THE PRESS AGENT AND THE PUBLIC'S MONEY
Probably the most scientifically press-agented camp in Nevada had been
Bullfrog. Bullfrog was born two years after Goldfield. The Goldfield
publicity bureau by this time had greatly improved its art and its
efficiency.
When the Bullfrog boom was still young the late United States Senator
Stewart, an octogenarian and out of a job, traveled from Washington, at
the expiration of his term, to the Bullfrog camp. There he hung out his
shingle as a practising lawyer. Immediately the press bureau secured a
cabinet photo of the venerable lawmaker and composed a story about his
fresh start in life on the desert. The yarn appealed so strongly to
Sunday editors of the great city dailies throughout the country that
Bullfrog secured for nothing scores of pages of priceless advertising
in the news columns.
The Senator built a home, the story said, on a spot where, less than a
year before, desert wayfarers had died of thirst and coyotes roamed.
The interior of the house on the desert was minutely described.
Olive-colored chintz curtains protected the bearded patriarch, while at
work in his study, from the burning rays of the sun. Old Florentine
cabinets, costly Byzantine vases, and matchless specimens of Sèvres,
filled his living-rooms. Silk Persian rugs an inch thick decked the
floors. Venetian-framed miniature paintings of former Presidents of the
United States and champions of liberty of bygone days graced the walls.
Costly bronzes and marble statuettes were strewn about in profusion.
Visitors could not help deducing that the Senator thought nothing too
good for his desert habitat. _The name of Bullfrog exuded from every
paragraph of the story; also the name of a mine at the approach to
which this desert mansion was reared and in the exploitation of which
the press-agent had a selfish interest._
The remarkable part of this tale, which was printed with pictures of
the Senator in one metropolitan newspaper of great circulation and
prestige to the extent of a full page on a Sunday and was syndicated by
it to a score of others, was that the only truth contained in it
happened to be the fact that the Senator had decided to make Bullfrog
his home with a view to working up a law practise. But it was a good
story from the Bullfrog press-agent's standpoint and from that of the
Sunday editor, and even the Senator did not blink at it. He recognized
it as camp "publicity" of the highest efficiency, as did other
residents of Bullfrog.
During the Manhattan boom, which followed that of Bullfrog, the
publicity bureau became more ambitious. It made a drive at the news
columns of the metropolitan press on week days, and succeeded.
At that time the Sullivan Trust Company of Goldfield was promoting the
Jumping Jack-Manhattan mining Company. James Hopper, the gifted
magazinist, wrote a story in which the names "Jumping Jack" and
"Sullivan Trust Company" appeared in almost every other line. It was
forwarded by mail to a great daily newspaper of New York and promptly
published as news. The yarn told how the man in charge of the gasoline
engine at the mouth of the Jumping Jack shaft had gone stark mad while
at work and how but for the quick intervention of the president of the
Sullivan Trust Company, who happened to be on the ground, a tragedy
might well have been the result.
The miner, the story said, stepped into the bucket at the head of the
shaft and asked the man in the engine-house to lower him to a depth of
300 feet. Quick as a flash the bucket was let down. When the 200-foot
point was reached there was a sudden stop. With a rattle and a roar the
bucket was jerked back to within 50 feet of the surface. Thereupon it
was again lowered and quickly raised again, and the operation
constantly repeated until the poor miner became unconscious and fell in
a jangled mass to the bottom of the bucket.
Hearing the miner's early cries, Mr. Sullivan had gone to the rescue.
He knocked senseless the man in the engine-house and pinioned him. Then
he brought up the bucket containing the almost inanimate form of the
miner.
Turning to the demon in charge of the engine, who had now recovered
consciousness, Mr. Sullivan cried,
"How dare you do a thing like this?"
The man responded, "His name is Jack, ain't it?"
"Well, what of it?" roared Mr. Sullivan.
"Oh, I was just _jumping the jack_!" chuckled the "madman."
This nursery tale was conspicuously printed in a high-class New York
newspaper's columns as real news. Undoubtedly the reason why the
editors allowed it to pass was that it was believed to be true, but
above all was cleverly written.
I was too busy during the early part of the Rawhide boom to do any
writing of consequence or even to suggest particular subjects for
stories. It seemed to me that the exciting events of every-day
occurrence during the progress of the mad rush would furnish the
correspondents with enough matter to keep the news-pot constantly
boiling. I assembled around me the shining lights of the Reno newspaper
fraternity and put them on the pay-roll.
For weeks an average of at least one column of exciting Rawhide
stampede news was published on the front pages of the big Coast
dailies. The publicity campaign went merrily on. I kept close watch on
the character of the news that was being sent out and was pleased in
contemplating the fact that very little false coloring, if any, was
resorted to. A boisterous mining-camp stampede, second only in
intensity to the Klondike excitement of eleven years before, was in
progress, and there was plenty of live news to chronicle almost every
day.
After returning from one of my trips to Rawhide I became alarmed on
reading on the front page of the leading San Francisco newspapers a
harrowing two-column story about the manner in which Ed. Hoffman, mine
superintendent of the Rawhide Coalition, had been waylaid the day
before on a dark desert road and robbed of $10,000 in gold which he was
carrying to the mines for the purpose of discharging the pay-roll.
I had just left Mr. Hoffman in Rawhide and he had not been waylaid.
I sent for the man who was responsible for the story.
"Say, Jim," I said, "you're crazy. There is a come-back to that yarn
that will cost you your job as correspondent for your San Francisco
paper. It is rough work. Cut it out!"
"Gee whillikins!" he replied. "How can I? Here's an order for a
two-column follow-up and I have already filed it."
"What did you say in your second story?" I inquired.
"Well, I told how a posse, armed to the teeth, were chasing the robbers
and explained that they're within three miles of Walker Lake in hot
pursuit."
"You're a madman!" I protested. "Kill those robbers and be quick; do it
to-night so that you choke off the demand for more copy, or you're a
goner!"
Next day the correspondent wired to his string of newspapers that the
posse had chased the robbers into Walker Lake, where they were drowned.
At the point in Walker Lake where the correspondent said the robbers
had found a watery grave it was known to some Reno people that for
three miles in both directions the lake was shallow and that the
deepest water in that vicinity was less than four feet. This caused
some snickering in Reno. Still there was no come-back. The newspapers
never learned of the deception. The correspondent had been canny enough
in sending the story to keep the local correspondents of all other
out-of-town newspapers thoroughly informed. They had sent out
practically the same story, and therefore did not give the snap away.
In the early days of the Rawhide boom a rumor reached the camp that
Death Valley "Scotty," the illustrious personage who had been
press-agented from one end of the land to the other as the owner of a
secret Golconda, was about to start a stampede into some new diggings.
