On July 27, 1919, there passed away a simple, unassuming gentleman, who, throughout his life, allowed his intense modesty to keep himself in the background and during his later years effaced himself so thoroughly that but few of his acquaintances knew aught of him. Yet he was one of our accomplished metallurgists, who did good work in the practice of his profession and lived an upright life. Now that he is no longer with us Franz Fohr cannot plead to be overlooked, and those who fondly remember him will be gratified by his receiving his due.
Franz Fohr was born, Sept. 7, 1838, in Mannheim, Germany. Of his ancestry, education, and early career we know scarcely anything. We do not even know just when he came to America, or what led him hither. The first record of his professional work in this country, found among his papers, shows that from July, 1870, to Jan. 1, 1872, he was superintendent of the Newark Smelting & Refining Works, then owned by Edward Balbach & Son. At that time the Balbach works at Newark, established in 1850, and the Selby works at San Francisco, established about 1866, were the only important silver-lead refineries in the United States. Mr. Fohr may have been associated with the Balbachs for some time before he became superintendent of their plant or he may have come from Germany but a short time previously. At all events, it is certain that he was at that time an experienced and accomplished metallurgist. After leaving Newark and going to San Francisco, he soon formed a connection with Thomas H. Selby & Co. Early in 1874, this firm sent him to New York to procure information respecting the manufacture of white lead. His engagement in New York terminated on Jan. 31, 1875. …
In this May 30th, 1885, dictation from Anton Eilers he mentions traveling in Europe for two years. However, he wasn’t there longer than six months (Jan 1882-May 1882). I can only conclude this was a transcription error or some other mistake. The original is Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection.
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Mr. A. Eilers
So Pueblo, Colo. May 30th, 1885
Was born in Germany January 14th, 1839 and educated at the Mining Academy of Clausthal and University of Goettingen. Graduated when 20 years of age and came at once to the U.S. Was employed by a firm of Mining Engineers in N.Y City for a number of years and in Dec. 1869 was appointed Deput of U.S. Mining Statistics and held position until 1876. Was in Salt Lake and rebuilt the Germania Smelter running it in 1877 and 1878. Next to Leadville, Colorado, in 1879 and built smelter there, remaining two years when health failed and sold out and traveled in Europe for two years and returned to Colorado.
Organized the Colorado Smelting Co in Pueblo and broke ground for the works in April 1883. Started work in Aug same year with one furnace and now have 4 furnaces with a local capacity of 200 tons per day. Employ 125 men and will increase capacity of works as fast as business demands it.
English Translation of Hahn’s 1938 Article on Karl Eilers
Below is the letter from Karl Eilers to Maxwell Hahn about an upcoming biography by Hahn on Eilers for a German newspaper. The German version can be found here.
March 15 1938 Letter from Karl to Mr. Hahn
Mr. Maxwell Hahn Room 1811–570 Lexington Avenue . New York City
My dear Mr. Hahn: I was much pleased with your biographical article concerning myself, and I have done as you suggested– made a few corrections in pencil; also, I am having your article re-written, with some copies for my children.
On your last page you make a very nice and very proper comment about Frank Van Dyk. I wish you could also say something to the effect that I am very grateful for the friendly, congenial assistance given me and our Associated Hospital Service by Homer Wickenden and yourself; and if you do not think it would clutter up the article too much, I would also like to have recognized the fine assistance given us by Mr. Pyle, Wm. Breed, Jr., Mr. Stanley Resor, and the many other important members of our Executive Committee and the Board. I had thought that something could be said immediately after your paragraph about Frank Yan Dyk covering Homer and yourself. Perhaps to add the other names at this point might be too cumbersome; but if your ingenuity could work it in somewhere advantageously, I should like very much to have it.
Very truly yours, enc. KE/S;
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Maxwell Hahn’s biography draft of Karl Eilers (English Version):
“Because I wasn’t worried, and because I had confidence . . .”
With these words, Karl Eilers, American-horn son of a German father, explains how he has traveled the long road from his birth seventy-two years ago in a small Ohio town to a position of prominence in New York City as President of the Associated Hospital Service of New York and President of Lenox Hill Hospital.
Today tall and portly, with the erect carriage of an army officer Karl Eilers is as full of confidence and faith in the future as in his youth. White-haired now, he goes about his tasks with the energy of a younger man and greets each day with the zest carried over from his colorful and adventurous past.
He has watched the Associated Hospital Service grow until now more than 650,000 men, women and children in the New York metropolitan area are enrolled and entitled to hospital care when needed. The skeptics who questioned the non-profit three-cents-a day plan for hospital care at its beginning less than three years ago have found their answer in the fact that subscribers have share and individually saved more than $3,7l5,000 in hospital bills.
And with the faith that enabled him to accept the presidency of the three-cents-a-day plan when others were doubtful of its success, Karl Eilers is convinced that enrollment in the plan will exceed in in York City a million members by the end of this year.
