Читать книгу My Adventures with Your Money - George Graham Rice - Страница 28

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Mining-stock speculators and investors at a distance who responded to the red-hot publicity campaign which marked those early days of Goldfield rolled up enormous profits, and I made no mistake. Terrific losses came eighteen months later, as a result of a madness of mining-stock speculation which followed on the heels of the great Mohawk boom and the merger of various Goldfield producers into a $36,000,000 corporation. This was taken advantage of by "wild-catters" in every big city of the country, and the public was fleeced to a finish. But of this more and a plenty later.

In those early days my agency advertised Goldfield Laguna at 15 cents per share in order to finance the company for mine operations. Within a year thereafter Goldfield Laguna sold at $2 a share on the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and was absorbed by the Goldfield Consolidated at that figure. And there were many others which duplicated or exceeded the performance of Laguna.

At the time of which I tell, when Laguna was promoted at 15 cents, Goldfield was about a year old. A population of about 1,500 had gathered there from all sections of the country. There were mining experts from Salt Lake, San Francisco and Colorado, and miners from every part of the Western mining empire; saloon-keepers from Alaska and Mexico; real-estate brokers from practically every Western State and a scattering of "tin-horns." It was about as motley a gathering as one could find anywhere in the world, but compositely they were a sturdy lot.

The camp was enjoying its maiden boom. In sixty days real-estate values had jumped from $25 for a lot on Main Street to $5,500. Roughly constructed business houses banked the main thoroughfare for two or three blocks. The heavy traffic incident to hauling in supplies from Tonopah had ground the dirt of the street into an impalpable mass of dust to the depth of fifteen inches, and the unchecked winds of the desert, sweeping from the Sierra Nevadas to the high uplifts east of Goldfield, whipped the dust into blinding clouds that daily made life almost unendurable.

Practically the entire population was housed in tents that dotted the foothills. At night-time these presented the appearance of an army encampment. Provisions were scarce and barely met the requirements. The principal eating-place was the Mocha Café, which consisted of a 14 by 18 tent with an earthen floor and a roughly constructed lunch-counter. Here men stood in line for hours, waiting to pay a dollar for a dirty cup of coffee, a small piece of salty ham and two eggs that had long survived the hens that laid them.

The popular rendezvous was the Northern saloon and gambling house, owned and managed by "Tex" Rickard and associates. Here fully seventy-five per cent. of the camp's male population gathered nightly and played faro, roulette and stud-poker, talked mines and mining, sold properties, and shielded themselves from the blasts that came with piercing intensity from the snow-capped peaks of the Sierras. The brokers of the camp gathered every night in the Northern and held informal sessions, frequently trading to the extent of 30,000 or 40,000 shares of the more active stocks.

The mining stocks which were advertised through my agency in those early Goldfield days were generally of the 10, 20 and 30-cent per share variety. The incorporators of the companies were enthusiastic on the point of their "prospect" making good, but I argued to myself that if the chances of any mining prospect of this character proving to be a mine were only about one in 25 or one in 50, and my agency advertised 25 or 50 companies of the average quality, and one of them made good in a handsome way, he who purchased an equal number of shares in each would at least "break even" with the profits from the one winner.

Later this principle was "knocked into a cocked hat" for conservatism by Mohawk of Goldfield advancing from 10 cents to $20 a share, proving that if Mohawk had been one among 50 companies, the shares of which were purchased by an investor at 10 cents, he would have gained handsomely. Early purchasers of Mohawk gathered 200 to 1 for their money, many times more than could usually be won on a long shot at the horse-races, and not so very much less than was formerly won by lucky prize-winners in the Louisiana Lottery. And Mohawk was only one of a dozen of the early ones which advanced in price on the exchanges and curb markets more than 1,000 per cent.

At this early stage in Goldfield, "wild-catting" was not indulged in from the camp, unless this long-shot gambling in shares of "prospects" can by a grave stretch of imagination be termed such, the promoter-brokers being able to offer stocks of close-in properties. Among the prizes were Red Top, which advanced within two years thereafter from 8 cents to $5.50 per share; Daisy, which sky-rocketed from 10 cents to $6; Goldfield Mining, which soared from 10 cents to $2; Jumbo, which improved from 50 cents to $5; Jumbo Extension, which rose from 15 cents to above $3; Great Bend, which jumped from 20 cents to around $2.50; Silver Pick, which moved up from 10 cents to $2.65; Atlanta, which was promoted at 10 and 15 cents and sold up to $1.25; Kewanas, which was lifted from 25 cents to $2.25, and others. "Wild-catting" in a small way was prosecuted in Goldfield's fair name even in those days, with Denver as the headquarters of the swindlers.

Eighteen months later, when the Mohawk mine of Goldfield was in the midst of its greatest half-year of production, at the rate of $1,000,000 a month, and the consolidation of the important mining companies of the camp was in progress, "wild-catting" became general from office buildings in the large cities. There were more than 2000 companies incorporated during this last period, not one of which made good, and the public lost from $150,000,000 to $200,000,000 as the result of this operation alone. Fully $150,000,000 more was lost by the ballooning to levels unwarranted by mine showings of listed Goldfield stocks on the New York Curb and the San Francisco Stock Exchange, at the same time.

But I am ahead of my story.

It was late in the Spring of 1905. I had been at work in Goldfield more than six months, and my campaign of publicity was beginning to gather momentum. The mines, however, were not at the moment keeping lively pace. The Mohawk was yet undiscovered.