The embarrassment of the L. M. Sullivan Trust Company, was disastrous to Goldfield, The decline and fall of the camp dated from that very hour.

The Goldfield News, of nation-wide circulation in those days and up to then unshackled, sought to stem the tide. It published a double-leaded editorial, in full-face type, setting forth that the Sullivan Trust Company had gone down with its flag nailed to the masthead of a declining market and had lost its last dollar supporting its own stocks.

The camp took courage. Soon it became evident that the initial smash in stock-market values was not sufficient to convince the natives that the death-knell of the market for its long line of mining securities had been sounded.

The population of Goldfield was 15,000. Its life could not be snuffed out in a day. Great was the depreciation in the market price of Goldfield mining issues, but not to an extent as yet that indicated the almost complete annihilation of values which followed. Final destruction for the general list, with some scattering exceptions, came only after a "starving-out" siege on the part of investors, who refused to commit themselves farther and gradually resorted to liquidation.

Listed Goldfield securities, nearly 200 in number, and valued in the markets at above $150,000,000 during the boom, had within two months shown a falling off of $60,000,000 in market value, but the list on the average was still quoted higher than the promotion prices.

On January 18, 1907, fifteen days after the newspapers throughout the land carried front-page stories of the failure of the Sullivan Trust Company, the stocks promoted by the trust company were still in demand in all mining-share markets of the country at an average price not below that at which original subscriptions were accepted from the public.

Jumping Jack, promoted at 25 cents, was quoted at 30 cents bid. Stray Dog Manhattan, promoted at 45 cents, was in demand at 49 cents. Lou Dillon, promoted at 25 cents, was still wanted at 26. Indian Camp, sold originally to the public at 25, was quoted at 85 bid. Silver Pick Extension, promoted at 25, was 21 bid, a loss of 4 cents from the promotion price. Eagle's Nest Fairview was quoted at 25, off 10 cents from the promotion figure. These prices represented terrific losses from the "highs" that had been reached during the height of the Goldfield boom, yet the average market price was still above the subscription price of the shares at which the public was first allowed to participate. A remarkable part of this demonstration was that for twenty days no inside support had been lent to these stocks. The Sullivan Trust Company being in trouble, the markets had been left to the mercy of short-sellers and market sharp-shooters generally.

Having settled the trust company's liabilities of $1,200,000 by tying up in trust all of its securities and the other assets, of which the creditors agreed to accept in full quittance 80 per cent. of the proceeds and to turn back to the trust company 20 per cent., I returned to New York during the last week in January. I was again out of a job—and broke.

I visited the officers of mining-stock brokers in Wall Street and Broad Street. Wherever I went a hearty handclasp was extended. Not one of the Eastern stock brokers was involved to the extent of a single dollar in the Sullivan Trust Company failure.

The brokers were convinced that the embarrassment was honest. The trust company's credit had always been good. Had the failure been meditated, I could have involved Eastern brokers for at least $1,000,000. Because I didn't, New York brokers were not slow to express their good feeling. A number of them offered to extend a helping hand did I wish to embark on a new enterprise.

Peculiarly enough—or shall I say, naturally—after tossing off the trust company's millions, of which half were mine, in a vain endeavor to support the market for its stocks, I was as full of spirit as the month of May. I had been broke before, and the sensation was not new to me. Withal, I had profited. A new fund of experience was mine. Even though I had not gathered shekels as a result of my hard work in Goldfield, I had learned something—I had acquired the rudiments of a great business.

Goldfield had been the mining emporium—the security factory. New York was the recognized market center. Market handling had been my weak spot. I now had a chance to witness the performance of some past-masters in the art of market manipulation, and I tried to make the best of the opportunity.

I watched intently the daily sessions of the New York Curb. I was in and out of brokerage offices hourly. Nothing that transpired escaped me.

Within a month I heard enough and saw enough to convince me that, daring as were the operations of the mergerers and waterers of Goldfield Consolidated, in that they ballooned the price of their security at its inception some $29,000,000 (400 per cent.) above the accepted intrinsic worth and were able to get the public in at top prices, their activities were but amateurish when compared with the stock-market campaign in Nipissing, which was now transpiring on the New York Curb.

In the Nipissing campaign tens of millions of the public's money went glimmering, several great promoters' fortunes were reared as by magic, some big names and big reputations were tarnished, and dollars in $1,000,000 blocks were juggled like glass balls under the touch of sleight-of-hand performers.

This market melodrama was well staged. It had a sensational start-off, and action was at high tension every minute. The performance had covered a period of seven months when I arrived in New York, and was reaching its climax. It was a wild orgy in market-manipulation and money-fleecing that had no parallel in history from the early Comstock days up to and including Greenwater. As a mining-stock boom it was a dizzy, bewildering success—full of red fire and explosions to the last curtain climax.

W. B. Thompson, Montana mine promoter and money-getter; Captain Joseph R. Delamar, famed as a daring adventurer on land and sea, and recently a highly successful financier, mine-owner, stock-market operator and art collector; John Hays Hammond, mining engineer, promoter, politician and ambitious society leader; A. Chester Beatty, millionaire mining engineer, and the seven Guggenheim brothers, were in the all-star cast. Mr. Thompson, by reason of the fact that he was market manager, was most under the spotlight, although at times he was obscured by the others.

Mr. Thompson was a product of Butte, Montana. Early in the game he had learned the Wall Street lesson that "stocks are made to sell." Born and reared in Butte without the aid of a silver spoon, he had never been "in the money" before coming East. The great pay-streak in the East apparently looked better to him than the pay-streaks that some of his Butte neighbors had missed in their deep-mine operations. He was an ideal man for the Nipissing job, as subsequent events in his career thoroughly confirm. Of a school that believes money in hand to be worth more than mining certificates in the box, Mr. Thompson's route from Montana to Broad Street was via Boston, where he made his first visible stake by marketing stock in the Shannon group of mines.

