When the excitement was at fever-heat in Goldfield over the stupendous rises in market value of Goldfield securities which were being chronicled hourly, news came to town of the successful flotation in New York of the Greenwater & Death Valley Mining Company. The capitalization was 3,000,000 shares of the par value of $1 each. The stock had been underwritten at $1 a share by New York and Pittsburg Stock Exchange houses, had been listed on the New York Curb, and had climbed to around $5.50, or a valuation for the property of $16,500,000. Among the officers of this company were M. R. Ward, brother-in-law of Charles M. Schwab; T. L. Oddie, now Governor of Nevada, and Malcolm Macdonald, later president of the Nevada First National Bank of Tonopah.
Greenwater is situated about 150 miles south of Goldfield, across the State line in California. No one ever went to or fro without passing through Goldfield. If there was a Greenwater boom, how was it that we in Goldfield, who were in touch with all Nevada mining affairs, did not know about it? Goldfield promoters soon began to give attention. Shortly they caught the infection. A stampede from Goldfield into Greenwater ensued. In fact, people flocked to Greenwater from every direction. A bunch of Tonopah money-getters, headed by the indomitable Malcolm Macdonald, were grabbing the money on Greenwaters in New York, and Goldfield was not in the play.
The reports that came from Greenwater as a result of the first stampede from Goldfield were of doubtful variety. Greenwater & Death Valley was described as a raw prospect not worth over 10 cents per share. Goldfield people shook their heads. There was no gainsaying the fact, however, that Greenwater & Death Valley appeared to be a giant success in the Eastern stock markets. Charles M. Schwab was reported to be behind the flotation of Greenwater & Death Valley. Montgomery-Shoshone and Tonopah Extension, two other Schwab enterprises, were selling at hundreds of per cent. profit in the stock markets. The fact that Mr. Schwab was interested in the camp was an argument that appealed with great force to Nevada promoters, for the fraternity had learned to attach just as much significance to having a market as to having a mine before commencing promotion operations.
The Sullivan Trust Company not having had a failure of any kind on the market, I hesitated to commit the trust company to any issue in the new camp. Not to be entirely out of it, however, I sent our engineer, "Jack" Campbell, into the district to report on all the properties.
News came thick and fast from the New York market as to the success of the Greenwaters in the East. Furnace Creek Copper Company, originally promoted by "Patsy" Clark of Spokane at 25 cents per share, with a million-share capitalization, was reported to be getting the benefit of Mr. Clark's personal market handling on the New York Curb, and the shares soon reached a high quotation of $5.50. John W. Gates had been let in by "Patsy" at around 50 cents and was reported to have unloaded 400,000 shares at all sorts of prices from $1 up to $5.50, and down again.
On the heels of this advance came word of the successful promotion of the United Greenwater Company, with C. S. Minzesheimer & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, acting as fiscal agents for the company. The promoters were named as Malcolm Macdonald, Donald B. Gillies and Charles M. Schwab. J. C. Weir, the New York mining-stock broker, who was conducting through the mails a nation-wide market-letter campaign in favor of Greenwater, was reported to have sold 150,000 or 200,000 shares at the subscription price of $1. The offering was said to have been oversubscribed twice. The price then shot up to $2.50 on the New York Curb. The market boiled.
Philadelphia was reported to be Greenwater-mad. When United Greenwater had reached $1.50 on its way up and Greenwater & Death Valley had passed the $4 point, the Schwab crowd announced the formation of the Greenwater Copper Mines & Smelters Company to consolidate the Greenwater & Death Valley and United Greenwater companies. This new parent company was capitalized for $25,000,000, with 5,000,000 shares of the par value of $5 each, and the East was reported to be eating up the new stock "blood raw." The president of this company was Charles R. Miller, who was president of the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad Company, and the vice-president was M. R. Ward, the redoubtable brother-in-law of Charles M. Schwab. The directorate included Mr. Schwab; John W. Brock, who represented Philadelphia interests on the directorate of the very successful Tonopah Mining Company; Malcolm Macdonald, the champion "lemon" peddler of Nevada; Frank Keith, general manager of the Tonopah Mining Company, and others. It was a "swell" directorate.
It was learned that the stock of the new company had been underwritten by New York Stock Exchange houses, principally those with Philadelphia and Pittsburg branches where the Schwab crowd was influential, at $1.80 per share, and that large blocks were being sold to the public at up to $3.25 on the New York Curb, a valuation for the "properties" of more than $16,000,000.
GETTING INTO THE GAME
The birth of the $25,000,000 merger, to take in two properties that had not yet matriculated even in the baby-mine class and were actually suspected at the outset by mining men in Goldfield to be wildcats, was the signal for an outpouring in quick succession of Greenwater promotions from all centers, of which the annals of the industry in this country chronicle no counterpart.