TEAGUE ATTACKS SENATOR NIXON
Mr. Teague was on the job just a week when he cut loose with an attack on United States Senator George S. Nixon of Nevada in a front-page story headed "Goldfield in the Grasp of Wall Street Sharks." The article declared that Senator Nixon, needing $1,000,000 to conclude the merger plans of the Goldfield Consolidated, had got it through B. M. (Berney) Baruch of the New York Stock Exchange, factotum of Thomas F. Ryan, at terrible cost. The loan was made at a time when Goldfield Consolidated was selling around $10 per share. In consideration for the loan, Senator Nixon, acting for the company, gave Mr. Baruch an option on 1,000,000 shares of treasury stock of the Goldfield Consolidated at $7.75 per share. At the time Mr. Teague commenced his onslaught Goldfield Consolidated shares had slumped from $10 to $7.50. Mr. Teague alleged that the market on the stock was being juggled and speculators were being milked. Mr. Baruch, he asserted, had sold the stock down to $7.50 per share on the strength of his option, and was now tempted to break the market, sell the stock short and cover all at much lower prices.
Within two weeks after the publication of Mr. Teague's exposé of the terms of the outstanding option to Mr. Baruch, Goldfield Consolidated shares dropped to under $6. The story evidently had its effect.
The issue of the paper which chronicled the break to $6 contained an editorial headed "Nixon in the Rôle of Brutus." It demanded of Senator Nixon that he stand behind the stock and support the market, and also called upon him to declare the payment of dividends which he had promised to stockholders in his annual report dated two months prior.
People in Nevada began asking, "Who is Teague?" Mr. Teague caused the publisher of the Nevada Mining News, who was Hugh Montgomery, formerly business manager of the Chicago Tribune, to explain over his signature that Mr. Teague had been the political editor of the Baltimore American, later an editorial writer for the Philadelphia North American, and that while on the Philadelphia North American he had crusaded against get-rich-quick swindlers who had headquarters in Philadelphia, with the result that the Storey Cotton Company, the Provident Investment Bureau, the Haight & Freese Company and other bucketshop concerns were put out of business. On evidence furnished by him, it was stated, Mr. Teague secured the conviction by the United States Government of Stanley Frances and Frank C. Marrin as chief conspirators in the $400,000 Storey cotton swindle. Finally, the article said, Mr. Teague was engaged by a far-famed magazine to expose bucketshop iniquities in the United States. This series of articles had appeared in 1906.
The biographical sketch seemed to satisfy readers that they were getting their "dope" straight on Goldfield Consolidated. My name at this time did not appear in connection with the publication except as part of the aggregation of Sullivan & Rice who advertised therein, but I was openly accused by Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield of dictating the policy of the paper. This was a half-truth. My sympathies were with the stockholders of Goldfield Consolidated—that's all.
The story is told in Nevada that when Senator Nixon received the check for $1,000,000 from Berney Baruch, after having executed notes of the Goldfield Consolidated, signed by himself as president and endorsed by him as an individual, he took luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. When the waiter presented the bill the Senator ostentatiously tendered the $1,000,000 check in payment. The waiter put it all over the Senator by politely stating that if he wished to pay his dinner check out of the proceeds, Proprietor Boldt would undoubtedly attend to the matter for him. The Senator was forced to tell the waiter he was "only joking."
The Nevada Mining News appeared to be catching on and was now printing 28,000 copies weekly. Sample copies were sent in every direction with the idea of acquainting investors with its existence.
A day after the issue appeared containing the editorial in which Senator Nixon was accused of playing the rôle of Brutus, I was stopped on the street by the editor of the Reno Gazette, a newspaper which is loyally attached to the Senator and his friends.
"The Senator wants to see you, Rice. Better go over to the bank right away. If you know what's good for you, you'll do it," the Gazette man said.
"I will, like ——!" I replied. "My office is up in the Clay Peters Building, and if the Senator has anything to say to me he can give me a call. I am not one of his sycophants, and I am not going."
I didn't go.
An hour afterward the editor of the Gazette met me again. "Senator Nixon wants to see you at his office right away," he said bluntly.
"About what?" I inquired.
"About articles which have appeared in the Nevada Mining News," he answered.
"Very well," I replied, "I'll send the editor over."
Turning to Mr. Teague, I said, "I have no business with Senator Nixon, and if he has anything to communicate regarding the newspaper you, the editor, are the man for him to say it to."
Mr. Teague went over to the Nixon National Bank and entered the directors' room. My stenographer accompanied him as far as the door and took a seat outside, in the banking room.
As Mr. Teague entered, Senator Nixon jumped to his feet. He looked black as thunder. He quivered with rage.
"Why don't Rice come over here himself, eh? He daren't! I've got his record from boyhood jacketed in these drawers. While I have not read it, I know the story, and I am going to have it published in a bunch of newspapers so the world can know who is holding me up to public scorn!" the Senator spluttered.
In relating what transpired Mr. Teague later informed me that the Senator's wrathful indignation appealed to him as so grotesquely comic he felt like laughing, but he thought it a poor newspaper stunt to incense him further at a moment when it looked as if, by appeasing him, he could tempt him into volubility. Soon Mr. Teague had the Senator at ease, pouring forth a long interview, full of acrimony and affectation, which Mr. Teague promised to publish in the Nevada Mining News.
Mr. Teague reported to me that the Senator construed his pacifying attitude as meaning that I would undoubtedly "listen to reason" and that his threat would most certainly accomplish its purpose.