My Adventures with Your Money

by George Graham Rice

Outgoing ore-laden freighters, hauled by ten-span mule teams, made almost impassable the roads connecting the camp with near-by points of ingress. Coming from the opposite direction, heavily laden wagons carrying lumber and supplies, and automobiles crowded to the guards with human freight, blocked the roadways.

Rawhide's publicity campaign from a press-agent's standpoint was a howling success. From the standpoint of the promoter, however, results were mixed. Nat. C. Goodwin & Company were enabled to make more than a financial stand-off of their promotion of the Rawhide Coalition Mines Company, but they did not profit to the extent they might have, had the times been propitious.

I was not long in discovering that my first deductions, made at the inception of the Rawhide boom, namely, that the country was in no financial mood to consider favorably the claims to recognition of a new mining camp, were right, and that it would have been better had the birth of Rawhide been delayed for a period or until the country could catch its financial breath again. Crowds came to Rawhide, but few with money. Flattering as was the extent of the inrush, it was easy to see that if the publicity campaign had been suppressed for a while, the result in harvest would have been immeasurably greater. Had financial conditions been right, the effort to give the camp "scientific" publicity would undoubtedly have been crowded with results for "the inside" of a character that would have meant much larger sums of money in the bank.

Nat. C. Goodwin & Company recognized, too, that they had been working at a great disadvantage by attempting to finance a great mining enterprise at so great a distance from Eastern financial centers as Reno. We were hardly a match for the Eastern promoter who, because of the handy location of his offices, was enabled to keep in close personal contact with his following.

The usual happening in mining took place at Rawhide. The extraordinary rich surface deposits opened up into vast bodies of medium and low-grade ore at depth. Rawhide's one requirement appeared to be a railroad, and a milling plant of 500 or 600 tons a day capacity. It was decided that I should come East and attempt to finance the company for deep mine development, mill and railroad construction, and also to go through with the deal made with the vendors of the controlling interest. The time period for payments had been extended for Nat. C. Goodwin & Company, and the option to purchase was now valued by the Goodwin company at a fortune.

In New York, over the signature of Nat. C. Goodwin the firm for a while, under my direction, conducted a display advertisement newspaper campaign in favor of the issue, which was now listed on the New York Curb. Hayden, Stone & Company, bankers, of Boston and New York, who have since successfully financed the Ray Consolidated and Chino copper companies, undertook to send their engineer to Rawhide to make an examination of the property with a view to financing the company for railroad and milling equipment amounting to upward of a million dollars. Under the impetus of this news and the Nat. C. Goodwin advertising campaign the market price of the shares shot up to $1.46, or a valuation in excess of four million dollars for the property.

A few weeks later a sharp market break occurred. Some one got the news before Nat. C. Goodwin & Company did that the million-dollar financing proposition had been acted upon adversely by the engineer. The company had done no systematic underground development work. An enormous amount of work had been done, but it was accomplished under the leasing system. The leasers, who, because of lack of milling facilities, were unable to dispose of a profit of ore that assayed less than $40 per ton, had bent all of their efforts toward bringing to the surface high-grade shipping ore and had made no effort at all to block out and put into sight the known great tonnages of medium and low-grade. Engineers take nothing for granted and this one reported that the proposition of spending a million dollars should be turned down because a commensurate tonnage had not been blocked out and put in sight.

To this day the camp has struggled along without adequate milling facilities, but has been practically self-sustaining. From a physical standpoint the mines to-day are conceded to be of great promise. The company is honestly and efficiently managed. The president, from the day of incorporation to this hour, has been E. W. King, formerly president of the Montana Society of Mining Engineers, a director of a number of Montana banks, and recognized as one of the ablest gold-mine managers of the West. M. Scheeline, president of the Scheeline Banking & Trust Company of Reno, who ranks as the oldest and most conservative banker in the State of Nevada, has been treasurer from the outset.

The history of Rawhide is still in the making and its final chapter has not yet been written by any manner of means. Nor is it within the pale of possibility that such latent productive potentialities as have been established at Rawhide can long remain in great part dormant.

In Wall Street Nat. C. Goodwin & Company's deal with the venders of the control of Rawhide Coalition was later financed to a successful finish. It was done by appealing to the speculative instinct of that class of investors who habitually gamble in mining shares. The effort to finance the mining company itself, to a point where it might take rank with the great dividend-paying gold mines of the West, was not so successful.