When the excitement was at fever-heat in Goldfield over the stupendous rises in market value of Goldfield securities which were being chronicled hourly, news came to town of the successful flotation in New York of the Greenwater & Death Valley Mining Company. The capitalization was 3,000,000 shares of the par value of $1 each. The stock had been underwritten at $1 a share by New York and Pittsburg Stock Exchange houses, had been listed on the New York Curb, and had climbed to around $5.50, or a valuation for the property of $16,500,000. Among the officers of this company were M. R. Ward, brother-in-law of Charles M. Schwab; T. L. Oddie, now Governor of Nevada, and Malcolm Macdonald, later president of the Nevada First National Bank of Tonopah.

Greenwater is situated about 150 miles south of Goldfield, across the State line in California. No one ever went to or fro without passing through Goldfield. If there was a Greenwater boom, how was it that we in Goldfield, who were in touch with all Nevada mining affairs, did not know about it? Goldfield promoters soon began to give attention. Shortly they caught the infection. A stampede from Goldfield into Greenwater ensued. In fact, people flocked to Greenwater from every direction. A bunch of Tonopah money-getters, headed by the indomitable Malcolm Macdonald, were grabbing the money on Greenwaters in New York, and Goldfield was not in the play.

The reports that came from Greenwater as a result of the first stampede from Goldfield were of doubtful variety. Greenwater & Death Valley was described as a raw prospect not worth over 10 cents per share. Goldfield people shook their heads. There was no gainsaying the fact, however, that Greenwater & Death Valley appeared to be a giant success in the Eastern stock markets. Charles M. Schwab was reported to be behind the flotation of Greenwater & Death Valley. Montgomery-Shoshone and Tonopah Extension, two other Schwab enterprises, were selling at hundreds of per cent. profit in the stock markets. The fact that Mr. Schwab was interested in the camp was an argument that appealed with great force to Nevada promoters, for the fraternity had learned to attach just as much significance to having a market as to having a mine before commencing promotion operations.

The Sullivan Trust Company not having had a failure of any kind on the market, I hesitated to commit the trust company to any issue in the new camp. Not to be entirely out of it, however, I sent our engineer, "Jack" Campbell, into the district to report on all the properties.

News came thick and fast from the New York market as to the success of the Greenwaters in the East. Furnace Creek Copper Company, originally promoted by "Patsy" Clark of Spokane at 25 cents per share, with a million-share capitalization, was reported to be getting the benefit of Mr. Clark's personal market handling on the New York Curb, and the shares soon reached a high quotation of $5.50. John W. Gates had been let in by "Patsy" at around 50 cents and was reported to have unloaded 400,000 shares at all sorts of prices from $1 up to $5.50, and down again.

On the heels of this advance came word of the successful promotion of the United Greenwater Company, with C. S. Minzesheimer & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, acting as fiscal agents for the company. The promoters were named as Malcolm Macdonald, Donald B. Gillies and Charles M. Schwab. J. C. Weir, the New York mining-stock broker, who was conducting through the mails a nation-wide market-letter campaign in favor of Greenwater, was reported to have sold 150,000 or 200,000 shares at the subscription price of $1. The offering was said to have been oversubscribed twice. The price then shot up to $2.50 on the New York Curb. The market boiled.

Philadelphia was reported to be Greenwater-mad. When United Greenwater had reached $1.50 on its way up and Greenwater & Death Valley had passed the $4 point, the Schwab crowd announced the formation of the Greenwater Copper Mines & Smelters Company to consolidate the Greenwater & Death Valley and United Greenwater companies. This new parent company was capitalized for $25,000,000, with 5,000,000 shares of the par value of $5 each, and the East was reported to be eating up the new stock "blood raw." The president of this company was Charles R. Miller, who was president of the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad Company, and the vice-president was M. R. Ward, the redoubtable brother-in-law of Charles M. Schwab. The directorate included Mr. Schwab; John W. Brock, who represented Philadelphia interests on the directorate of the very successful Tonopah Mining Company; Malcolm Macdonald, the champion "lemon" peddler of Nevada; Frank Keith, general manager of the Tonopah Mining Company, and others. It was a "swell" directorate.

