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.
[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.
[4] ] It has been destroyed by the July fire and must be replaced.
[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.
CHAPTER IX
The Wall Street Game
A man who thinks he knows what happened to me in Wall Street, and why it happened, suggests that the New York section of "My Adventures With Your Money" be prefaced with the following:
This is the story of an energetic, self-confident, aggressive, optimistic, enthusiastic, nervy, fearless, imprudent, uncompromising, presumptuous fool.
Maybe he was worthy of a following in that he would cast his own fortunes with those whom he asked to follow him, but withal he was a dangerous leader because he could not see the rents in his own armor and lacked caution, prudence and discretion. He could see a goal ahead and would lead the rush, but always failed to take into his reckoning one circumstance in his youth that left a blot on his escutcheon and placed in the hands of unfair opponents an envenomed weapon ready for use. He failed to see the necessity of making friends of his competitors and of placating his critics as he progressed. Indeed, he reckoned these elements not at all. He made many enemies and few allies. He never compromised. Naturally, he met with disastrous defeat for himself and the loyal ones who placed their faith in him.
I disagree. I was not a fool. I refused to be a knave, and I am not sorry. I have in mind a man of parts who as a stockholder has been doing the dirty work of unscrupulous multimillionaire Wall Street mining promoters for years. Dishonest in his expressed opinions and a sycophant in his every action, the interest of the Wall Street man of power is always his as against that of the unprotected investor. I look upon this man as a vile person. I could not do as he does if my very existence depended upon such conduct. I would rather be out of business and broke for the rest of my life than be he. For me to serve the base purposes of high-class crooks just because they have money and power, would be for me to barter away my soul and lose my peace of mind. I would not sell either for all the money in the world.
Honesty is the best policy. The type of man I have described can not thrive for long. He must evidently suffer total eclipse. The business of this world is founded and builded upon individual integrity. The business man who allows himself to be used to carry out the base purposes of men in high places forfeits the respect of those whom he serves, is forever afterwards mistrusted by them, and loses caste in the very set he tries to gain favor with.
I charge that powerful, dishonest interests on Wall Street found it necessary for selfish reasons that I be put out of business. I declare that they bided their time until newspaper clamor against so-called Get-Rich-Quick promoters had been fostered, aroused and stimulated to a point where citizens became imbued with the idea that all promoters who use the advertising columns of newspapers are crooks. And I aver that when the Government used upon me and my associates its rare power of seizure, search and confiscation, it was with no evidence that any Government statute had been violated. In this and the concluding chapter of "My Adventures with Your Money" I state the facts which I believe prove these statements to the last syllable.