"How far do you intend to go?" he gasped.
"Well," said I, "how can you lose? Your friend, Frank Golden, president of the Nye & Ormsby County Bank, has accepted the presidency of the company at our request, and the other officers we have secured are all representative citizens of this community, and, besides, the Nye & Ormsby County Bank has agreed to receive subscriptions. Can you beat that for a layout? Never in my experience in this camp, with all the promotions I have advertised, has the public had a dish quite so palatable offered to it—a producing mine, in the first place; a high-class directorate headed by a bank president, in the second place; and a real bank as selling agent, in the third and last place. And it will go like wildfire!"
I labored all that night in my advertising agency on some strongly-worded advertising copy recommending to the public the purchase of stock in Jumping Jack Manhattan. In the morning I induced Sullivan to advance $10,000 to pay the advertising bills. The copy was dispatched by first mail to the important daily newspapers of the country, with instructions to publish on the day following receipt of copy.
Within six days all of the advertising had appeared. The effect was magical. The display advertisements assisted the brokers in the various cities, who had asked for reservations of the stock, to dispose of their allotments in a few days. Within ten days after the initial offering of the promotion by telegraph to the Eastern brokers, Sullivan showed me telegraphic orders for 1,280,000 shares of Jumping Jack Manhattan stock at 25 cents a share, an oversubscription of 280,000 shares. Before the stock certificate books were printed and delivered from the local printing office, we were, in fact, oversold.
That week and the next, Sullivan gave me carte blanche to speculate in local mining stocks with partnership money, and within a fortnight we had made another small fortune from Manhattan securities. These were advancing in price on the San Francisco Stock Exchange by leaps and bounds.
I recall one overnight winning that we made, amounting to about $12,000, which came so easy I felt almost ashamed to take the money. Manhattan Seyler-Humphrey stock, promoted by Patrick, Elliott & Camp at 25 cents per share, was now listed on the Goldfield and San Francisco stock exchanges. It was in fair demand at 30 cents.
A dispatch reached Goldfield from New York, purporting to be signed by John W. Gates, reading as follows:
"At what price will you give me an option good 48 hours on 200,000 shares of Manhattan Seyler-Humphrey? Answer to Hotel Willard, Washington, to-night."
This was to Patrick, Elliott & Camp. Within half an hour a half-dozen similar messages reached other Goldfield brokers.
I happened to be in the office of Patrick, Elliott & Camp when the first telegram was received, and I lost no time in going out on the street and annexing all the Goldfield offerings of the stock at current quotations. At first Lou Bleakmore, manager for Patrick, Elliott & Camp, "smelled a rat," but when he learned that I was buying the stock he became convinced that I believed John W. Gates really wanted some Seyler-Humphrey, and he shot buying orders for his own firm into San Francisco.