A scrutiny of the files of the newspapers during the progress of the malodorous Nipissing campaign reveals many strange happenings. It shows, among other things, most remarkable willingness on the part of financial writers for the press of that day to say every possible good word for the manipulators and to feed the public appetite for sensational gossip concerning the gamble.
How this was done is easily understood by those familiar with Wall Street publicity. It was an open secret on the Street at that time that many writers for the press were subjected to strongest temptations to lend their hand to the game of publicity. The columns of the daily newspapers carry in themselves evidence to show that the attempts were not always in vain.
One little story will illustrate the methods employed. The business manager of a widely known and reputable daily financial publication was stopped one day by a man active in Nipissing and told he had been put into 500 shares of the Nipissing stock at the market price when the stock was still selling under $10 and at the time when it was being groomed for the terrific rise which followed and which did not culminate until $33 had been passed. The newspaper man was not above making a turn in the Street, but he objected to taking it that way. He politely turned down the proposition, saying that he did not wish any part of it.
The tempter then went to him on another tack, agreeing to carry the stock for him, so that he would have no risk whatever, at the same time remarking that, in turn for the favor, generous recognition in the news columns of the publication, in support of the Curb campaign, would be expected. Again the newspaper man declined, this time with unmistakable emphasis. He intimated cannily that while he might be taken on he might not be told when to get off, adding that he might be discharged if he fell for anything of that sort.
When the market price toppled from $33 back to around $6 this man's newspaper did not carry any front-page story denouncing the outrage upon the public.
I do not know that the manipulators of Nipissing "got to" his employers, but I do know of some newspapers in New York which pose before the public as embodying the very highest type of newspaper morality and which have at their head, either as part owners or as editors, men who were taken in hand by Wall Street magnates at a period when they were dependent for their daily livelihood on their weekly wage, and were lifted into the millionaire division by being put into "good things." Do you suppose newspapers presided over by those men are going to say a word against the enterprises of their benefactors? Conversely, if their benefactors happen to be bothered by any man whose business purposes run contrary to theirs, how far, do you think, these gentlemen of the press would go in their own news columns to poison the public mind against the enterprise of their patron's enemy?
When I witnessed the climax of W. B. Thompson's marvelously successful campaign in Nipissing on the New York Curb, I was fresh from Goldfield. My recollection is that my chief thought at that time, with the Goldfield Consolidated swindle fresh in my mind, was simply that the Western multi-millionaire highbinder promoter didn't class with his Eastern prototype. Indeed, the two appeared to be of different species, as different as the humble but noisy coyote from the Abyssinian man-eating tiger.
The late Spring of 1907 found me back in Nevada. I selected Reno as a central point for residence and decided to locate there. Eastern stock markets appeared to be beyond my ken. It seemed quite apparent that the Western game, as compared with the Eastern, was one of marbles as against millions. In New York's financial mart I felt like a minnow in a sea of bass. Without millions for capital, Nevada appealed to me as a more likely field of usefulness. I believed in Nevada's mineral resources. Having seen Goldfield evolve from a tented station on the desert with a hundred people into a city of 15,000 inhabitants; from a district with a few gold "prospects" into a series of mines producing the yellow metal at the rate of nearly $1,000,000 a month, I was enthused with the idea that there were other goldfields yet unexplored in the battle-born State and that opportunity was bound to come to me if I pitched my tent on the ground.
THE WONDER MINING-CAMP STAMPEDE
I was back in Nevada just a week when a stampede into a new mining camp called Wonder took place. I was quick to join in the rush. The Philadelphia crowd who owned control of the big Tonopah mine had annexed a property there which they named the Nevada Wonder. It boasted of a big tonnage of low-grade silver-gold ore.