The news bureau decided to kill off opposition. Newspapers of the land
were queried as follows:
"Scotty's lair discovered in Death Valley. It is a cache containing
a number of empty Wells-Fargo money-chests. Scotty has apparently
been looting the loot of old-time stage robbers. How many words?"
The newspapers just ate this one up. Column upon column was telegraphed
from Nevada. The source of Scotty's wealth being cleared up to the
satisfaction of readers of the "yellow," Scotty's value as a mine
promoter became seriously impaired.
When I chided the Reno correspondent for sending out the fake story
regarding the robbery of Rawhide Coalition's mine manager, I recall
that he argued he had made a blunder in one direction only. He said he
should have seen to it that the mine manager was actually robbed! That,
he said, would have eliminated the danger of a come-back.
Years ago in New York the public was startled by reading of an actress
taking her bath in pure milk. A few weeks later newspaper readers were
convulsed by stories of another star in the theatrical firmament
performing her morning ablutions in a tub of champagne.
"If you don't believe it," said the lady press-agent to a lady
newspaper reporter who was sent to cover the story, "I will give you a
chance to see the lady in the act."
This was done and, of course, the newspapers were convinced that it was
no idle press-agent's dream. Of course, neither of these women had been
in the habit of bathing in milk or in champagne. A tub of milk costs
less than $10 and a tub of champagne less than $200, but you could not
have bought this kind of publicity for these performers at anything
like such absurdly low figures if you used the display advertising
columns of the newspapers. Nor would the advertising have been nearly
so effective. The absurd milk story scored a "knockout" with newspaper
readers and earned a great fortune for the actress.
PUBLICITY VIA ELINOR GLYN
At this early stage in Rawhide's history the reigning literary
sensation of two continents was "Three Weeks." Nothing, reasoned the
correspondents, would attract more attention to the camp than having
Mrs. Elinor Glyn at Rawhide, particularly if she would conduct herself
while there in a manner that might challenge the criticism of church
members.
Sam Newhouse, the multimillionaire mining operator of Utah, famous on
two continents as a charming host, especially when celebrities are his
guests, was stopping at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Mrs. Glyn
was in San Francisco at the same time. Mr. Newhouse and Ray Baker, a
Reno Beau Brummel, clubman, chum of M. H. De Young, owner and editor
of the San Francisco _Chronicle_, and scion of a house that represents
the aristocracy of Nevada, were showing Coast hospitality to the
distinguished authoress.
A message was sent to Mr. Baker reading substantially as follows:
"Please suggest to Mr. Newhouse and Mrs. Glyn the advisability of
visiting Rawhide. The lady can get much local color for a new book. If
you bag the game, you will be a hero."
Ray was on to his job. Within three days Mrs. Glyn, under escort of
Messrs. Newhouse and Baker, arrived in Rawhide after a thirty-eight-hour
journey by railroad and auto from San Francisco.
The party having arrived in camp at dusk, it was suggested that they go
to a gambling-house and see a real game of stud poker as played on the
desert.
They entered a room. Six players were seated around a table. The men
were coatless and grimy. Their unshaven mugs, rough as nutmeg-graters,
were twisted into strange grimaces. All of them appeared the worse for
liquor. Before each man was piled a mound of ivory chips of various
hues, and alongside rested a six-shooter. From the rear trousers'
pocket of every player another gun protruded. Each man wore a belt
filled with cartridges. Although an impromptu sort of game, it was well
staged.
A man with bloodshot eyes shuffled and riffled the cards. Then he dealt
a hand to each.
"Bet you $10,000," loudly declared the first player.
"Call that and go you $15,000 better," shouted the second as he pushed
a stack of yellows toward the center.
"Raise you!" cried two others, almost in unison.
Before the jack-pot was played out $300,000 (in chips) had found its
way to the center of the table and four men were standing up in their
seats in a frenzy of bravado with the muzzles of their guns viciously
pointed at one another. There was enough of the lurking devil in the
eyes of the belligerents to give the onlookers a nervous shiver.
When the gun-play started, Mrs. Glyn and Messrs. Newhouse and Baker
took to the "tall and uncut."
As the door closed and the vanishing forms of the visitors could be
seen disappearing around the opposite street corner, all of the men in
the room pointed their guns heavenward and shot at the ceiling, which
was of canvas. The sharp report of the revolver-shots rang through the
air. This was followed by hollow groans, calculated to freeze the blood
of the retreating party, and by a scraping and scuffling sound that
conveyed to the imagination a violent struggle between several persons.
Fifteen minutes later two stretchers, carrying the "dead," were taken
to the undertaker's shop. Mrs. Glyn and Mr. Newhouse, with drooped
chins, stood by and witnessed the dismal spectacle.
Of course, the "murder" of these two gamblers, during the progress of a
card-game for sensationally high stakes and in the presence of the
authoress of "Three Weeks," made fine front-page newspaper copy.
Rawhide suggested itself in every paragraph of the stories as a
mining-center that was large enough to attract the attention of a
multimillionaire mine magnate of the caliber of Sam Newhouse and of an
authoress of such world-wide repute as Elinor Glyn. The camp got yards
of free publicity that was calculated to convince the public it was no
flash in the pan, which was exactly what was wanted.
The next night Elinor Glyn, having recovered from the shock of the
exciting poker-game, was escorted through Stingaree Gulch. The lane was
lined on both sides with dance-halls and brothels for a distance of two
thousand feet. Mrs. Glyn "sight-saw" all of these.
Rawhide scribes saw a chance here for some fine writing:
The wasted cheeks and wasted forms of frail humanity, as seen last
night in the jaundiced light that was reflected by the crimson-shaded
lamps and curtains of Stingaree Gulch, visibly affected the gifted
English authoress. They carried to Mrs. Glyn an affirmative answer to
the question, so often propounded recently, whether it is against
public morality to make a heroine in "Three Weeks" of a pleasure-palled
victim of the upper set. It was made plain to Mrs. Glyn that her
heroine differed from the Stingaree Gulch kind only in that her cheeks
were less faded than her character.
That's the kind of Laura Jean Libby comment on Mrs. Glyn's tour of
Stingaree Gulch that one of the Rawhide correspondents wired to a
"yellow," with a view to pleasing the editor and to insuring positive
acceptance of his copy.