It was learned that the stock of the new company had been underwritten by New York Stock Exchange houses, principally those with Philadelphia and Pittsburg branches where the Schwab crowd was influential, at $1.80 per share, and that large blocks were being sold to the public at up to $3.25 on the New York Curb, a valuation for the "properties" of more than $16,000,000.

GETTING INTO THE GAME

The birth of the $25,000,000 merger, to take in two properties that had not yet matriculated even in the baby-mine class and were actually suspected at the outset by mining men in Goldfield to be wildcats, was the signal for an outpouring in quick succession of Greenwater promotions from all centers, of which the annals of the industry in this country chronicle no counterpart.

At the height of the boom there was promoted out of Los Angeles and New York the Furnace Creek Consolidated Copper Company, with a capitalization of $5,000,000.

From Butte, home of the copper-mining industry, the Furnace Creek Extension Copper Mining Company was promoted, with a capitalization of $5,000,000, and also the Butte & Greenwater, capitalized for $1,500,000. Malcolm Macdonald the "hero" of Montgomery-Shoshone at Bullfrog, hailed from Butte. He it was who interested the Schwab crowd in Greenwater, as he did in Tonopah and Bullfrog.

"Patsy" Clark, the noted mine operator of Spokane, having prospered marketwise with his Furnace Creek Copper Company, promptly headed a new one, the Furnace Valley Copper Company, with a capitalization of $6,250,000. These shares were listed on the Spokane, Butte and Los Angeles Stock Exchanges, but did not appear on the New York Curb.

A San Francisco crowd of brokers and stock-market operators organized the Greenwater Bimetallic Copper Company. "They let her go Gallagher" with a capitalization of $1,000,000.

The C. M. Sumner Investment Securities Company of Denver opened subscriptions for the Greenwater-Death Valley Copper Company. (The title of this company was a play on the name of the Greenwater & Death Valley Copper Company.)

Tonopah citizens, not to be outdone, sallied forth with the Greenwater Calumet incorporated for $1,500,000. Hon. T. L. Oddie, later Governor of Nevada, then of Tonopah, and his brother, C. M. Oddie, followed the lead and headed the Greenwater Arcturus Copper Mining Company, with a capitalization of $3,000,000.

The Consolidated Greenwater Copper Company was fed to the hungry public out of a Pittsburg trough, with general offices in the Keystone Bank Building, and with a high-class Tonopah crowd on the directorate. Eugene Howell, cashier of the Tonopah Banking Corporation, of which United States Senator Nixon was president, was treasurer. John A. Kirby, of Salt Lake City, until recently associated with George Wingfield in the ownership of Nevada Hills, was president.

Arthur Kunze, who had sold the control of the Greenwater & Death Valley Copper Company to Malcolm Macdonald, who in turn had interested the Schwab coterie in the organization, put out a new one called the Greenwater Copper Mining Company, with a capitalization of $5,000,000.

H. T. Bragdon, formerly president of the Goldfield Mining Company, which is one of the integrals of the Goldfield Consolidated, headed the Greenwater Black Jack Copper Mining Company, with a capitalization of $1,000,000.

ALL THE COPPER IN THE WORLD

UNITED STATES Senator George S. Nixon of Nevada lent his name, along with H. H. Clark, William Bayley and H. J. Woollacott, as a director of the Greenwater Furnace Creek Copper Company, with a capitalization of $1,500,000. The prospectus of this company announced that the ores were "melaconite, azurite, chalcocite, and occasionally chrysocolla, averaging 18 to 36 per cent. (copper) tenor."

"Taking the lowest percentage of ore reported by the company," says Horace Stevens in the Copper Handbook of 1908, "and the company's own figures as to the size of its ore-bodies, the first 100 feet in depth on this wonderful property would carry upward of 20,000,000 tons of refined copper, worth, at 13 cents per pound, the comparatively trifling sum of five billion, two hundred million dollars."

Mr. Stevens goes on: "The fact that a Major is manager of this company, and a United States Senator is vice-president, will prove a great consolation to the shareholders. It is indeed lamentable to note that this magnificent mine, which carries, according to the company's own statements, more copper than all the developed copper mines of the world, is idle, and present office address a mystery."

