A GOVERNMENT RAID IS RUMORED
Out of a blue sky late in the month of June came news to the Scheftels office that a newspaper reporter on the New York American had stated that he had seen a memorandum in the city editor's assignment-book to watch out for a Scheftels raid by the United States Government. The information was reliable and it gave us a shock. Yet the thought that the powers of a great government like the United States could be used to crush us without giving us a hearing seemed unbelievable.
To be on the safe side Mr. Scheftels, accompanied by an attorney of high standing, visited Washington. They went direct to the Department of Justice, where Attorney-General Wickersham's private secretary, after a friendly conversation, referred them to the chief clerk. He reported, after a search of twenty-five minutes' duration, that there was no charge against B. H. Scheftels & Company. He even volunteered the information that he did not know that such a firm was in existence.
It afterward developed that at the very time Mr. Scheftels and the attorney were at the Department of Justice a special rubber-shoe investigation was on under the dual direction of a young Washington lawyer on Attorney-General Wickersham's personal staff, and a Special Agent of the Department of Justice. The latter had been given extraordinary powers as a special agent of the Department of Justice, ostensibly to "clean out Wall Street."
Satisfied they were in the wrong place, Mr. Scheftels and the counsellor departed from the Attorney-General's office for the Post-Office Department. They were referred to Chief Inspector Sharp. The lawyer requested that the Scheftels corporation be given a hearing before any action was taken on any complaints that might reach the department. Mr. Sharp agreed to this on condition that the attorney would agree for the Scheftels company that an inspection of the books of the corporation would be permitted on demand at any time. There was a ready assent. A memorandum to this effect was left with Inspector Sharp.
Mr. Scheftels left the Department with positive assurance that no snap judgment would be taken. Edmund R. Dodge of Nevada, personal counsel of B. H. Scheftels & Company, then addressed a letter to U.S. Senator Newlands with the request that he take the matter up direct with the Postmaster-General.
Senator Newlands, under date of July 2, wrote Mr. Dodge that he had addressed a letter to the Postmaster-General with the request that notice be given to Mr. Dodge in case any complaint or information was lodged against the Scheftels corporation. A few days later Senator Newlands sent Mr. Dodge a letter from Theodore Ingalls, Acting Chief Inspector of the Post-Office Department, in which Mr. Ingalls said it was the practice of the Department in case of alleged use of the mails for fraudulent purposes to give individuals against whom complaint has been made full opportunity to be heard either through person or counsel, should adverse action be contemplated as a result of the investigation of such allegation.
Feeling that our house had been securely safeguarded against surprise parties, I at this junction took a trip to Nevada, where urgent business matters required my attention. While I was in the West telegrams were sent me that the premier mail-order mining-stock bucket-shop firm on Broad Street was flooding the mail and burdening the telegraph wires with urgent appeals to stockholders of Rawhide Coalition, one of our specialties, to sell out their holdings, as a severe break in the price of the shares was impending. Forewarned of this attack, I telegraphed instructions from Reno to meet the onslaught with a notice in the Mining Financial News addressed to investors, telling them to be on their guard.
My trip to the West made a pocketful of money for investors by my purchase of the control in the Jumbo Extension company on a monthly payment plan. The price of the stock tripled in the market. My re-entrance into the Goldfield camp was especially distasteful to the Nixon-Wingfield interests. Before I left Goldfield I was actually warned that the vengeance wreaked on the Sullivan Trust Company would be visited on the Scheftels company for daring to reinvade the Goldfield district.
Late in August the Scheftels company endured what was probably the most severe strain it had been put to since its incorporation. We had been making heroic efforts to rally the price of our specialties on the New York Curb market. We were meeting with unusual resistance from professional sources. At the period of which I narrate, Ely Central had registered a low quotation of 62½ cents and we had successfully strengthened it to around $1. All the way up we met with heavy sales. One day deliveries crowded in so fast that three cashiers working in the "cage" were unable to keep up with the transactions. The business of the corporation had been heavy in the general list as well as in the house specialties. There was more than sufficient money on hand to finance all the transactions that day, but not, however, unless deposits were made in bank as rapidly as our own deliveries were made and collected for by our messengers.
About 2 o'clock in the afternoon a report reached the Curb that the bank checks of B. H. Scheftels & Company were not being promptly certified. As this rumor gained currency the excitement on the Curb increased. The Curb concluded that we were at last "busted." Motley throngs began to assemble in front of the offices. The fierce yells of brokers could be heard bidding for and offering Scheftels checks below their face value. A throng of the riffraff of the Street swarmed in front of the building.
