THE MULATOS MINE SALTING SCHEME
All sorts of methods of salting mines, even to the injection, with a hypodermic needle, of strong solutions of mineral salts into a mining engineer's carefully sealed sample bags, have been worked. The most honest, careful, and expert mining engineers have been deceived time and again, and salted right under their own eyes. Even a bland Chinee may be fooled. Take the instance of the Mulatos Mine: The bunch of Chinamen who proposed to buy it insisted on a mill-run test on fresh-mined ore, taken out BY THEMSELVES, for a five-days' run. They were not taking any chances, in their own belief. The owners of the mine, however—so runs the story—had a platform of plank arranged above the timbers at the top of the drift where the Chinamen brought out their ore cars. On this planking a man lay face downward where he could see each ore car that passed. He had a rather hard life for five days on the sandwiches and water which he took up there with him, but he managed to drop a pinch or so of nice gold dust into every car of ore that came trundling under him. The mill-run was an entire success from the viewpoint of the sellers, although not from that of the buyers.
There is no working law, let us repeat, which actually protects the investor against this sort of thing, nor which always protects even the promoter, though he be honest. The game is risky all the way along the line, in spite of state laws against the heinous crime of salting, which latter hath as yet by no means lost its savor.