Chapter 8 No.8

The Press Agent and the Public's Money

Probably the most scientifically press-agented camp in Nevada had been Bullfrog. Bullfrog was born two years after Goldfield. The Goldfield publicity bureau by this time had greatly improved its art and its efficiency.

When the Bullfrog boom was still young the late United States Senator Stewart, an octogenarian and out of a job, traveled from Washington, at the expiration of his term, to the Bullfrog camp. There he hung out his shingle as a practising lawyer. Immediately the press bureau secured a cabinet photo of the venerable lawmaker and composed a story about his fresh start in life on the desert. The yarn appealed so strongly to Sunday editors of the great city dailies throughout the country that Bullfrog secured for nothing scores of pages of priceless advertising in the news columns.

The Senator built a home, the story said, on a spot where, less than a year before, desert wayfarers had died of thirst and coyotes roamed. The interior of the house on the desert was minutely described. Olive-colored chintz curtains protected the bearded patriarch, while at work in his study, from the burning rays of the sun. Old Florentine cabinets, costly Byzantine vases, and matchless specimens of Sèvres, filled his living-rooms. Silk Persian rugs an inch thick decked the floors. Venetian-framed miniature paintings of former Presidents of the United States and champions of liberty of bygone days graced the walls. Costly bronzes and marble statuettes were strewn about in profusion. Visitors could not help deducing that the Senator thought nothing too good for his desert habitat. The name of Bullfrog exuded from every paragraph of the story; also the name of a mine at the approach to which this desert mansion was reared and in the exploitation of which the press-agent had a selfish interest.

The remarkable part of this tale, which was printed with pictures of the Senator in one metropolitan newspaper of great circulation and prestige to the extent of a full page on a Sunday and was syndicated by it to a score of others, was that the only truth contained in it happened to be the fact that the Senator had decided to make Bullfrog his home with a view to working up a law practise. But it was a good story from the Bullfrog press-agent's standpoint and from that of the Sunday editor, and even the Senator did not blink at it. He recognized it as camp "publicity" of the highest efficiency, as did other residents of Bullfrog.

During the Manhattan boom, which followed that of Bullfrog, the publicity bureau became more ambitious. It made a drive at the news columns of the metropolitan press on week days, and succeeded.

At that time the Sullivan Trust Company of Goldfield was promoting the Jumping Jack-Manhattan mining Company. James Hopper, the gifted magazinist, wrote a story in which the names "Jumping Jack" and "Sullivan Trust Company" appeared in almost every other line. It was forwarded by mail to a great daily newspaper of New York and promptly published as news. The yarn told how the man in charge of the gasoline engine at the mouth of the Jumping Jack shaft had gone stark mad while at work and how but for the quick intervention of the president of the Sullivan Trust Company, who happened to be on the ground, a tragedy might well have been the result.

The miner, the story said, stepped into the bucket at the head of the shaft and asked the man in the engine-house to lower him to a depth of 300 feet. Quick as a flash the bucket was let down. When the 200-foot point was reached there was a sudden stop. With a rattle and a roar the bucket was jerked back to within 50 feet of the surface. Thereupon it was again lowered and quickly raised again, and the operation constantly repeated until the poor miner became unconscious and fell in a jangled mass to the bottom of the bucket.

Hearing the miner's early cries, Mr. Sullivan had gone to the rescue. He knocked senseless the man in the engine-house and pinioned him. Then he brought up the bucket containing the almost inanimate form of the miner.

Turning to the demon in charge of the engine, who had now recovered consciousness, Mr. Sullivan cried,

"How dare you do a thing like this?"

The man responded, "His name is Jack, ain't it?"

"Well, what of it?" roared Mr. Sullivan.

"Oh, I was just jumping the jack!" chuckled the "madman."

This nursery tale was conspicuously printed in a high-class New York newspaper's columns as real news. Undoubtedly the reason why the editors allowed it to pass was that it was believed to be true, but above all was cleverly written.

I was too busy during the early part of the Rawhide boom to do any writing of consequence or even to suggest particular subjects for stories. It seemed to me that the exciting events of every-day occurrence during the progress of the mad rush would furnish the correspondents with enough matter to keep the news-pot constantly boiling. I assembled around me the shining lights of the Reno newspaper fraternity and put them on the pay-roll.

For weeks an average of at least one column of exciting Rawhide stampede news was published on the front pages of the big Coast dailies. The publicity campaign went merrily on. I kept close watch on the character of the news that was being sent out and was pleased in contemplating the fact that very little false coloring, if any, was resorted to. A boisterous mining-camp stampede, second only in intensity to the Klondike excitement of eleven years before, was in progress, and there was plenty of live news to chronicle almost every day.

After returning from one of my trips to Rawhide I became alarmed on reading on the front page of the leading San Francisco newspapers a harrowing two-column story about the manner in which Ed. Hoffman, mine superintendent of the Rawhide Coalition, had been waylaid the day before on a dark desert road and robbed of $10,000 in gold which he was carrying to the mines for the purpose of discharging the pay-roll.

I had just left Mr. Hoffman in Rawhide and he had not been waylaid.

I sent for the man who was responsible for the story.

"Say, Jim," I said, "you're crazy. There is a come-back to that yarn that will cost you your job as correspondent for your San Francisco paper. It is rough work. Cut it out!"

"Gee whillikins!" he replied. "How can I? Here's an order for a two-column follow-up and I have already filed it."

"What did you say in your second story?" I inquired.

"Well, I told how a posse, armed to the teeth, were chasing the robbers and explained that they're within three miles of Walker Lake in hot pursuit."

"You're a madman!" I protested. "Kill those robbers and be quick; do it to-night so that you choke off the demand for more copy, or you're a goner!"

Next day the correspondent wired to his string of newspapers that the posse had chased the robbers into Walker Lake, where they were drowned.

At the point in Walker Lake where the correspondent said the robbers had found a watery grave it was known to some Reno people that for three miles in both directions the lake was shallow and that the deepest water in that vicinity was less than four feet. This caused some snickering in Reno. Still there was no come-back. The newspapers never learned of the deception. The correspondent had been canny enough in sending the story to keep the local correspondents of all other out-of-town newspapers thoroughly informed. They had sent out practically the same story, and therefore did not give the snap away.

