The Mining Financial News had always been an entity. It had up to then been assisted financially at periods by mining promotion concerns with which I had been identified and was always a quasi house-organ for this reason. But it invariably preserved a certain independence in its news columns and at least such partial independence of ownership as enabled it to stand on its own bottom.
MORE TRUTH ON THE "MINING FINANCIAL NEWS"
WHEN the Mining Financial News removed to New York Mr. Scheftels used much persuasion to get the owners to transfer title to the Scheftels company. Admittedly, if the Scheftels company could boast ownership of the newspaper at the head of its editorial page, it would be a great feather in the Scheftels cap and might lead investors to think that an organization which could own and publish a first-class, metropolitan newspaper of the Mining Financial News variety must for that reason alone be worthy of financial credit.
Thompson, Towle & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, print a small sized pattern of such a newspaper, called the News Letter. Hayden, Stone & Company, and Paine, Webber & Company, of Boston and New York, are said to have much influence with the Boston News Bureau, a newspaper which features news of mines and mining share markets. The Boston News Bureau at times has printed no display advertisements and at other times has. It is considered by Boston mining-stock brokers who handle the Michigan and Arizona copper securities as a necessary complement to their market literature. Walker's Copper Letter and the Boston Commercial are other examples. Walker's Copper Letter, which carries no advertising, for years has said the very nicest things about copper securities promoted and fathered by important Boston and New York interests. Needless to state, what Walker's Copper Letter, the Boston Commercial and the Boston News Bureau say about the mining propositions of their friends is as a rule based on fact. The point is that promoters find it necessary that news happenings regarding the markets, the securities and the mines in which they are interested be given broad publicity.
It was the idea of the owners of the Mining Financial News, of which B. H. Scheftels, president and 25 per cent. owner of the capital stock of B. H. Scheftels & Company, was not one, that anybody who would supply the sinews while the paper was getting on its feet and was establishing itself, was entitled to all the publicity which the paper could consistently and honestly give it. With this understanding the Scheftels company assumed to take all of the income of the Mining Financial News and pay all of the running expenses until such period as the newspaper might become self-sustaining.
In doing so it performed a stupendous service to the entire mining industry in that the space devoted to the Scheftels enterprises therein did not average more than one-eighth of the whole, and it spent dollars to supply the news of all stocks where other mining financial publications in its field spent pennies.
To make sure that the public understood the Mining Financial News was the quasi house-organ of the Scheftels company many precautions were taken. No application was made for admission to the mails as second-class matter, and the paper was mailed under one and two-cent postage. The name of Harry Hedrick was lifted to the top of the page as vice-president of the corporation owning the Mining Financial News, Mr. Hedrick being openly employed by the Scheftels company as head of its correspondence department. My own name was later placed at the head of the editorial page as editor, the Scheftels company making no bones about my position as absolute head of its publicity department, its promotion enterprises, and of all markets for the Scheftels promotion stocks. The connection had before been established even closer than this. I had formerly been advertised as vice-president of Nat. C. Goodwin & Company of Reno and vice-president of the Rawhide Coalition Mines Company; and the Scheftels company had advertised that Nat. C. Goodwin was its own vice-president.
Further, the Scheftels company announced in its market literature that it had selfish interests in protecting the market for the stock because of the Nat. C. Goodwin affiliation. Occasionally market articles under the signature of B. H. Scheftels were published on the front page of the Mining Financial News. Whenever anybody made a request for the Scheftels Market Letter a copy of the Mining Financial News was quite regularly mailed to him without cost. Articles under the signature of other officers and employees, formerly of Nat. C. Goodwin & Company of Reno and later of B. H. Scheftels & Company of New York, were very frequently printed in the Mining Financial News.
Probably the most important reason why the Scheftels company made this sort of arrangement with the Mining Financial News was that it could do so with only a very small additional outlay. The Scheftels company found it necessary to employ correspondents in all mining and market centers, and the same correspondents could work for both enterprises. Another economic argument was that an enormous saving could be made in telegraph tolls, all dispatches addressed to the newspaper being sent at press rates. These dispatches were always available to the Scheftels corporation and its clientele.
It was the idea of the Scheftels organization that the mining-stock investing public sorely needed right direction and that any brokerage house which led it right would soon be unable to transact all the business that would be offered to it.