When the Cobalt excitement was in its infancy Mr. Thompson took a run up to the camp. The Nipissing mine was about the best thing in sight. It was producing real silver. The company was owned by a little club consisting of E. P. Earle, specialist in rare metals, Captain Delamar, millionaire soldier of fortune, E. C. Converse, banker and steel magnate, Ambrose Monnell, R. M. Thompson, Joseph Wharton, since deceased, of Philadelphia, and Duncan Coulson, a rich Canadian lawyer. Considerable silver was being produced. The veins, however, were exceedingly narrow, not more than a few inches wide. It was impossible to block out ore to an extent that would warrant any opinion as to the real measure of the mine's riches. The gentlemen owners were not averse to giving Mr. Thompson an option on 100,000 shares of treasury stock of the 1,200,000 five-dollar shares ($6,000,000), at $2 a share, when he made the proposition, and another 100,000 shares at $2.50. Later, they sold him a call on 50,000 or 100,000 shares around $7. All of this happened in the Summer of 1906, six months before I reached New York and at a time when the country was giving indication of going mining-stock crazy, Nevada stocks having advanced on the New York Curb in the Goldfield boom hundreds per cent.

After the Goldfield boom had gained terrific headway, during the Fall of 1906, when Mohawk was climbing from 10 cents per share toward the $20 mark, which it reached during the climax, the Cobalt mining-stock excitement spread like wildfire. A sudden demand sprang up for Nipissing shares. Mr. Thompson, about this time, connected himself with the old established and conservative banking house of C. Shumacher & Company on Wall Street. The affiliation was calculated to give the promoter of Nipissing stock much standing. The move served well its purpose. The public grabbed at the shares. The price jumped to $4.50 in a jiffy. Mr. Thompson began to let go of stock after the $4 point was reached. He was making a killing, but fed out his optional stock very cautiously at the rate of about 5,000 shares daily, each day at an advance. By the time the price reached $7 Mr. Thompson got suspicious. There was something about the play he could not understand. He had not found it necessary to do much "laundry" work on the Curb market. Every time he offered stock it was lapped up silently and completely. Every time his brokers opened their mouths to sell the certificates they were gobbled.

Mr. Thompson stopped putting out any more stock and streaked it up to Cobalt to see what was going on. He had a hard time laying hold of the inside facts, but learned enough to satisfy himself that rich ore had been encountered at depth. He discovered on his return to New York that Captain Delamar had been buying that cheap stock through S. H. P. Pell & Company and was even then the heaviest individual holder, a position contested only once during the whole campaign, and that by a rank outsider operating through Eugene Meyer, Jr., whose name has never been publicly mentioned as having anything to do with the gamble. This "unknown" was a quiet, mild-spoken, college-bred gentleman. He pulled down $1,500,000 in Nipissing—and kept it.

Upon the return of Mr. Thompson from Cobalt the promoters warmed up to their job. The manipulation which had been begun in a comparatively modest way now showed the spirit of the gambler who plays "the ceiling for the limit." New market-boosting accessories were called into use. They did their work. The game waxed hotter and hotter.

THE GUGGENHEIMS ENTER NIPISSING

Boom! Boom! Boom! went Nipissing. By the time the price crossed $20 the gamblers and speculators of two continents were on fire with excitement. Presently it became noised about that the Guggenheim family had taken an option on 400,000 shares of Nipissing stock at $25 a share, making the investment $10,000,000, and putting a valuation of $32,000,000 on the property. Furthermore, it was announced that the deal had been made on the report and advice of John Hays Hammond, the international mining engineer, crony of Cecil Rhodes and famed as the head of the profession. As a part and parcel of the remarkable story, it was authoritatively stated that the Guggenheims had paid $2,500,000 cash for the option. W. B. Thompson was said to have negotiated the transaction.

Confirmation of the deal set the gamblers crazy. There could be no risk in following such leadership as the Guggenheims', endorsed by the eminent Hammond. The market boiled up to $30 and then majestically boomed to $33.25. Transactions in this single issue totaled hundreds of thousands of shares a day. Waiters, bar-keepers, tailors, seamstresses and tenderloin beauties competed with bankers, merchants, professionals on the regular exchanges, and even ministers of the Gospel, for the privilege of buying Nipissing shares on a valuation of more than $40,000,000 for the mine.

On the way up the original bunch of insiders floated out of their holdings. Most of them had cashed in under $20. Some of them stayed out; others went back, and, like the moth, got burned. W. B. Thompson, it is said, parted with the bulk of his 250,000 to 300,000 shares at from $24.50 up, cleaning up for personal account between $4,500,000 and $5,000,000, according to the estimates of close friends then in his confidence. Never was there a cleaner case of "finding" money for Mr. Thompson. The manipulative campaign, of which he was made manager, was a giant success. The only ability or skill needed, after the Guggenheim deal was made—brilliant deal from a market standpoint!—was the sense to hold on to his optioned stock until his associates, the Guggenheim following, and the public made a rich, ripe and juicy market for it.

Mr. Thompson subsequently participated in Cumberland-Ely, El Reyo, Inspiration, La Rose, Utah Copper, Mason Valley, and other mining promotions, and is now rated at $10,000,000 to $12,000,000. He is generally prominent at the nutritious or selling end when a good market exists and is now head of a New York Stock Exchange brokerage and mining promotion firm which publishes its own newspaper.

But what happened to Nipissing? Plenty, and then some, happened. As noted, the stock mounted by flying leaps to $33.25, stayed well above $30 for quite a while, and began slowly to recede. Complacent in the consciousness that they had the biggest silver mine in the world, the Guggenheims allowed all of their friends to share in their good fortune.

Of a sudden, stock from mysterious sources began to press on the market. It came in great quantity and without let-up. Suspicion was aroused in the Guggenheim camp. They despatched A. Chester Beatty, one of their very best expert engineers, and a former protege of John Hays Hammond, to Cobalt to smell out the trouble. The text of his report was never printed. It didn't have to be. The facts beat it in.

Much of the showy mineral, on which glowing reports as to the fabulous value of the property had been based, contained little or no silver. It was smaltite, an ore of the metal cobalt, closely resembling many of the silver ores.

The story was given out that Mr. Beatty had reported adversely on account of the unfavorable showing made by mine developments carried out subsequent to Mr. Hammond's report. The miners had run into non-productive calcite a few hundred feet down, it was said.

As a matter of fact, because of the limited amount of all underground development in the interim, there could have been no condition observable in the property as a whole when Mr. Beatty made his examination that was not equally apparent when Mr. Hammond made his report.

The talent jumped to the conclusion that the mine was a "deader."

