THE Douglas family is one of the
most powerful and romantic in the stirring annals of Scotland; in fact, in
every generation a Douglas has been a leader of daring enterprise, and his
name a household word for successful accomplishment. Wherever in the world
they have settled, their descendants have carried with them this quality
of dominating energy, and we find them at the forefront in every field of
endeavour.
Dr. James Douglas’s
own
family has had an adventurous and varied history. A consideration of this
will help greatly toward understanding his versatile and successful
career. His great-grandfather was a mason and stone-cutter in Yorkshire.
His grandfather, a Methodist clergyman, was stationed at Brechin,
Scotland, where his father was born. Dr. James Douglas himself was born in
Canada, has lived a great part of his life in the United States, and his
activities have been bound up chiefly with that most picturesque and
adventurous section, Mexico and the Southwest. He comes naturally by his
varied career and many-sided abilities, also by his literary and
scientific skill, for his grandfather was a man of talents, within the
limitations of a country clergyman, and his father, as we shall see, was a
man of broad culture and one of the most distinguished men of science in
Canada.
His father, also Dr. James Douglas,
took his career in his own hands at an early age. After attending school
for a time in Scotland, he was placed by his father in the Methodist
Academy, Woodhouse Grove. Complaining that the standard of education
was below that to which he had
been accustomed, he ran away when twelve years old and was indentured to a
physician. After serving his term of six years and spending one season in
Edinburgh, he entered the Medical Department of Edinburgh University. From
the beginning he showed great aptitude for his chosen profession. His
first summer holiday was spent as surgeon to a Greenland whaler. He was
graduated as a surgeon at Edinburgh and London, first entering the
services of the East India Company, but returned to England to take
medical charge of Sir Gregor MacGregor’s fatal colony to the Mosquito
Coast of Central America. More dead than alive, he was rescued from the
Black River by a Yankee skipper and taken to Boston, where he was months
recovering his health. Later, while travelling through New York, he was
held up at Utica by a break in the Canal, and, seeing the need of that
locality, practised surgery there for several years. His success led to
his appointment as Professor of Anatomy in the Auburn Medical College,
where his duties "involved him in practices not then provided for in a
legitimate manner," and he was
obliged to go to Canada in the dead of winter, taking his young wife with
him. In Canada he had a large practice, was noted for his scientific
attainments and liberal benevolence and was the founder of the first
public institution in the Dominion for the care of the insane.
Dr. James Douglas, the subject of
the present sketch, was born November 4, 1837, in Quebec, Canada. He
received his early education at home and in the local schools. As a boy he
was much in the company of his brilliant father and received great
inspiration from him. After two years in the University of Edinburgh,
which he entered in 1855, he returned to Canada and completed his studies
at Queen ‘s University, Kingston, Ontario, receiving his A. B. in 1858.
lIe then returned to Edinburgh, took a course in theology and
was admitted as a
licentiate of the Church of Scotland, before its amalgamation with the
Free Church in Canada. This theological training, along the broadest lines
of scholarship, has proven to him a valuable asset, for not only has his
life been dominated by deep religious conviction and Christian spirit, but
the experience he received in public speaking and the literary tastes he
developed during this period have coloured his whole career. Later father
and son travelled extensively together in Europe and the Orient, visiting
Egypt three times and bringing back important archaeological collections,
which were subsequently presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York City.
The father’s health failing, the son
studied medicine in order to be able to assist him and to carry on the
work of the Quebec Lunatic Asylum, which the father had established, and
which was still largely in an experimental state. Also, Dr. Douglas, Sr.,
had invested heavily in gold and copper mining in Canada and the United
States; so, while studying medicine, the son was compelled to interest
himself in mining and metallurgy in an endeavour to conserve these
properties. Thus he was led away from the chosen path of literary and
religious work, and these investments for the most part proving
unfortunate, was forced to make a living as best he could out of an
occasional fee and lectures on chemistry and metallurgy. However, he
entered these new fields of endeavour with the same keen intelligence,
enthusiasm, and honesty of purpose that he has shown in whatever he has
attempted.
He was professor of chemistry in
Morrin College, Quebec, for three years, and while there began, in
association with his life-long friend, the late Dr. Thomas Sterry Hunt,
experimenting with the hydro-metallurgy of copper. Dr. Hunt and Professor
Silliman, of New Haven, were interested in a company organized to extract
the copper from the copper-bearing portions of the Jones Mine ores, on the
Schuylkill River, above Phoenixville, Pa., and offered the position of
manager to Dr. Douglas. He accepted and came to the United States in 1875.
The Chemical Copper Company was a
failure, on account of lack of capital. Its work, however, was important,
in that it was the pioneer in working out many of the methods that have
since proved invaluable in the industry. It was the first establishment to
refine copper electrolytically, and put many tons of anodes on the market.
While employed at Phoenixville, Dr. Douglas gained valuable experience in
the working out of metallurgical processes, and in further developing the
well-known Hunt-Douglas patents for the wet extraction of copper. His keen
powers of observation and description, coupled with his wide scientific
knowledge, also put him immediately in demand as an investigator and
mining expert.
It was in this capacity that he
became acquainted with Mr. Dodge and Mr. James, of Phelps, Dodge &
Company, and it was upon his advice that they became interested in the
Detroit Copper Company and later acquired the Copper Queen, Atlanta, and
other copper properties at Bisbee and elsewhere in Arizona and Mexico,
that, developed under Dr. Douglas’s management, have been such prominent
factors in the growth and prosperity of that important concern.
