MRS. RIKERT'S MILLIONS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 65, 3 August 1912, Page 2

MRS. RIKERT'S MILLIONS

AXD HOW SHE .MADE Til EM, A ROMAXTIC STORY, (Melbourne Age). Tit tli« year ISO I Mrs. Anm: Kline Rikert lived in Sun Francisco an unknown and undistinguished woman, the wife of a poor business man, who, it is said, hud never earned more than 1000 dol. a year in his life. To-day Mrs. Rikert is one of the richest women in the world. She owns house and landed property valued at upwards of £2,000,000. She is a large stock holder in the Standard Oil Company. She lias substantial interests in several shipping and mining corporations, and she is the exclusive owner of two railways, one of which serves several important mining centres in t'he State of California and was built out of her own capital. The story of her emergence from impoverished obscurity, and rise to enormous wealth and power, is beyond compare the most romantic and wonderful chapter in the entire history of female achievement of the last two or three centuries. It is from first to last a story of pluck and hick. Towards the end of the year 1892 her husband was stricken with a mortal sickness, and at the close of <i few weeks of vain struggle with disease he died, leaving Mrs. Rikert tace to face with destitution. The unhappy woman had been so tenderly attached to her husband that she wished to follow him into the tomb, and for a long while she was prostrated with grief. The need, however, to provide for her child, a little girl just turned five years old, recalled her from indulgence in despair. Her mother instincts triumphed over misery, and she set about the task of earning a livelihood. Her misfortune was that she was completely unequipped by any sort of training to engage in the battle of life as a bread-winner.' Like so many other women, she had been brought up as a dependent, and, once bereft of her support, she was stranded and helpless. She sought in all directions for employment, but, having no qualifications or special ability to recommend her, she failed to discover any post that she could take without being separated from her child. In sheer desperation, she determined on an expedient rash and reckless to the very point of lunacy. She reached this amazing resolution when the slender capital left her, after payment of her husband's debts, had dwindled to the meagre sum of £lB 10s. It was nothing less than to leave San Francisco with her babe and go into the wilderness in search of a gold mine. To think with Mrs. Rikert was to act. Buying a tent and a wretchedly insufficient outfit, she boldly set out "into the Mojave desert as a passenger on a trans- ; port team, taking her tiny daughter with her. After a dreary and inexpressibly rough and tedious journey she reached the neighborhood of the great Silver King mine, and pitched her tent near the well that supplied the famous Calico Camp with water. At this moment her whole capital consisted of twenty shillings and tenpence. Mrs. Rikert at once commenced prospecting, She was quite ignorant of mining. Every morning she walked out from her tent across tke desert, accompanied by the child, who carried a toy hammer and wiho thought the game of tapping at rocks and stones very fine fun. As Mrs. Rikert prospected "out" from the mineral belt she immediately becajne an object of pity and ridicule to ail the camp. The miners good-naturedly attempted to teach her the folly of her proceeding, but she proudly refused to be instructed, and she persisted in her course. She was soon, however, compelled to do other work in order to keep the pot boiling, and for a term she became a sort of intermittent, laundress to. the camp. She would do enough washing to purchase a stock of food, and then would resume prospecting until the stock was exhausted.- Her sufferings at this period were very acute. She tells us that, "Night after night after my little girl was asleep I cried until my pillow was so wet that I had to turn it over; and then I cried until' the other side was wet, and I had to put a towel over it." For nearly three months Mrs. Rikert dauntlesslv persisted with her dual occupation of washing clothes and prospecting, and then at last fortune smiled upon her. One day at sunset, just as she was about to return to her tent, weary and discouraged from a long day spent in hammering at the rocks of the desert ridges, her little girl, who was about thirty yards away, suddenly screamed out, "Mamma! Mamma! Come over here! I've found a rock exactly ; like the stone Mr. Pearson had at San Bernardino." Mr. Pearson, it should be explained, w r as a man whom Mrs. Rikert had met at San Bernardino, and who had shown the child some specimens of silver ore that he had brought from Mexico. Mrs. Rikert hurried over to her little daughter, and examined the rocks which she had found. To her astonishn". lit the child was right. The stone exiU'tlv resembled Mr. Pearson's specimens. Mrs. Rikert knocked off some of the cropping*, and look about 251b weight of specimens to her tent! After giving the child tea (she was too excited herself to take anv t< a at all) she walked over to Calico Camp and showed the rock to Hie miners. Tn five minutes she was the cent re of an enthusiastic and almost frenzied crowd. The miners told htr that the specimens were worth from 4000 to .">(100 d illars to the ton, and they assured li;r that her fortune was made.

One cannot sufficiently admire the honest conduct of these rough men. Mrs. Rikert was utterly in their power, and they might very easily and without the slightest risk have robbed her of the fruits of her discovery. On the contrary, they pegged out a large claim for her on the line of the outcrop, and co-oper-atively safeguarded the claim from intrusion or attack. Mrs. Rikert might have had for the asking all the capital needed to develop her discovery; but she had an unconquerable aversion to going into debt. She refused all assistance and set to work to develop her mine by her own efforts. She did this in the quaintest possible way. She possessed six pillow-eases. Armed with these, she proceeded eveiV morning to her claim and filled the pillow cases with picked lumps of ore. She then had the ore so bagged carried over to the Oro Grande battery to be milled and treated. This very tedious process she continued steadily for nearly four months. By that time she had accumulated a bank credit of 40.000 dollars, and she was able to launch out in a bigger way. She now engaged a manager, employed several men and began to erect a mill, of her own.

One might have supposed that this marvellous stroke of fortune would have suflicied to send Mrs. Rikert back to civilisation to spend the rest of her life in peace and comfort, more especially as her mine very speedily began to produce a splendid revenue. But it was not so. Mrs. Rikert could not endure (lie thought, of an inactive life, and she dcovted herself to the desert. The prospecting fever had taken hold of her, and from that time forth her happiness consisted in searching and exploring the wilderness. The subsequent part of her career is no less astounding than its commencement. To this extraordinary

fold its sccretest treasures. Onitting Calico Camp, a lie Went to San i!:>nianiino, and, against all advice, she capriciously began to prospect a country which had boon over-run with male prospectors for half a generation. The result of her foolish stubbornness was her discovery of -the .rich Calico silver mines, which she named after the place where fortune had first befriended her. Later si ill .Mrs. Rikert emigrated into the wild regions of the Tuslomne. There she discovered the Pino Blanco and Oro Mandre mines and several other gold mines of less importance. Mrs. Rikert has given up prospecting now, but she is still an extravagantly energetic woman. Quite recently she built a railroad through the roughest part of California out of her own capital to connect her various mines with the metropolis. She manages all 'her large mining properties and estates herself. She is the sole director of her two railways, and it is stated that she signs every week the wage cheques of the two thousand workmen in her employ. Her daughter is now twenty-five years of age, and the greatest heiress to a single fortune in the whole civilised world.