GETTING INTO THE GAME
The birth of the $25,000,000 merger, to take in two properties that had not yet matriculated even in the baby-mine class and were actually suspected at the outset by mining men in Goldfield to be wildcats, was the signal for an outpouring in quick succession of Greenwater promotions from all centers, of which the annals of the industry in this country chronicle no counterpart.
At the height of the boom there was promoted out of Los Angeles and New York the Furnace Creek Consolidated Copper Company, with a capitalization of $5,000,000.
From Butte, home of the copper-mining industry, the Furnace Creek Extension Copper Mining Company was promoted, with a capitalization of $5,000,000, and also the Butte & Greenwater, capitalized for $1,500,000. Malcolm Macdonald the "hero" of Montgomery-Shoshone at Bullfrog, hailed from Butte. He it was who interested the Schwab crowd in Greenwater, as he did in Tonopah and Bullfrog.
"Patsy" Clark, the noted mine operator of Spokane, having prospered marketwise with his Furnace Creek Copper Company, promptly headed a new one, the Furnace Valley Copper Company, with a capitalization of $6,250,000. These shares were listed on the Spokane, Butte and Los Angeles Stock Exchanges, but did not appear on the New York Curb.
A San Francisco crowd of brokers and stock-market operators organized the Greenwater Bimetallic Copper Company. "They let her go Gallagher" with a capitalization of $1,000,000.
The C. M. Sumner Investment Securities Company of Denver opened subscriptions for the Greenwater-Death Valley Copper Company. (The title of this company was a play on the name of the Greenwater & Death Valley Copper Company.)
Tonopah citizens, not to be outdone, sallied forth with the Greenwater Calumet incorporated for $1,500,000. Hon. T. L. Oddie, later Governor of Nevada, then of Tonopah, and his brother, C. M. Oddie, followed the lead and headed the Greenwater Arcturus Copper Mining Company, with a capitalization of $3,000,000.
The Consolidated Greenwater Copper Company was fed to the hungry public out of a Pittsburg trough, with general offices in the Keystone Bank Building, and with a high-class Tonopah crowd on the directorate. Eugene Howell, cashier of the Tonopah Banking Corporation, of which United States Senator Nixon was president, was treasurer. John A. Kirby, of Salt Lake City, until recently associated with George Wingfield in the ownership of Nevada Hills, was president.
Arthur Kunze, who had sold the control of the Greenwater & Death Valley Copper Company to Malcolm Macdonald, who in turn had interested the Schwab coterie in the organization, put out a new one called the Greenwater Copper Mining Company, with a capitalization of $5,000,000.
H. T. Bragdon, formerly president of the Goldfield Mining Company, which is one of the integrals of the Goldfield Consolidated, headed the Greenwater Black Jack Copper Mining Company, with a capitalization of $1,000,000.