Many millions in silver bullion have been taken from the property since then, and it is still a great producer, but this is another and more prosaic story. This deals with the stock-gambling feature of the record.

Scenes of the wildest disorder were witnessed on the Curb in those days of 1907 soon after my return from Goldfield. The Guggenheims "laid down" on their option, getting out as best they could. According to published reports, they charged to profit and loss the $2,500,000 originally put up, besides paying the $1,500,000 to $2,000,000 in losses of personal friends for whose misfortune they felt personally responsible. Be that as it may, the Guggenheims emerged from the campaign with damage to their market reputation and standing from which they have never fully recovered. Previous to their acquaintance with the Cobalt bonanza, they had a blindly idolatrous following that would have invested hundreds of millions on a tip from them. They have never regained the position in this respect they then held.

NIPISSING ON THE TOBOGGAN

The price of Nipissing tobogganed from $33 to under $6 with terrific speed. W. B. Thompson and his associates, who had unloaded their holdings on the way up, were reported to have taken advantage of the Beatty report and to have sold the market short on the way down, making another "clean-up" of millions. The stock hit a few hard spots on the descent, but when the wreckage was cleared away and the dead and wounded assembled, there wasn't hospital or morgue space to accommodate half of them. The final carnage and mutilation was shocking beyond description.

The public had once more been landed with the goods. It had eaten up Nipissing stock on a $43,000,000 valuation which broke to $7,000,000 or $8,000,000 within the space of a few days. This $35,000,000 slaughter represents only a fraction of the actual losses, for fabulous amounts were sacrificed in marginal accounts. The daily aggregate of open accounts in Nipissing during the months of keenest excitement probably averaged not less than five times the total capitalization. Actual losses were therefore far larger than would appear from a merely superficial calculation. The public contributed $75,000,000 to $100,000,000 to its Nipissing experience fund.

There has always been more or less mystery as to just what John Hays Hammond said orally to the Guggenheims to lead them into the crowning humiliation of their business career. It did not appear in his written and published report, for in that document is to be found a neat little hedge to the effect that "if" conditions as revealed to him were maintained, the values would be, etc., etc. That little "if" was the Hammond saving clause, although it did not save that $1,000,000-a-year job of his, about which some of his admirers have liked to talk in joyous chorus, nor did it save the public from massacre.

Another Nipissing mystery is the sustained professional and personal cordiality still existing between the eminent John Hays Hammond and the scarcely less eminent A. Chester Beatty. For a little while after Mr. Beatty had to turn down his chief their relations appeared to have been strained. But this was not for long. Mr. Beatty also severed connections with the Guggenheim pay-roll, and the two great engineers were soon again, and are now, on the best of terms.

On rainy days when the tickers drone along and there is no exciting news, evil-minded derelicts of the memorable Nipissing campaign are prone to figure how much a man might have made in the market with a foreknowledge of the two adverse reports and to figure on the sporting chances for a "double cross" that such a situation would hold.

Scandal mongers, too, who have watched closely the friendship which exists between W. B. Thompson and John Hays Hammond often ask unkindly what has cemented the bond between the two. Recently, when the Rocky Mountain Club needed a new club-house, Messrs. Hammond and Thompson subscribed an equal amount—a goodly sum it was—to build it.

They are seen much together in public and seem to have many tastes in common. Mr. Thompson, whose strangely fortunate campaign in Nipissing on the New York Curb was helped to a triumphant promotion climax by the Hammond report to the Guggenheims, bears Mr. Hammond no ill-will for that—and who would blame him for the kindly feeling?

WHO GOT THE $75,000,000?

But what of the public? It played $75,000,000 to $100,000,000 into the game, and has never yet learned who got it. Who did get it? Some of the details of the grand separation scheme have been set forth in the foregoing, but nothing like enough to satisfy the curiosity of the public who footed the bill, paid the freight, contributed sucker-toll for the whole prodigious sum.

Did the author of the report on the strength of which tens of millions were plunged on Nipissing by an army of deluded investors and speculators ever suffer in fortune by the mischance or misshot, or whatever name you may give the "come-on" document? Not that you could notice. True, he gave up his alleged $1,000,000 job with the Guggenheims. But is he not a heavy contributor to the Republican national campaign fund, a close personal friend of the Administration, and did he not represent this great Government as Special Ambassador at the Coronation of England's King? Was he not talked of as running mate for Mr. Taft, and did he not organize the National League of Republican Clubs two years ago? He is tremendously rich and round-shouldered under a mountain-high burden of honors.

Every mother's son of the old Nipissing crowd is at this very hour up and at it in regions where the public's money flows. Many of them still have a grip on the property. It was a good old cow to milk. E. P. Earle, who was president of Nipissing in 1906, headed the company four years later. Captain Delamar slipped down and away (he's now in on the extravagantly touted Porcupine Dome Mines Company), and so did E. C. Converse, whose time is all taken up managing the Stock Exchange banknote engraving monopoly and a couple of banks and trust companies. W. B. Thompson, who came into the Nipissing directory in 1907, still sticks in spite of the awful experience of 1906-07.

Has an outraged Government ever raised hue and cry against these eminent captains of industry? Not yet, nor soon.

What difference is there between the respectable multi-millionaire bankers putting across a losing promotion and the little fellow? Both may be equally honest or equally crooked, yet in equity both are entitled to the same treatment and the same consideration. Their operations differ only in degree. The aim of each is to get the public's money. And the big fellow is more dangerous by a hundred thousand degrees.

Where does real tangible evidence of a conspiracy to defraud in Nipissing exist? Does any exist? Now I venture to say that you could put on the scent any young man who is a graduate of the public schools, and within thirty days he would obtain enough evidence to prove to any jury in the land that the manipulators of that stock used improper measures to get the public's money.

A scrutiny of the files of the newspapers during the progress of the malodorous Nipissing campaign reveals many strange happenings. It shows, among other things, most remarkable willingness on the part of financial writers for the press of that day to say every possible good word for the manipulators and to feed the public appetite for sensational gossip concerning the gamble.

How this was done is easily understood by those familiar with Wall Street publicity. It was an open secret on the Street at that time that many writers for the press were subjected to strongest temptations to lend their hand to the game of publicity. The columns of the daily newspapers carry in themselves evidence to show that the attempts were not always in vain.

