Really, according to local report, these nuggets of native copper
had been taken from sluice boxes on Chittitu Creek, 235 miles
inland. Reynolds, so ran the story, had treated them with an acid
bath to brighten them, knowing that bright bait is better. At any
rate, the good, sober New Englanders went back home and sent him
$300,000 more, which set him entirely "dippy," in local phrase.
Reynolds's scheme was to run all the barber shops, laundries,
bars, and pretty much everything else on the Alaskan coast. A
certain Sam Blum had a store and bank; Reynolds wanted it; and
Blum, it is alleged, annexed $50,000 of the New England money as
a forfeited first payment on his property. A steamship company,
it was said, got $75,000 of money on a forfeit. So the good New
England savings merrily disappeared, in one of the most
spectacular farces ever known in Alaska; which latter is too good
and valid and valuable a national possession to permit to be
Reynoldsized, as it has been. Reynolds, in the belief of one who
knew him well, was a combination of the ignorant enthusiast, the
wild promoter, and the crazy man; and as for Brady, another
Alaskan called him "nothing worse than an innocent old ninny."
Yet, even with so sorry a mental equipment, these two took
something like half a million out of conservative New England!
The ease with which money can be raised for such enterprises by
the deliberately fraudulent or the unintentionally insane
continues one of the wonders of our civilization.
Another kind of bait offered is that of the "prominent name."
This has proved more useful in England than in this country.
Whittaker Wright was able to secure members of the nobility for
his boards of directors, and the English public swallowed his
schemes one after another, bait, hook, bob, and sinker. In this
country we have no lords whom we dearly love, so the names of
prominent literary or scientific men sometimes are employed by
wise promoters. A "prominent mining expert" is excellent bait.
Some good men have been used in this way, and the bait of their
reputation in other lines of activity has served to make ignorant
and innocent people of small means swallow the hook hid in the
lying statements which they have perhaps innocently, certainly
ignorantly, fathered. We are all familiar with the literature of
this class, sent to us under the guise of personal and intimate
confidence. Always that part of the communication is followed by
the blackfaced type where the stinger lies concealed. The words
AT ONCE usually come in capitals, as do LAST CHANCE, and PRICE
POSITIVELY WILL ADVANCE AFTER TEN DAYS. Millions and millions of
dollars have been extracted from the public by these means. There
is no law against it.
"ADJOINING" MINES--GOOD BAIT
Then there is the same old argument about wonderful properties
"adjoining" such and such a dividend-paying property. Very often
the properties are miles apart. They might be within twenty-five
feet of each other, and one still might be worthless and the
other rich. The profits of old and famous properties very
frequently are given in advertising literature of this class, "to
show what money there is in mining." The "property" sold may be a
ten-foot hole in a sand-bank two thousand miles from any of
these; yet this absurd argument is sufficient to extract coin
from the pocket of the American buyer. You can use Michigan to
tout him on to Arizona; Utah to land him in California; Mexico to
interest him in Alaska. Is it not true? There is no law against
it.
Again, the appeal to your mining pocket may come, not through the
advertising page, but in the proper person of the promoter or
owner himself. For instance, not long ago a gentleman from
California came into my office. He owned a mine on the old and
well-traced Mother Vein, of Tuolumne County, California. It had
been well opened, and showed, in development, according to a
reputable engineer's report, three million dollars' worth of ore
in sight, with many tons of the best ore already in the dump,
stuff which would run very high in value.
At the proper time the gentleman carefully produced from his
pocket a little ingot of pure gold, product of one test-mill run.
He gave the best of references as to his responsibility. He
offered to guarantee ten per cent. dividends on all money
invested, and declared that he had a banking proposition and not
a mine.