Later in the night a fire-alarm was rung in. The local fire-department
responded in Wild-Western fashion. The conflagration, which was started
for Mrs. Glyn's sole benefit, advanced with the rapidity of a tidal
wave. It brought to the scene a mixed throng of the riffraff of the
camp. The tumult of voices rose loud and clear. The fire embraced all
of the deserted shacks and waste lumber at the foothills of one of the
mines. The liberal use of kerosene and a favoring wind caused a fierce
blaze. It spouted showers of sparks into the darkness and gleamed like
a beacon to desert wayfarers. The fierce yells of the firemen rang far
and wide. Of a sudden a wild-haired individual thrust himself out of
the crowd and sprang through the door of a blazing shack. He
disappeared within the flames. Three feet past the door was a secret
passage leading to shelter in the tunnel of an adjoining mine. Mrs.
Glyn, of course, did not know this. She acclaimed the act as one of
daring heroism.
Water in the camp was scarce, so there was a resort to barreled beer
and dynamite. Soon the flames of the devouring fire were extinguished.
Again the newspapers throughout the land contained stories, which were
telegraphed from the spot, regarding the remarkable experiences of the
much-discussed authoress of "Three Weeks" in the new, great, gold camp
of Rawhide. The press agent was in his glory.
"AL" MILLER'S SIEGE
Elinor Glyn's experiences in Rawhide were by no means the most
interesting that newspaper readers of the United States were privileged
to read during the course of the press-agenting of the camp.
"Al" Miller was one of the first experienced mining operators to get
into Rawhide. He landed in camp in the early part of 1907. After a
thorough inspection of the mine showings throughout the district, he
hit upon the Hooligan Hill section of the Rawhide Coalition property as
a likely-looking spot to develop pay ore. Mr. Miller had been mining
for a great many years and had been identified with some important
mining projects in Colorado. When he applied for a lease on that
section of the Coalition property embracing a good part of Hooligan
Hill it was granted to him without parley.
Mr. Miller financed his project right in the camp of Rawhide. He
interested five other mining men. A syndicate was formed. Each of these
six took an equal interest. All agreed to subscribe to a treasury fund
to meet the expense of development.
A shaft was started on a very rich stringer of gold ore. When it had
reached a depth of about 40 feet the Miller lease was regarded as one
of the big "comers" of the camp. In fact, a good grade of ore was
exposed on all sides and in the bottom of a 4-1/2×7-1/2 foot shaft.
Specimens assayed as high as $2,000 a ton.
At this stage of the enterprise an operating company was formed. Those
who had formed the original syndicate divided the ownership stock among
themselves. Mr. Miller was given full charge and allowed a salary for
his services. Day after day you could see him on the job, sharpening
steel, turning a windlass to hoist the muck from the bottom of the
shaft after each round of shots had been fired, and making a full hand
as mine-manager, blacksmith, mucker and shift-boss.
One day I was sitting in my office at Reno when I received a telephone
message that there was a big fight on over the control of the Miller
lease. Mr. Miller and a big Swede who was working for him had
barricaded themselves at the mine. They threatened death to any one who
approached. We had, for a day or two, been hungering and thirsting for
some live news of the camp. My journalistic instinct got busy. I
queried our Rawhide correspondent. He advised that the situation really
looked serious and that a genuine scrap threatened. Mr. Miller had
installed a good-sized arsenal at the mine and laid in about three
days' provisions. He declared that he was prepared to hold out for an
indefinite period.
I wired our correspondent at Rawhide instructions to file a story up to
1,000 or 1,500 words. Naturally excitement ran high in the camp. Soon
hundreds of people gathered at points of vantage along the crest of
Hooligan Hill and surrounding uplifts. Every one was expectantly
awaiting interesting developments. To the casual onlooker it seemed as
though possibly a score or more who stood ready to storm the mine might
become involved. In fact, no one could tell how soon hostilities would
break loose.
Using the telegrams I had received from camp, one of my men dictated a
story containing the facts and sent it over to the Reno correspondent
of the Associated Press. It was put on the wire without a moment's
hesitation.
Mr. Miller had formed a rampart about the collar of the shaft. Sacked
ore was piled up to a height of about five feet. The gold-laden stuff
surrounded the shaft on all sides but one, the exception being to the
northwest. There Hooligan Hill slanted upward at an angle of less than
twenty degrees from vertical. It was from this approach that Mr. Miller
was forced to guard constantly against attack. He found it necessary,
according to our dispatches, to keep a constant vigil in order to
preclude the possibility of a surprise. He and his Swede companion
alternated in keeping the lookout. Occasionally the fitful soughing of
the gasoline engine exhausts from the mining plants on Balloon Hill and
Grutt Hill were interspersed by the sharp report of a six-shooter as
the besieged parties either actually or mythically observed a
threatened approach of the enemy.
Although the principals cast in this little mimic war were limited to
perhaps less than a score, every incident or detail was provided to
make up a very threatening and keenly interesting situation, with
several lives hanging in the balance. There is no doubt that Mr. Miller
at least, and perhaps his Swede companion, would have resisted any
attempt to take "Fort Miller," as we styled it, even to sacrificing his
life, for he was known as a man of action who had been in numerous
critical situations without showing the slightest exercise of the
primal instinct. The fact that Rawhide was saved from an episode that
might have measured up to the tragic importance of a pitched battle and
caused the loss of a number of lives was undoubtedly due to the patient
willingness of Mr. Miller's partners and their supporters to satisfy
themselves with a siege and to starve out the two men in possession of
the mine rather than undertake to rout them.
The story went like wildfire and we were besieged for others and for a
follow-up on the original story. For three days we kept the yarn alive
and the wires burdened with details of the siege and unsuccessful
storming of Camp Miller, Hooligan Hill, Nevada.
I venture to say that Mr. Hearst, with his well-known facility for
serving up hot stuff to a sensation-loving following, never surpassed
in this particular the stories that were scattered broadcast over the
United States foundered upon this interesting episode in the mining
development of Rawhide.
The story promised to be good for at least a week when we were somewhat
surprised to hear that Mr. Miller had capitulated. It seems that in
storing his fort with provender he had supplied only one gallon of
whisky and when this ran low, on the second or third day, he attempted,
single-handed, a foraging expedition in search of a further supply of
John Barleycorn. During his absence his Swede companion hoisted a flag
of truce, and when Miller returned to the scene of action he found his
mine in the possession of his enemies.
Charles G. Gates, son of John W. Gates, the noted stock-market plunger,
visited Rawhide twice. He spent his time by day inspecting the numerous
mine workings, of which there were not less than seventy-five in full
blast. At night he was a frequent winner at the gaming-tables. His
advent in Rawhide was telegraphed far and wide and contributed to
excite the general interest.
