The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond. Illustrated with Photographs. [2 volumes].

Murray Hill, New Yorlk: Farrar & Rinehart, Incorporated, 1935 Book. Near Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 2 volumes. Octavo. 9 x 6 inches. xiii, [1], 383 + 384-813pp. 68 black & white plates, many from photographs. Bibliography, index. Dark green cloth with gilt lettering on spine and front covers. Spines of each volume faded, else a fine set, internally fine and clean. Housed in the original publisher's slipcase, with pictorial pastedown. Light general wear to slipcase. First edition. John Hayes Hammond was an American mining engineer, diplomat and philanthropist. Born in San Francisco in 1855, Hammond spent in boyhood in the American Wild West then went to college at Yale. Over the course of his mining career, he worked for California Senator George Hearst and was sent to work as a superintendent for mines in Mexico, in San Francisco as a consulting engineer for Union Iron Works, Central Pacific Railway and Southern Pacific Railway, and in South Africa where he was given complete control of Cecil Rhodes' mines. Back in the United State he became a good friend of President William Howard Taft, and was appointed a special ambassador. All the while he was developing mines in Mexico and California, and in 1923 made a fortune drilling for oil with the Burnham Exploration Company. In May 1926, an organization called "The Company of Friends of John Hays Hammond" sponsored eleven dinners around the world in honor of Hammond. Over 10,000 people wrote tributes to Hammond, including William Randolph Hearst, the Guggenheims, former President Taft, and President Calvin Coolidge. The event was so extraordinary it landed Hammond on the cover of Time Magazine on May 10, 1926. .