Cattle King: A Dramatized Biography (ePub)

Biography of Henry Miller, known as The Cattle King, written by a man who was for 15 years the general counsel for the firm of Miller & Lux, Inc."e;This book is the life history of a German butcher boy, born Heinrich Alfred Kreiser in 1827, who came to New York City in 1847 where he practiced his trade until 1850 in which year he embarked for California by way of the Isthmus of Panama. He purchased his ticket for this voyage from a certain Henry Miller and from that time until his death in 1916 was known by that name. Later the California legislature bestowed it upon him by legal enactment. Upon his arrival in San Francisco with only six dollars in his pocket that he had earned by plying his trade of butcher at Panama, in the interval of awaiting a vessel to carry him northward, he once more took up the butcher business, a trade, or profession, that upon a steadily increasing scale he was to pursue from that city as a basis for the remainder of his days. The gold fields had no lure for him. He foresaw that there would be more money in meat than in mining. In 1858 he formed a partnership with a fellow German, Charles Lux, and the firm name of Miller and Lux was in course of time to become known in all the cattle and business centers of the Pacific West. Miller was the dominating spirit of this partnership -Lux not much more than its book-keeper-and through his daring and enterprise they came to possess a million head of cattle that ranged over a million acres of land situated in the three states of California, Nevada, and Oregon. In addition to this they owned two banks with their branches, reservoirs, abattoirs, as well as a number of hotels and other properties that had an appraised value of $50,000,000. "e;-JAM