The founding of a great smelting
center at Douglas, Arizona, impelled Phelps, Dodge & Company, Inc., into
which the original company was merged, to purchase the Dawson Coal Fields,
in order to secure an uninterrupted supply of fuel. Transportation
requirements led first to the building of branch railroads, then to the El
Paso & Southwestern Railroad, which, with its Mexican connections,
aggregates more than a thousand miles of standard gauge track and forms an
important link between the Rock Island and Southern Pacific railways. Thus
from small beginnings in 1881, the company now turns into the markets of
the world annually about 180,000,000 pounds, or 7% of the total production
of copper. The subsidiary companies responsible for this great output are
the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company, the Detroit Copper Mining
Company, the Moetezuma Copper Company, and The United States Mines; and
the Stag Canon Fuel Company extracts 1,500,000 tons of coal yearly, about
one-half of which is converted into coke.
Dr. Douglas is president of all the
companies controlling and operating these interests. All of them may be
said to have been instigated by him. The technical and financial success
with which this great organization has been handled bespeaks his
thoroughness and business ability. His work has brought to him honour and
wide professional fame, but, in the words of one of his associates, there
is "a feature dominating all of it that is more notable and worthy of
record. One cannot conceive of Dr. Douglas remaining the technical head of
an enterprise tainted in any way with stock-jobbing, unfair treatment of
employees or double dealing of any sort. Fortunately for him, his
associates have been men of similar ideals, deeply sympathizing with the
high motives that actuated their technical associate in all of his efforts
for the uplifting and comfort of miners and other employees. He has always
stood for free trade in ideas, and his mines and works are open to the
student, as well as to his brother engineers. He is never too busy freely
to give anyone sound advice and the results of his experience that many
others feel justified in keeping to themselves."
Dr. Douglas has twice been president
of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. He is a trustee of the
American Museum of Natural History, a member of the American Philosophical
Society, the American Geographical Society, the Society of Arts, London,
England, the Iron and Steel Institute and many other prominent societies
of America and Europe. He is a member and gold medallist of the Institute
of Mining and Metallurgy, London, England, and has been honoured with the
degree of LL.D. by McGill University.
Dr. James Douglas was awarded in
1915 the John Fritz Gold Medal for that year for notable achievements in
mining, metallurgy, education and industrial welfare. In 1914 he presented
to the American Museum of Natural History at New York a large model of the
Copper Queen Mine at Bisbee, Arizona, with which he has been so closely
identified since 1880. He has made other gifts to the Museum and to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dr. Douglas has aided his alma mater,
Queens University, Kingston, and McGill University, Montreal. He has given
largely to one of the New York hospitals, particularly toward cancer
research work, and his philanthropy extends in many other directions.
He is a member of the Century
Association, Engineers’ Club, City Club, Adirondack League Club, and
Montmorency Fish and Game Club.
When at Edinburgh Dr. Douglas was a
prizeman in English literature. His early training, his diversified
studies and wide experience have given him a broad outlook on life.
Endowed with a fine literary taste, in the midst of an exceptionally busy
career he has never permitted the light to grow dim. For a time, when Mr.
Garrison was editor, he wrote extensively for The Nation. These
papers cover a wide variety of subjects, literary, historical, religious,
philosophical and sociological, and many were of a significance to attract
notable attention. He has also contributed to many other American,
Canadian and British periodicals. He is an authority upon the early
history of Canada. His books include: Canadian Independence, Old France
in the New World, New England and New France—Contrasts and Parallels in
Colonial History, and Imperial
Federation and Annexation.
His reports and papers on strictly
scientific subjects reflect the same literary training and are
distinguished for their lucidity and accuracy. His contributions to the
literature of mining and metallurgy are numerous and important. Following
are some of the more important: The Gold Fields of Canada, 1863;
The Copper Deposits of Harvey Hill, 1870; Recent Spectroscopic
Observations of the Sun, 1870; The Copper Mines of Chili, 1872;
The Copper Mines of Lake Superior, 1874; Conditions of the
Survey for the Canadian Pacific Railway, 1874; Historical and
Geographical Features o.f the Rocky Mountain Railroads; The Metallurgy of
Copper, 1883; The Cupolo Smelting of Copper in Arizona, 1885;
Copper Production of the United States,
1892; Recent
American Methods and Appliances in the Metallurgy of Copper, Lead, Gold
and Silver (Cantor Lectures), 1895; Record of Borings in Sulphur Springs
Valley, Arizona, 1898; Treatment of Copper Mattes in Bessemer Converter,
1899; Gas from Wood in the Manufacture of Steel, 1902. Some of these have
been collected in a little book.
He was married in 1860 to Naomi
Douglas, one of the daughters of Capt. Walter Douglas, who brought over
the Unicorn as the first vessel of the Cunard line in 1840, and commanded
her for some years while she was in commission on the St. Lawrence River.
Of their children, six reached
maturity: James S., Walter, Elizabeth, Edith M. (Naomi E. and Lilly,
deceased). James S. has two sons; Walter has three daughters and two sons;
Edith M. (married Archibald Douglas) has two sons and one daughter;
Elizabeth, unmarried; Lilly (married Col. H. R. Hayter) left at her death
one son and one daughter. James S. Douglas is President of the United
Verde Extension Mining Co.,. which has a large copper mine in Arizona, and
Walter Douglas is Vice-President of Phelps, Dodge & Co., of which Dr.
James Douglas is President. |