The Black Sand and Gold Recovery Company was an early twentieth-century mining and industrial enterprise based in Chicago, Illinois, organized to extract gold, iron, and other valuable minerals from the black sands of the Pacific Coast.
Incorporated in Arizona with a capital stock of five million dollars, the company was built around the patented Lovett Magnetic Separator, invented by Chicago engineer Thomas J. Lovett, which could separate iron from wet sand and recover metals such as gold, platinum, and zircon. The company was created by Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn a physician and publisher known for his Chicago School of Psychology and as editor of Suggestion magazine, engineer and inventor Thomas J. Lovett, and businessman John H. McFarland. Its board of directors included J. F. Batchelder of the U.S. Government's Lewis and Clark Exposition, William Hoskins industrialist and National Vice President of the American Chemical Society and Henry W. Hoyt of Allis-Chalmers. The Lovett Magnetic Separator was publicly demonstrated in 1905 at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon, where government metallurgists confirmed that the black sands contained large recoverable quantities of gold and iron.
Dr. Parkyn would serve as the fiscal agent and promoted the company widely through his Suggestion magazine and affiliated journals, emphasizing its patented control over the Lovett process and its potential to commercialize the government-verified mineral wealth of the Pacific Coast black sands. Parkyn's use of his magazine as a central marketing tool was part of a wider trend in the emerging New Thought movement of the day, where publications combined teachings on success and mental science with the promotion of business and investment ventures.
Origins and early development Lovett was a long-time friend and neighbor of Dr. Parkyn, residing on Drexel Boulevard directly across from Parkyn's residence and his Chicago School of Psychology. Active in mining since the late 1880s, Lovett had patented his magnetic separator in 1892, a device capable of separating iron from wet sand while also recovering gold and other metals such as garnet, zircon, monazite, and platinum. Also living in the same building on Drexel was John H. McFarland, a close friend of both Parkyn and Lovett. McFarland was a business investor and salesman with extensive real estate interests, formerly Commercial Agent for the Frisco Railway System and General Manager of the Illinois agency of Fidelity Mutual. He was also an inventor, holding a patent for a gas light lamp that converted kerosene into hydro-carbon gas at a fraction of the cost of standard coal-oil lamps. McFarland served as Secretary of the Black Sand and Gold Recovery Company and later joined Parkyn and Lovett in placer mining ventures.
The three men regularly met at the Oakland Club, later renamed the Waupanseh Club, located on Drexel Boulevard only a short distance from their homes. The club had about 150 members drawn from Chicago's industrial and financial circles and was known for its social and professional atmosphere. It served as an ideal setting for Parkyn, Lovett, and McFarland to exchange ideas and recruit new investors from among the city's leading businessmen and industrialists. Many of the early discussions and connections that led to the formation of the Black Sand and Gold Recovery Company took place there. McFarland served as Vice President and Director of the club, which made it a central meeting point for several of Chicago's most active entrepreneurs.
The Lovett Magnetic Separator
Predecessor: The North Shore Reduction Company Lovett had worked in the mining business for many years and in 1889, formed his first company, the Western Ore Separating Company, in Chicago. It was during this venture that he invented and patented his magnetic separator. Lovett believed his patented machine could dominate the industry of metal recovery from black sands and did not intend to offer the process to the public until it had received government endorsement.
In 1903, following a Canadian government investigation confirming the mineral wealth of the north-shore sands of Lake Superior, Lovett formed the North Shore Reduction Company with Parkyn and a group of businessmen from Chicago and Minneapolis. Stock for the company was marketed through New Thought magazine by its editor, Sydney B. Flower, a long-time associate of Dr. Parkyn who had served as the secretary for his Chicago School of Psychology and as editor of the school's journal, The Hypnotic Magazine.New Thought magazine issue V12 N12, December 1903New Thought magazine issue V12 N7, July 1903The Chicago School of Psychology and Hypnotic magazine 1895-1910
Use of New Thought magazines for investment promotion By the early twentieth century, magazines in the New Thought movement had become major platforms for promoting investment ventures, particularly in mining and industrial enterprises. Publications such as New Thought, Suggestion, The Nautilus, and others reached large audiences attracted to the movement's promise that right thinking, confidence, and visualization could lead to material success. Editors and publishers recognized that this readership of ambitious, self-made investors was ideally suited to ventures that claimed to unite mental science with practical wealth-building.
