Even when the mine wins, the small stock-holder rarely wins. The
promoters often take the cream. Suppose a company is organized
for three million shares. One million is put in the treasury for
sale. Of this million shares, say, two hundred thousand are
offered at twenty-five cents. This raises a working capital of
fifty thousand dollars. Let us be very glowing, and suppose that,
with this fifty thousand dollars, we really uncover five million
dollars' worth of ore. The net profit would not exceed three
million dollars; so that the man who put in twenty-five cents
might, after a long time, get back a dollar. In the meantime, two
million dollars would have gone to promoters, in "commissions,"
and so forth. There are thousands of such cases, and still the
people continue to bite on such bait.