Even the Chinese dabble in stocks. Some of these are able to read the reports for themselves, while others ask white men to tell them the price of the stocks in which they are dealing. There was an old fellow who, for a long time was dealing in the stocks of the Belcher and the Segregated Belcher mines. The Belcher he called the “big Belch,” and the Segregated Belcher the “little Belch.” Crowding his way up to a bulletin-board he would say to some by-stander: “How much-ee to-day catch-ee big Belch?” Being told, and finding the stock up, he would say: “Bully for big Belch!”
Next he would ask: “How much-ee to day catch-ee little Belch?”
Finding that stock a “little off” he would say:
“Belly bad! belly bad! Little Belch too much-ee all time, bust me up!”
In passing the bulletin-boards one catches scraps of conversation like the following: “Didn’t I tell you so? I have said so all the time.” “I saw a man this morning who is thoroughly reliable, and he says”—“Yes, it may be a buy, but, confound it, I get sold so often!”—“I knew they would all be up to-day”—“Now you raise the money; I tell you it is just as I say. I have points that”—“Dealing in stocks with these rings is just like playing poker with a man who knows both hands”—“They have it awful in the”—“They haven’t got an ounce afore in the”[the”]—“I shan’t sell yet. Stocks have only begun to go up.” “I wish I had sold yesterday.” “Well I have laid up my treasures above, where the bulls and bears can never come.”—The last speaker is generally a newspaper reporter or some other such holy person, who is seen standing aloof from the ungodly worshippers at the shrine of Mammon.
The amount of “stock talk” heard in every saloon, public-house and shop, and on every street, is at times enough to render an easy-going Granger from one of the eastern or middle States, to whom it is all Greek a raving maniac or a drivelling idiot. The sidewalks on C street, the principal business street of Virginia City, are generally so thronged that it is a difficult matter to pass along them, except at the same slow pace at which the mass of the pedestrians is moving; therefore at times when there is an excitement in regard to stocks there are frequent blockades in front of the offices of the brokers, and persons wishing to pass are obliged to take to the streets. At times the police are obliged to clear passages through the throngs, as men become so interested in their stocks as to have neither eyes nor ears for anything else, and ladies and children find themselves unable to pass.
CHAPTER LIV.
CURIOUS SPECULATIONS IN STOCK.
When there is a grand upward movement in stocks, and all is excitement among the dealers, from the big operator worth millions, down to the little curb-stone broker whose fortune is yet to be made, early and reliable information in regard to what is going on in the lower-levels is valuable and is always in demand.
On the Comstock there is a class of men, for whom there is no distinctive name, whose business it is to find out all that can in any way be learned in regard to the condition of the mines, and report the same to the dealers in stocks by whom they are employed. These mining reporters, they might be called—as a class, are shrewd and eternally vigilant. They must always keep their employers, who are generally in San Francisco, well informed in regard to the condition of the Comstock mines at all times when a “strike” is anticipated or reported in any particular mine; it is expected of them, by hook or by crook, to ascertain exactly in what part of the mine it was made or is about to be made. If made at all, they are to find out the value of the strike, probable extent of the body of ore found, its richness, direction, and many other things not easily ascertained.
When a strike is reported made in a mine and all its gates and doors are closed, the strictest secresy enjoined on all the workmen, and admittance refused to all “outsiders,” then is the time for the mining reporter to display his genius or give up his trade. By bribing workmen or by getting a man of his own into the mine to work, or in some other way he must find out what he wants to know.