James Robert Keene was born in 1838 at Chester, near Liverpool, England. Little is known of his parentage. He once described his father as an "Irish gentleman. " When about fourteen he accompanied his father to America. They lived for a short time at Lynchburg, Virginia, but early in the fifties they both set out for California.
Keene received limited education.
James Keene was engaged in a variety of occupations--selling milk, teaching school, studying law, editing newspapers, caring for horses, working in a mill, mining, freighting, and stock-raising. After the Civil War the discovery of the Comstock silver lode in Nevada gave him an opportunity for speculation from which he quickly realized $10, 000. With that capital he began a career as stock manipulator on the San Francisco Exchange which lasted ten years and involved the winning and losing of fortunes. At first he was only a street broker handling the orders of active speculators. In 1869 Charles N. Felton, assistant treasurer of the United States, made him a loan and within a year Keene repaid the loan and cleared $400, 000 on the market. Within a few months he lost by speculation all that he had won and even his household goods were attached for debt. But bold and skillful trading in Nevada mining stocks soon retrieved his losses. Within five years he was reputed to be worth $5, 000, 000.
In 1875 he was made president of the Stock and Exchange Board and in the same year had a part in rehabilitating the Bank of California after the suicide of its president. In 1876 Keene crossed the continent from San Francisco with a voyage to Europe in prospect. He stopped in New York and became greatly interested in Wall Street and its mechanism--particularly in the operations of Jay Gould. When he joined Gould in a pool formed with the avowed purpose of putting down Western Union stock, Gould unscrupulously sold him out. Keene found that Wall Street was not so easily controlled as the San Francisco market, but the challenge only put him on his mettle. In other pools that he formed he was successful. At the top of the wild speculation that set in during 1879 Keene's profits may have reached $9, 000, 000. But in corn and wheat trading he did not fare so well.
After a few years of prosperity he over-extended his credits and bought recklessly. The climax was reached in 1884 when Keene tried to manipulate wheat, pushing the price up to $1. 30 a bushel. Here he overplayed and when it fell to $. 90 his failure was announced. Recovery from this defeat was long-delayed. Keene tasted poverty for the second time since his early days of affluence. Trading in National Cordage, sugar, and tobacco at last put him on his feet again. In the early nineties he engineered movements in sugar stock for the Havemeyers and his share of the profits was estimated at $4, 500, 000.
In 1901, when the new issue of the United States Steel Company's stock had to be marketed, Pierpont Morgan, Sr. , was willing to put the undertaking in Keene's hands. J. J. Hill and the Great Northern interests also employed Keene to buy $15, 000, 000 of Northern Pacific stock to ensure control against Harriman.
All his life Keene was a lover of horses. Soon after going to New York he began to buy thoroughbreds. In 1881 his horse Foxhall won the Grand Prix at Paris. Thereafter for more than a quarter of a century Keene's horses won many of the most famous sweepstakes in England, France, and America. Domino, Cap-and-Bell, and Sysonby were among his favorites. For the ten years from 1898 his total turf winnings were believed to exceed $2, 000, 000.
Keene married Sara Jay Daingerfield, sister of Judge William P. Daingerfield, of an old Virginia family.