In the early days of the Rawhide boom a rumor reached the camp that Death Valley "Scotty," the illustrious personage who had been press-agented from one end of the land to the other as the owner of a secret Golconda, was about to start a stampede into some new diggings. The news bureau decided to kill off opposition. Newspapers of the land were queried as follows:

"Scotty's lair discovered in Death Valley. It is a cache containing a number of empty Wells-Fargo money-chests. Scotty has apparently been looting the loot of old-time stage robbers. How many words?"

The newspapers just ate this one up. Column upon column was telegraphed from Nevada. The source of Scotty's wealth being cleared up to the satisfaction of readers of the "yellow," Scotty's value as a mine promoter became seriously impaired.

When I chided the Reno correspondent for sending out the fake story regarding the robbery of Rawhide Coalition's mine manager, I recall that he argued he had made a blunder in one direction only. He said he should have seen to it that the mine manager was actually robbed! That, he said, would have eliminated the danger of a come-back.

Years ago in New York the public was startled by reading of an actress taking her bath in pure milk. A few weeks later newspaper readers were convulsed by stories of another star in the theatrical firmament performing her morning ablutions in a tub of champagne.

"If you don't believe it," said the lady press-agent to a lady newspaper reporter who was sent to cover the story, "I will give you a chance to see the lady in the act."

This was done and, of course, the newspapers were convinced that it was no idle press-agent's dream. Of course, neither of these women had been in the habit of bathing in milk or in champagne. A tub of milk costs less than $10 and a tub of champagne less than $200, but you could not have bought this kind of publicity for these performers at anything like such absurdly low figures if you used the display advertising columns of the newspapers. Nor would the advertising have been nearly so effective. The absurd milk story scored a "knockout" with newspaper readers and earned a great fortune for the actress.

PUBLICITY VIA ELINOR GLYN

At this early stage in Rawhide's history the reigning literary sensation of two continents was "Three Weeks." Nothing, reasoned the correspondents, would attract more attention to the camp than having Mrs. Elinor Glyn at Rawhide, particularly if she would conduct herself while there in a manner that might challenge the criticism of church members.

Sam Newhouse, the multimillionaire mining operator of Utah, famous on two continents as a charming host, especially when celebrities are his guests, was stopping at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Mrs. Glyn was in San Francisco at the same time. Mr. Newhouse and Ray Baker, a Reno Beau Brummel, clubman, chum of M. H. De Young, owner and editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and scion of a house that represents the aristocracy of Nevada, were showing Coast hospitality to the distinguished authoress.

A message was sent to Mr. Baker reading substantially as follows: "Please suggest to Mr. Newhouse and Mrs. Glyn the advisability of visiting Rawhide. The lady can get much local color for a new book. If you bag the game, you will be a hero."

Ray was on to his job. Within three days Mrs. Glyn, under escort of Messrs. Newhouse and Baker, arrived in Rawhide after a thirty-eight-hour journey by railroad and auto from San Francisco.

The party having arrived in camp at dusk, it was suggested that they go to a gambling-house and see a real game of stud poker as played on the desert.

They entered a room. Six players were seated around a table. The men were coatless and grimy. Their unshaven mugs, rough as nutmeg-graters, were twisted into strange grimaces. All of them appeared the worse for liquor. Before each man was piled a mound of ivory chips of various hues, and alongside rested a six-shooter. From the rear trousers' pocket of every player another gun protruded. Each man wore a belt filled with cartridges. Although an impromptu sort of game, it was well staged.

A man with bloodshot eyes shuffled and riffled the cards. Then he dealt a hand to each.

"Bet you $10,000," loudly declared the first player.

"Call that and go you $15,000 better," shouted the second as he pushed a stack of yellows toward the center.

"Raise you!" cried two others, almost in unison.

Before the jack-pot was played out $300,000 (in chips) had found its way to the center of the table and four men were standing up in their seats in a frenzy of bravado with the muzzles of their guns viciously pointed at one another. There was enough of the lurking devil in the eyes of the belligerents to give the onlookers a nervous shiver.

When the gun-play started, Mrs. Glyn and Messrs. Newhouse and Baker took to the "tall and uncut."

As the door closed and the vanishing forms of the visitors could be seen disappearing around the opposite street corner, all of the men in the room pointed their guns heavenward and shot at the ceiling, which was of canvas. The sharp report of the revolver-shots rang through the air. This was followed by hollow groans, calculated to freeze the blood of the retreating party, and by a scraping and scuffling sound that conveyed to the imagination a violent struggle between several persons.

Fifteen minutes later two stretchers, carrying the "dead," were taken to the undertaker's shop. Mrs. Glyn and Mr. Newhouse, with drooped chins, stood by and witnessed the dismal spectacle.

Of course, the "murder" of these two gamblers, during the progress of a card-game for sensationally high stakes and in the presence of the authoress of "Three Weeks," made fine front-page newspaper copy. Rawhide suggested itself in every paragraph of the stories as a mining-center that was large enough to attract the attention of a multimillionaire mine magnate of the caliber of Sam Newhouse and of an authoress of such world-wide repute as Elinor Glyn. The camp got yards of free publicity that was calculated to convince the public it was no flash in the pan, which was exactly what was wanted.

The next night Elinor Glyn, having recovered from the shock of the exciting poker-game, was escorted through Stingaree Gulch. The lane was lined on both sides with dance-halls and brothels for a distance of two thousand feet. Mrs. Glyn "sight-saw" all of these.

Rawhide scribes saw a chance here for some fine writing:

The wasted cheeks and wasted forms of frail humanity, as seen last night in the jaundiced light that was reflected by the crimson-shaded lamps and curtains of Stingaree Gulch, visibly affected the gifted English authoress. They carried to Mrs. Glyn an affirmative answer to the question, so often propounded recently, whether it is against public morality to make a heroine in "Three Weeks" of a pleasure-palled victim of the upper set. It was made plain to Mrs. Glyn that her heroine differed from the Stingaree Gulch kind only in that her cheeks were less faded than her character.

That's the kind of Laura Jean Libby comment on Mrs. Glyn's tour of Stingaree Gulch that one of the Rawhide correspondents wired to a "yellow," with a view to pleasing the editor and to insuring positive acceptance of his copy.

