Author of "The Mississippi Bubble," "54-40 or Fight," etc.
EDITOR'S NOTE.--It is time vigorous efforts were made to stop the
cruel frauds perpetrated on the name of one of the world's
greatest industries. Mining is a legitimate and honorable
enterprise. It contributes immensely to the national wealth. It
has been the source of some of our great fortunes. Because there
is something magical in the suggestion of gold or coal or copper
taken out of the ground, sharpers have made mining an instrument
of successful deception. They have tricked people into investing
their savings in worthless or even non-existent mines. Perhaps
you who read this have bitten at an advertisement in a reputable
publication, which pretended to place the wealth of some western
El Dorado at your feet for a few hundred dollars. Doubtless your
money has disappeared. It is for the purpose of giving you the
protection of a knowledge both of legitimate mining and of the
ways of thieves that this article is published.
AMERICA is the land of the free and the country of opportunity
for all. Incidentally, it is free hunting-ground for sharpers,
and a land of opportunity for the unscrupulous. No such chances
for fraudulent business exist anywhere else in the world.
Americans are the richest people on earth, and the most easily
parted from their money. Those whose sole ambition is to get rich
quick very frequently help some other man to get rich quick.
Society owes no debt to either of these. It is obliged to support
them both. This is wrong both as a moral and as an industrial
proposition. Once, a dollar was spent to mine a dollar. To-day
two are spent: One dollar goes into blasting powder, the other
into advertising and office furniture.
No doubt you have heard the age-old legend of the Mother Vein of
Gold, which appears and vanishes, now and again, in this corner
of the world. Superstition regarding this great original vein of
gold is found wherever men seek the precious metal. The feverish
Spaniards called this phantom lode the Madre d'Oro, or "Mother of
Gold." Now it is located in Mexico, now in India or Peru,
California or Australia. Tradition says that Montezuma got his
gold from this great vein, which lay in a secret valley whose
where-abouts was jealously guarded by three priests of the war
tribe, sole possessors of the knowledge. Any intruder who by
chance or design looked down into this valley was smitten
absolutely blind. Tradition among the successors of the Aztecs
says that when Montezuma passed, the Madre d'Oro sank back again
into the earth, and has been seen no more. Men still follow the
phantom vein. Those who see it, even in their dreams, still are
smitten blind.
Gold! There is no other word that means quite so much. We want
gold; indeed, we must have it. Malleable, divisible,
indestructible, rare, it is the indispensable medium of exchange.
It is our chosen unit of power and success, the measure of
civilization and human attainment. Hence it has always been the
object of human desire. The Golden Fleece very probably was the
sheepskin bottom of an old-time sluice-box, in a day when they
used wool, instead of blankets, below the rocker troughs. In the
vast ruined civilization of Southeast Africa unknown men once
mined probably $400,000,000 worth of gold. There are mines
profitably operated in Greece to-day which the Phoenicians opened
1,200 B. C. Sixteen hundred years later the Romans owned all the
mines in Europe. Hannibal once paid his warriors in gold coin of
Carthage. Egypt was settled by the Semitic races 2,500 B. C.,
because of the gold that was found there. A thousand years later
Job knew about gold, and five hundred years later still, King
Solomon showed what an abundance of wives and what a reputation
for wisdom a man can get when he has unlimited gold mines back of
him. Columbus found America when he was searching for the wealth
of Ormus and of Ind. Cortez and Pizarro toiled and slew in the
hope of finding the Madre d'Oro. The great discoveries of the
world have been made by men in search of gold. The great voyages
of exploration were in part piratical voyages made in search of
gold already found and mined by others.