Nat Goodwin's Book

by Nat. C. Goodwin

Immediately after my unfortunate alliance with Brewer I formed an association with two men who, with me, believed in going at the mining game legitimately. By this I mean it is legitimate to buy options on prospects and properties which look good and place them on the market after they have been carefully examined by mining experts. Placing them on the market involves forming stock companies in each of which we must have the controlling interest. If the properties turn out well we continue to develop them and work them for all they're worth. This was the general idea of our new association.

I was the financial backer. One of my partners was a practical miner who knew nothing about publicity work nor the art of promotion. The other was a young man who had gone stranded in Reno and whom I had known slightly in Goldfield as one of the boldest operators in that roaring camp. He had failed for $3,000,000 in Goldfield (mentioned by way of corroboration of this young gentleman's boldness!), and then paid his creditors 100 cents on the dollar, quitting the camp broke.

In due time and with no little formality was launched the Nat C. Goodwin Company, mine operators with headquarters in Reno. Presently we secured control of a valuable property in the new mining town Rawhide. The stock was worth most in Rawhide itself. All the mining experts there knew the property. Thousands of shares were sold to the inhabitants of the new mining camp who were loudest in their boasts that we would soon prove that our property was the peer of the great Goldfield consolidated.

So confident were we that we had a really valuable property that we determined to go to New York and let the public in on the ground floor. With no difficulty at all we listed our stock on the New York Curb and with no manipulation that stock soared from 25 cents to $1.50 per share, almost over night. All we had to do with it was publishing the mining experts' reports.

The gentlemen who call themselves brokers on the Curb banded themselves together and conspired to work our ruin. In the end they succeeded.

But before they did we managed to mount fairly high in the business; our legitimate methods and the unflagging industry of my partners resulting in nine months in our acquiring the controlling interest in Rawhide Coalition, owning outright another property in Rawhide, one in Bovard, one in Fairview, one in Goldfield and the Ely Central. The purchase price of Rawhide Coalition was $700,000 and of Ely Central, $1,075,000. We had fine offices in New York in which we employed one hundred and twenty-five stenographers! There we edited and published a weekly newspaper, not to mention a daily and weekly market letter. Each had a circulation of 60,000 copies weekly.

This was the time that the big promoters of Wall Street decided we had been prosperous long enough. They "raided" our stocks—an interesting process for which there is not room here. Their raids were followed by the publication in two of the daily newspapers of the fact that one of my partners had a Past. It was a youthful past—the event happened back in 1894, just sixteen years before—but they dug it up to bludgeon the market with.

What of it? In Nevada it's what a man is—not what he was—that counts.

They said our "mines" and "prospects" were fakes, my partners impostors and I a willing tool. A burly police captain came to my apartments and threatened me with all sorts of punishments unless I agreed to pay for "protection." I was fearfully upset and insisted that my attorney examine the books of the company to assure me that everything was being conducted honestly. I knew the properties in Nevada were all we claimed for them. I had spent months there and had panned gold on every yard of these properties. My attorney made a rigid examination of the books and assured me that everything was strictly legitimate.

Then it was I determined to continue for I knew we had the goods and had been "on the level." But the market looters were inexorable and showed no mercy. They broke our stock in one day from $1.50 to 60 cents. My partner, the man with a youthful Past, stood by his guns. Instead of allowing the stock to tumble and against my advice, he bought every share as fast as it was offered with the result that we found ourselves owners of hundreds of thousands of shares of stock bought at prices ranging from $1.50 downwards which we could not readily dispose of again, because of the slanderous utterances of the destroyers.