My Adventures with Your Money

by George Graham Rice

The Porcupine gold field, according to Herron, is one of the wonders of the age. One prospector has stripped the vein for a distance of fifty feet and polished it in places, so that gold is visible all along. His trench is three feet deep and he asks $200,000 cash for it as it stands.

A party of Alaskans offered the owner of this claim $50,000 a shot for all the ore that could be blown out with two sticks of dynamite, but he refused.

Press-work like the foregoing is more than likely to separate the public wrongfully from its money.

The item serves as an excellent example of one of "the impalpable and cunningly devised tricks that fool the wisest and which landed you" that I promised, at the beginning of "My Adventures with Your Money," to lay bare. I said in my foreword:

Are you aware that in catering to your instinct to gamble, methods to get you to part with your money are so artfully and deftly applied by the highest powers that they deceive you completely? Could you imagine it to be a fact that in nearly all cases where you find you are ready to embark on a given speculation, ways and means that are almost scientific in their insidiousness have been used upon you?

The New York Sun article says it is estimated that $25,000,000 will be gleaned this year from the Dome mine in Porcupine. The truth is, no engineer has ever appraised the ore in sight in the entire mine, according to any statements yet issued, at anything like half of that amount gross, and the mine itself can not possibly produce so much as $100,000 this year.

A mill of 240 tons per diem capacity has been ordered by the management and it is expected will be in operation by October first, but no sooner.[2] The ore, according to H. P. Davis's Porcupine Hand Book, an accepted authority, "has been stated to average from $10 to $12 a ton." The lowest estimated cost of mining and milling is $6. A fair estimate of profits would, therefore, be $5 per ton, not allowing for any expenses of mine-exploration in other directions on the property or other incidental outlay, which will undoubtedly amount to $1 per ton on the production. The production of 240 tons of ore per day at $4 per ton net profit would mean net returns of $28,800 per month. If the mill runs throughout October, November and December of this the company will "glean" $86,400 during 1911, and not $25,000,000, as the New York Sun article suggests.[3]

How great an exaggeration the New York Sun's $25,000,000 estimate is may be gathered from the statement that to glean $25,000,000 in one year from any mine where the ore assays $11 on an average, and the cost of mining, milling and new development is $7, the gross value of the tonnage in the mine that is milled during the one year must be at least $53,571,000. Further, to reduce such a quantity of that quality of ore to bullion in a single year would require the erection of mills of 17,260 tons per day capacity. As mentioned, the actual per diem capacity of the mill now under construction is 240 tons.[4]

Undoubtedly the Dome mining company flotation will soon be made and the public will be "allowed" to subscribe for the shares or buy them on the New York Curb at a figure agreeable to the promoters. This seems certain, for otherwise why this raw press-work?[5]

The article says that a number of Alaskans offered money at the rate of $50,000 a shot for all the ore that could be blown out with two sticks of dynamite, but were refused. There never was a statement made by any wild-catter now behind prison bars in any literature I ever saw that could approach this one in flagrant misrepresentation of facts. All the ore that could be displaced in one shot with two sticks of dynamite would not exceed four tons. In order to repay the investor it would be necessary, therefore, that this ore average better than $12,500 per ton. The New York Sun's story says that notwithstanding this offer the owner was willing to sell the whole property for $200,000. Imagine this: There are four tons of rock on the property worth $12,500 per ton, for a distance of 50 feet the gold shimmers on the surface, and there are hundreds of thousands of tons of rock in the same kind of formation on the same property, but still the owner is willing to dispose of all of it for $200,000! The statement is preposterous and outrageous. It is the kind described by De Quincey as "all carved from the carver's brain."