Mr. Eilers’ confidence in the idea of placing hospital care on the family budget for payments of a few cents each day has been strengthened by the confidence of the public.
But for a decision made eighty years ago, Karl Eilers might have been a ministers son, pursuing his destiny in Clausthal, in the Harz Mountains, Germany.
The decision was wade by his father, F. Anton Eilers, who, given the choice of the ministry or mining for a life’s work, decided to be a miner. He was sixteen at the time, and from America came reports of a great Western territory as yet hardly touched, and of minerals that slept under the grass roots, ready to yield their wealth to the finder.
And so, in 1859, Karl Eilers’ father came to America. He brought his small savings and a stout heart to a country soon to be torn with internal conflict. Slavery, not minerals, was the subject he heard discussed at every corner. In that year, a man named John Brown had led a raid on Harpers’ Ferry in Virginia to incite a slave revolt. John Brown was killed, but the issue grew sharper and sharper. There were rumors of war in the air. Disturbing rumors to the ear of the young man who had left a quiet home in Germany.
He found a Job in a clothing store on Chatham and Pearl Streets, and a place to live in the Tremont section of the city. He worked there for several years, meanwhile seeking an opportunity to carry out his determination to be a miner. In 1861 Civil War was declared. Mr. Eilers remained in New York. In 1863, when he was courting the girl who was to be Karl Eilers’ mother, the draft riots broke out in New York City and left 1,000 dead to decide whether or not Republican officials had stuffed the draft lists with the names of Democrats. But the violence of the times proved no handicap to romance and in that year Mr. Anton Eilers married.
Shortly after his marriage, he left the clothing store where he had been employed and started his career in the mining industry in an assay office on Park Row. His employer was Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond of Adelberg & Raymond, assayers.
Mr. Eilers and his young bride traveled about the country from one mining operation to another. In 1865, while with a company drilling for oil near Marietta, Ohio, his son, Karl Eilers, was born.
The first American-born son of the Eilers family opened his eyes in a perplexed country. Abraham Lincoln had been shot and torn from the helm of the nation when it most needed guidance. Andrew Johnson was inaugurated president of the United States and assumed leadership of a broken and uncertain people.
The family returned to New York and took up residence in the Morrisania section of the city. Young Karl Eilers developed into a tall husky boy, receiving his first formal education at a public school in the Melrose section. His father was advanced to the position of Deputy Mineral Surveyor. Dr. Raymond had become United States Com-
miasionor of Mining Statistics for the western part of the United States and had six men scouting around the country, gathering information concerning the mineral resources of the nation.
In 1873 Karl Eilers witnessed his first financial panic and saw a city demoralized. With business structures tottering the depression began with a series of bank failures on September 20. The Stock Exchange closed that day and remained closed until September 30. Dr. Raymond retired from his position in 1876. Karl Eilers’ father also resigned, and went to Colorado to investigate the copper resources there at the request of a Boston organization.
At Saints John, Colorado, Karl Eilers received the first indication that his life was one curiously favored by fate. He was in the flimsy shelter of a small smelting plant that had been set up at the foot of a towering mountain. He stood watching the progress of a rainstorm that had been raging about him for hours when he heard a roar as though the whole mountain were collapsing. Tree-roots, loosened by the torrents of rain, gave way. Tons of earth crumpled and roared down the mountainside, throwing a barrage or trees and rocks into space. It was useless to run. Karl Eilers watched the mountain as it flattened and spread towards him. When the slide had spent itself, the twisted trees and broken rocks were piled a scant fifty feet from the plant there Karl Eilers stood and breathed thankfulness.
Mr. Eilers left the exciting life he had led with his father in the west and returned to New York to study at the Hill School, Pottstown, Pa., and at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1883. Later he took courses in mining and metallurgy at Columbia University.
In 1889 he finished his studies in America and returned to his father’s native Germany to study in Berlin. Interested in European mining operations, he visited France May, 1891 to see the mines there. While in Paris, he studied Spanish in preparation for a trip to Spain. He left for that country in fall and lived for several weeks at the American Embassy. Later he traveled through the southern part of that country, inspecting mining conditions.
Karl Eilers returned to the United States in 1892 and, like his father, arrived at a time when the country was in upheaval. Labor trouble had swept the land. Riots were frequent. He joined his father who had become a power in the mining industry and worked with him. In 1894, that industry, too, became the target of labor manipulations. A nation-side strike of miners paralyzed operations throughout the country. Again, the Eilers weathered the storm, moving alertly from one organization to another.
In 1896 at the age of thirty, Karl Eilers married. He had acquired a reputation by that time for his knowledge of smelting theory and practice, and in 1900 was sent to organize a lead smelting plant that the American Smelting and Refining company had built in Utah. The Guggenheins had taken control of the American Smelting and Refining Company in 1901, and his association with them lasted until 1920 when he parted company with Simon Guggenheim and his organization.
Recalling the problems met during his smelting career, Karl Eilers remembers that their troubles were not all under ground. The smoke that poured in great volume from the chimneys of the smelting plants made the smelters unpopular with the eastern farmers, and lawsuits were frequent. The farmers protested that their crops and animals were stifled by the rolling clouds and carried their complaints to the courts. Efforts were made to change this condition by building the plants at the mouths of canyons and valleys so that the smoke would be swept out and up by the air currents. These efforts were futile, however, and the smoke continued to sweep over the land for a radius of twenty-five miles and more from whore the plants were constructed.
But that, and the mountain slides, forest fires and ruggedness was part of the expansion and development of the West in which Karl Eilers played such an active part, It was to be, if cities were to grow where forests and empty plains stretched limitless and forbidding.
The men who met and solved the difficulties of that forced and hurried growth of a nation had to have confidence, they had to be unafraid.
In New York four years before Karl Eilers was born the second and more peaceful half of his destiny began shaping itself. The German Hospital and Dispensary was founded in 1861. Because of Civil War, the first building was not completed until 1868 although six beds were then in use at the dispensary which had been establish at 8 East Third Street.
It, too, expanded and developed. Now known as Lenox Hill Hospital, with modern buildings at 111 East Seventy-sixth Street it has taken its place as one of the leading hospitals in New York City.
When Karl Eilers was invited several years ago to become a member of the board of trustees of the hospital, he accepted because he ‘considered it a civic duty.’
Today, as president of Lenox Hill Hospital, he continues to regard his position as a fulfillment of a civic duty, one more contribution to a community he loves.
In 1934, he was asked to accept the presidency of the Associated Hospital Service of New York, a non-profit community organization that planned to put hospital care on the family budget of the man and woman in the metropolitan area for payments of a few cents a day.
There were critics of the idea, and others who warned Karl Eilers that it would not work.
“Why become associated with an organization that is pre-destined for failure”, they argued.
Enrollment rates had been estimated at $10 a year for a single subscriber. They were too low, the doubters pointed cut. Too many hospital benefits were provided, the cost of operation would be too great. And, anyway, the public would not be interested.
Karl Eilers shrugged his heavy shoulders. It was not a new idea to him. For in Pueblo, Colorado, many years ago, the miners and smelters had agreed upon a similar plan to ensure themselves proper care in times of illness and injury. From each man’s monthly rage was deducted a certain sum which was put into a central fund. From this fund, the money was taken when needed for medical care. The plan had worked well and served its purpose. And Karl Eilers had confidence in this plan to serve millions of people in the New York metropolitan area. He accepted the presidency.
Today, more and more people are learning that they don’t have to worry about unexpected hospital bills. Letters pour into the headquarters of the three-cents-a-day plan at 570 Lexington Avenue from grateful subscribers, stating that, because of their membership, they have been able to meet the problem of unexpected hospitalization without financial concern. The bills are paid in advance.
Every day, 1,198 incoming calls are handled by Associated Hospital Service telephone operators. Most of the calls are from persons who want to know more about the plan and its methods of enrollment. The doubters have been silenced, and Karl Eilers maintains his well-placed confidence in the plan and the people who are responsible for its success.
The three cents-a-day plan has upheld its standards as a non-profit community service. If it were otherwise, it is doubtful whether Karl Eilers would be associated with it.
He speaks proudly of Frank Van Dyk, executive director of the Associated Hospital Service of New York, and credits him with the growth of the plan and the extension of hospital benefits to subscribers.
[Large empty gap in the draft document at this location between the paragraph above and below. No obvious reason why]
He is proud, too, that as president he never interferes with the activities of his executives.
“One of the biggest things I have learned is to keep my hands off the man who is doing the work”, Karl Eilers explains. “I believe it was the father of John D. Rockefeller, who said, ‘Find the man that knows more about your problems than anyone else, put him in charge, and then let him work them out’”.
He looks up from his desk and smiles. Not a young man now, but certainly not an old man. With a past already filled with rich memories, he keeps his eyes to the future and the opportunities that may be in it for him to serve the community further.
Karl Eilers might have been a minister’s son, resigned to old age in Clausthal, in the Harz Mountains, Germany. He might have failed in the West and been swept aside by the waves of progress. He wasn’t.
“Because I wasn’t worried, and because I had confidence—“.
Karl Eilers, Der Mann und Sein Werk, March 27, 1938
This article about Karl titled “Der Mann und Sein Werk” appeared in a German newspaper March 27, 1928. It was written by Maxwell Hahn. The english translation can be viewed here.
Karl Eilers article “Der Mann und Sein Werk” by Maxwell Hahn, March 27, 1938.
Karl Eilers drafted this unfinished autobiography three months prior to his death in August of 1941.
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My earliest recollection of where my parents [Ed Note: Anton & Elizabeth Eilers] lived about New York were in Harlem, not far from where the Third Avenue Street Car came to an end, at the Harlem Bridge. We lived in a two-story, two-family house, with Grandmother Eilers [Elizabeth Dielmann] and her daughter Emma [Ed Note: Anton’s sister, not his daughter the painter] on the top floor and father’s small family on the first floor.
To the south and east were unoccupied lands, which at times in the summer served for circuses.
In Virginia my earliest recollection were of a trip with Else and some grown lady a short distance from the house towards Wytheville. All along, the ground was covered with tall willow trees and other vegetation in which I became lost from the other two and of course, was terrified.
Another recollection was on the trip from New York to Virginia. Stopping at the hotel in going through Washington, where leaning out of the window, running in and out of the trees, I saw a monster which frightened me terribly, evidently a switch engine. In Virginia another recollection is of the time when it became necessary to slaughter a few hogs for food and the squealing of those hogs still is strong in my memory. My sister Lu was born here and father always spoke of her as belonging to the F. F. V. [Ed Note: Possibly the First Families of Virginia]. Else was born in Grandfather Emrich’s house, 156th Street, South Melrose. I, as related above, was born near Marietta, Ohio. Annie again in New York. Now Lu in Virginia and Emma in 1870 in New York. Meta in 1875 also in New York.
On returning from some of these trips to the mines we lived first in Morrisania then in Tremont and finally in a more pretentious place in [Ed Note: just a big blank line, apparently didn’t know or remember the answer].
Else and I went to school with Minnie Emrich [Karl’s mother’s youngest half sister], south from Grandfather Emrich’s house a little way on Third Avenue and my memory is strong of a large woods, “Bathgate’s Woods”, the famlly name being retained even today in “Bathgate Avenue”. …
Hard to fix a website when a Killer Bee has you pinned down! (Texas, 2015).
In May of 2016, I re-arranged the deilers site. Now, my author site will stand as the entry point to this domain. The research storage area (an internet beacon if you will) has become a secondary site. I will rebuild this as time allows.
Anton Eilers by Rossiter W. Raymond
From the Engineering and Mining Journal, Vol 103, No. 17. Pages 762 – 764. April 28, 1917.
Frederic Anton Eilers was born in Nassau, Germany, Jan 14, 1839. He received his technical education at the University of Gottingen and the mining school of Clausthal. In 1859 he came to the United States and in 1863 became an assistant in the office of Adelberg and Raymond, New York City, consulting mining engineers and metallurgists, of which firm I was the junior partner.
The death of Mr. eilers removes the last survivor of a group of young men who began in our office and under our directions careers of considerable importance and honor — Hereman Credner, afterward professor of geology at the University of Leipzig and Director of the Royal Saxon Geological Survey; Charles A. Stetefeldt, destined to international fame as the inventor of the Stetefeldt furnace; Otto H. Hahn, a distinguished contributor to the rapid development of American metallurgy and one of its most skillful practitioners; and, last, but not least, Anton Eilers – all began their technical careers as employees of Adelberg & Raymond. I cannot say that they learned their business from us, but their expertise with us carried them to some extent over that period of acclimation which was in those days often disagreeable and sometimes disastrous to foreign experts in this country.
Of all those whom I have named, I think Eilers became the most completely Americanized. Though he retained the thoroughness, simplicity, directness and geniality which he brought with him, he acquired the ability to recognize new conditions and me and to adapt himself to them. From 1866 to 1869 he had charge of the Betty Baker copper mine and furnace in Carroll County, Virginia. This enterprise was based on the superficial “black” oxide copper ores resulting from a “secondary enrichment” along the outcrop of a formation like that of Ducktown, Tenn., and of course the supply of ore was soon exhausted.
Having become in 1868 United States Commissioner of Mining Statistics for the states and territories in and west of the Rocky Mountains, I was very glad to secure in 1869 the services of Mr. Eilers as my deputy. Of the eight volumes of my annual reports, all but the first contain results of his faithful, intelligent and intrepid labors. I say “intrepid,” because they sometimes involved personal danger, as for instance, in Arizona, the mining districts of which he visited while the Apaches were still on the warpath. In the preparation of the annual report, Eilers and I traveled separately through different parts of the great field, inspecting mines and securing trustworthy agents and correspondents. In the course of the eight years of my commissionership, we managed to reach personally all the states and territories concerned.
This method (the only one possible with an annual appropriation of never more than $15,000 to cover all salaries, traveling expenses, correspondence, clerical and editorial labor) produced in the resulting volumes a peculiar series of public documents. Each volume contained the personal impressions and observations of the commissioner and of the deputy commissioner as to certain regions, together with the reports (edited by me) of special agents in the remaining regions. Since this fact was clearly stated in each successive preface, it is easy now to find what portions of any one of the eight volumes represent the special work of Eilers, and whoever makes such an examination will gain a betteer notion of its remarkable extent and quality than I can here impart.\n\nOne pleasant exception to our habit of separate work was furnished in 1870 [ed note actually 1871] when, after completing our individual tours, we met by appointment in Virginia City, Mont., and proceeded with four other persons to explore the then newly discovered geyser basins of the Yellowstone. An account of this exploration, including our running interview with Sitting Bull and a dozen of his braves, who had chosen that time for a raid off the reservation, was published thirty-odd years ago in my little book, “Camp and Cabin.” This episode became a lifelong memory of humor and adventure to us both.
I confess that I am surprised, in my old age, to see how much we did with exuberant strength and enthusiasm when we were young. Our work was that of a special agency, not of a government bureau. Perhaps it was at the time more helpful to the young industries which it represented than an expensive systematic collection of statistics would have been. But, when I finished my volume for 1876, I frankly advised the discontinuance of Congressional appropriations for the work; and in due time it became a part of the United States Geological Survey, to the great advantage of the country and the mining industry and those engaged in it.
One thing, however, it had unquestionably done. It had made both Eilers and me exceptionally familiar with all parts of the Pacific slope, their natural resources, industries prospects and people. And so, in 1876, when I resumed my private practice, Eilers selected the Salt Lake valley as the scene of his technical activity and became part owner and general manager of the Germania Smelting and Refining Works in that valley. This was the beginning of an uninterrupted progress in professional reputation and business success, which made him one of the universally recognized and adequately rewarded “captains of industry.”
It was not difficult, indeed, for a graduate of Clausthal to improve the Salt Lake practice of that day. The valley contained many little shaft-furnaces, smelting argentiferous galena, and experiencing a “salamander” pretty regularly once a week or oftener. If I remember correctly, eight days’ run without “gobbling-up” and “digging out,” and “blowing-in” again, was considered good practice.
The Germania furnaces, running indefinitely without such interruption, were a revelation to the metallurgical pioneers of the valley. But, German-American enterprise was not satisfied with that. Soon, from Salt Lake and other American districts we began to hear of larger furnaces, better apparatus – in short, of a new practice, which made Clausthal and Freiberg and Swansea sit up and take notice. In this surprising advance Eilers was one of the leaders, daring yet prudent.
In 1879, he formed a partnership with the late Gustav Biling and built and operated for several years the Arkansas Valley smelting works in Leadville, Colorado. This concern also was highly successful.
Meanwhile, he had entered the field of technical authorship. Having joined the American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1871, the first year of its existence, he united with O.H. Hahn and myself in the preparation of a paper on “The Smelting of Argentiferous Lead Ores in Nevada, Utah and Montana. “ This was followed by several metallurgical papers, and in 1875 (just before he took charge of the Germania works) by one on the “The Progress of the Silver-Lead Metallurgy of the West During 1874.” These contributions show him to have been a close observer of the progress, in which he afterward played so conspicuous a part.
But the great opportunity for which many years of manifold preparation had fitted him came in 1883 [ed note this should be 1881]. Eilers had been called in to show the owners of the Madonna Mine, at Monarch, Colorado, near the Continental Divide, how to run its little charcoal furnace on lead-carbonate ores, without salamanders. It was Salt Lake over again. But after remedying the immediate trouble, he convinced the owners that they could not succeed commercially by local smelting of a single ore, low in silver, while hauling all the supplies and shipping all products in wagons. The result not only vindicated his business judgment, but also illustrated his power to command confidence through honest frankness.
The Colorado Smelting Company was formed, the owners of the mining taking their share of stock, and Eilers and his friends receiving the rest upon the fulfillment of certain pledges, including the securing of a railroad to the mine and the erection of smelting works at Pueblo. This combination proved profitable even beyond expectation. Cheap freight rates on the downgrade via Marshall Pass to Pueblo brought the Madonna ore to the furnaces at low cost; the mine itself developed enormous bodies of nonsiliceous fluxing ore, admirably suited for smelting with high-grade siliceous ores, and was for years the largest tonnage producer in Colorado; so that the company did not have to buy barren fluxes or compete in the market for fluxing ores. As a consequence it enjoyed a secure prosperity so long as the Madonna held out.
But the joy of his life came to Eilers in the opportunity to select freely a suitable site, build model up-to-date smelting works, surround himself with chosen assistants, and train them in his own notions of technical efficiency.
Those of us who visited the works of the Colorado Smelting Company in the days of its glory will never forget that oasis of beauty and rest – the clean and airy buildings, the orderly yards, the reservoir masquerading as an embowered lake, beloved of ducks, the sociable clubhouse for young men. Travelers made haste to arrive there and were slow in leaving. The birds of a continent steered in their migrations to that haven of rest. Yet, business routine and the technical system of the place were as good as if it had been dirty and ugly. Indeed, the absence of ugliness and dirt had a direct relation to the cleanness of slags and the proper handling of by-products and waste.
Here in full freedom, a kindly dictator, Eilers trained his young men. Robert Sticht, Walter H. Aldridge, Arthur S. Dwight, H.C. Bellinger, Howard F. Wierum, Frank H. Smith, Karl E. Eilers, and others whose names stand high in metallurgy, were “Eilers’s boys” and still acknowledge gladly their filial debt to him.
About 1890 Mr. Eilers, with the same friends who had joined him the Colorado enterprise, organized the Montana Smelting Company and built large works at Great Falls Montana. These works, together with the East Helena smelting works, became part of the great consolidated Amercian Smelting and Refining Co [Ed note aka Asarco], which was formed in 1899 and which comprised most of the important establishments of Colorado also. Of this company, and of the subsequently organized American Smelter’s Securities Co., he was director and the technical member of the excecutive committee until 1910, when he retired from active business, though he still visited his New York office almost daily until within a comparatively recent period and retained many incidental positions of trust, such as vice presicent of the Last Dollar Gold Mining Co., of Cipple Creek, Colorado, and president of the Colorado Mines Exploring Co.
As already noted, he was one of the earliest members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, of which was a manager for six years (1875-7 and 1882-4 inclusive) and a vice president in 1876 and 1877, to the Transactions of which he contributed valuable papers, besides those specifically mentioned. He was also a member of the American Forestry Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the Technical Society of New York, and of the following clubs: The Engineers’, German and Rocky Mountain (New York); Germania (Brooklyn); Denver (Denver, Colorado); and Alta (Salt Lake City, Utah).
Mr. Eilers was married to Elizabeth Emrich in 1863, just before he came to me as an assistant. His death makes, I believe, the first break in his large an happy family. Two daughters and a son, together their mother, survive him [editors note: One son and 5 daughters]. The son, Karl, has achieved a reputation worthy of his blood and is now a vice president of the American Smelting and Refining Co. I have known them all from cradle. Their home has been a home to me, in Salt Lake City, Leadville, Pueblo, Denver, Brooklyn and Sea Cliff. It was at Sea Cliff, Long Island, the beautiful country seat where he had indulged to the full his love of tress and flowers and hill-horizons and cordial hospitality, that Anton Eilers, after long illness, passed away on Saturday morning, Apr 21, and this is my farewll, so far as earthly companionship is oncerned, to my genial, upright, generous comrade through four and fifty years of loyal friendship and mutual trust unmarred by doubt or discord.
While not true blood relatives, Rossiter was Anton’s close friend and Uncle Ros to his kids (I have 3 of Rossiter”s books signed, in part, ‘Uncle Ros & Aunt Sally’ to Karl E. Eilers in 1905). Since his wide ranging interests and successes do not get their due elsewhere on the web, they will get it here (and eventually wikipedia). As Walter R. Ingalls once noted, “Dr. Raymond was one of the most remarkable cases of versatility that our country has ever seen’—sailor, soldier, engineer, lawyer, orator, editor, novelist, story-teller, poet, biblical critic, theologian, teacher, chess-player—he was superior in each capacity. What he did, he always did well.”
Here’s a short biographical sketch from Rossiter’s Memorial (full pdf here):
Rossiter Worthington Raymond, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (1857), Lafayette College (PhD 1868), Leigh University (LLD 1906), and the University of Pittsburgh (honorary LLD. 1915)., mining engineer, metallurgist, lawyer, and author, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, April 27, 1840, the son of Robert Raikes and Mary Anna (Pratt) Raymond; grandson of Eliakim and Mary (Carrington) Raymond, of New York City, and of Caleb and Sally (Walker) Pratt, of Providence, Rhode Island. …
Arthur S. Dwight was a friend of Karl’s since they were boys. He was also Rossiter Raymond’s nephew. Arthur was a mining engineer who worked for Anton Eilers and with Karl Eilers for several years.
Karl Emrich Eilers, Engineer of Mines, Master of Science (Hon.) Honorary Member, Director and Treasurer of the Institute, one of the most distinguished and probably the most widely beloved of its members, died at his Sea Cliff, Long Island home on August 18, 1941. In spite of failing health, he had continued his activities to the end. He was seventy-five years old.
He was born at Marietta, Ohio, on November 20, 1865, the son of F. Anton Eilers and Elizabeth Enrich Eilers. While his family was later residing in the far west he attended the Hill School, Pottstown, Pa., was roommate of my cousin, Alfred Raymond and spent his vacations in Brooklyn with his roommate’s family, where I came to know him intimately. Later he graduated from the Brooklyn Polytechnic, and in 1889 from the Columbia School of Mines, following which he went abroad to take some courses in the German mining schools and to visit foreign metallurgical plants.
In 1896, after his establishment in active work in Colorado, he married Miss Leonie Wurlitzer of Cincinnati, Ohio, and had three children, Marguerite (Mrs. Andrew Beer) K. Fritz, and Farny, all of whom, with his widow survive him.
For me to describe his career is like telling my own story, up to a certain point, for he was my boyhood friend, my close associate in metallurgical work in the west, during which our professional careers were moulded by the same influences, and after our professional paths diverged, though still closely parallel, he remained an unwavering and loyal friend.
The background of the story is the lifelong friendship of Karl’s father, the late Anton Eilers, with my uncle, the late Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond, one of the founders of the Institute and its Secretary for over 30 years. It also involves some of the ancient history of the development of lead smelting in the west. The elder Eilers, after graduating from Clausthal Mining School, came to this country in 1859. In 1863 he became one of a group of young mining engineers on the staff of the firm of Adelberg & Raymond.
