Los Angeles County
Biographies
HON. JOHN PERCIVAL JONES
JONES, HON. JOHN PERCIVAL, Santa Monica, California, Capitalist and ex-Senator of the United States, was born at The Hay by the River Wye, Herefordshire, England, close to the Welsh border, January 27, 1829, the son of Thomas Jones and Mary (Pugh) Jones. He married Hannah Cornelia Greathouse, widow of George Greathouse, in 1861, and they had one son, Roy. His first wife died in 1871 and he married Georgina Frances Sullivan in 1875, and to them there were born three daughters, Alice, Marion and Georgina.
The Jones family came to America when the future Senator was only two years old and settled at Cleveland, Ohio, then a town of only a few thousand inhabitants and known as the heart of the Western Reserve. He attended the public schools of Cleveland, and after graduating from the high school attended a private school for some time, then went to work for a shipping firm, and later obtained employment in a local bank.
In 1849, when young Jones was just twenty years of age, came the discovery of gold in California. The hard times following the Mexican War had produced great restlessness and discontent throughout the country, so that the tales of fabulous wealth to be found in California brought about the most spectacular migratory rush in the annals of the world.
A number of the most adventurous young men of Cleveland, of whom Jones was one, organized a party and chartered the small bark, Eureka, of less than 160 tons displacement, and on September 26, 1849, set sail for the coast of California. They went through the new Welland Canal, which was so narrow that it was necessary to trim down the sides of the bark in order that she might pass through, on down the St. Lawrence and then along two continents and around Cape Horn.
The little vessel was scarcely seaworthy when she started, but in spite of numerous adventures she made the trip in safety, and in April, 1850, after a voyage occupying nearly nine months, sailed into the harbor of San Francisco.
Of all the ship’s company including the crew, Senator Jones is now the only survivor.
After landing in California, he remained in San Francisco for a while, but before long proceeded to the gold fields of Trinity County and washed gold from the sands of its streams. Sometimes he worked in the employ of others, but most of the time he was mining for himself. As with most of the early pioneers, small fortunes came and went, and throughout the vicissitudes of the search he managed to prove one fact of great value—that he possessed boldness of character and utter fearlessness of all consequences. He fought a good fight with fate, and he had to be ready to fight good men. He looked death in the face frequently enough in his contact with the reckless characters that peopled the goldfields, and he did it so unflinchingly that he was elected to that greatest of all offices of the early West, the one that carried with it the highest tribute to character, the office of Sheriff. He held the office successfully and good men respected, while bad men feared him. He was long remembered by the latter class in California. He took his dangerous post in the late fifties and held it until 1863.
In 1863 he was elected to represent Shasta and Trinity Counties in the California State Senate, and was fairly started on a political career that continued almost without interruption for a period of more than forty years. He represented the two counties as State Senator until 1867, when he was nominated Lieutenant Governor on the Republican ticket. The ticket was defeated, but his nomination indicated that he had become a man of power in the State.
Senator Jones had in reality two parallel careers—one in politics and the other in finance. In both he was more than ordinarily successful. Each was in a measure responsible for the other, because his success in business and investment recommended him to public office, and his clear-headedness in politics won the confidence of the men of business.
He left California in the year 1868, just after his defeat for the lieutenant governorship, and went to Virginia City, Nevada, the scene of the magic Comstock Lode, easily the most wonderful treasury of wealth the world has yet unearthed and which made millionaires in great numbers. He went as superintendent of the Crown Point mines, of which he was a part owner.
The game of politics was in his blood. He had no sooner arrived at Virginia City than he began to play it with the same energy as in California. Nevada was really a California overflow. He knew all of the men of consequence personally and all of them knew the former Sheriff of Trinity county. In less than three years’ time he was candidate for the greatest office Nevada had to give, the United States Senatorship. His force, popularity and generalship swept aside opposition and won him the election in 1872.
He never failed to give his support to any measure that promised good to the West, and particularly to his own State. Nevada got fully its share of appropriations, and with Senator Jones on the watch no measure that would hurt the Pacific States got through without a fight. He managed to get the Sawtelle Soldiers’ Home for Southern California, although to persuade Congress he and his partner, Colonel R. S. Baker, donated three hundred acres of its site.
