left alone.” Finally in 1947, Joe sold Huckleberry Hill Farm to the Kress family for $100,000 – less than a third of what it had cost him.
Meanwhile, other troubles shook the hand with the golden touch. In 1945 Joe was fined $8,500 by the Canadian government for neglecting to get permits to take money (specifically $15,000) out of the country. “It was a stupid mistake,” Joes admits. It was in 1945, too, that Joe’s marriage ended in divorce. He is clinically honest about this misfortune. “To do what I did, you gotta work, you gotta work like crazy. I’ve always been married to my work. To do what I did, you’ve gotta make sacrifices. I sacrificed my family, my relations with my wife and my kids.” In the emotional turmoil that followed the divorce he found two resources: sustained psychoanalysis and a second marriage (1945), to the modern painter Lily Harmon. Joe believes that the analysis greatly increased his understanding of other people and himself. He stayed married to Lily nine years. Early . . . [in 1956] they were divorced and several months later he was married again, to Brenda Hawley Heide of New York.
Through all those troubled years Joe kept at his steady zigzag run. Some people thought they saw something reprehensible in the zigzags. Mining has notoriously held an irresistible attraction for penny-stock tricksters, the “hit-and-run” boys, the vast and venal array that prompted Mark Twain to describe a gold mine as simply a big hole with a liar at the other end. The fast-talking boy from Brooklyn was in a business in which success itself was often a proof of skulduggery, especially in the sour judgment of those who had failed. Inevitably, many of the chances Joe took with his own and other people’s money – a list of mining gambles with names like Anglo Rouyn, Armistice, Aquarius, Calder Bousquet – fell below high hopes. Yet Joe never had quit on a company. When, for instance, Anglo Rouyn’s gold petered out, Joe switched the company into Saskatchewan copper (Anglo Rouyn was one of the biggest Hirshhorn properties in the Rio Tinto deal).
The verdict on Hirshhorn heard today in the Ontario Securities Commission’s offices is that his financing has been sound, his geological advice the best and his legal counsel responsible and respected. Aside from the penalty for exporting Canadian dollars during the war, Joe has had only one encounter with the law. In 1950 New York State attorney general Nathaniel Goldstein, whom Joe had known back in the Brooklyn days, took to the press to warn the public away from a stock offering by a company called American-Canadian Uranium Company, in which Hirshhorn was involved.... Goldstein submitted the facts to the SEC, but the SEC found no grounds for a hearing.
During the Forties Joe’s happiest venture had involved a U.S. company, Mesabi Iron, owner of substantial taconite properties. “When I bought Mesabi stock,” he says, “no one knew what taconite was – they thought it was a disease or a new product to clear your skin. I knew what it was, and I knew it was going to be big.” Starting his buying at 13⁄8 and moving in and out of the stock over a period of years, he netted in the end $1,550,000. Joe, as this demonstrates, does not have to be on the inside of a company to turn a profit.
Meanwhile, however, he managed to lose over $300,000 in a Philippine gold-mining venture. He found himself tangled in a web of nationalist laws and currency restrictions and learned another lesson: “Be sure you know all the facts before you dip into one of those foreign ventures.”
It was in the late Forties that Joe first acquired his interest in uranium, which was to prove more fascinating than anything he had touched in his life. He had been reading about Canada’s Precambrian shield and the meaning of the chatter of the Geiger counter. In 1949-50, in the Lake Athabaska region of northwestern Saskatchewan, Joe had bought the claims on 470 square miles of
Meanwhile, other troubles shook the hand with the golden touch. In 1945 Joe was fined $8,500 by the Canadian government for neglecting to get permits to take money (specifically $15,000) out of the country. “It was a stupid mistake,” Joes admits. It was in 1945, too, that Joe’s marriage ended in divorce. He is clinically honest about this misfortune. “To do what I did, you gotta work, you gotta work like crazy. I’ve always been married to my work. To do what I did, you’ve gotta make sacrifices. I sacrificed my family, my relations with my wife and my kids.” In the emotional turmoil that followed the divorce he found two resources: sustained psychoanalysis and a second marriage (1945), to the modern painter Lily Harmon. Joe believes that the analysis greatly increased his understanding of other people and himself. He stayed married to Lily nine years. Early . . . [in 1956] they were divorced and several months later he was married again, to Brenda Hawley Heide of New York.
Through all those troubled years Joe kept at his steady zigzag run. Some people thought they saw something reprehensible in the zigzags. Mining has notoriously held an irresistible attraction for penny-stock tricksters, the “hit-and-run” boys, the vast and venal array that prompted Mark Twain to describe a gold mine as simply a big hole with a liar at the other end. The fast-talking boy from Brooklyn was in a business in which success itself was often a proof of skulduggery, especially in the sour judgment of those who had failed. Inevitably, many of the chances Joe took with his own and other people’s money – a list of mining gambles with names like Anglo Rouyn, Armistice, Aquarius, Calder Bousquet – fell below high hopes. Yet Joe never had quit on a company. When, for instance, Anglo Rouyn’s gold petered out, Joe switched the company into Saskatchewan copper (Anglo Rouyn was one of the biggest Hirshhorn properties in the Rio Tinto deal).
The verdict on Hirshhorn heard today in the Ontario Securities Commission’s offices is that his financing has been sound, his geological advice the best and his legal counsel responsible and respected. Aside from the penalty for exporting Canadian dollars during the war, Joe has had only one encounter with the law. In 1950 New York State attorney general Nathaniel Goldstein, whom Joe had known back in the Brooklyn days, took to the press to warn the public away from a stock offering by a company called American-Canadian Uranium Company, in which Hirshhorn was involved.... Goldstein submitted the facts to the SEC, but the SEC found no grounds for a hearing.
During the Forties Joe’s happiest venture had involved a U.S. company, Mesabi Iron, owner of substantial taconite properties. “When I bought Mesabi stock,” he says, “no one knew what taconite was – they thought it was a disease or a new product to clear your skin. I knew what it was, and I knew it was going to be big.” Starting his buying at 13⁄8 and moving in and out of the stock over a period of years, he netted in the end $1,550,000. Joe, as this demonstrates, does not have to be on the inside of a company to turn a profit.
Meanwhile, however, he managed to lose over $300,000 in a Philippine gold-mining venture. He found himself tangled in a web of nationalist laws and currency restrictions and learned another lesson: “Be sure you know all the facts before you dip into one of those foreign ventures.”
It was in the late Forties that Joe first acquired his interest in uranium, which was to prove more fascinating than anything he had touched in his life. He had been reading about Canada’s Precambrian shield and the meaning of the chatter of the Geiger counter. In 1949-50, in the Lake Athabaska region of northwestern Saskatchewan, Joe had bought the claims on 470 square miles of
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