John Warne Gates

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John Warne Gates (May 18, 1855–August 9, 1911), also known as "Bet-a-Million" Gates, was a pioneer promoter of barbed wire who became a Gilded Age industrialist. Gates was born in Winfield, Illinois, but his career began with a trip to San Antonio, Texas in 1876 as a salesman for the Washburn-Moen barbed wire company, and a dramatic demonstration with cattle penned into Military Plaza. He later started the Southern Wire Company of St. Louis, Missouri. With the help of Chicago attorney Elbert H. Gary he created a monopoly in the US wire industry in 1898 with American Steel and Wire Company, which was sold in 1901 to J.P. Morgan in a deal (also negotiated by Gary) to become part of the new U.S. Steel conglomerate.

Gates was a founder of the The Texas Company which became the Texaco oil company. He became influential in the development of the city of Port Arthur, Texas when he took over the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad in December 1899 after he forced it into bankruptcy along with its previous owner and Port Arthur founder Arthur Edward Stilwell.

In a 1900 horse race in England, Gates won $600,000 on a $70,000 bet, which rumors escalated to over $1 million and conferred on him the nickname "Bet-A-Million".

A compulsive gambler, he once participated in a marathon poker game on a train journey from Chicago to New York. After a week of nearly constant play (meals were taken at the poker table), the match ended with about half a million dollars changing hands.

Gates died in Paris, France, following an unsuccessful operation to remove a throat tumor. His funeral was held in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel in New York. The Gates Memorial Library in Port Arthur was built in 1918 by his widow, Delora R. Baker of St. Charles, Illinois, who he had married in 1874. They had one son, Charles Gilbert Gates.

[edit] References

Herman Kogan and Lloyd Wendt, Bet-A-Million!: The Story of John W. Gates, 1948, New York: Bobbs-Merrill
The Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1915, New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc., vol. 8 p. 61; available online at the Making of America digital library