A young woman of dazzling beauty and fine presence was discovered in
camp unchaperoned. She had been attracted to the scene by stories of
fortunes made in a night. Under a grilling process of questioning by a
few leading citizens she divulged the fact that she had run away from
her home in Utah to seek single-handed her fortune on the desert. In
roguish manner she expressed the opinion that if allowed to go her own
way she would soon succeed in her mission. But she would not divulge
the manner in which she proposed to operate. She confessed she had no
money. There was a serene but settled expression of melancholy in her
eyes that captivated everybody who saw her.
Many roving adventurers of the better class in the district who had
listened to the call of the wild yet would have felt as much at home in
the salon of a Fifth Avenue millionaire as in the boom-camp, pronounced
her beauty to be in a class by itself. There was no law in the camp
which would warrant the girl's deportation, yet action appeared
warranted. Within a few moments $500 was subscribed as a purse to
furnish the girl a passage out of camp and for a fresh start in life.
The late Riley Grannan, race-track plunger, Nat. C. Goodwin, the noted
player, and three others subscribed $100 each. She refused to accept
the present. Next day she disappeared.
There was a corking human interest story here. Newspapers far and wide
published the tale. Two years later this girl's photograph was sent
without her knowledge to the judges of a famous beauty contest in a Far
Western State. The judges were on the point of voting her the prize
without question when investigation of her antecedents revealed her
Rawhide escapade. The award was given to another.
When the camp was four months old and water still commanded from $3 to
$4 a barrel, the standard price for a bath being $5, a banquet costing
$50 a plate was served to one hundred soldiers of fortune who had been
drawn to the spot from nearly every clime. The banqueters to a man
played a good knife and fork. The spirit of _camaraderie_ permeated the
feast. There was much libation, much postprandial speechifying, much
unbridled joyousness. _Bon mots_ flew from lip to lip. Song and jest
were exchanged. The air rang with hilarity. Nat. C. Goodwin warmed up
to a witty, odd, racy vein of across-the-table conversation. Then
he made a felicitous speech. Others followed him in similar vein.
Luxuriant and unrestrained imagination and slashiness of wit marked
most of the talks. The festivities ended in a revel.
The correspondents burned up the wires on the subject of that banquet.
In the memory of the most ancient prospector no scene like this had
ever been enacted in a desert mining camp when it was so young and at a
time when the country was just emerging from a panic that seemed for a
while to warp its whole financial fabric.
THE FUNERAL ORATION FOR RILEY GRANNAN
In April, 1908, Riley Grannan, the noted race-track plunger, died of
pneumonia in Rawhide, where he was conducting a gambling house. He was
ill only a few days and his life went out like the snuff of a candle.
When all the gold in Rawhide's towering hills shall have been reduced
to bullion and not even a post is left to guide the desert-wayfarer to
the spot where was witnessed the greatest stampede in Western mining
history, posterity will remember Rawhide for the funeral oration that
was pronounced over the bier of Mr. Grannan by H. W. Knickerbocker,
wearer of the cloth and mine-promoter.
The oration delivered by Mr. Knickerbocker on this occasion was a
remarkable example of sustained eloquence. Pouring out utterances of
exquisite thought and brilliant language in utter disregard of the
length of his sentences and without using so much as a pencil
memorandum, Mr. Knickerbocker with a delicacy of expression pure as
poetry urged upon his auditors that the deceased "dead game sport" had
not lived his life in vain. Soon the crowd, who listened with rapt
attention, was in the melting mood. As Mr. Knickerbocker progressed
with his discourse his periods were punctuated with convulsive bursts
of sorrow.
Rawhide correspondents reorganized the full value of the occasion from
the press-agent's standpoint. Mr. Grannan had been a world-famous
plunger on the turf, and the correspondents burned the midnight oil in
an effort to do their subject justice.
Some other lights and shadows of Rawhide press-agenting are contained
in the following dispatch, which appeared in a San Francisco newspaper
in the early period of the boom:
GOLDFIELD, February 19.--W. H. Scott of the Goldfield brokerage
house of Scott & Amann, who returned from Rawhide this morning,
expresses the opinion that within a year that camp will be the
largest gold-producer in the State. "When a man is broke in
Rawhide," said Mr. Scott, "he can always eat. All he has to do is
to go to some lease and pan out breakfast money. There is rich ore
on every dump, and every man is made welcome."
H. W. Knickerbocker sent this one to a Reno newspaper:
Gold, Gold, Gold! The wise men of old sought an alchemy whereby
they could transmute the base metals into gold. It was a fruitless
quest then; it is a needless quest now. Rawhide has been
discovered! No flowers bloom upon her rock-ribbed bosom. No
dimpling streams kiss her soil into verdure, to flash in laminated
silver 'neath the sunbeam's touch. No flowers nor food, no beauty
nor utility on the surface; but from her desert-covered heart
Rawhide is pouring a stream of yellow gold out upon the world which
is translatable, not simply into food and houses and comfort, but
also into pictures and poetry and music and all those things that
minister in an objective way to the development of a full-orbed
manhood.
Joseph S. Jordan, the well-known Nevada mining editor, filed this
dispatch to the newspapers of his string on the Coast:
Right through what is now the main street of Rawhide, in the days
of '49, the makers of California passed on their way to the new
Eldorado. They had many hardships through which to pass before
reaching the gold which was their lure, and thousands that went
through the hills of Rawhide never reached their goal. They were
massacred by the Indians, or fell victims to the thirst and heat of
the desert, and for many years the way across the plains was marked
by the whitening bones of the pathfinders. And here all the while
lay the treasures of Captain Kidd, the ransoms of crowns.
Harry Hedrick, the veteran journalist of Far Western mining camps, sent
his newspaper this:
To stand on twenty different claims in one day, as I have done; to
take the virgin rock from the ledge, to reduce it to pulp and then
to watch a string of the saint-seducing dross encircle the pan; to
peer over the shoulder of the assayer while he takes the precious
button from the crucible--these are the convincing things about
this newest and greatest of gold camps. It is not a novelty to have
assays run into the thousands. In fact, it is commonplace. To
report strikes of a few hundred dollars to the ton seems like an
anticlimax.
There were scores of actual happenings in Rawhide that make it possible
for me to say in reviewing the vigorous publicity campaign which marked
its first year's phenomenal growth, that ninety per cent. of the
correspondence, including the special dispatches sent from the camp and
from Reno, which was published in newspapers of the United States, was
not only based on fact but was literally true in so far as any
newspaper reporter can be depended upon accurately to describe events.