For this he has the gratitude of thousands of old soldiers, because there, in that almost ideal climate, the veterans of the Civil War can have their lives prolonged a decade of years, and live in a comfort impossible in the wintry East.
He led a successful fight for the exclusion of the Chinese, and thereby saved the western half of the continent to the white man. He has not always received the credit he deserves for this fight, as it is the opinion of many that without his efforts the Chinese would never have been excluded.
He himself believes that one of his most important actions, and one most far reaching in its effect, was his earnest opposition to the Force Bill. This bill provided for the employment of the Federal army in the elections of the South to compel the Southerners not to interfere with the colored voters. Feeling ran high at the time, but now everybody realizes that the passage of such a bill would have precipitated another Civil War.
He was a consistent supporter of fiat money, accepting bimetalism as the best available compromise obtainable at the time, but basing his contentions upon the principles of a scientific currency dependent upon the quantitative theory of money. He is known as one of the most astute financiers in the United States and for many years has been considered an authority on such matters.
Because of his thorough understanding of the money question, the Senate, in 1876, appointed him a member of the Silver Commission, of which he was made chairman, and he later prepared a report for the commission, which was a fundamental treatise on money. In recognition of his knowledge of the subject, President Harrison in 1892 named him a delegate to the International Monetary Conference at Brussels.
While preparing for his work at this conference the Senator went over the ground so thoroughly that his gold-silver report was characterized as the most conclusive documentary presentation of the facts that our nation has seen. At the final conference at Brussels, the Senator’s argument consumed two days, and when printed reached the astonishing length of 200,000 words. This achievement stamped Senator Jones as one of our leading financial thinkers, as well as one of the greatest statistical authorities the country has known in public life.
The Senator’s mind is and always has been, from early years, a storehouse of statistical information, and he has the unusual faculty of making columns of figures and tables tell a story as fascinating as a novel.
His leading speech on money, delivered in the Senate, made a large volume and was a fundamental treatise of the science of money. It is perhaps the most complete history and exposition of the quantitative theory which has ever been written.
But one of the greatest services of his public life was his investigation and presentation of the principles of protection. In 1890 he delivered in the Senate a treatise on the subject in a speech entitled, “Shall the Republic do its own work?” which was so convincing and fundamental that more than a million copies were reprinted by the National Republican Committee and by the American Protective Tariff League and circulated throughout the United States.
The personality of Senator Jones is one of the traditions of the United States Senate. He is a man of powerful physique and has kept his strength well into the eighties.
His known fearlessness, the piercing quality of his eye and his naturally dominating appearance is also unusual, and few men are armed with such keenness of logic and such a wealth of facts.
He was always a convincing debater, and, although he made no pretensions to oratory, he had a beautiful speaking voice and was a master of English. He was a political tactician of the highest order and his opponents dreaded his resourcefulness.
He is known to all his friends as a great wit and story teller and his most serious speeches are interspersed with illustrations so apt that they grip the mind more powerfully than a column of argument.
He used to sit for hours in the cloak room of the Senator surrounded by a group of his colleagues, telling anecdotes and discussing questions of the hour. It was thus that he acquired the personal influence which gave him so much power.
At the time of his election to the Senate he had made a great fortune in mining, and during his long career he has always been associated with the mining development, not only of California and Nevada, but of Alaska, Mexico and Colorado. He was one of the original company which opened the great Treadwell Mine, near Juneau, Alaska.
In addition to his mining interests he has invested largely in real estate, and still owns several large ranches.
In 1875 he laid out the town of Santa Monica, on the San Vicente Rancho, which he owned in partnership with Col. R. S. Baker. He built the first railroad from Los Angeles to Santa Monica, intending to continue it to Independence. Subsequently this road was sold to the Southern Pacific. He has now disposed of most of his interests around Santa Monica, but still lives in the old homestead there which the family has occupied for 20 years.
He has belonged to innumerable clubs in Nevada, San Francisco, New York, Washington and Los Angeles and retains his membership in several of them.
Although January 27, 1912, was his eighty-third birthday, he is still an active man, taking a keen interest in the affairs of the world.
________
Ed. Note: Senator Jones was called by death Nov. 27, 1912.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 457,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2010 Joyce
Rugeroni.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPIES