Return of the King

On his "Pond Run Farm" near New Richmond, Ohio, roly-poly John William Haussermann packed his bags. He put in some of his favorite blue suits, a clutch of flashy ties and plenty of cigars. Then he kissed his wife goodbye, took a last look at the Ohio River, where he swam as a boy, and drove into town to take the train. Last week, at 80, the gold king of the Philippines was on his way back to the islands to rebuild his war-shattered empire.

Since war's end, John Haussermann had been busily scraping up money and shipping off equipment to rebuild the mining villages and mill plants wrecked by the Japanese. A trickle of gold was already coming from his mines. But bustling Mr. Haussermann thought it would come out faster if he was on the spot. Twice before, he had picked up the pieces of his Benguet Consolidated Mining Co., and fitted them together, until in 1941 they made a $100,000,000 empire.

Ill Wind. It was a disaster that had made Haussermann a miner. In 1911 a typhoon swept northern Luzon, flooded the tiny Benguet Co.'s only mill, bankrupted the owners, and left the Bank of the Philippine Islands with a worthless batch of loans. To retrieve its stake, the bank picked Haussermann, Benguet's lawyer, who had come to the islands in 1898 as a second lieutenant, had stayed to become an assistant attorney general in the new Philippine's government.

"Judge" Haussermann floated 200,000 shares of new stock, borrowed $75,000 from the bank, built a new mill and started mining ore. In two years he paid off the bank's loan to Benguet. Gradually, he increased his own stock holdings out of earnings until he owned a controlling interest of about 30%. (His original investment was eventually worth $460,000.)

Blown Good. In 1926 things looked dark again; Benguet's ore was running low. The other stockholders wanted to dissolve the company and split up the $750,000 on hand. Instead, John Haussermann stubbornly insisted on spending some of the cash on prospecting. He won the gamble; a rich new strike put him in a position to buy a lumber company, a power station, and a $300,000 controlling interest in the Balatoc Mining Corp.

Balatoc (also on Luzon) turned out to be the most profitable mine in the islands and Haussermann became one of the biggest gold producers in the world. By 1940, his mines employed 10,000 Filipinos, produced 1,200,000 tons of ore--about one-third of the islands' gold output--and earned their stockholders $4,000,000 a year.

Haussermann, who had quit the islands in 1940, sat out the war on his New Richmond farm. Since war's end his company has spent $5,000,000 on reconstruction, expects to spend another $3,000,000. Benguet is now mining about 1,000 tons of ore (worth $10,000) daily, about one-fourth of its capacity. Judge Haussermann hopes to get the working force, now 2,000, back to its peak, along with production, in eighteen months.'

It can't get back too soon to please Philippines' President Manuel Roxas. Gold is the Philippines' most valuable export. Benguet now sells it in the Philippine free market for $44 an ounce. Though traders sell it outside for around $60, Haussermann doesn't mind. Along with fat profits, he likes the fun of digging gold. Says he: "When a man's 80, he doesn't have any cronies left. Work's my hobby."

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