Frederick Augustus Heinze was an American mining engineer and businessman. He was one of the three Copper Kings of Butte, Montana, together with William Andrews Clark and Marcus Daly.
Background
Frederick Heinze was born on December 5, 1869, in New York City, New York, United States. His father, Otto Heinze, was a German; his mother, Lida March Lacey, was a Connecticut Yankee with a strain of Irish blood. His father named him Fritz, but while still a schoolboy he dropped the name as too German and thereafter generally signed himself Frederick Augustus; he gave his first name as Frederick when applying for a marriage license.
Education
Frederick was educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, the Columbia School of Mines, and in Germany.
Career
After graduating from Columbia in 1889 Frederick Heinze went to Butte, Montana, where he found employment as an engineer with the Boston & Montana Mining Company. Although William A. Clark and Marcus Daly were then developing their organizations and beginning to control the copper market, Heinze, keen, alert, and resourceful, saw opportunities that they had missed.
After spending the year 1891 in New York on the editorial staff of the Engineering and Mining Journal, Heinze returned to Montana and leased the rich Estella mine from James Murray, the shrewdest operator in Butte, and manipulated the deal so that he got all the profits. In 1893 he organized the Montana Ore Purchasing Company and built a smelter for the small independent producers. He leased the abandoned Glengarry mine and found a rich vein of copper. In 1895 he bought the Rams mine for $400, 000, and made it pay him millions. From Miles Finlen, Marcus Daly’s partner, he bought the unproductive Minnie Healy mine, and within a month uncovered the richest copper vein in Butte.
When this business was prospering, Heinze decided to invade the Kootenay region in Canada. There he built a smelter and obtained a land grant to build a railroad to the coast, but the Canadian Pacific, alarmed, soon bought him out at a high price. Heinze was doubtless willing to sell because he saw impending a fight with the large copper companies at Butte. The chief weapon on both sides was the “apex law, ” under the terms of which the owner of the apex of a vein of ore could follow the vein downward even under the land of another. Heinze’s intimate knowledge of the ore deposits around Butte and his clever imagination enabled him to turn the "apex law” to his advantage. The Boston & Montana Company began the fight by suing Heinze. When the newly created Amalgamated Copper Company absorbed the former company it inherited this suit along with a number of others.
Since these were equity cases, to be decided by judges elected by the people, there ensued a bitter political struggle. Heinze was popular, while the “trust” was dreaded. The Amalgamated cut miners’ wages and Heinze maintained them. He bought newspapers, hired bands and speakers, and succeeded in electing his men as judges. Then he claimed much Amalgamated property under the “apex law, ” and since the apex could not be determined except by excavating, it was difficult to disprove his contentions. He secured many injunctions against the Amalgamated and exploited its property until the trust gave up and closed its mines. Finally in 1903 the legislature, in special session, passed the “fair trial” bill which enabled the Amalgamated to carry its suits to other judges, and Heinze’s control of the Butte mines was weakened.
In 1906 Heinze sold most of his holdings there for $10, 500, 000. He then organized the United Copper Company and gained control of a number of banks, including the Mercantile National Bank of New York City. The Standard Oil Company, which controlled the Amalgamated, continued the fight. One of the first breaks in the panic of 1907 was the fall of United Copper stocks, which was followed by a run on the Heinze banks. The Heinze group was notified by the New York Banks Clearing House Committee that they must relinquish their offices before aid would be given their banks, and it then appeared that the panic was precipitated by the struggle to get rid of Heinze. Thereafter he never wielded his former power, although he continued to be interested in several mining and railway projects. Heinze died suddenly at Saratoga Springs, New York. Five of his speeches were published in 1902 in a volume entitled The Political Situation in Montana, 1900-1902.
Achievements
Personality
A handsome man of powerful build, Heinze had the faculty of winning and holding the loyalty of all sorts of people. He was equally at ease in a group of miners, in cultured society, and in the gambling dens of Butte. He was a convincing speaker and in political campaigns won votes by his eloquence as well as by bribery and trickery.
Connections
Frederick Heinze was married, August 31, 1910, to Berenice (Golden) Henderson, an actress, the divorced wife of Charles Henderson. Heinze and his wife were divorced in 1912, shortly after the birth of their only child, but became reconciled in 1913, just before the death of Mrs. Heinze.