Ask any high-class newspaper owner or editor to express his sentiments
regarding the "faking" which formed about ten per cent. of the Rawhide
press work described herein and he will tell you that such work is a
reproach to journalism. Maybe it is, but we are living in times when
such work on the part of press-agents is the rule and not the
exception. The publicity-agent who can successfully perform this way is
generally able to command an annual stipend as big as that of the
President of the United States. There was nothing criminal about the
performance in Rawhide, because there was no intentional
misrepresentation regarding the character or quality of any mine in the
Rawhide camp. Correspondents were repeatedly warned to be extremely
careful not to overstep the bounds in this regard.
Confessedly there are grades of "faking" which no press-agent would
care to stoop to.
Somewhere in De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater" he describes
one of his pipe-dreams as perfect moonshine, and, like the sculptured
imagery of the pendulous lamp in "Christabel," _all carved from the
carver's brain_. Rawhide and Reno correspondents were guilty of very
little work which De Quincey's description would exactly fit. There was
a basis for nearly everything they wrote about, even the alleged
discovery of Death Valley Scotty's secret storehouse of wealth, that
story having been in circulation in Nevada, although not theretofore
published, for upward of eighteen months. Unsubstantial, baseless,
ungrounded fiction had been resorted to, it is true, during the
Manhattan boom, in a single story about the madman in charge of the
hoist on the Jumping Jack, but this was an exception to the rule and
the story was harmless.
AMONG THE "BIG FELLOWS"
If you don't think the character of the press-agent's work during the
Rawhide boom was comparatively high class and harmless, dear reader,
you really have another "think" coming. At a time when Goldfield
Consolidated was wobbling in price on the New York Curb and the market
needed support, just prior to the smash in the market price of the
stock from $7 to around $3.50, the New York _Times_ printed in a
conspicuous position on its financial page a news story to the effect
that J. P. Morgan & Company were about to take over the control of that
company. That's an example of a _harmful_ "fake," the coarse kind
that Wall Street occasionally uses to catch suckers.
Here is another:
Thompson, Towle & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange,
issue a weekly newspaper called the _News Letter_. Much of its space
is given over to a review of the copper situation, at the mines and in
the share markets. W. B. Thompson, head of the firm, he of Nipissing
market manipulation fame, is interested to the extent of millions in
Inspiration, Utah Copper, Nevada Consolidated, Mason Valley and other
copper-mining companies. On January 25, 1911, when both the copper
metal and copper share markets were sick, and both the price of the
metal and the shares were on the eve of a decline, which temporarily
ensued, the _News Letter_, in an article headed "Copper," said:
Every outcrop in the country has been examined and it is not known
where one can look for new properties.
The readers of the _News Letter_ were asked to believe that no more
copper mines would be discovered in this country and that, because of
this and other conditions which it mentioned, the supply of the metal
must soon be exhausted and the price of the metal and of copper
securities must advance.
The statement in the _News Letter_ that every outcrop in the country
has been examined and that it is not known where one can look for new
properties--well, if the whole population of North America agreed in a
body to accept the job of prospecting the Rocky Mountains and Sierra
Nevada Mountains alone they could hardly perform the job in a
lifetime.
The use of the automobile has undoubtedly been responsible in the past
few years for an impetus to the discovery of mines which is calculated
to double the mineral product of this country in the next two decades,
and who shall say what the flying-machine will accomplish in this
regard? Further, new smelting processes and improved reduction
facilities generally are daily reducing the cost of treatment of ores
and are making commercially valuable low-grade ore-bodies heretofore
passed up as worthless.
The best opinion of mining men in this country is that our mineral
resources have not yet been "skimmed" and that the mining ground of the
Western country has not yet been well "scratched."
Therefore, the statement made in a newspaper which is supposedly
devoted to the interests of investors, that it need not be expected
that more copper mines are going to be discovered, is a snare
calculated to trap the unwary.
The foregoing is an example of a very harmful but comparatively crude
fake, employed by some promoters in Wall Street of the multimillionaire
class when their stocks need market support.
Here is a specimen of the _insidious_ brand of get-rich-quick fake. On
March 7, 1911, the New York _Sun_ printed in the second column of its
front page the following dispatch:
TACOMA, Wash., March 6.--F. Augustus Heinze has struck it rich
again; this time it's a fortune in the Porcupine gold fields in
Canada.
Charles E. Herron, a Nome mining man, who has just returned from
the new gold fields, is authority for the statement that Heinze is
"inside the big money." He has bought the Foster group of claims,
adjoining the celebrated Dome mine, from which it is estimated that
$25,000,000 will be gleaned this year and for the development of
which a railroad is now under construction.
The Porcupine gold field, according to Herron, is one of the
wonders of the age. One prospector has stripped the vein for a
distance of fifty feet and polished it in places, so that gold is
visible all along. His trench is three feet deep and he asks
$200,000 cash for it as it stands.
A party of Alaskans offered the owner of this claim $50,000 a shot
for all the ore that could be blown out with two sticks of
dynamite, but he refused.
Press-work like the foregoing is more than likely to separate the
public wrongfully from its money.
The item serves as an excellent example of one of "the impalpable and
cunningly devised tricks that fool the wisest and which landed you"
that I promised, at the beginning of "My Adventures with Your Money,"
to lay bare. I said in my foreword:
Are you aware that in catering to your instinct to gamble, methods
to get you to part with your money are so artfully and deftly
applied by the highest powers that they deceive you completely?
Could you imagine it to be a fact that in nearly all cases where
you find you are ready to embark on a given speculation, ways and
means that are almost scientific in their insidiousness have been
used upon you?
The New York _Sun_ article says it is estimated that $25,000,000 will
be gleaned this year from the Dome mine in Porcupine. The truth is, no
engineer has ever appraised the ore in sight in the entire mine,
according to any statements yet issued, at anything like half of that
amount gross, and the mine itself can not possibly produce so much as
$100,000 this year.
A mill of 240 tons per diem capacity has been ordered by the
management and it is expected will be in operation by October first,
but no sooner.[2] The ore, according to H. P. Davis's _Porcupine Hand
Book_, an accepted authority, "has been stated to average from $10 to
$12 a ton." The lowest estimated cost of mining and milling is $6. A
fair estimate of profits would, therefore, be $5 per ton, not allowing
for any expenses of mine-exploration in other directions on the
property or other incidental outlay, which will undoubtedly amount to
$1 per ton on the production. The production of 240 tons of ore per
day at $4 per ton net profit would mean net returns of $28,800 per
month. If the mill runs throughout October, November and December of
this the company will "glean" $86,400 during 1911, and not
$25,000,000, as the New York _Sun_ article suggests.[3]
[2] The fire of July will delay installation until a later
date.