Later in the night a fire-alarm was rung in. The local fire-department responded in Wild-Western fashion. The conflagration, which was started for Mrs. Glyn's sole benefit, advanced with the rapidity of a tidal wave. It brought to the scene a mixed throng of the riffraff of the camp. The tumult of voices rose loud and clear. The fire embraced all of the deserted shacks and waste lumber at the foothills of one of the mines. The liberal use of kerosene and a favoring wind caused a fierce blaze. It spouted showers of sparks into the darkness and gleamed like a beacon to desert wayfarers. The fierce yells of the firemen rang far and wide. Of a sudden a wild-haired individual thrust himself out of the crowd and sprang through the door of a blazing shack. He disappeared within the flames. Three feet past the door was a secret passage leading to shelter in the tunnel of an adjoining mine. Mrs. Glyn, of course, did not know this. She acclaimed the act as one of daring heroism.

Water in the camp was scarce, so there was a resort to barreled beer and dynamite. Soon the flames of the devouring fire were extinguished. Again the newspapers throughout the land contained stories, which were telegraphed from the spot, regarding the remarkable experiences of the much-discussed authoress of "Three Weeks" in the new, great, gold camp of Rawhide. The press agent was in his glory.

"AL" MILLER'S SIEGE

Elinor Glyn's experiences in Rawhide were by no means the most interesting that newspaper readers of the United States were privileged to read during the course of the press-agenting of the camp.

"Al" Miller was one of the first experienced mining operators to get into Rawhide. He landed in camp in the early part of 1907. After a thorough inspection of the mine showings throughout the district, he hit upon the Hooligan Hill section of the Rawhide Coalition property as a likely-looking spot to develop pay ore. Mr. Miller had been mining for a great many years and had been identified with some important mining projects in Colorado. When he applied for a lease on that section of the Coalition property embracing a good part of Hooligan Hill it was granted to him without parley.

Mr. Miller financed his project right in the camp of Rawhide. He interested five other mining men. A syndicate was formed. Each of these six took an equal interest. All agreed to subscribe to a treasury fund to meet the expense of development.

A shaft was started on a very rich stringer of gold ore. When it had reached a depth of about 40 feet the Miller lease was regarded as one of the big "comers" of the camp. In fact, a good grade of ore was exposed on all sides and in the bottom of a 4?×7? foot shaft. Specimens assayed as high as $2,000 a ton.

At this stage of the enterprise an operating company was formed. Those who had formed the original syndicate divided the ownership stock among themselves. Mr. Miller was given full charge and allowed a salary for his services. Day after day you could see him on the job, sharpening steel, turning a windlass to hoist the muck from the bottom of the shaft after each round of shots had been fired, and making a full hand as mine-manager, blacksmith, mucker and shift-boss.

One day I was sitting in my office at Reno when I received a telephone message that there was a big fight on over the control of the Miller lease. Mr. Miller and a big Swede who was working for him had barricaded themselves at the mine. They threatened death to any one who approached. We had, for a day or two, been hungering and thirsting for some live news of the camp. My journalistic instinct got busy. I queried our Rawhide correspondent. He advised that the situation really looked serious and that a genuine scrap threatened. Mr. Miller had installed a good-sized arsenal at the mine and laid in about three days' provisions. He declared that he was prepared to hold out for an indefinite period.

I wired our correspondent at Rawhide instructions to file a story up to 1,000 or 1,500 words. Naturally excitement ran high in the camp. Soon hundreds of people gathered at points of vantage along the crest of Hooligan Hill and surrounding uplifts. Every one was expectantly awaiting interesting developments. To the casual onlooker it seemed as though possibly a score or more who stood ready to storm the mine might become involved. In fact, no one could tell how soon hostilities would break loose.

Using the telegrams I had received from camp, one of my men dictated a story containing the facts and sent it over to the Reno correspondent of the Associated Press. It was put on the wire without a moment's hesitation.

Mr. Miller had formed a rampart about the collar of the shaft. Sacked ore was piled up to a height of about five feet. The gold-laden stuff surrounded the shaft on all sides but one, the exception being to the northwest. There Hooligan Hill slanted upward at an angle of less than twenty degrees from vertical. It was from this approach that Mr. Miller was forced to guard constantly against attack. He found it necessary, according to our dispatches, to keep a constant vigil in order to preclude the possibility of a surprise. He and his Swede companion alternated in keeping the lookout. Occasionally the fitful soughing of the gasoline engine exhausts from the mining plants on Balloon Hill and Grutt Hill were interspersed by the sharp report of a six-shooter as the besieged parties either actually or mythically observed a threatened approach of the enemy.

Although the principals cast in this little mimic war were limited to perhaps less than a score, every incident or detail was provided to make up a very threatening and keenly interesting situation, with several lives hanging in the balance. There is no doubt that Mr. Miller at least, and perhaps his Swede companion, would have resisted any attempt to take "Fort Miller," as we styled it, even to sacrificing his life, for he was known as a man of action who had been in numerous critical situations without showing the slightest exercise of the primal instinct. The fact that Rawhide was saved from an episode that might have measured up to the tragic importance of a pitched battle and caused the loss of a number of lives was undoubtedly due to the patient willingness of Mr. Miller's partners and their supporters to satisfy themselves with a siege and to starve out the two men in possession of the mine rather than undertake to rout them.

The story went like wildfire and we were besieged for others and for a follow-up on the original story. For three days we kept the yarn alive and the wires burdened with details of the siege and unsuccessful storming of Camp Miller, Hooligan Hill, Nevada.

I venture to say that Mr. Hearst, with his well-known facility for serving up hot stuff to a sensation-loving following, never surpassed in this particular the stories that were scattered broadcast over the United States foundered upon this interesting episode in the mining development of Rawhide.

The story promised to be good for at least a week when we were somewhat surprised to hear that Mr. Miller had capitulated. It seems that in storing his fort with provender he had supplied only one gallon of whisky and when this ran low, on the second or third day, he attempted, single-handed, a foraging expedition in search of a further supply of John Barleycorn. During his absence his Swede companion hoisted a flag of truce, and when Miller returned to the scene of action he found his mine in the possession of his enemies.

Charles G. Gates, son of John W. Gates, the noted stock-market plunger, visited Rawhide twice. He spent his time by day inspecting the numerous mine workings, of which there were not less than seventy-five in full blast. At night he was a frequent winner at the gaming-tables. His advent in Rawhide was telegraphed far and wide and contributed to excite the general interest.

