The enactment of good mining laws, punishing the proved intent to
commit a fraud as well as the fraud itself, and seeing to it that
capital stock shall be paid up, seeing to it also that all moneys
spent by a mining corporation shall be traceable from start to
finish, is the natural first step toward the purification of
American mining methods. Beyond that, the national government
could take a hand in the game through a federal Bureau of Mines.
There must be some clearing-house of intelligence and of values
in this country, some place from which our intelligence may start
and to which it may return. The public must have accessible
reports of engineers, state or federal, of a sort entitled to
confidence.
The nest of vermin in our large cities, inhabited by those who
make a living out of the ignorance and eagerness of small
investors, must be smoked out once and for all. In this work,
state and national governments, popular education and
intelligence, and the aid of the better class journalism of
America, all must be enlisted. The pages of our press might well
be far cleaner than they are. The publication which prints the
advertisements of a fake-mining enterprise is itself a party to
the fraud. A Bureau of Mines chief can sit behind the desk of
every advertising manager in the counting-rooms of every
newspaper and magazine in America. The press of this country,
when it likes, can, by taking thought, somewhat dim the splendor
of the mahogany in many an elegant suite of offices in New York,
Boston, or elsewhere. It can reduce the reckless and senseless
expenditure of ill-gained wealth which is making civilization a
mockery in America, and branding our republican form of
government as a failure.
We will have a different way of life, or another form of
government. We will have a better administration of law in the
United States or we will have another political party, possibly
another political system. We will clear up this rotten society,
or we will try how we like a different organization of society.
The people of America are beginning to murmur. The burden of the
murmur is that they have long enough been betrayed. Unspeakable
injustice has been done the people of America under the forms of
law and government. It is coming to be said that our law and
government have not an even hand for all, that a few are allowed
to despoil the many. When a people murmurs, let a government
beware. Meantime the more that certain unspeakable things are
reduced in, and eliminated from, Wall Street and the other
"financial centers," the better for our schools, our taxes, our
farming, our industry, our living, our CHARACTER, our country.
After all, the government of this country, as we now have it
organized, depends on the CHARACTER of its average individual
citizen. The end of this abuse of fake-mining enterprises begins
now, here, with you and me, in OUR intelligence, in OUR love of a
square game. By taking thought we can add a cubit to our OWN
stature, and so add to the stature of OUR laws and of our
national morality.