F. Augustus Heinze

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F.Augustus Heinze
F.Augustus Heinze
Born	1869 Brooklyn, New York, USA
Died	1914

F. Augustus Heinze (1869–1914) was one of the three "Copper Kings" of Butte, Montana along with William Andrews Clark and Marcus Daly. Heinze was one of the most colorful entrepreneurs in Montana history.

[edit] Early life

F. Augustus Heinze was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He went to Butte in 1889 as a mining engineer for the Boston and Montana Company.

[edit] Business Career

Although Heinze arrived in Butte after Clark and Daly were well established, he was able to catch up with the other two moguls through the use of mining law and court lawsuits.

In 1893, Heinze organized the Montana Ore Purchasing Company and began a series of court challenges to the claims of the established interests in Butte, most notably the Amalgamated Copper Company (renamed Anaconda Copper in 1915). Amalgamated was controlled by directors of the Standard Oil Company.

Heinze was a brilliant man and bought judges to support his cause. He was known to have over thirty judges on his staff at one point in time. He was also notorious for his methods of bending the mining law to gain wealth. He bought a small triangular plot of land amongst other much larger claims by three other mining kings, which would normally be expected to be of little use. But the mining law directed that an owner could mine the veins that outcropped on his claim, and follow them underground beneath claims owned by others. This is known as the law of the apex, and led to many legal and physical battles in western mining districts. Heinze maintained that many veins outcropped on his tiny parcel, and that his miners therefore had the right to take out copper ore from beneath his neighbors. His miners dig straight down into the small plot, and then spread out in all directions underneath the surrounding claims. When the other mining moguls complained, Heinze's bought judges would throw out their cases, ruling that Heinze's parcel contained the apex of the copper veins, and so the copper belonged to him.

In 1906, Heinze sold his mining interests in Butte to the Amalgamated Copper Company for a sum of $10.5 million. He returned to New York and entered the banking business. Soon, he would lose his fortune and set off the Panic of 1907.

The events of October 1907 brought a total of 16 counts of financial malfeasance. However, a series of fortunate incidents in the courts led to his complete exoneration in 1909, and on Nov. 7 of that year he returned to Butte, Montana. Despite full exoneration by the courts, the events of October 1907 left an indelible mark on his life: his mining ventures collapsed, his relationships with his brothers (former business partners) were destroyed, his marriage failed and his health disintegrated. He became "distraught in appearance"; at 37, his hair was almost completely white. In 1914, just 44 years old, Heinze suffered a hemorrhage of the stomach caused by cirrhosis of the liver, and died. ^[1]

[edit] References and Bibliography

1. ^ Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis – F. Augustus Heizne and the panic of 1907

• Sarah McNelis (1968) Copper King at War, Missoula: Univ. Montana Press.

[edit] External links

• Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis – F. Augustus Heizne and the panic of 1907