One little story will illustrate the methods employed. The business manager of a widely known and reputable daily financial publication was stopped one day by a man active in Nipissing and told he had been put into 500 shares of the Nipissing stock at the market price when the stock was still selling under $10 and at the time when it was being groomed for the terrific rise which followed and which did not culminate until $33 had been passed. The newspaper man was not above making a turn in the Street, but he objected to taking it that way. He politely turned down the proposition, saying that he did not wish any part of it.

The tempter then went to him on another tack, agreeing to carry the stock for him, so that he would have no risk whatever, at the same time remarking that, in turn for the favor, generous recognition in the news columns of the publication, in support of the Curb campaign, would be expected. Again the newspaper man declined, this time with unmistakable emphasis. He intimated cannily that while he might be taken on he might not be told when to get off, adding that he might be discharged if he fell for anything of that sort.

When the market price toppled from $33 back to around $6 this man's newspaper did not carry any front-page story denouncing the outrage upon the public.

I do not know that the manipulators of Nipissing "got to" his employers, but I do know of some newspapers in New York which pose before the public as embodying the very highest type of newspaper morality and which have at their head, either as part owners or as editors, men who were taken in hand by Wall Street magnates at a period when they were dependent for their daily livelihood on their weekly wage, and were lifted into the millionaire division by being put into "good things." Do you suppose newspapers presided over by those men are going to say a word against the enterprises of their benefactors? Conversely, if their benefactors happen to be bothered by any man whose business purposes run contrary to theirs, how far, do you think, these gentlemen of the press would go in their own news columns to poison the public mind against the enterprise of their patron's enemy?

When I witnessed the climax of W. B. Thompson's marvelously successful campaign in Nipissing on the New York Curb, I was fresh from Goldfield. My recollection is that my chief thought at that time, with the Goldfield Consolidated swindle fresh in my mind, was simply that the Western multi-millionaire highbinder promoter didn't class with his Eastern prototype. Indeed, the two appeared to be of different species, as different as the humble but noisy coyote from the Abyssinian man-eating tiger.

The late Spring of 1907 found me back in Nevada. I selected Reno as a central point for residence and decided to locate there. Eastern stock markets appeared to be beyond my ken. It seemed quite apparent that the Western game, as compared with the Eastern, was one of marbles as against millions. In New York's financial mart I felt like a minnow in a sea of bass. Without millions for capital, Nevada appealed to me as a more likely field of usefulness. I believed in Nevada's mineral resources. Having seen Goldfield evolve from a tented station on the desert with a hundred people into a city of 15,000 inhabitants; from a district with a few gold "prospects" into a series of mines producing the yellow metal at the rate of nearly $1,000,000 a month, I was enthused with the idea that there were other goldfields yet unexplored in the battle-born State and that opportunity was bound to come to me if I pitched my tent on the ground.

THE WONDER MINING-CAMP STAMPEDE

I was back in Nevada just a week when a stampede into a new mining camp called Wonder took place. I was quick to join in the rush. The Philadelphia crowd who owned control of the big Tonopah mine had annexed a property there which they named the Nevada Wonder. It boasted of a big tonnage of low-grade silver-gold ore.

On arrival at Wonder, I found my former Goldfield partner, L. M. Sullivan, on the ground. He entreated me to allow him to cut in on any deal I made. A bargain was struck. He agreed to advance all the money and I was to receive half of the profits for my work. The corporation of Sullivan & Rice was formed. We purchased the Rich Gulch group of claims, a likely piece of ground with a well defined ledge, and incorporated the Rich Gulch Wonder Mining Company. A company with the usual million-share capitalization was formed to operate the property. A high-class directorate was secured. T. F. Dunnaway, vice-president and general manager of the Nevada, California & Oregon Railroad, accepted the presidency. Hon. John Sparks, Governor of Nevada, became first vice-president. U. S. Webb, Attorney General of California, accepted the second vice-presidency. D. B. Boyd, for twenty-five years successively Treasurer of Washoe County, Nevada, was made treasurer.

The first advertised offering of treasury stock of the Rich Gulch Wonder carried the names of forty leading mining-stock brokers, situated in various cities stretching from New York to Honolulu, who had signified over their signatures their willingness to undertake the sale of treasury stock at 25 cents per share on a basis of 20 per cent. commission. The first thousand shares of treasury stock at 25 cents was sold to Superintendent McDaniel of the Nevada Wonder mine. This convinced us that we had a good "prospect."

I had my doubts about the successful promotion of any Nevada mining company at this period, because of the terrific slump which was transpiring in Goldfield issues and also because of the smack in the face that mining-stock investors had just received in Nipissing. It was my idea that if the Rich Gulch Wonder made any money for us the cashing would have to be delayed until mills were erected and the property became a producer. I was willing to go ahead on that basis.

The sale of treasury stock was slow, but sufficient was disposed of to warrant the expense for mine development of at least $2,000 a month for six months, and that appeared far enough to provide for in advance.

Pending the making good of this proposition in a financial way, I determined I would help finance a newspaper publication at Reno which would give to mining-stock speculators an unbiased statement of mining and market conditions as they existed. In the mining camps it was considered tantamount to financial suicide for the home publication to reflect on the merits of any locally owned property. Strictures were looked upon as "knocks," and "knockers" are taboo in mining camps. Moreover, mining-camp papers could hardly make both ends meet at the time without support from inside interests, and unprejudiced statements of fact that were detrimental to a local property could hardly be expected.

Merrill A. Teague was made editor of the new publication, which was called the Nevada Mining News. Mr. Teague had just blown into Reno from Goldfield where he had been connected with the Nevada Mines News Bureau, a daily market sheet. Before coming to Nevada he had served in an editorial capacity on the Baltimore American and the Philadelphia North American. Mr. Teague is the possessor of a facile pen. At $50 a week, which was his stipend at the beginning, I was convinced that the Nevada Mining News had a cheap editor. When news was scarce he could write more about nothing than any man I ever met before. Incidentally, he could go further without finding a stopping place in a crusade than any man I had ever bumped up against. That was his drawback. However, compared with the work of other newspaper men then employed in Nevada, his stuff was in a class by itself and was commercially very valuable.