A young woman of dazzling beauty and fine presence was discovered in camp unchaperoned. She had been attracted to the scene by stories of fortunes made in a night. Under a grilling process of questioning by a few leading citizens she divulged the fact that she had run away from her home in Utah to seek single-handed her fortune on the desert. In roguish manner she expressed the opinion that if allowed to go her own way she would soon succeed in her mission. But she would not divulge the manner in which she proposed to operate. She confessed she had no money. There was a serene but settled expression of melancholy in her eyes that captivated everybody who saw her.

Many roving adventurers of the better class in the district who had listened to the call of the wild yet would have felt as much at home in the salon of a Fifth Avenue millionaire as in the boom-camp, pronounced her beauty to be in a class by itself. There was no law in the camp which would warrant the girl's deportation, yet action appeared warranted. Within a few moments $500 was subscribed as a purse to furnish the girl a passage out of camp and for a fresh start in life. The late Riley Grannan, race-track plunger, Nat. C. Goodwin, the noted player, and three others subscribed $100 each. She refused to accept the present. Next day she disappeared.

There was a corking human interest story here. Newspapers far and wide published the tale. Two years later this girl's photograph was sent without her knowledge to the judges of a famous beauty contest in a Far Western State. The judges were on the point of voting her the prize without question when investigation of her antecedents revealed her Rawhide escapade. The award was given to another.

When the camp was four months old and water still commanded from $3 to $4 a barrel, the standard price for a bath being $5, a banquet costing $50 a plate was served to one hundred soldiers of fortune who had been drawn to the spot from nearly every clime. The banqueters to a man played a good knife and fork. The spirit of camaraderie permeated the feast. There was much libation, much postprandial speechifying, much unbridled joyousness. Bon mots flew from lip to lip. Song and jest were exchanged. The air rang with hilarity. Nat. C. Goodwin warmed up to a witty, odd, racy vein of across-the-table conversation. Then he made a felicitous speech. Others followed him in similar vein. Luxuriant and unrestrained imagination and slashiness of wit marked most of the talks. The festivities ended in a revel.

The correspondents burned up the wires on the subject of that banquet. In the memory of the most ancient prospector no scene like this had ever been enacted in a desert mining camp when it was so young and at a time when the country was just emerging from a panic that seemed for a while to warp its whole financial fabric.

THE FUNERAL ORATION FOR RILEY GRANNAN

In April, 1908, Riley Grannan, the noted race-track plunger, died of pneumonia in Rawhide, where he was conducting a gambling house. He was ill only a few days and his life went out like the snuff of a candle. When all the gold in Rawhide's towering hills shall have been reduced to bullion and not even a post is left to guide the desert-wayfarer to the spot where was witnessed the greatest stampede in Western mining history, posterity will remember Rawhide for the funeral oration that was pronounced over the bier of Mr. Grannan by H. W. Knickerbocker, wearer of the cloth and mine-promoter.

The oration delivered by Mr. Knickerbocker on this occasion was a remarkable example of sustained eloquence. Pouring out utterances of exquisite thought and brilliant language in utter disregard of the length of his sentences and without using so much as a pencil memorandum, Mr. Knickerbocker with a delicacy of expression pure as poetry urged upon his auditors that the deceased "dead game sport" had not lived his life in vain. Soon the crowd, who listened with rapt attention, was in the melting mood. As Mr. Knickerbocker progressed with his discourse his periods were punctuated with convulsive bursts of sorrow.

Rawhide correspondents reorganized the full value of the occasion from the press-agent's standpoint. Mr. Grannan had been a world-famous plunger on the turf, and the correspondents burned the midnight oil in an effort to do their subject justice.

Some other lights and shadows of Rawhide press-agenting are contained in the following dispatch, which appeared in a San Francisco newspaper in the early period of the boom:

Goldfield, February 19.-W. H. Scott of the Goldfield brokerage house of Scott & Amann, who returned from Rawhide this morning, expresses the opinion that within a year that camp will be the largest gold-producer in the State. "When a man is broke in Rawhide," said Mr. Scott, "he can always eat. All he has to do is to go to some lease and pan out breakfast money. There is rich ore on every dump, and every man is made welcome."

H. W. Knickerbocker sent this one to a Reno newspaper:

Gold, Gold, Gold! The wise men of old sought an alchemy whereby they could transmute the base metals into gold. It was a fruitless quest then; it is a needless quest now. Rawhide has been discovered! No flowers bloom upon her rock-ribbed bosom. No dimpling streams kiss her soil into verdure, to flash in laminated silver 'neath the sunbeam's touch. No flowers nor food, no beauty nor utility on the surface; but from her desert-covered heart Rawhide is pouring a stream of yellow gold out upon the world which is translatable, not simply into food and houses and comfort, but also into pictures and poetry and music and all those things that minister in an objective way to the development of a full-orbed manhood.

Joseph S. Jordan, the well-known Nevada mining editor, filed this dispatch to the newspapers of his string on the Coast:

Right through what is now the main street of Rawhide, in the days of '49, the makers of California passed on their way to the new Eldorado. They had many hardships through which to pass before reaching the gold which was their lure, and thousands that went through the hills of Rawhide never reached their goal. They were massacred by the Indians, or fell victims to the thirst and heat of the desert, and for many years the way across the plains was marked by the whitening bones of the pathfinders. And here all the while lay the treasures of Captain Kidd, the ransoms of crowns.

Harry Hedrick, the veteran journalist of Far Western mining camps, sent his newspaper this:

To stand on twenty different claims in one day, as I have done; to take the virgin rock from the ledge, to reduce it to pulp and then to watch a string of the saint-seducing dross encircle the pan; to peer over the shoulder of the assayer while he takes the precious button from the crucible-these are the convincing things about this newest and greatest of gold camps. It is not a novelty to have assays run into the thousands. In fact, it is commonplace. To report strikes of a few hundred dollars to the ton seems like an anticlimax.

There were scores of actual happenings in Rawhide that make it possible for me to say in reviewing the vigorous publicity campaign which marked its first year's phenomenal growth, that ninety per cent. of the correspondence, including the special dispatches sent from the camp and from Reno, which was published in newspapers of the United States, was not only based on fact but was literally true in so far as any newspaper reporter can be depended upon accurately to describe events.

