------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (December 2007)

John C. Stewart, _Thomas F. Walsh: Progressive Businessman and 
Colorado Mining Tycoon_. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 
2007. xv + 230 pp. $35 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-87081-870-7.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Joshua C. Hall, Department of Economics and 
Management, Beloit College.


This book is a biography of one of Colorado's most famous citizens, 
Thomas F. Walsh, by Denver attorney and historian John Stewart. 
Called "one of the foremost mining men in the country" by the _New 
York Times_ at the time of his death in 1910, Walsh is famous for his 
discovery of the Camp Bird Mine in Colorado, one of the most 
productive gold mines in U.S. history. In addition, his considerable 
wealth led him to become a significant figure in state and national 
politics for the last decade of his life.

_Thomas F. Walsh_ begins by recounting what little is known about the 
Walsh family in Ireland circa Tom Walsh's birth in 1850. Walsh came 
from a fairly typical Irish farming family of the time and began his 
lifetime interest in geology while in grade school. At this time, 
however, all mineral rights in Ireland belonged to the British Crown. 
As a result, in 1869 Walsh left Ireland for the United States.

 From this point on, the book can be thought of as split into two 
distinct parts. The first part, comprised of Chapters 2 through 7, 
follows Tom Walsh as he seeks to make his fortune prospecting for 
minerals throughout Colorado. This is also the part of the book that 
is most likely to be of interest to economists and business 
historians. In these chapters, Stewart paints a picture of Walsh as a 
shrewd businessman who loved mining but would only engage when it 
made financial sense.

Walsh did not immediately rush to Colorado and begin prospecting. 
Instead, he was happy to find steady work as a carpenter building 
railroad trestles for the Colorado Central Railroad. When the 
financial panic of 1873 raised the returns to prospecting relative to 
carpentry work, Walsh joined the gold rush. Even after moving to the 
mining town of Del Norte in southwestern Colorado, Walsh split his 
time between carpentry and prospecting, a strategy he would employ 
for much of his mining career.

Based on data supplied by Stewart about Walsh's earnings during his 
first five years in the mining territory, this strategy was a very 
lucrative one. According to Stewart, when Walsh left the Black Hills 
in 1878, he left with $10,000 in carpentry savings and $15,000 from 
sales of his stake in a local mine.

This raises one of my major criticisms of the book. While Stewart 
notes that Tom Walsh left the Black Hills as a fairly wealth man, by 
using only nominal dollars throughout the text he does not provide 
today's readers with enough context for how proficient Walsh seemed 
to be at accumulating wealth. Using the Consumer Price Index, for 
example, Walsh's $25,000 in 1878 was equivalent to nearly $500,000 in 
2006 dollars. That is a considerable sum to accumulate in just five 
short years, especially with two-fifths of it coming from carpentry. 
Given the availability of online calculators (such as the one on 
EH.NET), it would have been easy for Stewart to have provided readers 
with this context.

For the next eight years, the Walsh fortunes ebbed and flowed along 
with his various business ventures, including a lucrative stint as a 
hotel owner and a not so lucrative period as a silver ore refiner 
during the silver crash of 1893. Then in 1896, Walsh discovered the 
Camp Bird gold vein, one of the most lucrative deposits of gold ever 
discovered in the United States. During its first four years of 
operation, the mine produced $2.5 million dollars of gold, silver, 
lead and copper with costs of only $885,000. Thus, in just four years 
Walsh had earned about $1.65 million in profits from the Camp Bird 
Mine (around $37 million in 2006 dollars).

What did Walsh do with his newfound wealth? That is the subject of 
the second half of the book that begins with Chapters 8. Two years 
after discovering the Camp Bird vein Walsh moved his family to 
Washington D.C. where the Walsh family quickly became a prominent 
member of Washington high society. After selling the Camp Bird Mine 
for $6 million in 1902 ($145 million in 2006 dollars), Walsh spent 
$2.1 million on building and furnishing a mansion on Massachusetts 
Avenue in order to better signal his permanence as a member of 
Washington's elite.

Until his death from lung cancer in 1910, Walsh spent the remainder 
of his life "as a prominent member of national society." He spent his 
days engaged in philanthropic works and advocated for public policies 
that he felt would benefit the Western states, such as irrigation 
initiatives and highway construction. His frequent political 
donations and newfound social ranking brought Walsh attention from 
politicians and other world leaders. Among his political 
acquaintances were Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, 
and William H. Taft.

I found Stewart's _Thomas F. Walsh_ to be a quick and insightful 
read. The primary value of the book to economists lies in providing 
classroom teaching material. In the style of McCloskey's (1985) price 
theory text, I use problems -- mostly historical in nature -- to 
teach price theory. Several examples from this book will find their 
way into my problem sets. A good example of the firm's shut-down 
decision occurs on page 173, when Stewart describes how the Camp Bird 
Mine would shut down and restart depending on fluctuations in the 
price of gold or silver. More generally, however, this book is too 
narrowly focused on the life of Walsh and the mining industry in 
Colorado to be of general interest to economic and business 
historians.

Reference:
D. McCloskey, _The Applied Theory of Price_, New York: Macmillan (1985).

Joshua C. Hall is an assistant professor of economics at Beloit 
College in Beloit, Wisconsin. His most recent publication is (with 
Peter T. Leeson) "Good for the Goose, Bad for the Gander: 
International Labor Standards and Comparative Development" in the 
September 2007 issue of _Journal of Labor Research_.


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