John Dennis Ryan | |
---|---|
President of Anaconda Copper Mining Company | |
Personal details | |
Born | Hancock, Michigan | November 10, 1864
Died | February 11, 1933 68) Manhattan, New York City | (aged
John Denis Ryan (October 10, 1864 – February 11, 1933) was an American industrialist and copper mining magnate. He served as President of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and was a founder of the Montana Power Company. [1] [2]
Ryan was born on October 10, 1864, in Hancock, Michigan, in Copper Country. [3] He began selling lubricating oil in the western American states from a base in Denver, Colorado. [4] Relocating to Butte, Montana, he later became close to Margaret Daly, the widow of banking and mining magnate Marcus Daly, who had died in 1900, and he acquired an interest in 1901 in the Daly Bank and Trust Co. in Anaconda, becoming its president. As such, he was closely involved with the management of Mrs. Daly’s fortune.
Marcus Daly had been heavily involved in copper mining, and was involved with a syndicate led by Standard Oil principals Henry H. Rogers and William Rockefeller which created a new company, Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, and acquired Daly's Anaconda Copper Co., with Daly retaining a financial interest.
Amalgamated was in competition with Copper Kings William A. Clark and especially F. Augustus Heinze. Clark initially sided with Heinze, but later sold his holdings to Amalgamated. Heinze’s mines in Butte were consolidated in 1902 as the United Copper Company. Thus, no single organization was able to monopolize copper extraction in Montana. In addition, although Butte was then the most prolific copper-mining district in the world, Amalgamated could not control other copper-mining districts, such as those in Michigan, Arizona, and countries outside the United States. Ryan is reputed to have had exceptional negotiating skills. He convinced Heinze to walk away with abundant compensation.
Rogers and Rockefeller were then able to gain complete control of Butte's copper as they merged them all with Amalgamated. Ryan became its president, and was rewarded with significant package of Amalgamated shares. The "right hand" of John Ryan was Cornelius Kelley, a young attorney who soon was given the position of vice-president. The reorganized company was again named Anaconda, as it had been under Daly.
Henry Rogers died suddenly in 1909 of a stroke, but William Rockefeller brought in his son Percy Rockefeller to help with leadership. During World War I, Ryan took leave from Anaconda to work for the government and the American Red Cross. He was named Director General of the Red Cross' War Relief Program in 1917. [5]
President Wilson appointed Ryan as new head of the Aircraft Production Board in April 1918, succeeding Howard Coffin. Shortly after the war had ended in late 1918, Ryan resigned and returned to private business. [6]
Kelley served as President of Anaconda in the interim. After the War, Ryan assumed the position of Chairman, with Kelley continuing as company president.
Under Percy Rockefeller, Ryan and Kelley, Anaconda acquired additional mining businesses outside the United States and by the 1920s, was expanding into new areas of activity which included manganese, zinc, aluminum, uranium and silver. It became the fourth largest company in the world.
He died on February 11, 1933, in Manhattan, New York City. [1]
In 1928 Ryan and Percy Rockefeller aggressively speculated on Anaconda shares, causing them to go up at first (at which point they sold) and then to go down (at which point they bought them back). Known today as a "pump and dump", at the time it was not illegal, and was actually quite common. The prices, under the pressure of a "joint account" set up by Ryan and Rockefeller of nearly a million and a half shares of Anaconda Copper Company, fluctuated from $128 in December 1928 to $40 in March 1929.
Smaller investors were completely wiped out. The results are still considered one of the great fleecings in Wall Street history. The American Senate hearings concluded that those operations cost the public, at the very least, $150 million.
When the U.S. stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, Anaconda suffered serious financial setbacks. Moreover, at the same time, copper prices started going down dramatically. Things at Anaconda worsened as the Great Depression set in.
Ryan's Anaconda shares, once worth $175 each, had dropped to $4 at the bottom of the Great Depression. Ryan died in 1933, and was buried in a copper coffin. His protege', Cornelius Kelley, was named Chairman of Anaconda in 1940. In 1977, the company was purchased by Atlantic Richfield Corporation (Arco) and operations shut down permanently in 1982.
