A mining partnership between Nat. C. Goodwin, the actor, and Dan Edwards had been formed at Reno a little before this time. Dan Edwards was a hustling young mining man who had engaged in the business of "turning" properties to promoters. In August, when Goldfield Consolidated was selling around $7.50, Mr. Edwards had asked me to give him a good market tip. I told him to sell Goldfield Consolidated short.
When it hit $6.50 around October 1st he saluted me thus, "Got to hand it to you. I have been trying to make my new firm stick, but it don't seem to work. I guess I don't know how to handle the situation in times like this. How would you like to join us?"
"How much capital have you got?" I asked.
"Five thousand of Nat's money," he answered.
"Get another man with $5,000," I said, "and I'll talk to you."
A young Easterner engaged in mining, named Warren A. Miller, was stopping at the Riverside Hotel. Within an hour Mr. Edwards had him lined up. A week later Nat. C. Goodwin & Company was incorporated with Nat. C. Goodwin president, Mr. Miller vice-president and general manager, and Dan Edwards secretary. The new corporation engaged to give me a salary for showing it how and an interest for other substantial considerations.
Within a fortnight the corporation of Nat. C. Goodwin & Company was making money, not as promoters, however, but as demoters. Instead of at first promoting a mining company and earning its profits on the constructive side of the market, it turned the tables and made money on the destructive side—of Goldfield Consolidated.
During the first half of 1907 I had felt the country's speculative pulse from day to day with the promotion literature of the Sullivan & Rice corporation. Although its new mining company, the Rich Gulch Wonder, had boasted of a very high-class directorate and the property was conceded to have merit, the public refused to enthuse. Instead of subscribing for large blocks, scattering purchases had been made, and money in dribs and drabs had been grudgingly paid over. The Wonder mining camp boom had "died abornin'." Investors seemed to have had enough of mining-stock speculation for a while.
Prices of listed Nevada issues were crumpling like seersuckers in the rain. By this time the awful mess that had been made of Goldfield affairs through the mistakes of Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield had resulted in a depreciation in market value of more than $100,000,000 in listed Nevada issues. This in itself was sufficient to kill a world of buying sentiment.
You have to be a rainbow-chaser by nature to be a successful promoter, but even I, despite my chronic optimism, began to feel the influence of what was transpiring. I made a flip-flop and turned bear on the whole market.