[3] In arriving at these figures I am more than fair. Recent
estimates of the average value of the ores is $8, and I know
of some estimates by very competent mining men that are as
low as $4. Some engineers say justification is lacking for
even a $4 estimate. The Dome is by no means a proved
commercial success as yet from the mine standpoint, although
the possessor of much ore, because of the uncertain average
values.
How great an exaggeration the New York _Sun's_ $25,000,000 estimate is
may be gathered from the statement that to glean $25,000,000 in one
year from any mine where the ore assays $11 on an average, and the
cost of mining, milling and new development is $7, the gross value of
the tonnage in the mine that is milled during the one year must be at
least $53,571,000. Further, to reduce such a quantity of that quality
of ore to bullion in a single year would require the erection of mills
of 17,260 tons per day capacity. As mentioned, the actual per diem
capacity of the mill now under construction is 240 tons.[4]
[4] It has been destroyed by the July fire and must be
replaced.
Undoubtedly the Dome mining company flotation will soon be made and the
public will be "allowed" to subscribe for the shares or buy them on the
New York Curb at a figure agreeable to the promoters. This seems
certain, for otherwise why this raw press-work?[5]
[5] The foregoing comment on the Porcupine situation has been
more than justified by developments after the date of this
writing. The first battery of forty stamps in the first stamp
mill was not in operation till April, 1912, more than a year
from the date of the prediction that $25,000,000 would be
gleaned in 1911.
The article says that a number of Alaskans offered money at the rate of
$50,000 a shot for all the ore that could be blown out with two sticks
of dynamite, but were refused. There never was a statement made by any
wild-catter now behind prison bars in any literature I ever saw that
could approach this one in flagrant misrepresentation of facts. All the
ore that could be displaced in one shot with two sticks of dynamite
would not exceed four tons. In order to repay the investor it would be
necessary, therefore, that this ore average better than $12,500 per
ton. The New York _Sun's_ story says that notwithstanding this offer
the owner was willing to sell the whole property for $200,000. Imagine
this: There are four tons of rock on the property worth $12,500 per
ton, for a distance of 50 feet the gold shimmers on the surface, and
there are hundreds of thousands of tons of rock in the same kind of
formation on the same property, but still the owner is willing to
dispose of all of it for $200,000! The statement is preposterous and
outrageous. It is the kind described by De Quincey as "all carved from
the carver's brain."
THE REVERSE ENGLISH
Now, about the "reverse English" in this line of press-work. Similar
ways and means, dear reader, that are just as scientific in their
insidiousness have been used upon you to poison your mind _against_ the
value of mining investments of competing promoters, when it has been
found to the interest of powerful men to bring this about.
When the offices of B. H. Scheftels & Company, with which I was
identified, were raided in seven cities by Special Agent Scarborough
(since permitted to resign) of the Department of Justice of the United
States Government, in September, 1910, two of the men who had been
active in bringing about the raid assembled in the parlor of the Astor
House the newspaper men assigned to cover the story by New York and
Brooklyn newspapers. There they gave out the information that Ely
Central, which I had advised the purchase of at from 50 cents per
share up to $4 and down again, was actually under option to me and my
associates in large blocks at 5 cents. As a matter of fact, the
average price paid over for this option stock in real hard money by my
people was in excess of 90 cents per share, without adding a penny to
the cost for expenses of mining engineers, publicity or anything else.
My people had also partly paid for a block bought at private sale at
the rate of $3 a share, besides buying tens of thousands of shares in
the open market at $4 and higher. The New York _Times_ and the New
York _Sun_, two newspapers which make capital of the rectitude of both
their news and advertising columns, published this statement, along
with forty others that were just as false, if not more so. So did the
New York _American_ and the other Hearst newspapers of the United
States.
The New York _Times_ story related how I had personally cleaned up
in fifteen months not less than $3,000,000 as the result of my market
operations. As a matter of fact, I and my associates had impoverished
ourselves trying to support the stock in the open market against the
concerted attacks of rival promoters and other powerful interests on
whose financial corns we had tread. Every well-informed person in Wall
Street knows this.
The New York _Times_ stated that every man connected with B. H.
Scheftels & Company had tried to obtain membership on the New York
Curb and that all of the requests were turned down. No application was
ever made for membership because, first, the rules of the Curb forbade
corporation memberships, and, second, the Scheftels company already
employed several members on regular salary and more than a dozen
members on a commission basis.
It was also stated that B. H. Scheftels & Company applied to the Boston
Curb for membership and that their application was rejected. This was
also a lie made out of whole cloth.
In three months, the New York _Times_ said, no less than 400,000
letters had been received in reply to circulars sent out by B. H.
Scheftels & Company. This is an average of over 5,000 letters for each
business day during the period of three months. The exaggeration here
was about 5,000 per cent.
All of the properties promoted by the Scheftels company were stated
in the New York _Times_ article to be "practically worthless." This
was utter rubbish and so misleading that had I been accused of
pocketpicking the effect could not have been more harmful.
Rawhide Coalition had produced upward of $400,000 in gold bullion, had
probably been "high graded" to the extent of nearly as much more,
according to the judgment of well-posted men on the ground, and not
less than five miles of underground development work had been done on
the property. Development work and production had never ceased for a
day. Besides, when the Rawhide camp was still in its swaddling-clothes,
I had originally purchased the controlling interest for Nat. C. Goodwin
& Company at a valuation of $700,000 for the mine.
The control of Ely Central had been taken over by B. H. Scheftels &
Company and paid for at a valuation well in excess of a million dollars
for the property, and upward of $200,000 had been spent in mine
development during the fourteen months of the Scheftels quasi-control.
Jumbo Extension was a famous producer of Goldfield. Subsequent to the
raid one-twentieth of its acreage was sold to the Goldfield
Consolidated for $195,000. On July 15th of the current year the company
disbursed to stockholders $95,000 in dividends, being 10 per cent. on
the par of the issued capitalization. Bovard Consolidated, which was
promoted at 10 cents a share as a speculation, had turned out to be a
"lemon" after a period of active mine development, the values in the
ore pinching out at depth, but B. H. Scheftels & Company had
immediately informed stockholders to this effect.
The New York _Times_ stated that B. H. Scheftels & Company sold Ely
Central stock to the amount of five or six millions in cash and made a
profit of $3,000,000 on the transactions. The books of the Scheftels
company show that the company not only made no money on the sale of
Ely Central but actually lost vast sums.
The New York _Times_ said that it had been advertised that a carload
of ore had been shipped from the Ely Central mine as a sample, but
that the Government had not been able to find out to whom this carload
of ore was consigned. The truth was that the consignment had been made
to the best-known smelter company in the United States, that the ore
averaged seven per cent. copper, and that it could not have been
shipped out of camp except over a single railroad which has the
monopoly--an easy transaction to trace.
