Archibald Spriggs arrived in Montana in 1888 and taught school in the mining camp of Confederate Gulch for several years.

Governor Robert Burns Smith, an opponent of Clark, was lured out of the state to view a mining concession in California, and Spriggs made an unexpected return from a Populist convention, summoned by a telegram reading, "Weather fine, cattle doing well.

However, the governor submitted a competing appointment of Martin Maginnis on his return, and the Senate refused to seat either man.

Their Guatemala Mining and Development Company, backed by French capital, obtained broad rights from Guatemalan president Manuel Estrada Cabrera in 1911,[8] but the project was halted by the advent of World War I.

[12] From 1915 until his death Spriggs served as the first chairman of the Industrial Accident Board established by the Montana Workmen's Compensation Act of 1915.