John Gates was
known as a Gilded Age industrialist for having pioneered the promotion of
barbed wire. Gates, who also earned the moniker “Bet-a-Million”, was born on
May 18, 1855 in Winfield, Illinois. He started his career in 1876 as a salesman
of San Antonio, Texas-based barbed
wire company Washburn-Moen.
A little later, Gates
moved to St. Louis, Missouri to join Southern Wire Company. In 1888, Southern
Wire merged with Braddock Wire Company and formed the Consolidated Steel and
Wire Company. By 1898, Gates has monopolized the wire industry in the US.
Gates co-founded
a Texas company which is known today as Texaco Oil Company. Gates also played a
significant role in the development of port Arthur City, Texas when he took
over the helm of Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad in 1899. According to
reports, he forced the previous owners and Port Arthur founder Arthur Edward
Stilwell into bankruptcy
which resulted to his takeover of the company.
On the downside,
Gates was known as a compulsive gambler. He was first called “Bet-a-Million” in
1900 in an England horse race where he bet and won $600,000. The winning was
rumored to have escalated to more than $1 million; thus the nickname
“Bet-a-Million”. When he was on a train trip from Chicago to New York, Gates
joined a marathon poker, a game which lasted for one week. In another occasion,
Gates lost a million dollars in a betting game – which of two raindrops on a
glass window would be first to reach the bottom.
Gates died of an
unsuccessful surgery to remove a tumor on his throat in 1911 in Paris, France.
His wake was held in New York’s Plaza Hotel and was buried in Woodland
Cemetery. In memory of Gates, his widow funded Port Arthur’s Gates Memorial
Library. The library used to be Port Arthur’s public library. Today, it is the
campus library of Lamar Sate College.
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