Disillusioned Millionaire

THE MAGNATE--Hermann Hagedorn-- Reynal & Hitchcock ($3).

The first generation of Rocky Mountain capitalists, piling up their millions in the turbulent frontier period, were usually hard, determined men who were entirely satisfied with the simple acquisition of wealth and power. But so swift was the West's industrial expansion that a Montana-born financier, William Boyce Thompson, beginning his career as a small mining promoter, soon found himself involved in politics that had international ramifications, and before the end of his life had played a spirited--and unsuccessful--part in the greatest historic event of modern times. Hermann Hagedorn, in a friendly and somewhat romantic biography of Thompson, succeeds in showing how the abrupt widening of Western financial and intellectual horizons created confusions unlimited, bred political and moral dilemmas that robbed Thompson's triumph of all personal satisfaction.

By the time he had made his first million Thompson could no longer be content with the mere accumulation of money. He had a social conscience and worried over his lack of an integrated philosophy of life.

Born in Alder Gulch, Mont, in 1869, son of a well-to-do timberman, Thompson went to school at Exeter, was popular but undistinguished, formed a friendship with Thomas W. Lament that lasted all his life.

His first business years, so unexciting that Biographer Hagedorn fills in the gaps with wordy descriptions of Montana scenery, gave him little experience for the great problems he was to face: he ran a coal yard, made about $5,000 a year, married quietly and happily, did a little gambling in mining claims on the side. Inspired by the reckless career of F. Augustus Heinze, who was matching wits with Butte copper kings at the age of 21, Thompson traveled East to peddle his claims. Wall Street would not listen, State Street was almost as inhospitable, and he was nearly at the end of his resources when he managed to get an option on the $250,000 Shannon Mine, in Clifton, Ariz, for $500 cash. He borrowed a last $5,000 to hire a private car and take a party of brokers to inspect the property. Thereafter wealth flowed in, much of it in speculation whose intricacies Author Hagedorn describes in understandable, unsensational terms.

Thompson's holdings were scattered from Cobalt Lake, Canada to Peru. They included Inspiration Mine in Arizona and Indian Motorcycle Co. He financed lead, zinc and coal mines, street railways, handled the sensational Midvale Steel financing during the War when the stock rose from 290 to 500. He refinanced American Woolen Co. and Tobacco Products Co., launched Cuban Cane Sugar Co., got control of Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., organized Submarine Boat Corp. and the Wright-Martin Aeroplane Co. Fat, good-natured, bald, a tireless worker, a devoted family man, Thompson chewed tobacco, underpaid his employes and, as one of the greatest gamblers of his time, discharged them for gambling. He collected minerals, built beautiful homes, but remained dissatisfied, constantly groped for guidance with writers and thinkers whose intellectual stature Author Hagedorn seems prone to exaggerate.

The Russian Revolution provided the great climax and anticlimax of his life. As a member of the Red Cross Mission during Kerensky's term of office, deeply influenced by Major Raymond Robins, he understood the meaning of revolutionary developments that baffled and outraged Allied diplomats, generals and political experts. A natural democrat, he tried to strengthen Kerensky's government. To forestall the Bolsheviki, he made available for famed oldtime anti-Tsarist martyrs, a million dollars of his personal fortune. The money was to be used for propaganda among the soldiers, urging them to continue the War on the grounds that German victory would mean a return of the monarchy. Thompson demanded that the U. S. Government provide three million a month for the same purpose. President Wilson ignored his warnings and pleas. When Thompson discovered that the Bolsheviki were gaining strength on their twin program--all power to the Soviets and land for the peasants--he studied the Soviets at work, learned that the common people obeyed their decisions, urged Kerensky to steal Bolshevik thunder and slogans.

Kerensky was willing, but die-hard Allied ambassadors refused. After the Bolsheviki seized power, Thompson, who preferred them to dictatorial counter-revolutionists, urged that they be recognized and persuaded to carry on the War. Rebuffed on all sides, the disillusioned millionaire returned to Wall Street, where he stunned his colleagues by speaking warmly of the Soviets in the midst of a Red scare, declared wistfully that as a capitalist he could get along better with plain workmen than with politicians & lawyers. His unique position was not understood. He became known inaccurately as the man who had given a million dollars to the Bolsheviki.

He was denounced in the Senate, rejected by the Government, patronized by his friends. Still searching for some consistent, intellectually adequate view of human history, he virtually retired, "wandered dreamily under the elms and apple-trees of his estate and tried to find a base in a bewildering world."

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