Ask any high-class newspaper owner or editor to express his sentiments regarding the "faking" which formed about ten per cent. of the Rawhide press work described herein and he will tell you that such work is a reproach to journalism. Maybe it is, but we are living in times when such work on the part of press-agents is the rule and not the exception. The publicity-agent who can successfully perform this way is generally able to command an annual stipend as big as that of the President of the United States. There was nothing criminal about the performance in Rawhide, because there was no intentional misrepresentation regarding the character or quality of any mine in the Rawhide camp. Correspondents were repeatedly warned to be extremely careful not to overstep the bounds in this regard.

Confessedly there are grades of "faking" which no press-agent would care to stoop to.

Somewhere in De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater" he describes one of his pipe-dreams as perfect moonshine, and, like the sculptured imagery of the pendulous lamp in "Christabel," all carved from the carver's brain. Rawhide and Reno correspondents were guilty of very little work which De Quincey's description would exactly fit. There was a basis for nearly everything they wrote about, even the alleged discovery of Death Valley Scotty's secret storehouse of wealth, that story having been in circulation in Nevada, although not theretofore published, for upward of eighteen months. Unsubstantial, baseless, ungrounded fiction had been resorted to, it is true, during the Manhattan boom, in a single story about the madman in charge of the hoist on the Jumping Jack, but this was an exception to the rule and the story was harmless.

AMONG THE "BIG FELLOWS"

If you don't think the character of the press-agent's work during the Rawhide boom was comparatively high class and harmless, dear reader, you really have another "think" coming. At a time when Goldfield Consolidated was wobbling in price on the New York Curb and the market needed support, just prior to the smash in the market price of the stock from $7 to around $3.50, the New York Times printed in a conspicuous position on its financial page a news story to the effect that J. P. Morgan & Company were about to take over the control of that company. That's an example of a harmful "fake," the coarse kind that Wall Street occasionally uses to catch suckers.

Here is another:

Thompson, Towle & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, issue a weekly newspaper called the News Letter. Much of its space is given over to a review of the copper situation, at the mines and in the share markets. W. B. Thompson, head of the firm, he of Nipissing market manipulation fame, is interested to the extent of millions in Inspiration, Utah Copper, Nevada Consolidated, Mason Valley and other copper-mining companies. On January 25, 1911, when both the copper metal and copper share markets were sick, and both the price of the metal and the shares were on the eve of a decline, which temporarily ensued, the News Letter, in an article headed "Copper," said:

Every outcrop in the country has been examined and it is not known where one can look for new properties.

The readers of the News Letter were asked to believe that no more copper mines would be discovered in this country and that, because of this and other conditions which it mentioned, the supply of the metal must soon be exhausted and the price of the metal and of copper securities must advance.

The statement in the News Letter that every outcrop in the country has been examined and that it is not known where one can look for new properties-well, if the whole population of North America agreed in a body to accept the job of prospecting the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada Mountains alone they could hardly perform the job in a lifetime.

The use of the automobile has undoubtedly been responsible in the past few years for an impetus to the discovery of mines which is calculated to double the mineral product of this country in the next two decades, and who shall say what the flying-machine will accomplish in this regard? Further, new smelting processes and improved reduction facilities generally are daily reducing the cost of treatment of ores and are making commercially valuable low-grade ore-bodies heretofore passed up as worthless.

The best opinion of mining men in this country is that our mineral resources have not yet been "skimmed" and that the mining ground of the Western country has not yet been well "scratched."

Therefore, the statement made in a newspaper which is supposedly devoted to the interests of investors, that it need not be expected that more copper mines are going to be discovered, is a snare calculated to trap the unwary.

The foregoing is an example of a very harmful but comparatively crude fake, employed by some promoters in Wall Street of the multimillionaire class when their stocks need market support.

Here is a specimen of the insidious brand of get-rich-quick fake. On March 7, 1911, the New York Sun printed in the second column of its front page the following dispatch:

Tacoma, Wash., March 6.-F. Augustus Heinze has struck it rich again; this time it's a fortune in the Porcupine gold fields in Canada.

Charles E. Herron, a Nome mining man, who has just returned from the new gold fields, is authority for the statement that Heinze is "inside the big money." He has bought the Foster group of claims, adjoining the celebrated Dome mine, from which it is estimated that $25,000,000 will be gleaned this year and for the development of which a railroad is now under construction.

The Porcupine gold field, according to Herron, is one of the wonders of the age. One prospector has stripped the vein for a distance of fifty feet and polished it in places, so that gold is visible all along. His trench is three feet deep and he asks $200,000 cash for it as it stands.

A party of Alaskans offered the owner of this claim $50,000 a shot for all the ore that could be blown out with two sticks of dynamite, but he refused.

Press-work like the foregoing is more than likely to separate the public wrongfully from its money.

The item serves as an excellent example of one of "the impalpable and cunningly devised tricks that fool the wisest and which landed you" that I promised, at the beginning of "My Adventures with Your Money," to lay bare. I said in my foreword:

Are you aware that in catering to your instinct to gamble, methods to get you to part with your money are so artfully and deftly applied by the highest powers that they deceive you completely? Could you imagine it to be a fact that in nearly all cases where you find you are ready to embark on a given speculation, ways and means that are almost scientific in their insidiousness have been used upon you?

The New York Sun article says it is estimated that $25,000,000 will be gleaned this year from the Dome mine in Porcupine. The truth is, no engineer has ever appraised the ore in sight in the entire mine, according to any statements yet issued, at anything like half of that amount gross, and the mine itself can not possibly produce so much as $100,000 this year.