Having proved his abilities, Eilers was selected by Raymond in 1869 as his Deputy Commissioner of Mining Statistics, in helping gather and edit the voluminous data on mineral resources of the West, which they verified by personal visits to the western mining camps. The record of their work is to be found in the 8 volumes of “Raymond’s Reports” covering the period of 8 years ending in 1876. This long’ and intimate association of the two men resulted in a close intimacy of their families, influencing profoundly the careers of Karl Eilers and myself, and indirectly those of many others.
Anton Eilers, by the wide knowledge of the mineral resources of the west gained by his extensive travels, saw the great opportunities offered by the lead-silver deposits of the Utah and Colorado districts. In 1876 he acquired an interest in the Germania Smelter at Salt Lake. In 1879 soon after the opening up of the extensive carbonate deposits at Leadville, Colo., he formed a partnership with the late Gustav Billing and built a lead smelter in Leadville. Under the improved smelting technique which Eilers developed this plant had a very profitable career at the height of the Leadville boom and, after its sale the Consolidated Kansas City Smelting as Refining company, became known as the Arkansas Valley Smelter. It is today, under the ownership of the American Smelting & Refining; Company, the only lead smelter of all the dozen or more of its one time competitors still operating in Colorado. The old log cabin which Eilers built as his office is still standing.
On the dissolution of their partnership Mr. Billing purchased the Kelly mine and built the Socorro Smelter in New Mexico, afterwards acquired by the St. Louis S. & R. Co. Anton Eilers formed a company with the owners of the Madonna mine at Monarch, Colorado under the name of the Colorado Smelting Co. and in 1883 built his smelting plant at Pueblo, Colo. The Madonna ore, a carbonate lead ore, low in silica and high in iron oxide with an average tonnage of over 150 tons per day for several years, formed an ideal smelting base, and with cheap fuel and limestone enabled Eilers to compete for the profitable silicious ores at his own figures. The plant though not as large as some of the other smelting works in Colorado was excellent in design, and with the many structural improvements introduced by Eilers and his standardized slag formulae, his works became famous as a model in design, or orderliness and efficient practice, and its financial results highly profitable, especially as long as the Madonna ore held out. In all his successive enterprises, Eilers beautified the surroundings of his smelting plants and the one at Pueblo was no exception. The grounds around the offices and Mess House were beautifully landscaped and well kept. Any of the old time metallurgists who could trump up an excuse to stop at Pueblo en route never failed to do so and enjoy the hospitality of the Club House, with Eilers at the head of the table, and us younger members of the staff ranging down in order of seniority, the youngest member chaired with custody of the keys to the wine cellar and dispensing of the fine brands of Rhine wine the Company provided for entertaining its guests. Thus we youngsters had the privilege of personal acquaintance with many of the older men of the mining and metallurgical profession whose names are famous in the early history of mining in this country.
Eilers selected his staff with care and everyone of them knew that if he made good he was in line for the top. The plant became a real training school, and many of us owe whatever professional success we may have attained to the precepts and thorough basic training we received from Eilers, who came to be known as the “father of modern lead-silver smelting.”
Otto E. Hahn, a contemporary of Eilers, was the first Superintendent; junior to him came the brilliant Robert Sticht, who later was transferred to Montana to build and operate the Great Falls plant for Eilers, and who afterwards became famous by successfully working out the art of pyritic smelting of pepper ores at Mt. Lyell, Tasmania.
Immediately on my graduation in 1885, I entered Mr. Eilers’ service at Pueblo; as Assistant Assayer, later Chemist, and in 1889 I succeeded Hahn as Superintendent. Walter H. Aldridge followed me in the line of promotion up to Assistant Superintendent, when he me transferred to the Montana Plant; then followed H. Paul Bellinger, Frank M. Smith, and later Karl Eilers.
Karl had spent most of his vacations at the plant and thus shared in the training and experiences that meant so much to the rest of us. And after his return from studies in Germany, following his graduation from Columbia School of Mines in 1889, he came to Pueblo 1892 as a regular member of the staff and moved up through the successive grades. After he had served for a year as Assistant Superintendent. I felt he was fully qualified to take the place which I had held so long as personal assistant to his father. So, I took the initiative, and against the very generous protests from both father and son, and with secret reluctance, resigned my position as Superintendent in 1896 and move to other fields.
Karl continued with his father’s company until after it became merged with the other smelting companies into the American Smelting & Refining Co. Here he was given wider and wider fields of usefulness, especially in the construction and operation of the great Garfield copper smelter in Utah. From there he was called to New York, in 1903 and became in time a director and Vice President of the Company, serving until he resigned in 1920 to take up consulting practice.
In 1927 he was induced to accept the presidency of the Lenox Hill Hospital, a position he held until his death, the hospital prospering greatly under his wise direction. His interest in welfare work led him to take a leading part in the Associate Hospital Service of New York, of which he was the first president.