One or two individuals, implacable enemies who had repeatedly led the market onslaught against the Scheftels stocks, offered Scheftels checks for small sums at as low as 50 cents on the dollar. These were licked up by our friends who had been assured that we were financially all right and that some mistake must have been made at the bank.
Investigation showed that dilatory message service was responsible for the bank's delay in certifying. Our deposits did not reach the bank as promptly as they should have. As a special favor to us that afternoon, while the tumult in front of our doors was greatest, the bank continued to certify checks until 3:30 o'clock, extending the closing time 30 minutes. Then they reported that a comfortable cash balance was still on hand.
The next morning the newspapers started a jamboree. First-page, last-column, double-leaded, scare-head stories greeted every New Yorker for breakfast, telling him about the panic among Curb brokers to sell the Scheftels checks the afternoon before. Needless to say it was the kind of notoriety that was likely to do greatest injury to the House of Scheftels. If anything half as bad had been printed about the strongest bank in New York, that bank would have been forced to close its doors before the day was half over.
Nor did I for a moment underrate the danger of our position. Between two suns I managed to assemble $50,000 in addition to our cash reserves, with promises of as much more as was needed. We easily held the fort. At the end of the day's business I created a diversion by appearing in the Scheftels board-room, flourishing a handful of $1,000 bills before the newspaper men. The scribes found the Scheftels corporation meeting all demands, and, at the end of the session, with a small bale of undeposited money in its possession.
The strain, however, was great. Confidence was again impaired. Many accounts were withdrawn by customers. We were compelled to ease our load by selling accumulated stocks at a loss. The price of Ely Central and other Scheftels promotions dropped. The decline was assisted by general weakness in other Curb stocks.
Peculiarly enough, at the time when the market for Ely Central shares was lowest, during the latter part of September, fourteen months after the Scheftels company had taken hold of the proposition, mine reports were most favorable. Underground development work and churn drilling had set at rest for all time the question of whether or not mineralized porphyry underlies the rhyolite cap or flow extending eastward through Ely Central ground from the steam-shovel pit of the Nevada Consolidated. Upward of $240,000 had been paid out for administration, mine equipment and for miners' wages to make this demonstration.
The Scheftels company was now informed that the Nevada Consolidated was actually meditating a trespass on the Juniper claim of the Ely Central company, in order to secure an outlet from the lower levels of its giant steam-shovel pit. Warning in writing had already been served on the Nevada Consolidated officials against such a course. On September 25th attorneys of the Ely Central Copper Company secured from a Nevada court an order restraining the Nevada Consolidated from proceeding with this trespass and citing it to show cause why it should not cease to trespass on other Ely Central ground.
The attorney telegraphed to New York that a bond was required before the injunction could be made operative. On September 27th and 28th telegrams were exchanged between the Ely Central offices in New York and the Nevada attorneys of the company at Reno as to providing sureties for the bond.
The sureties never qualified. A catastrophe befell us and brought to an earthquake finish the house of B. H. Scheftels & Company and all its ambitious plans.
The constant turmoil in which the House of Scheftels had found itself, from the day the Engineering & Mining Journal's attack appeared, had made it impossible for the Scheftels company to hold the markets for Ely Central and Rawhide Coalition. Impairment of credit, money stringency and a general declining market were partly responsible. But there was another important factor. Because of the time-limit of its options, the Scheftels company was forced, from time to time, to throw stock on the market at prices which showed an actual loss.
It had one market winner which showed customers and the corporation itself a large profit, namely, Jumbo Extension. I held an option on approximately 450,000 shares of this stock at an average price of 35 cents, which I had turned over to the corporation. The market advanced to 70. Following the tactics employed in Ely Central at the outset of that deal, the Scheftels corporation had urged all its customers to buy Jumbo Extension at the very moment when I was negotiating for the option in Goldfield, with the result that purchases were made in the open market by readers of our market literature at from 25 cents up, with accompanying profit-making.
As the price soared, a short interest of 150,000 shares of Jumbo Extension had developed among brokers in San Francisco and New York, and it was very apparent from the demands of stock for borrowing purposes that it would be impossible for the short interests to cover excepting upon our terms. The Scheftels company was making ready for a "squeeze" of the shorts such as had not been administered before in the history of the Curb. At the very moment of victory, however, when we were making ready to execute a magnificent market coup in Jumbo Extension in the markets of San Francisco and New York, we were plunged without warning to complete ruin.