TEAGUE ATTACKS SENATOR NIXON

Mr. Teague was on the job just a week when he cut loose with an attack on United States Senator George S. Nixon of Nevada in a front-page story headed "Goldfield in the Grasp of Wall Street Sharks." The article declared that Senator Nixon, needing $1,000,000 to conclude the merger plans of the Goldfield Consolidated, had got it through B. M. (Berney) Baruch of the New York Stock Exchange, factotum of Thomas F. Ryan, at terrible cost. The loan was made at a time when Goldfield Consolidated was selling around $10 per share. In consideration for the loan, Senator Nixon, acting for the company, gave Mr. Baruch an option on 1,000,000 shares of treasury stock of the Goldfield Consolidated at $7.75 per share. At the time Mr. Teague commenced his onslaught Goldfield Consolidated shares had slumped from $10 to $7.50. Mr. Teague alleged that the market on the stock was being juggled and speculators were being milked. Mr. Baruch, he asserted, had sold the stock down to $7.50 per share on the strength of his option, and was now tempted to break the market, sell the stock short and cover all at much lower prices.

Within two weeks after the publication of Mr. Teague's exposÉ of the terms of the outstanding option to Mr. Baruch, Goldfield Consolidated shares dropped to under $6. The story evidently had its effect.

The issue of the paper which chronicled the break to $6 contained an editorial headed "Nixon in the RÔle of Brutus." It demanded of Senator Nixon that he stand behind the stock and support the market, and also called upon him to declare the payment of dividends which he had promised to stockholders in his annual report dated two months prior.

People in Nevada began asking, "Who is Teague?" Mr. Teague caused the publisher of the Nevada Mining News, who was Hugh Montgomery, formerly business manager of the Chicago Tribune, to explain over his signature that Mr. Teague had been the political editor of the Baltimore American, later an editorial writer for the Philadelphia North American, and that while on the Philadelphia North American he had crusaded against get-rich-quick swindlers who had headquarters in Philadelphia, with the result that the Storey Cotton Company, the Provident Investment Bureau, the Haight & Freese Company and other bucketshop concerns were put out of business. On evidence furnished by him, it was stated, Mr. Teague secured the conviction by the United States Government of Stanley Frances and Frank C. Marrin as chief conspirators in the $400,000 Storey cotton swindle. Finally, the article said, Mr. Teague was engaged by a far-famed magazine to expose bucketshop iniquities in the United States. This series of articles had appeared in 1906.

The biographical sketch seemed to satisfy readers that they were getting their "dope" straight on Goldfield Consolidated. My name at this time did not appear in connection with the publication except as part of the aggregation of Sullivan & Rice who advertised therein, but I was openly accused by Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield of dictating the policy of the paper. This was a half-truth. My sympathies were with the stockholders of Goldfield Consolidated—that's all.

The story is told in Nevada that when Senator Nixon received the check for $1,000,000 from Berney Baruch, after having executed notes of the Goldfield Consolidated, signed by himself as president and endorsed by him as an individual, he took luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. When the waiter presented the bill the Senator ostentatiously tendered the $1,000,000 check in payment. The waiter put it all over the Senator by politely stating that if he wished to pay his dinner check out of the proceeds, Proprietor Boldt would undoubtedly attend to the matter for him. The Senator was forced to tell the waiter he was "only joking."

The Nevada Mining News appeared to be catching on and was now printing 28,000 copies weekly. Sample copies were sent in every direction with the idea of acquainting investors with its existence.

A day after the issue appeared containing the editorial in which Senator Nixon was accused of playing the rÔle of Brutus, I was stopped on the street by the editor of the Reno Gazette, a newspaper which is loyally attached to the Senator and his friends.

"The Senator wants to see you, Rice. Better go over to the bank right away. If you know what's good for you, you'll do it," the Gazette man said.

"I will, like ——!" I replied. "My office is up in the Clay Peters Building, and if the Senator has anything to say to me he can give me a call. I am not one of his sycophants, and I am not going."

I didn't go.

An hour afterward the editor of the Gazette met me again. "Senator Nixon wants to see you at his office right away," he said bluntly.

"About what?" I inquired.

"About articles which have appeared in the Nevada Mining News," he answered.

"Very well," I replied, "I'll send the editor over."

Turning to Mr. Teague, I said, "I have no business with Senator Nixon, and if he has anything to communicate regarding the newspaper you, the editor, are the man for him to say it to."

Mr. Teague went over to the Nixon National Bank and entered the directors' room. My stenographer accompanied him as far as the door and took a seat outside, in the banking room.

As Mr. Teague entered, Senator Nixon jumped to his feet. He looked black as thunder. He quivered with rage.

"Why don't Rice come over here himself, eh? He daren't! I've got his record from boyhood jacketed in these drawers. While I have not read it, I know the story, and I am going to have it published in a bunch of newspapers so the world can know who is holding me up to public scorn!" the Senator spluttered.

In relating what transpired Mr. Teague later informed me that the Senator's wrathful indignation appealed to him as so grotesquely comic he felt like laughing, but he thought it a poor newspaper stunt to incense him further at a moment when it looked as if, by appeasing him, he could tempt him into volubility. Soon Mr. Teague had the Senator at ease, pouring forth a long interview, full of acrimony and affectation, which Mr. Teague promised to publish in the Nevada Mining News.

Mr. Teague reported to me that the Senator construed his pacifying attitude as meaning that I would undoubtedly "listen to reason" and that his threat would most certainly accomplish its purpose.

"CALLING FOR A SHOW-DOWN"

When Mr. Teague finished narrating to me what had transpired I was beside myself. Presently I gave him these instructions: "Write out the interview with the Senator. Have two carbon copies made. When finished, take the three copies over to the Senator and have him read them and put his O.K. on them. After you have done that, give the Senator one copy, give the printer a copy, and put the other copy in the safe. As soon as the copy of the interview is in the printer's hands, sit down and write an editorial. Head it 'A United States Senator with a Blackmailing Mind.' Publish my record in full. Tell of everything of any consequence I ever did, good or bad. Parallel my record with the Senator's record. Tell the people of Nevada all the facts about the Senator's threat. Say to them nobody can blackmail me, and ask them to choose between us."