A mill of 240 tons per diem capacity has been ordered by the management and it is expected will be in operation by October first, but no sooner.[2] The ore, according to H. P. Davis's Porcupine Hand Book, an accepted authority, "has been stated to average from $10 to $12 a ton." The lowest estimated cost of mining and milling is $6. A fair estimate of profits would, therefore, be $5 per ton, not allowing for any expenses of mine-exploration in other directions on the property or other incidental outlay, which will undoubtedly amount to $1 per ton on the production. The production of 240 tons of ore per day at $4 per ton net profit would mean net returns of $28,800 per month. If the mill runs throughout October, November and December of this the company will "glean" $86,400 during 1911, and not $25,000,000, as the New York Sun article suggests.[3]

How great an exaggeration the New York Sun's $25,000,000 estimate is may be gathered from the statement that to glean $25,000,000 in one year from any mine where the ore assays $11 on an average, and the cost of mining, milling and new development is $7, the gross value of the tonnage in the mine that is milled during the one year must be at least $53,571,000. Further, to reduce such a quantity of that quality of ore to bullion in a single year would require the erection of mills of 17,260 tons per day capacity. As mentioned, the actual per diem capacity of the mill now under construction is 240 tons.[4]

Undoubtedly the Dome mining company flotation will soon be made and the public will be "allowed" to subscribe for the shares or buy them on the New York Curb at a figure agreeable to the promoters. This seems certain, for otherwise why this raw press-work?[5]

The article says that a number of Alaskans offered money at the rate of $50,000 a shot for all the ore that could be blown out with two sticks of dynamite, but were refused. There never was a statement made by any wild-catter now behind prison bars in any literature I ever saw that could approach this one in flagrant misrepresentation of facts. All the ore that could be displaced in one shot with two sticks of dynamite would not exceed four tons. In order to repay the investor it would be necessary, therefore, that this ore average better than $12,500 per ton. The New York Sun's story says that notwithstanding this offer the owner was willing to sell the whole property for $200,000. Imagine this: There are four tons of rock on the property worth $12,500 per ton, for a distance of 50 feet the gold shimmers on the surface, and there are hundreds of thousands of tons of rock in the same kind of formation on the same property, but still the owner is willing to dispose of all of it for $200,000! The statement is preposterous and outrageous. It is the kind described by De Quincey as "all carved from the carver's brain."

THE REVERSE ENGLISH

Now, about the "reverse English" in this line of press-work. Similar ways and means, dear reader, that are just as scientific in their insidiousness have been used upon you to poison your mind against the value of mining investments of competing promoters, when it has been found to the interest of powerful men to bring this about.

When the offices of B. H. Scheftels & Company, with which I was identified, were raided in seven cities by Special Agent Scarborough (since permitted to resign) of the Department of Justice of the United States Government, in September, 1910, two of the men who had been active in bringing about the raid assembled in the parlor of the Astor House the newspaper men assigned to cover the story by New York and Brooklyn newspapers. There they gave out the information that Ely Central, which I had advised the purchase of at from 50 cents per share up to $4 and down again, was actually under option to me and my associates in large blocks at 5 cents. As a matter of fact, the average price paid over for this option stock in real hard money by my people was in excess of 90 cents per share, without adding a penny to the cost for expenses of mining engineers, publicity or anything else. My people had also partly paid for a block bought at private sale at the rate of $3 a share, besides buying tens of thousands of shares in the open market at $4 and higher. The New York Times and the New York Sun, two newspapers which make capital of the rectitude of both their news and advertising columns, published this statement, along with forty others that were just as false, if not more so. So did the New York American and the other Hearst newspapers of the United States.

The New York Times story related how I had personally cleaned up in fifteen months not less than $3,000,000 as the result of my market operations. As a matter of fact, I and my associates had impoverished ourselves trying to support the stock in the open market against the concerted attacks of rival promoters and other powerful interests on whose financial corns we had tread. Every well-informed person in Wall Street knows this.

The New York Times stated that every man connected with B. H. Scheftels & Company had tried to obtain membership on the New York Curb and that all of the requests were turned down. No application was ever made for membership because, first, the rules of the Curb forbade corporation memberships, and, second, the Scheftels company already employed several members on regular salary and more than a dozen members on a commission basis.

It was also stated that B. H. Scheftels & Company applied to the Boston Curb for membership and that their application was rejected. This was also a lie made out of whole cloth.

In three months, the New York Times said, no less than 400,000 letters had been received in reply to circulars sent out by B. H. Scheftels & Company. This is an average of over 5,000 letters for each business day during the period of three months. The exaggeration here was about 5,000 per cent.

All of the properties promoted by the Scheftels company were stated in the New York Times article to be "practically worthless." This was utter rubbish and so misleading that had I been accused of pocketpicking the effect could not have been more harmful.

Rawhide Coalition had produced upward of $400,000 in gold bullion, had probably been "high graded" to the extent of nearly as much more, according to the judgment of well-posted men on the ground, and not less than five miles of underground development work had been done on the property. Development work and production had never ceased for a day. Besides, when the Rawhide camp was still in its swaddling-clothes, I had originally purchased the controlling interest for Nat. C. Goodwin & Company at a valuation of $700,000 for the mine.

The control of Ely Central had been taken over by B. H. Scheftels & Company and paid for at a valuation well in excess of a million dollars for the property, and upward of $200,000 had been spent in mine development during the fourteen months of the Scheftels quasi-control. Jumbo Extension was a famous producer of Goldfield. Subsequent to the raid one-twentieth of its acreage was sold to the Goldfield Consolidated for $195,000. On July 15th of the current year the company disbursed to stockholders $95,000 in dividends, being 10 per cent. on the par of the issued capitalization. Bovard Consolidated, which was promoted at 10 cents a share as a speculation, had turned out to be a "lemon" after a period of active mine development, the values in the ore pinching out at depth, but B. H. Scheftels & Company had immediately informed stockholders to this effect.

The New York Times stated that B. H. Scheftels & Company sold Ely Central stock to the amount of five or six millions in cash and made a profit of $3,000,000 on the transactions. The books of the Scheftels company show that the company not only made no money on the sale of Ely Central but actually lost vast sums.

The New York Times said that it had been advertised that a carload of ore had been shipped from the Ely Central mine as a sample, but that the Government had not been able to find out to whom this carload of ore was consigned. The truth was that the consignment had been made to the best-known smelter company in the United States, that the ore averaged seven per cent. copper, and that it could not have been shipped out of camp except over a single railroad which has the monopoly-an easy transaction to trace.

B. H. Scheftels & Company were accused by the New York Times of clearing up nearly $600,000 in three months on the promotion of the South Quincy Copper Company. The facts were that, after receiving $30,000 in subscriptions and returning every subscription on demand because of the slump in metallic copper, the Scheftels company abandoned the promotion and never even applied for listing of the stock in any market. A large sum was lost by the Scheftels company here.

Even in stating the penalty for misuse of the mails, which was the crime charged by the Government agent who afterwards resigned as a consequence of conduct objectionable to the Government, the New York Times stated that the punishment was five years in prison, which was more hop-skip-and-go-merry mistaking. The crime is a misdemeanor and the maximum penalty for an offense is eighteen months.