THE RAID ON B. H. SCHEFTELS & CO.
The destruction of the Scheftels structure was consummated on the 29th day of September, 1910. I was standing on the front stoop of the Scheftels offices, watching the markets for the Scheftels specialties. A broker with San Francisco connections made me a bid of 68 cents for 10,000 shares of Jumbo Extension. I promptly refused. At that very moment my attention was called to the violent slamming of a door behind me. Turning to a Scheftels employee who was standing by my side, I learned that a number of strangers had filed into the customers' room without attracting any particular attention. I tried to get in. The door was locked. Undoubtedly something serious was transpiring. I walked a full block through the hallway to the New Street entrance of the building where the offices of the Mining Financial News adjoined those of the Scheftels corporation. I tried the door there with similar result. It was locked against me.
That settled it. I concluded that the ax had fallen.
The shock of realization that our offices were being raided by the Government did not for a moment throw me off my balance or put fear in my heart, nor did the sense of the outrage affect me at the moment. There was but one sickening thought—the ruin of the edifice I and my associates had labored day and night for so many months to build and the fate of our customers who had invested their money in the companies we had promoted.
In three seconds I was on my way to the place where I thought succor could be found—the offices of the Scheftels attorneys. I walked across the street to the New Street entrance of a building that extends from Broadway to New Street, ambled across to the Broadway side, jumped on a surface car, rode three blocks to Broadway and Cedar Street, jumped into an elevator, and in a few minutes entered the offices of House, Grossman & Vorhaus.
"Go over to the Scheftels offices," I said, "and be quick! I think we are being raided."
In a moment two members of the law firm were on their way. Within ten minutes after the raiders had entered the offices the lawyers were on the spot. They were denied admittance and had to content themselves with waiting outside the door until the prisoners were taken out.
The moment the lawyers left their offices I began to use the 'phones to provide for the release on bail of the men arrested. I found it necessary to go in person and so I left the lawyers' offices and walked down Broadway. My attention was attracted by the clanging of the bell of the police-patrol wagon. As it wheeled past me on the run I could see my associates huddled together in the Black Maria on their way to the bastile.
For the moment, I lost full sense of the gravity of what was transpiring and was overcome by a feeling of joy that I had been spared that ignominy. That self-felicitating slant of an intensely serious situation passed. My associates were in trouble and it was up to me to help them. I was at large and I knew that I could do more for my friends and myself by not immediately surrendering.
I returned to the lawyer's office, where I remained. All this time the thought never entered my mind that we were in any sense guilty of any intent to defraud anybody, or that we had committed any offense against law or the rules of fair conduct. The one consuming and controlling idea in my mind was that somebody had put one over on us and that it was up to me to organize for defense against the abominable outrage.
What transpired behind the closed doors while the Scheftels lawyers were attempting to gain an entrance for the instruction of the corporation, its officers and employees as to their rights, beggars description. Gentle reader, you would not conceive the reality to be possible. Armed with a warrant which conferred upon him the right to arrest, seize, search and confiscate, the Special Agent of the Department of Justice had secured from the local police headquarters a detail of fifteen heavily armed plain-clothes men.
Once inside the Scheftels establishment, the doors were locked and egress barred. The main body of invaders then took possession of the front offices, while others searched through the back rooms and boisterously commanded everybody to remain where they were until given permission to depart. The establishment was under seizure, every foot of it, and every person found within its doors was held prisoner. The Special Agent took pains to impress upon everybody within hearing that he was in supreme command. Leaving police guards in the front room, he stalked into the telegraph-cage where two or three operators were sitting at tables.
Pressing the muzzle of a revolver into the face of Chief Operator Walter Campbell—a quiet and inoffensive man—the Special Agent commanded:
"Cut off that connection!"
Mr. Campbell didn't at first see the gun because it was pointed at his blind eye. When he got his first peep he concluded that a maniac had invaded his sanctum and he almost expired with apoplexy on the spot.
Returning to the front office, the Agent entered the cashier's cage and took possession of the company's pouch containing its securities.
He gave no receipt to any responsible employee of the Scheftels company for anything. When Mr. Stone, one of the cashiers, suggested to him that he was there to safeguard the securities, he thundered,
"Come out of there!"
"What authority have you for this?" demanded Mr. Stone. The Agent thereupon showed his badge.