On May 25, 1907, the editorial, headed "Nixon a Senator with a Blackmailing Mind," appeared. It was a passionate denouncement, calculated to stir the blood. Also there appeared Senator Nixon's interview in full.

In the interview the Senator had made an effort to disentangle himself from a seemingly inextricable network in which he was enmeshed, and the paper contained still another editorial lambasting him in amplitude for trying to practise on the credulity of the newspaper's readers. The editor accused him of equivocation, artful dodging, false coloring, exaggeration, suppression of truth, cupidity and knavery.

The arraignment wrought an undoubted sensation.

The effect on the Nevada public was unmistakable. It reminded me more of the motionless and breathless attitude of an audience at the third-act climax of a four-act drama, than anything else. The Senator was not seen on the streets of Reno for two months afterwards. For a fortnight afterward he didn't even call at the offices of the bank. When he did finally resume his visits to the bank he came in his automobile. He was whisked to the door of the building, immediately secreted himself in the directors' room and was not get-at-able.

Leading citizens, including the directors of a number of banks in Reno, made clandestine calls at my office, shook my hand, felicitated me over the stand I took, and went away. Even George Wingfield, the Senator's partner, it was reported (and I afterward corroborated this from the lips of George Wingfield himself), backed me up in the stand I had taken. The general sentiment in the State appeared to be that the threat was a lowdown trick, and that of the two I had the less to be ashamed of.

When the Senator read the article headed "Nixon a Senator with a Blackmailing Mind" it is said he telegraphed to former Governor Thomas of Colorado, his counsel, and asked him to come to Reno.

"If I don't say something in answer to this awful attack, I'll choke!" cried the Senator as he nervously walked the floor.

"Did you sign that interview which they published?" asked Governor Thomas.

"Yes," said the Senator.

"Well, then, if you say anything at all now, they'll choke you," answered Governor Thomas.

During the course of our attacks on Senator Nixon in the Nevada Mining News which followed at various intervals, the newspaper accused him of making promises of early dividends to Goldfield Consolidated stockholders which he knew he could not keep; of having been the State Agent in Nevada of the Southern Pacific Company at $150 per month during the Huntington rÉgime when legislatures were bought; of having bilked the investing public out of millions in Goldfield; of having carved his fortune, that made possible the acquisition by him and his partner of control of the Goldfield Consolidated, out of a gambling house in Tonopah; of having gathered his first mining property and mining-stock interests in Goldfield from prospectors who lost money and surrendered their mining claims and stock certificates to the gambling house in lieu of the cash; and of being generally a financial and political freebooter of the most despicable sort. And the Senator never sued for libel nor proceeded in the courts in any way whatsoever to obtain a retraction.

MANIPULATING GOLDFIELD CON

About a week after the publication of the editorial headed "Nixon a Senator with a Blackmailing Mind," when Goldfield Consolidated stock had slumped to around $7, the Nevada Mining News in big bold-faced type urged its readers to place their buying orders for Goldfield Consolidated at $4 a share, saying that New York mining-stock brokers advised their clients that the stock would almost certainly go down to that figure because of the Senator's mistakes in the financial management of the company. That edition contained another editorial on Senator Nixon, headed "Branding a Bilker." It accused him of saying in his annual report a few months previous that payments of dividends on a regular basis would commence within a short time, and contrasted this statement with the signed interview published in the Nevada Mining News, in which he said dividends would be paid "whenever the trustees thought it wise to do so and not before."

Within a day thereafter the stock "busted" wide open to $51/8 bid, $5¼ asked, and the whole Goldfield list smashed farther in sympathy. By June 8th Goldfield Consolidated had crashed to $4.50.

On the dip from $7.50 to $4.50 an opportunity had been offered to Berney Baruch and his associates to buy back in the open market all of the stock they might have sold on the way down from $10 to $7.75, which was the option price. Then the stock was promptly manipulated back to $7. On the way back to $7, the outstanding short interest (of other traders who had accompanied the decline with their selling orders) was forced to cover.

To help along the covering by outsiders up to the $7 point a report was circulated by lieutenants of Senator Nixon in Reno that a dividend would be declared before the end of June, and almost simultaneously the general manager of the mining company in Goldfield put forth a similar tip. As the market began to recover toward the $7 point, Senator Nixon went to San Francisco and was seen often at the sessions on the floor of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board. On the day before the bulge to $7 he was quoted in a San Francisco newspaper as saying that Goldfield Consolidated was such a good thing he would not take $20 per share for his stock.

When the stock hit $7 and the shorts were being squeezed the hardest, Senator Nixon was quoted as saying in still another interview that a dividend was not far away. This interview was carried over the telegraph wires to all market centers by the Associated Press. At the same time a story was printed in the New York Times saying that it was reported on the Street that J. Pierpont Morgan, acting for the Baruch-Ryan crowd, had taken over the control of the Goldfield Consolidated. The shorts were successfully driven to cover. Then the price eased off again in a day from $7 to $61/8.

A month later Mr. Teague became editor in chief of the Nevada State Journal and severed his connection with the Nevada Mining News. I succeeded Mr. Teague as editor and my name appeared at the head of the editorial columns. At about the same time the Sullivan & Rice enterprise was abandoned. I discovered that most of the money Mr. Sullivan had put into the corporation had been borrowed by him from a member of my own family with whom he had hypothecated most of his stock in the company. A rumpus ensued which ended in the shutting up of the shop.

By August Goldfield Consolidated had been manipulated back to $8.37½ a share. Mr. Baruch's option could certainly prove of little value to him unless the stock sold higher at periods than $7.50. But he now evidently found it a hard job to hold the stock above $7.50. By September it had receded again to $7.40. At this period it was reported in Reno that George Wingfield, sick of his partner's bad bargain, was beginning to assert himself and demanded that the Baruch option be cancelled at whatever cost.

The erratic price movement of the stock was causing the loss of public confidence. The manipulation appeared to be raw. Without any important transpiration except the news of the Baruch option and the varying statements put out by Senator Nixon from time to time regarding the plans of the company, which was now awaiting the erection of a huge mill before going on a regular producing basis, the stock had dropped from $10 to $4.50, recovered to $7 and eased off to $61/8, rallied to above $8, and was again tumbling.

