Mr. Morgan
Since there is little or no information on Harpending’s movements in London, the exact sequence of his actions is impossible to describe. What we do know is that Harpending’s own account of this period, as given in his memoirs, is so full of “errors” that it should be regarded as unreliable at best.
For example, his account of his chance meeting with a Mr. Morgan. Harpending claims that the intention was to meet with the President of the Bank of England on behalf of W. C. Ralston. The meeting was to take place in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
At a hotel in Cheyenne, Harpending approached a man who was “evidently a Briton”, assuming him to be Mr. Green, the President. He turned out to be not Green, who had apparently passed through Cheyenne without making a stop, but a Mr. Morgan; an Englishman supposedly making a sightseeing tour of the far west. This “chance” meeting is a key event – not only to the Pyramid Range scheme, but also to the Diamond Hoax which would take place two years later.
After striking up a friendship with Morgan, Harpending agreed to allow him to accompany him to New Mexico where Harpending “had made a great investment on the strength of huge outcroppings of mineralized ledges that gave indications of a great mining property.” Harpending wished to inspect this investment, along with an area of land in the same vicinity (near the headwaters of the Gila) which he was in the process of acquiring.
Once there, he says that Mr. Morgan became completely enchanted by the country. He gathered samples of ore from the outcroppings, had them tested by Harpending’s assayer, and was so impressed with the results that he soon made Harpending a business proposition, offering to form a company in England for the purpose of floating stock in the claims in order to raise money to finance their development. Harpending, “with a cooler head”, advised Morgan that it was still too early to estimate the worth of the claims, and that although they might well turn out to be valuable, there was an even greater chance that they would prove to be worthless.
Eventually Harpending and Morgan agreed upon a compromise. Morgan was to go to England immediately; he claimed to have influential financial connections there. Harpending was to follow at a later date, by which time Morgan would have made the necessary arrangements. The outcome was that when Harpending finally arrived in London:
Morgan had issued a prospectus that put the tales of Baron Munchausen in the shade. He actually described the mines as mountains of silver and by his very extravagance of statement doomed the enterprise from the start.
There is no doubt that Morgan did accompany Harpending to New Mexico, and that he visited Harpending’s “investments” at the Virginia Mining District, nor that they visited the Gila together. What must be in doubt – bearing in mind Harpending’s propensity for economies of the truth, as displayed repeatedly in his memoirs – is that the above described events occurred in exactly the way that Harpending relates them.⁵⁴
A column in the Weekly New Mexican of November 22, 1870, refers to a letter from Ralston City, author unknown, which had appeared in the Colorado Tribune on the 8th of that month. The letter had been written by a recent visitor to Ralston. It gives an overview of the settlement, describing the buildings and the businesses there. The author then goes on to describe how “after a rest of three days, Mr. Harpending, one of our San Francisco party, and principal owner in the mines, proposed going down to the Gila River.” After a description of the journey, the author of the letter writes “we soon made up a rousing party of eighteen well armed men”, and says that he “managed to capture a fine turkey, while our London friend, Mr. Morgan, captured a fine mess of fish.” This has to be the same Mr. Morgan so fortuitously stumbled upon by Harpending in Cheyenne.
The Pyramid Range Silver Mountain Company Prospectus
Harpending writes that by the time he arrived in London, Morgan had issued the prospectus for the Pyramid Range Silver Mountain Company, having thrown Harpending’s urgings of caution completely to the wind. Here again doubt is cast on the accuracy of Harpending’s version of events, especially his professed astonishment over Morgan’s description of the claims as “mountains of pure silver”; this could not possibly have been the first time that Harpending had heard this particular phrase used to describe the outcroppings of the Virginia Mining District!
If, as we have surmised, Harpending had arrived in London by the beginning of January of 1871, it is deceitful of him to blame Morgan for the fanciful descriptions contained in the prospectus. The prospectus was not issued until the end of January of 1871, by which time Harpending must definitely have been present in London, as the vendor of the properties, and he would have been fully aware of the wording of the prospectus. Even if he was not present, the descriptions could have held no surprises for him, especially when one takes into consideration that Harpending’s British publication the Stock Exchange Review had reported that:
One pauses for want of breath at the contemplation, and we will merely add that the enterprises introduced under such thoroughly respectable auspices that there can be no shadow of suspicion of intentional exaggeration.⁵⁵
On January 28, 1871, a small paragraph in the London Times announced that:
A prospectus has been issued by another Californian mining undertaking called the Pyramid Range Silver Mountain Company (Limited) … the faith of the directors seems to be based on observations made and specimens obtained by a Mr. Henry Morgan, who is known to them, and who, while recently traveling in America, had his attention directed to these wonderful discoveries.
Two days later, the Times carried a much more detailed account of the prospectus. This article gives a summary of the contents of the prospectus, referring to the “mountains of silver” and the seemingly endless surface croppings of that metal which were so easily accessible that:
The miner has but to select the most desirable locality for his blast, and then quarry out the ore-bearing rock without timber or windlass in the broad light of day.
Development work was to be commenced with a 125 stamp mill, and, with a working year of only 280 days, it was promised that investment in the company would net shareholders a profit of $560,000 per year. The vendor of this magnificent property was named as Mr. Asbury Harpending, and on the Board of Directors was Mr. George D. Roberts, San Francisco merchant. The remainder of the Board of Directors comprised the Hon. Egar Ellis, Member of Parliament; William Austin, Director of the S & M Rail Road; James Rennick, Esq. who had been at one time Britain’s Secretary to India; John D. Fry and S. Heydenfeldt, Chief Justice of California.
Although the prospectus itself⁵⁶ does not contain the phrase “mountains of silver”, the ledges are described as being “unequaled in mining experience.” The prospectus describes “the magnitude and richness” of the “inexhaustible” ores, and their “facility for working”, stating that, due to their nature (a soft chloride), they could easily be crushed at a rate of two tons per day per stamp head. As the ores were “on the surface, there will be no expense for raising, and so no fuel or steam-power is required.” The prospectus promises that “no time will be lost in the erection of the stamps, buildings, and requisite machinery”; this is some five months after the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican had reported that machinery was already well into its journey to the Virginia Mining District. The prospectus continues with the description of the plan to transport the crushed ore to the Gila River where “it will be worked by water power, which is abundant, and no steam-power will be required.” The Company would erect water mills on the Gila, and the ore would be transported there by a tramway to be constructed by the Company.
After all costs had been met – building the tramway, erecting stamp and water mills, mining, milling, labor, tools etc. – investors could expect to see net profits, per working day, of £2,000.
There is a parallel to the truth in Harpending’s comments on Morgan; this concerns his claim that it was Morgan’s “extravagance of statement” which doomed the enterprise from the start. Whether or not Morgan was solely responsible for the wording of the prospectus – and it is highly unlikely that he was – it is true to say that it was indeed its wording which caused the proposed stock float to fail and, as we shall see in the next installment, Morgan can most definitely not be blamed for that.
©2007-2024 Jim & Erica Parson
REFERENCES FOR THIS INSTALLMENT
⁵⁴Wilkinson (1938). Chapter XXII. Pages 124-128.
⁵⁵Stock Exchange Review, I, January 1871. In: Spence, Clark C. (1995) British Investments and the American Mining Frontier, 1860-1901. Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press. Page 57.
⁵⁶As published in: The Economist, Weekly Commercial Times. Volume XXIX. January 7, 1871 – December 30, 1871. London: The Economist Office, 340 Strand. Page 126 (January 28, 1871).
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