Ryan is credited with consolidation of several regional electrical generating companies into a single entity, Montana Power Company. This providing Anaconda with low-cost electricity for its mines and smelters. As president of Montana Power, he fostered electrification of the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway and electrical improvements in the mines.
A 1933 Senate banking committee called the stock manipulating operations of Anaconda in the late 1920s one of the greatest frauds in American banking history and a leading cause of the 1930s depression.
John D. Ryan was named ninth in a listing of the 100 most important people in Montana of the 20th century. [7] He was inducted posthumously into the National Mining Hall of Fame at Leadville, Colorado in 2005. Carrie Johnson, a historian, wrote a story about Ryan's rise to power which was published in Montana – The Magazine of Western History. [7]
William Avery Rockefeller Jr. was an American businessman and financier. Rockefeller was a co-founder of Standard Oil along with his elder brother John Davison Rockefeller. He was also a part owner of Anaconda Copper, which was the fourth-largest company in the world by the late 1920s. Rockefeller started his business career as a clerk at 16. In 1867, he joined his brother's company, Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, which later became Standard Oil. The company was eventually split up by the Supreme Court in 1911. Rockefeller also had a significant involvement in the copper industry. In 1899, Rockefeller and Standard Oil principal Henry H. Rogers joined with Anaconda Company founder Marcus Daly to create the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, which later returned to the name Anaconda Copper.
Marcus Daly was an Irish-born American businessman known as one of the four "Copper Kings" of Butte, Montana, United States.
Butte is a consolidated city-county and the county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. The city covers 718 square miles (1,860 km2), and, according to the 2020 census, has a population of 34,494, making it Montana's fifth-largest city. It is served by Bert Mooney Airport with airport code BTM.
The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine in the western United States, located in Butte, Montana. It is one mile (1.6 km) long by one-half mile (800 m) wide, with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is heavily acidic, about the acidity of Coca-Cola, lemon juice, or gastric acid. As a result, the pit is laden with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals that leach from the rock, including copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.
Anaconda, county seat of Deer Lodge County, which has a consolidated city-county government, is located in southwestern Montana, United States. Located at the foot of the Anaconda Range, the Continental Divide passes within 8 mi (13 km) south of the community. As of the 2020 census the population of the consolidated city-county was 9,421, and the US Census Bureaus's 2015-2019 American Community Survey showed a median household income of $41,820. Anaconda had earlier peaks of population in 1930 and 1980, based on the mining industry. As a consolidated city-county area, it ranks as the ninth most populous city in Montana, but as only a city is far smaller. Central Anaconda is 5,335 ft (1,626 m) above sea level, and is surrounded by the communities of Opportunity and West Valley.
The Anaconda Copper Mine was a large copper mine in Butte, Montana that closed operations in 1947 and was eventually consumed by the Berkeley Pit, a vast open-pit mine. Originally a silver mine, it was bought for $30,000 in 1881 by an Irish immigrant named Marcus Daly from Michael Hickey, a Civil War veteran, and co-owner Charles X. Larabie. From this beginning Daly, along with partners George Hearst, James Ben Ali Haggin and Lloyd Tevis, created the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which ultimately became a global mining enterprise that would go on to mine 18 billion pounds of copper over 100 years. At the height of The Anaconda Copper Mining Company, it consisted of the Anaconda and other Butte mines, a smelter at Anaconda, Montana, processing plants in Great Falls, Montana, the American Brass Company, and many other properties spanning multiple countries.
The Missoulian is a daily newspaper printed in Missoula, Montana, United States. The newspaper has been owned by Lee Enterprises since 1959. The Missoulian is the largest published newspaper in Western Montana, and is distributed throughout the city of Missoula, and most of Western Montana.
James Edward Murray was an American politician and United States Senator from Montana, and a liberal leader of the Democratic Party. He served in the United States Senate from 1934 until 1961.
The Copper Kings were industrialists Marcus Daly, William A. Clark, James Andrew Murray and F. Augustus Heinze. They were known for the epic battles fought in Butte, Montana, and the surrounding region, during the Gilded Age, over control of the local copper mining industry, the fight that had ramifications for not only Montana, but the United States as a whole.