I have counted not less than five hundred unfounded and misleading statements of this kind regarding myself and associates that have been made in the past year by newspapers and press associations. The shadow has been taken for the substance.

Now, the Scheftels raid, I shall prove in due time, was the culmination of as bitterly waged a campaign of misrepresentation and financial brigandage as has ever been recorded. Chronologically an introduction of the subject is out of place here. The effect, however, of the press-agenting which formed a part of the campaign of destruction is pertinent to the topic under consideration.

The immediate result was that thousands of stockholders in the various mining companies that had been sponsored by the Scheftels company were robbed of an aggregate sum amounting into millions, which represented the ensuing decline in market value of the stocks.

The newspaper campaign of misrepresentation and villification was essential to the plans and purposes of the men who sicked the Government on to me. The final destruction of public confidence in the securities with which I was identified became necessary to justify the whole proceeding in the public mind.

On the surface of the play it was made to appear that the Government of the United States had reached out righteously for the suppression of a dangerous band of criminals. The story in the New York Times and other newspapers on the day after the raid was justification made to this end.

The fact that tens of thousands of innocent stockholders might lose their all, as a result of the foul use of powerful maladroit publicity-machinery, did not stop the conspirators for a moment. I had a youthful past and, therefore, the newspapers took little chance in publishing anything without investigation and proof that might be offered. And they went the limit, particularly those newspapers that are in the habit of permitting the use of their news columns from time to time to help along the publicity measures of powerful interests.

Contrasted with the comparatively harmless "faking" that characterized Rawhide's press-agenting, the raw work of the newspapers just described is as different as angel-cake from antimony. If you are not yet convinced, hearken to this:

THE POWER OF THE PUBLIC PRINT

In the Saturday Evening Post of December 31, 1910, there appeared an article headed, "Launching a Corporation. How the Pirates and Merchantmen of Commerce Set Sail. By Edward Hungerford," from which I quote, without the omission or change of so much as a comma. Referring, in my opinion to Ely Central, promoted by myself and associates, Mr. Hungerford says:

Here is a typical case-a mining property recently exploited on the curb market, the shipyard of many of these pirate craft: a prospect located not far from one of the bonanza mines of the West was capitalized by a number of men who, after they had convinced themselves that it would not pay, dropped it and gave little thought to the company they had organized.

One day they received through a lawyer an offer of four thousand dollars for the even million shares of stock they had prepared to issue at a face value of five dollars a share. They were told that a wealthy young man was willing to take a four-thousand-dollar flier on the property, on the outside chance that it might develop ore. The deal was made. Soon after a well-known man was named as a part owner of the mine, which "promised" to enrich all those interested in it.

That was not the first time that the marketable value of a name that is known had been used to exploit a corporation. Any man of standing has many such offers.

The shares of stock that had been purchased for four cents each were peddled on the curb at fifty cents. Then they were advanced to sixty cents. Soon a "market"-so called-was made and the stock found a ready sale. Point by point it was advanced until it actually was eagerly sought by investors, who were not only willing but eager to pay four dollars a share for it.

Mr. Hungerford states in the foregoing: "This mine was capitalized by a number of men who dropped out after they convinced themselves that it would not pay." The statement is false if it refers to Ely Central, as I believe it does. The chief owners and organizers attempted to promote it through a New York Stock Exchange house on the New York Curb at above $7 per share, or at a valuation of more than $8,000,000 for the mine, but the bankers' panic of 1907-8 intervened, and for that reason they quit. The stock sold in 1906 at above $7.50 a share on the New York Curb, two years before I became identified with it.

Mr. Hungerford says that one day these men received through a lawyer AN OFFER OF $4,000 FOR A MILLION SHARES OF STOCK, and they sold.

How cruelly false this statement is nobody can feel more than myself. The average price paid by my associates in hard money for the controlling interest in the 1,600,000 shares of capitalization, as already mentioned, was above 90 cents, or considerably more than one million dollars in all. An additional $600,000 or more was used to protect the market for the stock, making our cost, without adding a cent for promotion expenses, about $1.50 per share instead of four cents-more than $2,000,000 for the property and not $5,000.

Line by line and word for word I could analyze the statement of Mr. Hungerford and show that 95 per cent. of it is false both in premise and deduction. But this would be only cumulative on the one point. My excuse for mentioning the item is to give a striking example of the startling force and power which attaches to insidious newspaper publicity of the kind quoted from the New York Times. Mr. Hungerford "fell" for it, and innocently lent himself to the purposes of the men who sponsored the story by himself passing it on to the readers of the Saturday Evening Post.

The purpose here has been to show the imposition on the American public which is being practiced every day in the news columns of daily newspapers and other publications, but I have been able to convey to the reader only the barest kind of suggestion as to the depths to which this perception is practiced. Limitations of space prohibit further encroachment, or I would fain extend my list of examples indefinitely.

We hear much these days about the abuses of journalism. Much of the criticism is leveled at publishers who lend the use of their columns for "boosting" that is calculated to help their advertisers. But little attention is paid to that other evil namely, the use of the news columns for the purpose of destroying business rivals, political rivals and enemies generally of men who wield sufficient influence to employ the method.

This ramification of the subject appeals to me as of at least as much consequence to citizens as is the one of inspired puffery. I believe the public is going to hear much more of this feature of newspaper abuse in the future than it has in the past. The community is waking up and is manifesting a desire to learn more about the heinous practice.

RAWHIDE AGAIN

To return to Rawhide. As a result of the "scientific" press-agenting which the camp received, a frenzied stampede ensued. The rush was of such magnitude that it stands unparalleled in Western mining history. Not less than 60,000 people journeyed across the desolate, wind-swept reaches of Nevada's mountainous desert during the excitement. Not less than 12,000 of these remained on the ground for a period of several months.

Mining-camp records were broken. The maximum population of Goldfield during the height of its boom was approximately 15,000, but it had taken more than three years and the discovery of the world's highest grade gold mine to attract this number of people. Cripple Creek for two years after its discovery was little more than a hamlet. Leadville during its first year was hardly heard of.

