Meyer Guggenheim

American mining magnate and industrialist

• Born: February 1, 1828
• Birthplace: Lengnau, Switzerland
• Died: March 15, 1905
• Place of death: Palm Beach, Florida

Guggenheim rose from obscurity to dominate copper, silver, and lead mining, as well as refining, establishing one of the wealthiest families in the United States. His descendants rose to positions of prominence and became patrons of the arts and sciences, promoting many of the twentieth century’s most important figures.

Sources of wealth: Mining; investments

Bequeathal of wealth: Children; relatives; charity

Early Life

Meyer Guggenheim (MI-yehr GOO-gehn-him) was born in Lengnau, Switzerland, on February 1, 1828, to a poor family of German-Jewish descent. At this time, the ghetto in Lengnau was one of only two Swiss villages in which Jews were permitted to live. There life was restrictive in terms of career options and personal choices. Guggenheim’s father, Simon, was a tailor. Simon wanted to remarry after the death of his first wife, but he was prohibited because he lacked sufficient financial means. His intended had seven children by a previous marriage, and Meyer and his five sisters would make this a family of thirteen children.

Wanting the right to remarry and to obtain new opportunities, Simon emigrated from Switzerland to Philadelphia in 1847. The nineteen-year-old Meyer started his life in the New World by peddling household goods in the coal towns of northeast Pennsylvania. He supplemented his income by manufacturing an effective stove polish and lye, as well as an early type of instant coffee, in which coffee beans mixed with chicory were boiled down to a syrup that dissolved in warm water. This instant coffee proved to be a popular item. Simon’s effectiveness as a salesman was limited by his inability to speak English, so his customers primarily came from the German-speaking neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Guggenheim and his father earned enough money to take care of the needs of their large family. Their profits were rechanneled into building a successful wholesale business in household merchandise.

First Ventures

In 1852, the twenty-four-year-old Guggenheim felt financially secure enough to take a wife, Barbara Meyers, and buy a modest house in Roxborough, a working-class area in northwest Philadelphia. Between 1854 and 1873, Barbara gave birth to seven sons and four daughters. All but three of the children were born in Roxborough. Guggenheim was a strict disciplinarian and raised his sons to have good business skills and assist him in commercial ventures. Barbara was a loving mother and tried to instill in her children a love for art, music, and literature.

Guggenheim’s merchandising business established him as a solid member of the middle class. His business greatly expanded during the Civil War. Forming a partnership with two other investors, Guggenheim became a major importer and a dealer in spices.

By the late 1870’s, having more money than he actually needed, Guggenheim began to look for lucrative stock investments. He purchased two thousand shares of stock in a railroad line, which, within a few years, became essential for the railroad construction plans of Jay Gould. In 1881, he sold the stock to Gould for $320,000. Guggenheim immediately took this money and invested in a new technology, developed in Germany, to make fine “needle lace” by machine. His brother-in-law Morris Meyers opened a factory in St. Gall, Switzerland, and Guggenheim made a fortune by importing and selling the fine lace. Soon he sent three of his sons, Daniel (1856-1930), Murry (1858-1939), and Solomon R. (1861-1949), to Switzerland to establish lace factories. Company headquarters were moved from Philadelphia to New York, where Guggenheim was assisted by his oldest son, Isaac (1854-1922). The lace business was named M. Guggenheim’s Sons and it made a fortune for the family.

More important, in 1881 Guggenheim reluctantly accepted half interest in two Colorado mines in payment for a debt. It was mining that would propel the Guggenheim family into the ranks of America’s fantastically wealthy.

Mature Wealth

When Guggenheim first went to look at his mine in Leadville, Colorado, in 1881, it was filled with water, and he felt foolish for acquiring an interest in it. He had to invest about $20,000 to pump the water from the mine. Discouraged, one of his partners sold his share to the other partners, thus giving Guggenheim controlling interest in the mine. However, it soon became apparent that Guggenheim had stumbled into investing in two of the richest mines in Colorado, with vast lodes of silver and lead. By 1887, some nine million ounces of silver and eight-six thousand tons of lead were extracted from the two mines.