B. H. Scheftels & Company were accused by the New York _Times_ of
clearing up nearly $600,000 in three months on the promotion of the
South Quincy Copper Company. The facts were that, after receiving
$30,000 in subscriptions and returning every subscription on demand
because of the slump in metallic copper, the Scheftels company
abandoned the promotion and never even applied for listing of the stock
in any market. A large sum was lost by the Scheftels company here.
Even in stating the penalty for misuse of the mails, which was the
crime charged by the Government agent who afterwards resigned as a
consequence of conduct objectionable to the Government, the New York
_Times_ stated that the punishment was five years in prison, which
was more hop-skip-and-go-merry mistaking. The crime is a misdemeanor
and the maximum penalty for an offense is eighteen months.
I have counted not less than five hundred unfounded and misleading
statements of this kind regarding myself and associates that have been
made in the past year by newspapers and press associations. The shadow
has been taken for the substance.
Now, the Scheftels raid, I shall prove in due time, was the culmination
of as bitterly waged a campaign of misrepresentation and financial
brigandage as has ever been recorded. Chronologically an introduction
of the subject is out of place here. The effect, however, of the
press-agenting which formed a part of the campaign of destruction is
pertinent to the topic under consideration.
The immediate result was that thousands of stockholders in the various
mining companies that had been sponsored by the Scheftels company were
robbed of an aggregate sum amounting into millions, which represented
the ensuing decline in market value of the stocks.
The newspaper campaign of misrepresentation and villification was
essential to the plans and purposes of the men who sicked the
Government on to me. The final destruction of public confidence in the
securities with which I was identified became necessary to justify the
whole proceeding in the public mind.
On the surface of the play it was made to appear that the Government of
the United States had reached out righteously for the suppression of a
dangerous band of criminals. The story in the New York _Times_ and
other newspapers on the day after the raid was justification made to
this end.
The fact that tens of thousands of innocent stockholders might lose
their all, as a result of the foul use of powerful maladroit
publicity-machinery, did not stop the conspirators for a moment. I had
a youthful past and, therefore, the newspapers took little chance in
publishing anything without investigation and proof that might be
offered. And they went the limit, particularly those newspapers that
are in the habit of permitting the use of their news columns from time
to time to help along the publicity measures of powerful interests.
Contrasted with the comparatively harmless "faking" that characterized
Rawhide's press-agenting, the raw work of the newspapers just described
is as different as angel-cake from antimony. If you are not yet
convinced, hearken to this:
THE POWER OF THE PUBLIC PRINT
In the _Saturday Evening Post_ of December 31, 1910, there appeared an
article headed, "Launching a Corporation. How the Pirates and
Merchantmen of Commerce Set Sail. By Edward Hungerford," from which I
quote, without the omission or change of so much as a comma.
Referring, in my opinion to Ely Central, promoted by myself and
associates, Mr. Hungerford says:
Here is a typical case--a mining property recently exploited on the
curb market, the shipyard of many of these pirate craft: a prospect
located not far from one of the bonanza mines of the West was
capitalized by a number of men who, after they had convinced
themselves that it would not pay, dropped it and gave little
thought to the company they had organized.
One day they received through a lawyer an offer of four thousand
dollars for the even million shares of stock they had prepared to
issue at a face value of five dollars a share. They were told that
a wealthy young man was willing to take a four-thousand-dollar
flier on the property, on the outside chance that it might develop
ore. The deal was made. Soon after a well-known man was named as a
part owner of the mine, which "promised" to enrich all those
interested in it.
That was not the first time that the marketable value of a name
that is known had been used to exploit a corporation. Any man of
standing has many such offers.
The shares of stock that had been purchased for four cents each
were peddled on the curb at fifty cents. Then they were advanced to
sixty cents. Soon a "market"--so called--was made and the stock
found a ready sale. Point by point it was advanced until it
actually was eagerly sought by investors, who were not only willing
but eager to pay four dollars a share for it.
Mr. Hungerford states in the foregoing: "This mine was capitalized by a
number of men who dropped out after they convinced themselves that it
would not pay." The statement is false if it refers to Ely Central, as
I believe it does. The chief owners and organizers attempted to promote
it through a New York Stock Exchange house on the New York Curb at
above $7 per share, or at a valuation of more than $8,000,000 for the
mine, but the bankers' panic of 1907-8 intervened, and for _that
reason_ they quit. The stock sold in 1906 at above $7.50 a share on
the New York Curb, two years before I became identified with it.
Mr. Hungerford says that one day these men _received through a lawyer
AN OFFER OF $4,000 FOR A MILLION SHARES OF STOCK, and they sold_.
How cruelly false this statement is nobody can feel more than myself.
The average price paid by my associates in hard money for the
controlling interest in the 1,600,000 shares of capitalization, as
already mentioned, was above 90 cents, or considerably more than one
million dollars in all. An additional $600,000 or more was used to
protect the market for the stock, making our cost, without adding a
cent for promotion expenses, about $1.50 per share instead of four
cents--more than $2,000,000 for the property and not $5,000.
Line by line and word for word I could analyze the statement of Mr.
Hungerford and show that 95 per cent. of it is false both in premise
and deduction. But this would be only cumulative on the one point. My
excuse for mentioning the item is to give a striking example of the
startling force and power which attaches to insidious newspaper
publicity of the kind quoted from the New York _Times_. Mr. Hungerford
"fell" for it, and innocently lent himself to the purposes of the men
who sponsored the story by himself passing it on to the readers of the
_Saturday Evening Post_.
The purpose here has been to show the imposition on the American public
which is being practiced every day in the news columns of daily
newspapers and other publications, but I have been able to convey to
the reader only the barest kind of suggestion as to the depths to which
this perception is practiced. Limitations of space prohibit further
encroachment, or I would fain extend my list of examples indefinitely.
We hear much these days about the abuses of journalism. Much of the
criticism is leveled at publishers who lend the use of their columns
for "boosting" that is calculated to help their advertisers. But little
attention is paid to that other evil namely, the use of the news
columns for the purpose of destroying business rivals, political rivals
and enemies generally of men who wield sufficient influence to employ
the method.
This ramification of the subject appeals to me as of at least as much
consequence to citizens as is the one of inspired puffery. I believe
the public is going to hear much more of this feature of newspaper
abuse in the future than it has in the past. The community is waking up
and is manifesting a desire to learn more about the heinous practice.