The option to Mr. Baruch was conceded to be practically a flat failure from a company standpoint, only 20,000 shares of stock having been purchased by Mr. Baruch from the treasury of the company in nine months. The impression prevailed that Mr. Baruch was milking the market and held the option principally as a club to accomplish his market designs. Moreover, nearly every broker, investor and speculator residing in Goldfield by this time had gone broke because of the vagaries of this stock in the market, and the losses in bad loans and unsecured overdrafts incurred by John S. Cook & Company's bank, controlled by Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield, was said to total nearly $2,000,000 as a result of the almost general smash in market values. The entire Goldfield list, with the exception of Goldfield Consolidated, was now selling at 25 cents on the dollar compared with boom prices of less than a year before, and it was a rather ordinary "piker" sort of broker or speculator in Goldfield who at this time could not boast of being in "soak" to John S. Cook & Company's bank anywhere from $15,000 to $100,000.

On September 23 the Goldfield Consolidated directorate met at Goldfield. After the meeting it was officially announced that the option held by Mr. Baruch on 1,000,000 shares at $7.75 had been canceled and that Mr. Baruch had been given sufficient of the optional stock to liquidate the $1,000,000 obligation of the company, leaving the company free of debt and with a cash reserve of nearly $2,000,000. It was stated that Mr. Baruch had originally been given the option for services in securing the loan of $1,000,000 from J. Kennedy Todd & Company of New York for 13 months with interest at the rate of 6 per cent., and that the price of $7.75 was an "average" one, indicating that Mr. Baruch held an option on stock at varying figures on a scale up from a considerably lower price than $7.75, which he might have exercised in whole or in part.

It was also disclosed that a large block of Goldfield Consolidated stock had been put up as collateral for the note. Because the officials of the company declared by resolution that the "unused certificates shall be canceled" it was generally believed that the entire 1,000,000 shares under option to Mr. Baruch had been put up as security.

The official statement of the company said that the option had been turned back to the company "on a satisfactory basis." No figures were given out. Dispatches from San Francisco to the Nevada Mining News, which I promptly published, alleged that Mr. Baruch was given 200,000 or more shares of Goldfield Consolidated in settlement of the loan to the corporation of $1,000,000 and for the surrender of his option on 1,000,000 shares at an average price of $7.75.

The 200,000 shares of stock was taken out of the collateral at the rate of $5 per share on a day when Goldfield Consolidated was selling around $7.50, after the stock had been manipulated to a fare-ye-well and against a market price of $10 for the stock on the day the option was given.

No denial was ever published. My opinion, based on private investigation and on analysis of the company's reports, is that Mr. Baruch fared even better than as outlined above.

The giving of the option had made it dangerous for anybody except Mr. Baruch to attempt to hold the stock above $7.75 per share after the option had been given, and the company in addition was now mulcted for the difference between the low price per share at which settlement was made with Mr. Baruch and the price at which the stock could have been sold had it been quietly disposed of on the market during the period of nine months which had preceded the date of cancellation. As a matter of fact, there was no necessity at all for settling the loan with stock, the company having in its treasury more than sufficient to repay the loan, and the money was not due. The real purpose, apparently, was to shroud in darkness the exact amount given to Mr. Baruch to release the company from the option and to keep Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield's Goldfield bank, which was the depositary of the mining company, in funds.

Instead of quieting the stockholders the surrender of the option again thrust into the limelight the entire transaction and proved to be an exacerbation.

The immediate effect was that Goldfield Consolidated began to slump again, and in a few days sold down to $6.50. From this point it kept on tobogganing during a period of weeks down to the $3.50 point—a depreciation in market price for the capitalization of the company, within a year of its promotion at $10 a share, of $23,400,000—before rallying once.

ENTER, NAT. C. GOODWIN & CO.

A mining partnership between Nat. C. Goodwin, the actor, and Dan Edwards had been formed at Reno a little before this time. Dan Edwards was a hustling young mining man who had engaged in the business of "turning" properties to promoters. In August, when Goldfield Consolidated was selling around $7.50, Mr. Edwards had asked me to give him a good market tip. I told him to sell Goldfield Consolidated short.

When it hit $6.50 around October 1st he saluted me thus, "Got to hand it to you. I have been trying to make my new firm stick, but it don't seem to work. I guess I don't know how to handle the situation in times like this. How would you like to join us?"

"How much capital have you got?" I asked.

"Five thousand of Nat's money," he answered.

"Get another man with $5,000," I said, "and I'll talk to you."

A young Easterner engaged in mining, named Warren A. Miller, was stopping at the Riverside Hotel. Within an hour Mr. Edwards had him lined up. A week later Nat. C. Goodwin & Company was incorporated with Nat. C. Goodwin president, Mr. Miller vice-president and general manager, and Dan Edwards secretary. The new corporation engaged to give me a salary for showing it how and an interest for other substantial considerations.

Within a fortnight the corporation of Nat. C. Goodwin & Company was making money, not as promoters, however, but as demoters. Instead of at first promoting a mining company and earning its profits on the constructive side of the market, it turned the tables and made money on the destructive side—of Goldfield Consolidated.

During the first half of 1907 I had felt the country's speculative pulse from day to day with the promotion literature of the Sullivan & Rice corporation. Although its new mining company, the Rich Gulch Wonder, had boasted of a very high-class directorate and the property was conceded to have merit, the public refused to enthuse. Instead of subscribing for large blocks, scattering purchases had been made, and money in dribs and drabs had been grudgingly paid over. The Wonder mining camp boom had "died abornin'." Investors seemed to have had enough of mining-stock speculation for a while.

Prices of listed Nevada issues were crumpling like seersuckers in the rain. By this time the awful mess that had been made of Goldfield affairs through the mistakes of Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield had resulted in a depreciation in market value of more than $100,000,000 in listed Nevada issues. This in itself was sufficient to kill a world of buying sentiment.

You have to be a rainbow-chaser by nature to be a successful promoter, but even I, despite my chronic optimism, began to feel the influence of what was transpiring. I made a flip-flop and turned bear on the whole market.

On October 17th the Heinze failure occurred in New York. Five days later the embarrassment of the Knickerbocker Trust Company was announced. I glued my ears to the ground.