The scenes enacted in Rawhide when the boom was at its height beggar description. Real estate advanced in value in half a year in as great degree as Goldfield's did in three years. Corner lots on the Main Street sold as high as $17,000. Ground rent for plots 25×100 feet commanded $300 a month. During the day as well as at night the gaming-tables of the pleasure-palaces were banked with players, and the adventuresome were compelled literally to fight their way through the serried ranks of onlookers to take a hand in the play. The miners were flush. Many assay offices, accessories of "high-graders," were turning out bullion from extraordinarily rich ore easily hypothecated by a certain element among the men working underground.

The opening of "Tex" Rickard's gambling-resort in Rawhide was celebrated by an orgy that cut a new notch for functions of this kind in Southern Nevada. The bar receipts aggregated over $2,000. The games were reported to have won for Mr. Rickard $25,000 on the first day. Champagne was the common beverage. Day was merged into night and night into day. Rouged courtesans of Stingaree Gulch provided the dash of ˉ On the densely crowded streets fashionably tailored Easterners, digging-booted prospectors, grimy miners, hustling brokers, promoters, mine operators and mercantile men, with here and there a scattering of "tin horns," jostled one another and formed an ever shifting kaleidoscopic maelstrom of humanity.

In the environing hills could be heard the creak of the windlass, the clank of the chain, and the buzz and chug of the gasoline hoist, punctuated at frequent intervals by sharp detonations of exploding dynamite.

Outgoing ore-laden freighters, hauled by ten-span mule teams, made almost impassable the roads connecting the camp with near-by points of ingress. Coming from the opposite direction, heavily laden wagons carrying lumber and supplies, and automobiles crowded to the guards with human freight, blocked the roadways.

Rawhide's publicity campaign from a press-agent's standpoint was a howling success. From the standpoint of the promoter, however, results were mixed. Nat. C. Goodwin & Company were enabled to make more than a financial stand-off of their promotion of the Rawhide Coalition Mines Company, but they did not profit to the extent they might have, had the times been propitious.

I was not long in discovering that my first deductions, made at the inception of the Rawhide boom, namely, that the country was in no financial mood to consider favorably the claims to recognition of a new mining camp, were right, and that it would have been better had the birth of Rawhide been delayed for a period or until the country could catch its financial breath again. Crowds came to Rawhide, but few with money. Flattering as was the extent of the inrush, it was easy to see that if the publicity campaign had been suppressed for a while, the result in harvest would have been immeasurably greater. Had financial conditions been right, the effort to give the camp "scientific" publicity would undoubtedly have been crowded with results for "the inside" of a character that would have meant much larger sums of money in the bank.

Nat. C. Goodwin & Company recognized, too, that they had been working at a great disadvantage by attempting to finance a great mining enterprise at so great a distance from Eastern financial centers as Reno. We were hardly a match for the Eastern promoter who, because of the handy location of his offices, was enabled to keep in close personal contact with his following.

The usual happening in mining took place at Rawhide. The extraordinary rich surface deposits opened up into vast bodies of medium and low-grade ore at depth. Rawhide's one requirement appeared to be a railroad, and a milling plant of 500 or 600 tons a day capacity. It was decided that I should come East and attempt to finance the company for deep mine development, mill and railroad construction, and also to go through with the deal made with the vendors of the controlling interest. The time period for payments had been extended for Nat. C. Goodwin & Company, and the option to purchase was now valued by the Goodwin company at a fortune.

In New York, over the signature of Nat. C. Goodwin the firm for a while, under my direction, conducted a display advertisement newspaper campaign in favor of the issue, which was now listed on the New York Curb. Hayden, Stone & Company, bankers, of Boston and New York, who have since successfully financed the Ray Consolidated and Chino copper companies, undertook to send their engineer to Rawhide to make an examination of the property with a view to financing the company for railroad and milling equipment amounting to upward of a million dollars. Under the impetus of this news and the Nat. C. Goodwin advertising campaign the market price of the shares shot up to $1.46, or a valuation in excess of four million dollars for the property.

A few weeks later a sharp market break occurred. Some one got the news before Nat. C. Goodwin & Company did that the million-dollar financing proposition had been acted upon adversely by the engineer. The company had done no systematic underground development work. An enormous amount of work had been done, but it was accomplished under the leasing system. The leasers, who, because of lack of milling facilities, were unable to dispose of a profit of ore that assayed less than $40 per ton, had bent all of their efforts toward bringing to the surface high-grade shipping ore and had made no effort at all to block out and put into sight the known great tonnages of medium and low-grade. Engineers take nothing for granted and this one reported that the proposition of spending a million dollars should be turned down because a commensurate tonnage had not been blocked out and put in sight.

To this day the camp has struggled along without adequate milling facilities, but has been practically self-sustaining. From a physical standpoint the mines to-day are conceded to be of great promise. The company is honestly and efficiently managed. The president, from the day of incorporation to this hour, has been E. W. King, formerly president of the Montana Society of Mining Engineers, a director of a number of Montana banks, and recognized as one of the ablest gold-mine managers of the West. M. Scheeline, president of the Scheeline Banking & Trust Company of Reno, who ranks as the oldest and most conservative banker in the State of Nevada, has been treasurer from the outset.

The history of Rawhide is still in the making and its final chapter has not yet been written by any manner of means. Nor is it within the pale of possibility that such latent productive potentialities as have been established at Rawhide can long remain in great part dormant.

In Wall Street Nat. C. Goodwin & Company's deal with the venders of the control of Rawhide Coalition was later financed to a successful finish. It was done by appealing to the speculative instinct of that class of investors who habitually gamble in mining shares. The effort to finance the mining company itself, to a point where it might take rank with the great dividend-paying gold mines of the West, was not so successful.

* * *

[2]

The fire of July will delay installation until a later date.

[3]

In arriving at these figures I am more than fair. Recent estimates of the average value of the ores is $8, and I know of some estimates by very competent mining men that are as low as $4. Some engineers say justification is lacking for even a $4 estimate. The Dome is by no means a proved commercial success as yet from the mine standpoint, although the possessor of much ore, because of the uncertain average values.

[4]

It has been destroyed by the July fire and must be replaced.

[5]

The foregoing comment on the Porcupine situation has been more than justified by developments after the date of this writing. The first battery of forty stamps in the first stamp mill was not in operation till April, 1912, more than a year from the date of the prediction that $25,000,000 would be gleaned in 1911.