A moment later one of the deputies pried open the cash-drawer. The Special Agent was at his elbow.
"Oh, look what's here!" cried the deputy.
Thereupon the Agent of the Department of Justice impounded the contents of the cash-drawer, without counting the cash, checks, money-orders, etc., or giving any member of our firm a receipt for them.
Turning to the Scheftels officers and employees who had been placed under arrest, he ordered them removed from the room.
It was about as raw a performance as was ever witnessed in a peaceful brokerage firm's banking-room.
Bookkeepers were ordered to close up books. United States mail in the office was impounded, including mail that had been received in the office for delivery to others.
The Scheftels employees were commanded to stand in their places with arms folded. The desperadoes among them—those for whom a warrant had been issued and who had been jerked out and huddled together in the outer room—were then searched for deadly weapons. One penknife and the stub of a lead-pencil were found on their persons. The deadly knife was hardly sharp enough to serve the purpose of nail-manicuring. Not one of the men under arrest would have known how to use a revolver if it had been placed in his hands.
The men taken into custody were: Mr. Scheftels, aged 54, quiet and inoffensive, rounding out an honorable business career without a blemish of any kind on his character or standing; Charles F. Belser, one of the cashiers of the corporation and a 32d degree Mason, who never before in his life had been so much as charged with the violation of the spirit of a minor ordinance; Charles B. Stone, aged 60, another cashier whose sons and sons-in-law had served their country in the army and who, himself, was as peaceful as a class leader in a Sunday-school; John Delaney, Clarence McCormick, William T. Seagraves and George Sullivan, clerks of the establishment, who were as likely to offer resistance that would require gun-play to combat as were a quartette of psalm-singing children.
Mr. Scheftels protested in a dignified and self-respecting way against the brutal demonstration. He asked to see the authority for the raid. This was refused until after he and the other desperate characters were collected in another room. His demand to see the officers' warrant was met by a vulgar exclamation from the Special Agent, to the effect that, "If you don't shut up, we will put the irons on you! If you are looking for any trouble, you —— —— stiff, you will get what you are looking for!"
The absurdity of the armed invasion appealed to everybody but the ringleader of the raiders. It was a ludicrous situation from a service viewpoint. There had been no time up to the moment of the raid when a single man armed with proper authority could not have accomplished with decency and in good order everything and more than was done by the "rough house" and brutal invasion of the armed band.
Private papers were grabbed and bundles of certificates of stock, packages of money, checks, receipts and everything that came in sight were carried away. No complete record was made at the time of the raid of the documents and other valuables seized. The temporary receiver for B. H. Scheftels & Company, before his discharge later on, was able to gather together and take an accounting of part of the seized assets of the corporation, but I have no doubt that many thousands of dollars worth of securities and money were hopelessly lost.
When the wreck was complete the prisoners were driven like malefactors out of the front entrance, down the steps and loaded into the Black Maria. Five thousand people witnessed the act. The prisoners pleaded in vain to be allowed to pay for taxicabs to convey them before the United States Commissioner. They urged that as yet they had had no hearing and were innocent in the eyes of the law, and until convicted of some offense they were entitled to decent treatment. This request was refused. The delay in the start to the Federal building was just long enough to give the dense crowd that had filled the block time to insult the victims of the atrocity to the fullest extent. Friends of the arrested men boiled over with indignation and several fights occurred. Men were knocked down, trampled upon and the clothing torn from their backs in the desperate mêlée. The scene was disgraceful.
An army of newspaper reporters, attended by a camera brigade, were on the spot and snapshotted the prisoners as they entered the Black Maria. With bells clanging and whips lashing, a start was made up Broad Street to Wall. Then the vehicle turned up Broadway and ding-donged on to the Federal building. There the men were arraigned. Bail aggregating $55,000 was demanded. Later several of the men taken into custody in this brutal manner were not even indicted.
Called upon to identify the prisoners, the Special Agent of the Department of Justice was unable to point out any of them except Mr. Scheftels. A stenographer in the employ of the corporation was forced to single them out.
The warrant proved to have been sworn to by the Special Agent and had been granted on his affidavit that the corporation had committed crimes against some few of its customers. Two of them have already been mentioned in this article as Slack and Szymanski, whose statements had been furnished to the attorneys of the Engineer & Mining Journal.
