THE COLLAPSE OF GREENWATER
THE offering turned out to be a "bloomer," the first the Sullivan Trust Company had met with. E. A. Manice & Company did not dispose of as many as 30,000 shares. Neither did the stock offered later by the Sullivan Trust Company through brokers in other cities sell freely. Just at the moment when we announced our offering of Furnace Creek South Extension the Greenwater boom began to crack.
Oscar Adams Turner, who promoted the Tonopah Mining Company of Nevada, which has paid $8,000,000 in dividends on a capitalization of $1,000,000, is responsible for the early bursting of the bubble. Mr. Turner had invested in the Greenwater camp on the reports of an engineer. He organized the Greenwater Central Copper Company. Then he decided that it was advisable for him to take a look at the property for himself. He visited Greenwater. Two hours after arriving in camp he sent a telegram to Philadelphia reading substantially as follows:
Stop offering Greenwater Central. Make no more payments on the property. Do not use my name any further. There is nothing here.
The tenor of the message leaked out. Indiscriminate selling ensued by a noted bank crowd in Philadelphia who were loaded up with Greenwaters. Others followed suit. The market became sick.
At the first sign of a market setback inquiries began to pour into Nevada from all over the East, and noted copper experts from Montana, Arizona, California and other points came piling into the Greenwater camp to examine the properties. Soon a chorus of adverse opinion found its way into every financial center. Market values crumbled as rapidly as they had risen. Paper fortunes evaporated in thin air.
I make a conservative statement when I say that the American public sank fully $30,000,000 in Greenwater in less than four months.
Not all of the Greenwater promotions were over-subscribed—not half, not a quarter—and the American public may well congratulate itself that the boom "busted" when only approximately $30,000,000 had passed into the pockets of the promoters.
What of the camp?
It exists no more. All mine development work ceased long ago. There are green-stained carbonates on the surface, but there are no copper ore-bodies. The "mines" have been dismantled of their machinery and other equipment, and not even a lone watchman remains to point out to the desert-wayfarer the spot on which was reared the monumental mining-stock swindle of the century. Every dollar invested by the public is lost. The dry, hot winds of the sand-swept desert now chant the requiem.