someone grew concerned over the management of the billion dollar Clark fortune. Huguette is Clark’s daughter and heiress. She is 104 years old and has been living in a hospital room for 20 years.

For 60 years before that she hid in one or another of her father’s mansions. Servants tended her home and needs for years without catching a glimpse of the reclusive lady.

This was not the happily-ever-after ending Huguette was promised. Daddy had told her she could be an aristocrat. He promised to find her a noble husband - maybe even a duke, earl or prince.

But that was before things went wrong for the Copper King.

Once, everything Clark touched turned to gold. He joined the Alder Gulch gold rush in the 1850s. He struck paydirt, proved the claim’s productivity. He sold it for a small fortune and proceeded to make a big one.

During his short career as a miner, he discovered the real mother lode - other miners’ pockets.

A famine in gold-rich Virginia City called Clark to the grocery business. He freighted flower, eggs and other comestibles from Salt Lake City and sold them at a markup of 1,000 percent. He made enough to found a bank in Dillon.

Clark invested his and his customers’ money in mining claims. Soon, he was a stake holder in the budding copper industry at Butte. When electrification of the nation exploded copper prices, Clark emerged as a major player, a Copper King.

Clark sold out to a vicious and rapacious Eastern combine that bought judges, manipulated stock and impoverished retired soldiers, sailors and widows conned into buying the company’s stock.

The liquidation of his holdings made Clark the second richest man in America. His streak would go no further.

He had peaked. He was no longer a Copper King, no longer King Midas. Thereafter almost everything he touched turned to manure.

Clark wanted to be more than rich. He wanted to be rich, powerful and famous. Montana had just won statehood and Clark wanted admission in that exclusive club – the U.S. Senate. He certainly had the price of admission.

A true friend told Clark to forget politics. “Found a university,” the guy said.

Had he followed his friend’s advice, instead of being hated and forgotten, Clark would be a Montana hero revered even today. With his support, Clark University could have been a center of the arts, renowned for its scientific research and a football team contending for the Rose Bowl.

Clark should have but would not listen. He wanted to make law, speeches and be revered. He wanted to be a U.S. senator.

No one could take on Clark and his fortune. No one but another Copper King.  Marcus Daley, Clark’s greatest enemy, recruited and bankrolled a candidate of his own.

It was a grand campaign. Montana will never see its like again. Money flowed like water. Whiskey flowed like whiskey. Miners smoked 50-cent cigars and enjoyed drinks on the house, paid for by Clark and Daley.

Daley’s money beat Clark’s. Clark lost. In those days U.S. senators were elected by the state Legislature. Daley’s party claimed more seats than Clark’s.

But while Daley’s gang celebrated, Clark regrouped. He sent agents with suitcases full of money to Helena where the Legislature met. Clark’s boodle boys caught solons at waterholes and in the Capitol lobby. They even roamed the halls of Helena hotels, tossing bundles of greenbacks over the transoms.  After the session, legislators returned home to pay off their mortgages, buy ranches and farms, open businesses. Three combined their boodle to open a bank.

Daley learned that buying a man did not mean he would stay bought.

Clark rode the train to Washington, where he was greeted with boos and sneers. That grand old order of rich white men refused to seat the vote-buyer from Montana.

Still not ready to give up, Clark returned to Montana where his boys lured the governor out of state, leaving the lieutenant governor in charge. The lieutenant governor - more buyable than his superior - appointed Clark to fill the seat made vacant when the Senate refused to seat him.

This time senators granted him admission, as if to say, “If this is the quality representation Montana wants, let ‘em have it.”

The Senate was a great disappointment. Clark smelled of scandal. His colleagues wanted nothing to do with him. He was a senator, but not a member of the club.

Constituents were worse than his fellow senators. They treated Clark like a public servant. They wrote or came to Washington to tell HIM what to do. He resigned in despair.

His plan to marry his daughters to nobility proved fruitless. Poverty-stricken nobles flocked to America in search of heiresses. The Clark girls attracted few suitors. Maybe that’s why Huguette hid in her room for 80 years.