From the Court House to the Tombs, the Scheftels desperadoes, in shackles, were escorted up Broadway. Later in the day when bail was ready and the prisoners were sent for, they were handcuffed again and marched in parade up streets and down avenues of the densest section of New York City.
I had worked all afternoon in the lawyers' offices with one object in view, namely, the securing of bail for the imprisoned men. I succeeded. I now got busy with my own bail, the court having fixed it in advance at $15,000. In the morning I walked from my lawyers' offices to the Post-Office Building and surrendered myself, being immediately released on surety which was waiting in the office of the United States Commissioner. As I left the building I recognized scores of Scheftels customers. Several grasped my hand.
My indignation grew as the circumstances came up under review and I had time to connect and collate the facts. Gradually the whole truth revealed itself. I can relate only part of it. The full, detailed story would extend itself into a volume, and the space here at my command is limited. I learned that from the moment the Special Agent had been put on the scent with permission to put us out of business he had never slackened his effort to turn the trick.
His efforts attracted the attention of sundry newspaper editors with Wall Street affiliations and also enemies generally who hastened to coöperate with him. His office as a Special Agent of the Department of Justice gave to his statements weight which would not have been given to them had he as an individual sponsored the charges. His official position imparted exaggerated importance to his statements in the eyes of newspaper men, and, after the raid, to the public.
A person whom we shall characterize as the Tool now appears on the scene with alleged information which he placed at the service of the Special Agent to back him up before the Assistant United States attorneys in New York with testimony since recanted over the signature of the false witness.
In the preceding chapter I called attention to some of the atrociously false statements that were published on the day following the raid. I gave only an inkling. The newspapers declared that Ely Central had cost the Scheftels company 5 cents per share, that the capital stock was over-issued, and that the property was worthless. Jumbo Extension, which has since distributed $95,000 in dividends to its stockholders, has still a treasury reserve of $100,000 and is selling to-day in the markets at a share valuation of about one-quarter of a million dollars for the property, was also described as a "fake stock." Rawhide Coalition, which has produced upward of $400,000 in bullion, and which is to-day recognized as one of the substantial gold mines of the Far West, was labeled plain junk. Bovard, which represented an investment of nearly $100,000 for property account and mine development and which had been promoted at 10 cents per share on representations that it was a "prospect," was stated to be a raw steal.
The Scheftels corporation was said to have got away with millions of dollars by selling "fake mining stocks." It was also stated that I had profited to the extent of millions for my personal account. The Scheftels mailing-list was described as a regulation "sucker list," notwithstanding the fact that the principal names that were on it were stockholders in Guggenheim companies.
The ringleaders were pictured as myself—"a man with an awful Past"—and the "notorious character," "Red Letter" Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan was styled as the facile letter-writer who had addressed the "suckers" and hypnotized them, principally widows and orphans, to withdraw their money from the savings-banks and send it to the Scheftels sharks. "Red Letter" Sullivan was also referred to as a man with a "Past."
The true facts regarding Mr. Sullivan's connection with the Scheftels company were these: A few months before, he had applied for a position. He was then employed as manager of a Boston stock-brokerage office. He was awarded the job of time-clerk in the stenographers' department.
His job, while employed with the Scheftels company, was to see that the stenographers reported on time, did their work properly and were not paid for any services they did not render. He had little or nothing whatever to do with the correspondence department. He never dictated any answers to letters received by the Scheftels company. Never was he employed in an executive capacity by the Scheftels company. We knew little or nothing of the "Red Letter" title with which he had been decorated. The first we learned of it was in the newspapers after the raid. Investigation revealed that ten years before, while a broker in Chicago, he had issued a weekly market letter which was printed on red paper.
I have thus far not given space to one of the greatest wrongs connected with this disgraceful proceeding—the wrong and damage inflicted upon a multitude of helpless stockholders. While the Special Agent of the Department of Justice and his armed followers were wrecking the Scheftels offices and terrorizing the place, the Scheftels group of mining stocks was being savagely raided on the Curb and enormous losses were inflicted on the public. Thousands of margin accounts were wiped out in less time than it takes to tell of the massacre. Declines in Ely Central, Jumbo Extension, Rawhide Coalition and Bovard Consolidated exceeded $2,000,000. This loss was distributed among approximately fourteen thousand shareholders of record and as many more not of record.
This large army of innocent shareholders was helpless. From such species of confiscation the law affords no relief or recourse, except actual acquittal of the arrested persons, in whom lies the confiding investor's only chance for the market rehabilitation of his securities.