Guggenheim was quick to realize that much of the profit in mining was derived from the processing of ore. To this end he built a large smelter in Pueblo, Colorado, completed in 1888 and supervised by Simon Guggenheim; two smelting operations in Monterrey and Aguascalientes, Mexico; and a refining works at Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The Mexican smelters enabled the Guggenheims to circumvent tariff restrictions on the importation of Mexican ore. In 1891, the Guggenheims consolidated about a dozen of their smelting operations as the Colorado Smelting and Refining Company. By this time, the family was completely out of the fine lace business and five of Guggenheim’s seven sons were intimately involved with mining and smelting operations.

By 1901, the Guggenheims gained control of the rival American Smelting and Refining Company. Daniel Guggenheim helped organize a trust company and became its president. At the same time, a separate firm, the Guggenheim Exploration Company, was formed to develop mining opportunities not only in the United States but also in the rest of the world. Hence by the turn of the century, the Guggenheims controlled the most important silver smelting company in the world and held virtual control over the American copper industry.

Meyer Guggenheim retired in 1895, leaving the mining and smelting operations to his sons, whom he had trained so well. He spent his summers at the New Jersey shore to escape the oppressive New York City heat, and he now had much time to be a doting grandfather. His wife Barbara, who suffered from diabetes, died in 1900. Her sons donated $200,000 to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York for the construction of a building in her name, and Guggenheim donated $80,000 for a building in her name at Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia.

For the next four years, Guggenheim was a widower, cared for by his cook and housekeeper, Anne Poppee. He suffered from a slow-growing prostate cancer. By late winter of 1904, his prostate gland had to be removed. While the surgery was successful, Guggenheim caught a bad cold. He was moved to the warmth of West Palm Beach, Florida, to recuperate. However, his cold turned into pneumonia and he died on March 15, 1905. He was buried next to Barbara in an elaborate family mausoleum in Salem Fields, a Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Legacy

The life of Meyer Guggenheim is a case study of the American Dream, in which a poor immigrant becomes wealthy through a combination of pluck and luck. Guggenheim established a business and trained his seven sons to continue its operation. The fact that this family business changed from a merchandising store to linen production and, finally, to mining and processing is incidental. The end result was a dynasty that dominated American mining and refining operations in silver, copper, and lead and went on to play a major role in mining operations in places as diverse as Chile, Mexico, and the Congo. Twenty-first century corporations, such as the American Smelting and Refining Corporation (ASARCO); Corporación Nacional del Cobre, Chile; Grupo Mexico; Nabors Industries; and Phelps Dodge trace their origins to the Guggenheims. Meyer Guggenheim’s descendants also became some of America’s leading philanthropists, using the Guggenheim Foundation to finance contributions to American art and science.

Bibliography

Davis, John H. The Guggenheims: An American Epic. New York: William Morrow, 1978. A study of the individual lives of one of America’s most influential dynasties, and a sympathetic treatment of the dynasty’s founder.

Lawson-Johnston, Peter. Growing up Guggenheim: A Personal History of a Family Enterprise. Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Institute, 2006. A look at the individuals and Guggenheim family culture from the inside.

Marcosson, Isaac F. Metal Magic: The Story of the American Smelting and Refining Company. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1949. A study of the economic growth of the company, taken over by the Guggenheims, who went on to dominate smelting both in the United States and worldwide.

O’Connor, Harvey. The Guggenheims: The Making of an American Dynasty. New York: Covici Friede, 1937. Dated but contains the most complete coverage of Meyer Guggenheim’s career.

Unger, Debi, and Irwin Unger. The Guggenheims: A Family History. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. Based on a wide variety of documental sources, this effort to portray the lives of a large and complex cast of characters is an ambitious undertaking. The first four chapters contain much background information about Meyer Guggenheim.