My Adventures with Your Money

wh

ing mines, and I could not imagine where the money was going to come from. Eastern securities markets were in the doldrums. Time money commanded a big premium. Prices for all descriptions of mining stocks had flattened out to almost nothing. Investors were at their wits' end to prot

stringency serves only to strengthen the natural incentive. By the first week in January, 1908, fully

the center of the m

before in the history of mining in the West had there been discovered a quartz deposit so seemingly rich in the yellow metal at or near the surface which at the same time embraced so large an area of auriferous mineralizat

taken from a seam of ore assayed $300,000 to the ton. The Kearns lease on Balloon Hill repo

Also regular shipments were being m

tements made by camp "boosters" that a part of Balloon Hill was "gold with a little rock in

gainst my earlier judgment, I n

e "the real thing,"

t the habit of horse-race players when they lose five races in succession to make a plunge bet on the sixth with a view to getting out even? This panic had impoverished hundreds of thousands. What more natural than that t

saw electrified me. Soon

OLD AT

hese hard-rock miners. More than half a dozen surface openings on Grutt Hill showed the presence of masses of gold-studded quartz. At the intersection of Rawhide's two principal thoroughfares a round of shots in a bold quartz outcrop revealed g

arns Nos. 1 and 2 leases on Balloon Hill were scenes of strikes of such extraordinary richness that they alone would have started a stam

ere maintained through the night to prevent loss from theft. At the Alexander lease on Hooligan Hill th

leton-like gallows-frames dotted the landscape for miles in every direction. The soughing of gasoline engines suggested the brea

ities of investors who put their money into the camp. Less than a half year old, Rawhide

ars for Goldfield to make a

hopes of camp enthusiasts were fulfilled. Here was apparently a fulfillment rather than a promise. At the threshold of the first stage of its devel

ut had lived through the acute period of 1893-96 to

succeeded my earlier skepticism. History is about

COALITION

ing a compact group of eight claims, 160 acres, were owned by a partnership of eigh

was identified. A company, with 3,000,000 shares of the par value of $1 a share,

ock, and were given an option by the company on 250,000 shares, to net the treasury $57,500 for purposes of administration and mine development. The Goodwin company also purchased 1

al owners, and the residue of treasury stock, amoun

. Goodwin & Company amounted to about $15,000. I

l resources to the extent of a single dollar to go through with the deal. The money was raised, first for the Coalition's treasury and later for the vendors, by appealing directly to the speculative instinct of the Amer

and the vendors without any deductions whatsoever. All of the advertising expense and other outlays of pr

system? How

OF GA

in building mining camps and financing mining enterprises. I now realized that in order to make a success of the undertaking befo

he gambling instinct of his fellow men, be his intention

ing industry in the United States? Would you believe that without the gambling instinct t

anced in the past by appealing directly to the gambling instinct. In the decade antedatin

or mining stocks. Speculators (gamblers) who are willing to risk part of their fortune in the hope of ga

men in the United States, according to the best statistical

n be classed as even a prospect worthy of exploration. The prospector who follows his burro into the mountain fastnesses or acr

e mining industry for all time, or until either the fortune-hunting instincts

lofty-pinnacled financiers as Messrs. Rothschild, Rockefeller, Morgan, the Guggenheims and others. My own thought

blers and we allow the captains of

to accomplish big things. Not infrequently publicity will accomplish what neither money nor politic

camp needed publicity. I had nothing to secure publicity with but m

and the public recognizing them to be such. It is one thing for a manufacturer to be himself assured that his article is a better product fo

fore me. How was this to be accomplished? Display advertising in the newspapers is costly and requires larg

dfield. Few news editors have the heart to consign good copy to the waste-pap

o "press-age