My Adventures with Your Money

by George Graham Rice

THE STORY OF GOLDFIELD CONSOLIDATED

Rumors were rife in Goldfield of a merger of mammoth proportions which was said to be on the tapis. Great as were the gold discoveries in camp, they did not justify the terrific advances being chronicled in the stock-market, and it was apparent that something extraordinary must be hatching to justify the market's action.

George Wingfield, who had enjoyed a meteoric career, rising within five years from a faro dealer in Tonopah to the ownership of control in the Mohawk and many other mining companies and to part ownership of the leading Goldfield bank, John S. Cook & Company, which was then credited with having $7,000,000 on deposit, was said to be engineering the deal. The names of the properties were not given, nor the figures. It occurred to me that in any merger that was made the Jumbo and Red Top, because of their central location, must be included. I sought out Charles D. Taylor, who with his brother, H. L. Taylor, and Capt. J. B. Menardi, owned the control of these properties. He asked $2.50 per share for his stock and that of his partners—all or none. Mr. Taylor had walked into the camp as a prospector. Most of his nights were spent at the gaming tables, and he was reported to be an easy mark for the professionals. His losses were constant and heavy. I put Mr. Sullivan on his trail. Mr. Sullivan reported to me that Mr. Wingfield was hobnobbing with Mr. Taylor.

"Get an option on these properties from Taylor and be quick," I told Mr. Sullivan.

Next morning I met Mr. Sullivan. He held in his hands 20,000 shares of Jumbo, selling at $1.75 per share on the Goldfield Stock Exchange.

"I won it in a poker game last night with Taylor and Wingfield," he said. "I have an oral option on the property good for three days at $2.50, but if you leave it to me, I'll win these properties from him playing cards."

I did not see Mr. Sullivan again for a week. Next I heard of him he had "fallen off the water-wagon" and was reported to be celebrating the event in Tonopah. While Mr. Sullivan was "kidding" himself about his poker-playing ability, Mr. Wingfield had come to terms with Mr. Taylor and had bought the control of Jumbo and Red Top at an average price of $2.10 per share. That explained Mr. Sullivan's lapse. However, I blamed myself. Mr. Sullivan was no match for Mr. Wingfield. In any game from stud-poker to marketing mining stock Mr. Wingfield can outwit, outmaneuver and outgeneral a hundred like "Larry."

Both companies had been capitalized for 1,000,000 shares. The sale required that a fortune be paid over. Mr. Wingfield paid a small sum down, and Mr. Taylor placed the stock of both of these companies in escrow in the John S. Cook & Company bank, the balance to be paid a month later.

The purchase of control of the Jumbo and Red Top by the firm of Wingfield and Nixon signalized the beginning of a stock-market campaign for higher prices that stands unprecedented for audacity and intensity in the history of mining-stock speculation in this country since the great boom of the Comstock lode in 1871-1872.

The market for all listed Goldfield stocks was made to boil and sizzle day in and day out until Jumbo and Red Top had been ballooned from $2 to $5 per share, Laguna from 40 cents to $2, Goldfield Mining from 50 cents to $2, and Mohawk from $5 to $20. Within three weeks the advance in market price of the issued capitalization of this quintet alone represented the difference between $8,000,000 and $26,500,000.

A few days before top prices were reached, it was officially announced that the merger of Mohawk, Red Top, Jumbo, Goldfield Mining and Laguna into the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company had been made on the basis of $20 for each outstanding share of Mohawk, $5 for Red Top, $5 for Jumbo, $2 for Goldfield Mining, and $2 for Laguna. It was also given out that the promoters, Wingfield and Nixon, had allotted themselves $2,500,000 in stock of the merged companies as a promoters' fee. Right on top of this came an announcement that the Combination mine had been turned into the merger for $4,000,000 in cash and stock, and it was learned that go-betweens had made a profit of $1,000,000 on the deal by securing an option on the property for $3,000,000.

In short, a merger was put through of properties and stocks, the issued capitalization of which was selling in already inflated markets on the day the merger was conceived for $11,000,000, at a valuation of $33,000,000, and in addition the promoters received a $2,500,000 bonus. Had the properties been merged on the basis of their selling prices three weeks prior, the equivalent value of the 3,500,000 shares of merger stock would have been a fraction above $3. As it stood, under the ballooning process, the market value was $10, which was the par.

At the time of the merger these were the conditions that ruled at the mines:

The Mohawk, appraised at $20,000,000, had produced under lease in the neighborhood of $8,000,000, of which less than $2,000,000 had found its way into the treasury of the Mohawk Mining Company, the balance going to the leasers. The leasers had "high-graded" the property to a fare-you-well, and less than $1,000,000 worth of high-grade remained in sight, although it was conceded on every side that the leasers had not attempted, nor were they able during the period of their leasehold, to block out systematically and put into sight all of the ore in the mine. Large, but indefinite, prospective value therefore attached to Mohawk in addition to the tonnage in sight.

The Laguna, for which $2,000,000 had been paid in stock, did not have a pound of ore in sight, and had cost Wingfield and Nixon less than $100,000.

Goldfield Mining, scene of a sensational production during the early days of the camp, appraised at $2,000,000 more, had fizzled out as a producer.

Jumbo, taken in for $5,000,000, for a year previous had produced little or no ore, most of the time being exhausted by the management in sinking a deep shaft, and it had less than $500,000 in sight.

Red Top, valued at another $5,000,000, had in excess of $2,000,000 worth of medium grade ore blocked out.

Wingfield and Nixon were also heavily interested in Columbia Mountain, Sandstorm, Blue Bull, Crackerjack, Red Hills, Oro, Booth, Milltown, Kendall, May Queen, and other Goldfield stocks. No sooner did the five stocks forming the merger begin to show such startling market advances than the ballooning tendency manifested itself in Wingfield and Nixon's miscellaneous list, and all of them showed phenomenal gains. Soon the entire list of Goldfield, Tonopah, Manhattan, Bullfrog, and other Nevada mining securities listed on the San Francisco Stock Exchange and traded in on the exchanges and curbs of the country, felt the force of the terrific rises, and sympathetically they skyrocketed to unheard-of levels.

To convey an idea as to how far the prices of these stocks were moved up beyond their intrinsic worth, as a result of the ballooning process of the merger, I give some comparisons.

Columbia Mountain sold during the boom at above $1.50; it is now selling at 5 cents. Blue Bull, Crackerjack, Oro, Booth, Red Hills, Milltown, Kendall, Conqueror, Hibernia, Ethel, Kewanas, Sandstorm and May Queen sold at an average of 75 cents during the boom; they are now selling at an average of less than 5 cents. A hundred other Goldfield securities, which were in eager demand at the zenith of the spectacular movement at prices ranging from 50 cents to $2.50 can now be purchased at from 1 to 5 cents per share, while many others that were hopefully bought by an over-wrought public at all sorts of figures are now not quoted at all.