Within this environment, ventures were promoted not only as business enterprises but also as demonstrations of the New Thought principle that organized thought and confident belief could produce tangible results and transform ideas into material wealth.Occult Roots of Salesmanship, by Marc Demarest 2008.A History of Mail Classification and its Underlying Policies and Purposes
Promotion of the Black Sand and Gold Recovery Company In June 1906, Herbert A. Parkyn's Suggestion magazine introduced the Black Sand and Gold Recovery Company through a five-page advertisement and a three-page editorial written by Parkyn. He explained that his Suggestion magazine normally avoided speculative stock promotions but made an exception because the company's officers and operations were personally known to him.Suggestion magazine issue V16 N6, June 1906Suggestion magazine issue V17 N5, November 1906A four-page ad for The Black Sands and Gold Recovery Company, with Herbert A. Parkyn serving as the fiscal agent in Suggestion magazine, November, 1906.
Dr. Parkyn described The Black Sand and Gold Recovery Company as one of the most promising industrial ventures of its era, aiming to recover vast mineral wealth from the black sands of the Pacific Coast. These sands, long known to contain large quantities of gold, iron, and other valuable minerals, had historically resisted profitable extraction. The company claimed to have overcome this barrier through the Lovett Process, a patented system of magnetic separation and mineral recovery that its backers described as a "virtual monopoly" on commercial black sand treatment. J. F. Batchelder, the Superintendent of Mines and Metallurgy who ran the research for the government in Black sands, was now running the operations of the company. He called control of the Lovett patents "the only key to unlock the inconceivable wealth" of the Pacific black sands.
The company's launch coincided with a surge of newspaper stories about hidden fortunes in Pacific sands, which created a favorable environment for its promotion. Beyond financial returns, the company's promoters envisioned a broad economic impact, with new industries along the Pacific Coast, tens of thousands of jobs, and a substantial increase in national wealth. Parkyn closed his editorial by urging readers to investigate the opportunity themselves, and that he and his friends and relatives were already highly invested. Dr. Parkyn would serve as the fiscal agent for the company and use his large platform in the New Thought movement to bring in hundreds of investors.Stellar Ray magazine V19 Adverts page 20-23 1905 U.S. government report on the black sands of the Pacific Coast
In 1905, a U.S. Government investigation funded by a $50,000 appropriation from Congress examined the mineral content of Pacific Coast black sands and the report confirmed that the sands contained significant quantities of iron and gold, as well as other valuable minerals. The report prompted the company to initially built a plant for iron and steel production, followed by a second plant on the Snake River for gold and platinum recovery. Projected annual net profits were $600,000 from the first two plants, with an estimated $5,000,000 annually if 1,000 separators were operated under royalty agreements.. One representative claimed the Pacific Coast sands held enough iron to fill Lake Superior with solid ore, enough to supply the world's iron and steel needs for 100,000 years.
The Lovett Patented Process formed the foundation of the company's claims. It employed Lovett's magnetic separator along with concentrating devices and a bedrock pneumatic pipe dredge for recovering gold and other valuable metals from sand. These patents gave the company complete control over the commercial treatment of black sands. A full-scale Lovett Separator was publicly demonstrated at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland. At the Exposition, C. E. Wilson, an electrical furnace expert, smelted a 500-pound steel ingot for the U.S. Government from iron recovered by the Lovett process.
Board of directors and corporate structure
The company's board of directors was noted as one of the strongest ever organized, including steel men, government officials, bankers, lawyers, and well-known Chicago business professionals. Since the company was built around the Lovett Magnetic Separator and dredge patents, the composition of its board reflected a deliberate emphasis on intellectual property. The president and vice president were leading Chicago patent lawyers, while several others were industrial and chemical innovators who had built major enterprises on the strength of patent monopolies. Together they made patent protection and proprietary technology the foundation of the enterprise. The board was further reinforced by leaders of big business, linking the company to manufacturing capital, government finance, and railroad wealth.
The board included longtime personal associates of Parkyn, such as H. W. Huttig, who was involved in several business ventures with him. Others included:
William H. Dyrenforth (President) a senior Chicago patent attorney, who had litigated several patent disputes that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. His firm was a central presence in intellectual property litigation, especially in mechanical and industrial patents. George A. Chritton (Vice President) a Chicago corporation lawyer, who also argued cases before the Supreme Court and specialized in patent and corporate law. William Hoskins, a nationally known chemist and assayer. He was a partner in Mariner & Hoskins of Chicago, one of the city's oldest commercial chemistry firms and where "Chromel" was born. He headed Hoskins Manufacturing which pioneered electric heating elements and supported Albert L. Marsh's discovery of nichrome. He was the National Vice President of the American Chemical Society and had more than thirty patents to his name. Hoskins represented the metallurgical expertise essential to validating the company's technology. Philetus Warren Gates, the former president of Gates Iron Works, a machinery manufacturing company based in Chicago. Gates had patented a gyratory crusher in 1881 that became a cornerstone of the crushing and milling industry. Gates Iron Works merged into Allis-Chalmers in 1901, placing him among the city's best-known industrialists. Gates's presence connected the company with large-scale manufacturing and the proven ability to commercialize machinery based on patent monopolies.