Donald Mackenzie, of Goldfield, promoter of the successful Frances-Mohawk Mining & Leasing Company at Goldfield, which netted over $1,500,000 from Mohawk ores, and distributed all of 20 per cent. of this amount to stockholders in the shape of dividends, pushed out the Greenwater Red Boy Copper Company and the Greenwater Saratoga Copper Company, with a capitalization of $1,000,000 each. Thomas B. Rickey, president of the State Bank & Trust Company of Goldfield, Tonopah and Carson City, was president of both of these companies, and J. L. ("God-Bless-You") Lindsey, cashier of the State Bank & Trust Company, was treasurer.

Greenwater Consolidated, Greenwater Copper, Furnace Creek Oxide Copper, Greenwater Black Oxide Copper, Greenwater California Copper, Greenwater Polaris Copper, Greenwater Pay Copper, Pittsburg and Greenwater Copper, Greenwater Copper Range, Greenwater Ely Consolidated, Greenwater Sunset, New York & Greenwater, Greenwater Etna, Greenwater Superior, Greenwater Victor, Greenwater Ibex, Greenwater Vindicator, Greenwater Prospectors', Greenwater El Captain, Greenwater & Death Valley Extension, Greenwater Copper Queen, Greenwater Helmet, Tonopah Greenwater, Furnace Creek Gold & Copper, and Greenwater Willow Creek were the names of a score of others with capitalizations ranging all the way from $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 each.

Among these the Greenwater Willow Creek Copper Company boasted of the fanciest directorate. George A. Bartlett, Nevada's lone Congressman, was president, and Richard Sutro, then head of the world-known New York banking house of Sutro Bros. & Co., was advertised as first vice-president. Henry E. Epstine, the popular Tonopah broker, was second vice-president, and Alonzo Tripp, general manager of the Tonopah & Goldfield Railroad, was a director.

Did I fall for Greenwater? Yes, and at the eleventh hour.

On the half-hearted recommendation of the trust company's engineer, "Jack" Campbell, the L. M. Sullivan Trust Company paid $125,000 for a property in Greenwater that boasted of two ten-foot holes. On two sides it adjoined the property of the Furnace Creek Copper Company, the original location in the camp. Our engineer reported that if "Patsy" Clark's Furnace Creek Copper Company, shares of which were selling in the market at a valuation of $5,500,000 for the property, had any ore, we certainly could not miss it. No matter which way the veins trended, our ground must be as good as "Patsy's," because the identical vein formation passed through both properties.

The Sullivan Trust Company thereupon incorporated the Furnace Creek South Extension Copper Company to operate the property. The capitalization was 1,250,000 shares of the par value of $1, of which 500,000 shares were placed in the treasury of the company to be sold for purposes of mine development.

New York Stock Exchange houses having the call as purveyors of this particular line of goods, the Sullivan Trust Company tendered the selling agency of Furnace Creek South Extension treasury stock to E. A. Manice & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, whose officers are located in the same building in New York as J. P. Morgan & Company. We offered for public subscription 100,000 shares of treasury stock at par, $1, through E. A. Manice & Company, and this firm advertised the offering in New York newspapers over their own signature. The Sullivan Trust Company paid the bills.

THE COLLAPSE OF GREENWATER

THE offering turned out to be a "bloomer," the first the Sullivan Trust Company had met with. E. A. Manice & Company did not dispose of as many as 30,000 shares. Neither did the stock offered later by the Sullivan Trust Company through brokers in other cities sell freely. Just at the moment when we announced our offering of Furnace Creek South Extension the Greenwater boom began to crack.

Oscar Adams Turner, who promoted the Tonopah Mining Company of Nevada, which has paid $8,000,000 in dividends on a capitalization of $1,000,000, is responsible for the early bursting of the bubble. Mr. Turner had invested in the Greenwater camp on the reports of an engineer. He organized the Greenwater Central Copper Company. Then he decided that it was advisable for him to take a look at the property for himself. He visited Greenwater. Two hours after arriving in camp he sent a telegram to Philadelphia reading substantially as follows:

Stop offering Greenwater Central. Make no more payments on the property. Do not use my name any further. There is nothing here.