CAMPAIGN OF THE AMERICAN MINING CONGRESS
"I do not believe that any one law can effect protection to mining investors, nor that the protection afforded through the Post Office Department forbidding the use of mails for fraudulent advertising matter can fully cover that ground. The greater part of mining frauds are perpetrated without the use of the mails.
"The proposed law, in our judgment, is the longest possible step toward preventing mining frauds. A second step has been taken in the form of a publicity law. My belief is that no system of laws, either state or national, will prevent men from gambling in mines more effectually than such laws now prevent gambling in its more common forms. These may restrict and furnish protection to those who are wise enough to open their eyes, but it will be impossible to protect all the fools all the time. It is the purpose of the American Mining Congress, after having secured the enactment of laws providing penalties for fraudulent representations and requiring publicity, to perfect an organization to SECURE EXECUTION of these laws, and also to carry on campaigns of education showing to investors, first, that mining is a legitimate business and not a gamble; second, that mines are found and not made; third, that investments in mining should be made with the same care and prudence exercised by business men when embarking in other business enterprises. . . . The next work of our organization will be along the line of developing some manner of control of corporations by which paid-up capital stock shall represent actual value."
Mr. Callbreath would seem to be one fore-doomed to his own troubles; yet it is clear that he and his organization stand for legitimate mining as opposed to prospect-selling. In strictly accurate phrase, it is the prospect which is found, and the mine which is made and investment cannot properly begin until a body of ore has been blocked out in a proved prospect. Add to the glamor of risk the haze of fraud, and the foregoing will show the nebulous condition of mining investments in relation to mining laws in America to-day.
What we really need is a Bureau of Mines at Washington. Nobody protects the mining investor. Nobody guards the widest open gate into the savings deposits of this country.
The American Mining Congress, it should be stated, had a quasi pre-inaugural pledge from President Taft in favor of a Federal Bureau of Mines. Toward this we have made a start. A bill establishing this Bureau has already passed both the House and the Senate, and bids fair to become a law. But the activities of this new department will be confined to safe-guarding mineworkers. The next step should be to enlarge the province of the Bureau so as to include the supervision of the mining industry for the protection of investors.
It seems quite likely that the states and the nation will need to unite if adequate protection to the investing public is to be expected. But when did state and nation unite to solve a great popular problem? When did section ever unite with section or even resident with nonresident? This is America.