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And that brings
us back around to Hyman Klinkle, the Andrew Carnegie
of fertilizer.
Being a classic
Gilded Age "robber baron," Hyman hadn't
given much thought to the island's caste-like social
order, its company-town politics, or the well-being
of the guano miners he affectionately called "my
little stinkers."
All he was interested
in was good guano.
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Like
so many of his affluent contemporaries, Hyman
publicly attributed his miners' lifestyles to
their natural lot in life and let it go at that.
But, privately, old Hyman suffered deep pangs
of conscience when his employees joyfully handed
over their company scrip to horizontal comfort
parlors like the "Twisted Limb" and "Barking Betty's"
or whiled away their scarce free hours with games
of chance, cheap rum, and women with bad teeth
and crude tattoos.
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The
changing room at "Barking Betty's,"
circa 1880
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Hyman's detractors
say that only Hyman's fear of his devout Lutheran
wife kept him from taking an active ownership position
in these lucrative if somewhat tainted market niches.
Others believe that the constant anxiety over this
business opportunity-denied exacerbated Hyman's
predisposition to flatulence and led to his premature
demise on a St. Paul streetcar in 1881.
Debates such
as these, however, are a subject for more serious
scholars, not your humble correspondent.
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Another
wheelbarrow of "guano gold."
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Notwithstanding his pained disinterest
in his workers, Hyman had long worried about what
would happen to Poco Cabesa (and Klinkleburg) after
the guano mines petered out.
Despite the boomtown's
rowdy ways, Hyman saw his namesake boomtown as his
legacy (when fertilizer is your vocation, even the
faintest glimmer of a legacy shines bright indeed
-- especially when you're the kind of fellow who
keels over on a streetcar because you're too tightfisted
to hire a carriage).
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But
that was all in the future. And, for Hyman, this
was his now.
Determined to
do right by his little island, starting in 1883
Hyman deducted a small percentage from every guano
receipt and deposited it in the "Poco Cabesa Limited
Trust," to be administered by his younger brother,
Hiram, at the Klinkle Bank & Trust in the Twin Cities.
The terms of the Trust stated that it was to be
tapped only when the island's guano gauge ultimately
reached "E."
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One
of Klinkle's early biographers, Margaret Celeste
Dorsett, theorized that Hyman intended the Poco
Cabesa Limited Trust and Klinkleburg to be models
of paternalistic authoritarian capitalism, a concept
advocated by 19th century Austrian political theorist,
Ligg Isleichen. Other historians and biographers
who argue over things like this insist that Hyman
was simply sending business his little brother Hiram's
way.
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Ligg
Isleichen, Vienna, 1879
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Klinkleburg
during the golden days of guano. |
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Whatever the
reason, day by day, year by year, the legendary
Limited Trust grew in proportion to the shrinking
layers of guano upon which it fed.
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Change
is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles
with.
-- Mr. Twain |
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