Karl joined the Institute in 1888. He served various times as Vice President and Director and was Treasurer from 1927 until his death. He was elected Honorary Member in 1933, a distinction universally approved, for his technical ability, his high character, and his unfailing devotion to the interests of the Institute.
Karl resembled his father in his sturdy, forthright character, his distinguished talents, thoroughness, broad sympathies, kindly nature, and a gift for friendship. He achieved a professional reputation worthy of his blood. His impressive figure, silver mane, and benign manner will be remembered by all who knew him.
I think I cannot end this sketch more fittingly than by passing on the identical words that Dr. Raymond used in his obituary of Karl’s father: “And this is my farewell, so far as earthly companionship is concerned, to my genial, upright, generous comrade through four and fifty years of loyal friendship and mutual trust unmarred by doubt or discord.”
This address from Rossiter Raymond, long time friend of Anton Eilers, was printed in Anton’s 1920 memorial book.
To my thought, it is not out of place, on an occasion like this, after the solemn words of Hoy Church have been spoken, that there should be heard also the familiar, homely, heart-felt words of human friendship, in witness of love and gratitude and grief. Especially appropriate is such testimony when it voices not merely the tribute of one, but the unspoken declaration of all. You all knew Anton Eilers—though perhaps none, outside of his own kindred, for so long a time as I—; and you all loved and trusted and admired him; and you all mourn him sincerely, and will miss him keenly. It was peculiarly true of him that he was the same to all of us always. He lived no double life. If you had but a slight acquaintance with him you possessed a picture of his character which further acquaintance would not alter, but only color and complete. And so I am sure that the words I speak to-day will find instant echo in the hearts behind the tearful eyes into which I look while I speak!
He and I were nearly of the same age. We were married within a few days of each other, and for fifty-four years we have been together—close together sometimes, less close at other times, yet never wholly apart—in the companionship of the camp, the field, the mountain trail, the mine, the smelting works, above all, the household and the family. In the early days we explored a new continent together. In later days, his home—at Salt Lake, Denver, Leadville, Pueblo, Brooklyn, Sea Cliff—was always my home, whenever I came under its hospitable roof. Now that I look back over more than half a century, I cannot recall a single occasion of even temporary and passing discord to mar that perfect friendship.
He was at first my employee, then my assistant in public service, and then, to the day of his death, my business associate. I have seen him under circumstances of hardship, peril, conflict, doubt apprehension, discomfort—and discomfort is no mean enemy to the sovereignty of a man over himself and his fate;—but always and everywhere he was the same simple, earnest, upright, thorough, dauntless, generous soul. He could not do a mean or tricky thing. More than once I have heard him say of some plausible business scheme, “That would convenient and profitable; but we couldn’t do it, you know!” What he said, he meant; what he promised, he performed. In business dealings he matched with his transparent honesty, frankness and justice the skillful strategy of other men. Over and over again, disputes have been settled by the final decision, “Let’s leave it to Eilers!” Both sides rested content with the verdict of this fair-minded, incorruptible man, who incarnated in these modern days the ancient motto, “Noblesse oblige!” without preaching and without pretense.
Many years ago I wrote concerning another friend, unlike Eilers in the outward circumstances of his life and work, yet exhibiting the same undeviating truth and beauty of character, a sonnet which I take the liberty of reading here, as both true and pertinent.
THE DOER OF THE WORD
Not thine in lofty words to celebrate
The deeds of other men, or to declare
How honor, courage, kindliness are fair;
How happy homes make strong the welded State;
How they who draw the path of duty straight
And tread therein unswerving, without boast,
Of all God’s loyal servants do the most
To cast up for His feet the highway great.
Yet with a clearer language dist thou speak
Than poet’s song or preacher’s tongue of fire
That truth, to utter which mere speech is weak;
And thee not less we gratefully admire,
Who quietly hast lived the life they seek
By their high words in all men inspire.
So, this is my farewell to one of the staunchest, truest, noblest, dearest friends that ever a man had!
And yet—and yet—can this be the end? Love say, No! and Science says, No! For the very existence of science demands the assumption of a rational universe. Nature must not tell us lies. Her evidence must be interpretable. And science, starting on that basis of faith in honest evidence, has discovered not only order but purpose in the evolution of the universe. We can read the progress of that purpose in ages past, from primordial slime through the ascending forms of life, to savage man, barbaric man, civilized man—through specific features to personality. Science confirms the poet who says, “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.” And science cannot receive with respect the conception of a Being who would spend aeons in careful, patient preparation to bring forth a man only to destroy him 00 a God blowing bubbles, and, just when such a radiant sphere has reached its brightest rainbow glory, dashing it into mist, in order to begin another with futile inflation. How childish, how absurd! No; we demand a reasonable universe and a respectable God—we students of science. We will not accept the notion that early death ends all. It is too ridiculous!
Therefore, we say over this outworn body to the spirit invisible of our dear friend, not Lebewohl, but Auf Wiedersehen.