RAWHIDE AGAIN
To return to Rawhide. As a result of the "scientific" press-agenting
which the camp received, a frenzied stampede ensued. The rush was of
such magnitude that it stands unparalleled in Western mining history.
Not less than 60,000 people journeyed across the desolate, wind-swept
reaches of Nevada's mountainous desert during the excitement. Not less
than 12,000 of these remained on the ground for a period of several
months.
Mining-camp records were broken. The maximum population of Goldfield
during the height of its boom was approximately 15,000, but it had
taken more than three years and the discovery of the world's highest
grade gold mine to attract this number of people. Cripple Creek for two
years after its discovery was little more than a hamlet. Leadville
during its first year was hardly heard of.
The scenes enacted in Rawhide when the boom was at its height beggar
description. Real estate advanced in value in half a year in as great
degree as Goldfield's did in three years. Corner lots on the Main
Street sold as high as $17,000. Ground rent for plots 25×100 feet
commanded $300 a month. During the day as well as at night the
gaming-tables of the pleasure-palaces were banked with players, and the
adventuresome were compelled literally to fight their way through the
serried ranks of onlookers to take a hand in the play. The miners were
flush. Many assay offices, accessories of "high-graders," were turning
out bullion from extraordinarily rich ore easily hypothecated by a
certain element among the men working underground.
The opening of "Tex" Rickard's gambling-resort in Rawhide was
celebrated by an orgy that cut a new notch for functions of this kind
in Southern Nevada. The bar receipts aggregated over $2,000. The games
were reported to have won for Mr. Rickard $25,000 on the first day.
Champagne was the common beverage. Day was merged into night and night
into day. Rouged courtesans of Stingaree Gulch provided the dash of
¯
On the densely crowded streets fashionably tailored Easterners,
digging-booted prospectors, grimy miners, hustling brokers, promoters,
mine operators and mercantile men, with here and there a scattering of
"tin horns," jostled one another and formed an ever shifting
kaleidoscopic maelstrom of humanity.
In the environing hills could be heard the creak of the windlass, the
clank of the chain, and the buzz and chug of the gasoline hoist,
punctuated at frequent intervals by sharp detonations of exploding
dynamite.
Outgoing ore-laden freighters, hauled by ten-span mule teams, made
almost impassable the roads connecting the camp with near-by points of
ingress. Coming from the opposite direction, heavily laden wagons
carrying lumber and supplies, and automobiles crowded to the guards
with human freight, blocked the roadways.
Rawhide's publicity campaign from a press-agent's standpoint was a
howling success. From the standpoint of the promoter, however, results
were mixed. Nat. C. Goodwin & Company were enabled to make more than a
financial stand-off of their promotion of the Rawhide Coalition Mines
Company, but they did not profit to the extent they might have, had the
times been propitious.
I was not long in discovering that my first deductions, made at the
inception of the Rawhide boom, namely, that the country was in no
financial mood to consider favorably the claims to recognition of a new
mining camp, were right, and that it would have been better had the
birth of Rawhide been delayed for a period or until the country could
catch its financial breath again. Crowds came to Rawhide, but few with
money. Flattering as was the extent of the inrush, it was easy to see
that if the publicity campaign had been suppressed for a while, the
result in harvest would have been immeasurably greater. Had financial
conditions been right, the effort to give the camp "scientific"
publicity would undoubtedly have been crowded with results for "the
inside" of a character that would have meant much larger sums of money
in the bank.
Nat. C. Goodwin & Company recognized, too, that they had been working
at a great disadvantage by attempting to finance a great mining
enterprise at so great a distance from Eastern financial centers as
Reno. We were hardly a match for the Eastern promoter who, because of
the handy location of his offices, was enabled to keep in close
personal contact with his following.
The usual happening in mining took place at Rawhide. The extraordinary
rich surface deposits opened up into vast bodies of medium and
low-grade ore at depth. Rawhide's one requirement appeared to be a
railroad, and a milling plant of 500 or 600 tons a day capacity. It was
decided that I should come East and attempt to finance the company for
deep mine development, mill and railroad construction, and also to go
through with the deal made with the vendors of the controlling
interest. The time period for payments had been extended for Nat. C.
Goodwin & Company, and the option to purchase was now valued by the
Goodwin company at a fortune.
In New York, over the signature of Nat. C. Goodwin the firm for a
while, under my direction, conducted a display advertisement newspaper
campaign in favor of the issue, which was now listed on the New York
Curb. Hayden, Stone & Company, bankers, of Boston and New York, who
have since successfully financed the Ray Consolidated and Chino copper
companies, undertook to send their engineer to Rawhide to make an
examination of the property with a view to financing the company for
railroad and milling equipment amounting to upward of a million
dollars. Under the impetus of this news and the Nat. C. Goodwin
advertising campaign the market price of the shares shot up to $1.46,
or a valuation in excess of four million dollars for the property.
A few weeks later a sharp market break occurred. Some one got the news
before Nat. C. Goodwin & Company did that the million-dollar financing
proposition had been acted upon adversely by the engineer. The company
had done no systematic underground development work. An enormous amount
of work had been done, but it was accomplished under the leasing
system. The leasers, who, because of lack of milling facilities, were
unable to dispose of a profit of ore that assayed less than $40 per
ton, had bent all of their efforts toward bringing to the surface
high-grade shipping ore and had made no effort at all to block out and
put into sight the known great tonnages of medium and low-grade.
Engineers take nothing for granted and this one reported that the
proposition of spending a million dollars should be turned down because
a commensurate tonnage had not been blocked out and put in sight.
To this day the camp has struggled along without adequate milling
facilities, but has been practically self-sustaining. From a physical
standpoint the mines to-day are conceded to be of great promise. The
company is honestly and efficiently managed. The president, from the
day of incorporation to this hour, has been E. W. King, formerly
president of the Montana Society of Mining Engineers, a director of a
number of Montana banks, and recognized as one of the ablest gold-mine
managers of the West. M. Scheeline, president of the Scheeline Banking
& Trust Company of Reno, who ranks as the oldest and most conservative
banker in the State of Nevada, has been treasurer from the outset.
The history of Rawhide is still in the making and its final chapter has
not yet been written by any manner of means. Nor is it within the pale
of possibility that such latent productive potentialities as have been
established at Rawhide can long remain in great part dormant.
In Wall Street Nat. C. Goodwin & Company's deal with the venders of the
control of Rawhide Coalition was later financed to a successful finish.
It was done by appealing to the speculative instinct of that class of
investors who habitually gamble in mining shares. The effort to finance
the mining company itself, to a point where it might take rank with the
great dividend-paying gold mines of the West, was not so successful.