Frederick "Fritz" Augustus Heinze was an American businessman, known as one of the three Copper Kings of Butte, Montana, along with William Andrews Clark and Marcus Daly. Contemporary assessments variously described him as an intelligent, charismatic but also devious character. To some people in Montana, he was seen as a hero for standing up to the Amalgamated Copper Company, but he also eventually sold his Butte interests to Amalgamated for a reported $12 million. Thereafter, he played a significant role in the Panic of 1907, for which he was indicted but eventually exonerated. Ultimately, Heinze's flamboyant, hard-drinking lifestyle resulted in a hemorrhage of the stomach thought to be caused by cirrhosis of the liver, and he died in November 1914, aged 44.
The Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway is a short line railroad in the U.S. state of Montana. The BA&P was founded in 1891 and operated as such until sale in 1985, when it was renamed the Rarus Railway. The railway was again sold in May 2007 to the Patriot Rail Corporation, and the name returned to the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway in July 2007. The railway was the main conduit for ore transport between Butte and Anaconda, and was used for filming of portions of the 1985 Golden Globe nominated movie Runaway Train.
On April 21, 1920, during a miners strike in Butte, Montana's copper mines, company guards fired on striking miners picketing near a mine of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, killing Tom Manning and injuring sixteen others, an event known as the Anaconda Road massacre. His death went unpunished.
The Anaconda Copper Mining Company, known as the Amalgamated Copper Company from 1899 to 1915, was an American mining company headquartered in Butte, Montana. It was one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century and one of the largest mining companies in the world for much of the 20th century.
The United Copper Company was a short-lived United States copper mining business in the early 20th century that played a pivotal role in the Panic of 1907.
Samuel Thomas Hauser was an American industrialist and banker who was active in the development of Montana Territory. He made his first fortune in silver mines and railroads, but he lost everything in the Panic of 1893. He restored his fortune by building hydroelectric dams, only to lose it all again after his Hauser Dam burst. In addition to his many business interests, he was appointed the 7th Governor of the Montana Territory, serving from 1885 to 1887.
The Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company was a mining, smelting, and refining company which operated primarily in the state of Montana in the United States. It was established in 1887 and merged with the Amalgamated Copper Company in 1901. The Amalgamated Copper Company changed its name to Anaconda Copper in 1910, and became one of America's largest corporations. Historian Michael P. Malone has written, "Well financed and well managed, the Boston and Montana came to rank among the world's greatest copper companies."
Montana Resources LLP is an American mining company with headquarters in Butte, Montana. The company is owned by businessman Dennis Washington as a unit of The Washington Companies. The company employs about 350 people, and operates the Continental mine, an open pit copper and molybdenum mine at Butte. The Continental pit is the only active mining operation at Butte.
The Butte, Montana labor riots of 1914 were a series of violent clashes between copper miners at Butte, Montana. The opposing factions were the miners dissatisfied with the Western Federation of Miners local at Butte, on the one hand, and those loyal to the union local on the other. The dissident miners formed a new union, and demanded that all miners must join the new union, or be subject to beatings or forced expulsion from the area. Sources disagree whether the dissidents were a majority of the miners, or a militant minority. The leadership of the new union contained many who were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), or agreed with the I.W.W.'s methods and objectives. The result of the dispute between rival unions was that the copper mines of Butte, which had long been a union stronghold for the WFM, became open shop employers, and recognized no union from 1914 until 1934.
Butte is a city in southwestern Montana established as a mining camp in the 1860s in the northern Rocky Mountains straddling the Continental Divide. Butte became a hotbed for silver and gold mining in its early stages, and grew exponentially upon the advent of electricity in the late-nineteenth century due to the land's large natural stores of copper. In 1888 alone, mining operations in Butte had generated an output of $23 million. The arrival of several magnates in the area around this time, later known as the "Copper Kings," marked the beginning of Butte's establishment as a boomtown.
Reno Haber Sales was an American mining engineer who was Chief Geologist of Anaconda Corporation in Montana. He is known as the "father of mining geology."