Nat. C. Goodwin & Company "shorted" the mining-stock market so far as its limited capital would permit. On the day Mr. Heinze went overboard the company was already short 2,000 shares of Goldfield Consolidated at around $6. On hearing that the Knickerbocker Trust Company was in trouble it promptly shorted 2,000 shares more at a lower figure.

On the afternoon when the news reached Reno of the Knickerbocker Trust Company's embarrassment I received a private telegram from Chicago stating that the paper of the State Bank & Trust Company of Goldfield, Tonopah and Carson City had gone to protest in San Francisco. This set my blood tingling. I knew that meant a general Nevada "bust."

Next morning Nat. C. Goodwin & Company shorted 2,000 shares more of Goldfield Consolidated at about $51/8. Later in the day the failure of the State Bank & Trust Company was announced. A run followed on the Nye & Ormsby County Bank and its branches in Reno, Carson City, Tonopah, Goldfield, and Manhattan, and in two hours that institution, too, closed its doors.

Goldfield Consolidated promptly broke to $4 a share. Around this point Nat. C. Goodwin & Company covered its short sales, at discretion.

All of the Nixon banks in Nevada experienced runs as a result of the failure of the two Nevada banking institutions. So did the other banks.

Governor Sparks was appealed to by Nevada bank officials between two suns to come to the rescue. Without hesitation he declared a series of legal holidays to enable the banks of the State which were still standing on their feet to catch their breath. These banks finally threw open their doors, but when they did, those of Reno met depositors' withdrawals with asset money instead of legal tender. The only bank in Reno which had refused to take advantage of the enforced legal holidays was the Scheeline Banking & Trust Company. And when asset money was finally resorted to as a makeshift, M. Scheeline, the president, was made custodian of the bonds which were put up by the associated Reno banks to secure payment. This restored confidence.

It was believed in Nevada at the time of the failure of the mining-camp banks, the State Bank & Trust Company and the Nye & Ormsby County, that the Nixon institution in Goldfield would have found it hard to weather the storm but for the fact that the Goldfield bank was believed to have upward of $2,000,000 of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company's money on deposit.

When the State Bank & Trust Company went to the wall Senator Nixon, in an interview published in his Reno newspaper, charged the failure of the State Bank & Trust Company to me. He alleged that the State Bank & Trust Company lost $375,000 by the failure of the Sullivan Trust Company ten months before, and that I had broken the bank. The liabilities of the bank were $3,000,000, and its Sullivan Trust Company loss was only "a drop in the bucket." The Senator didn't fool anybody, not even himself. His effort was an ill-concealed attempt to prepossess the public against me, and was received by Nevada people as such.

Senator Nixon indulged in some more "interview" with a view to stemming the tide of liquidation in Goldfield Consolidated. Notwithstanding the fact that the company had only recently resorted to the sale of treasury stock for money-raising purposes, he asserted that a quarterly dividend, payable January 25th, would probably be declared. Beyond a question this statement was made for market purposes at a time when the Senator was sweating money-blood.

The stock promptly tobogganed farther on the strength of the dividend forecast. The Senator's interviews had now become a standing joke in the community. Speculators and brokers had learned the wisdom of "coppering" anything the Senator said.

THE STORY OF THE GOLDFIELD LABOR "RIOTS"

A large force of miners was discharged from the Goldfield Consolidated properties. The action of the company in laying off its men at such a distressful period was denounced. It was alleged that Senator Nixon's Goldfield bank could not afford to pay out the money on deposit to the credit of the company because it was required for bank purposes. The money was apparently being hoarded during the money stringency to help the bank out of a tight place. After-events appeared fully to confirm this theory.

Right in the teeth of the panic, during the depressed and troublous days of the latter part of November;—when current finance was deeply affected; when Goldfield Consolidated was selling below the $4 point and the entire Nevada share list had suffered an average depreciation of about 85 per cent. from the "highs" reached during the Goldfield boom of the year before; when the State of Nevada was racked from end to end by the serious losses incurred by citizens through the failure of the Nye & Ormsby County's and the State Bank & Trust Company's chain of banks, totaling nearly $6,000,000, and it appeared that the credit of the State had already been shattered almost beyond repair—a fresh blow was administered.

Government troops were reported to be en route to Goldfield from San Francisco "to preserve the law." It had been represented to the President of the United States that Goldfield was in a state of anarchy. Goldfield wasn't. As a matter of fact, the situation in Goldfield with the miners, from the standpoint of law and order, was never good, but it was as good then as it had been in eighteen months. True, there had been some lawlessness, but no riot, and the sheriff of the county had made no call whatsoever on the Governor for any aid.

During the first days of the panic Nixon and Wingfield's Goldfield bank, John S. Cook & Company, had tendered the miners the bank's unsecured scrip in lieu of money for the payment of wages. The miners refused acceptance. They were willing to take time-checks of two, three or four months, bearing the mining company's signature, but balked at the idea of becoming creditors of the bank.

It has been stated to me by a number of Goldfield brokers who were present in the camp at the time that the miners had even decided to concede this point, when an outsider secured by intrigue and money sufficient voting power at a meeting of the executive committee of the Miners' Union to pass a resolution objecting to the bank's scrip. The refusal to accept the bank's scrip was at once made an excuse by the Goldfield Mine Owners' Association, which was dominated by George Wingfield, to determine upon a lockout and simultaneously to demand Federal intervention.

If Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield's bank needed money, as the tender of unsecured scrip indicated all too plainly, the complete shutdown which left with the bank as available resources approximately $2,000,000 in the account of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company, was a perfect stop-gap; and the need of the presence of troops was a fine coincidental excuse for the shutdown. Incidentally, it would rid Goldfield of the Miners' Union, which voted to a man against Senator Nixon's Republican candidates for office, and would permit the importation of foreign labor, an expedient which was afterward successfully resorted to.

Senator Nixon brought pressure to bear at Washington. He invoked the good offices of Uncle Sam and urged that Federal troops be sent to the State. He was assisted by Congressman Bartlett in laying the matter before the departments. The wires between Goldfield, Reno, Carson City and Washington were kept hot with an interchange of views. President Roosevelt finally informed the Senator he could not send the soldiers unless the Governor of Nevada wired that a state of anarchy actually existed which the State itself was powerless to put down.

Governor Sparks, honest as the day was long and unsuspecting of any trickery or jobbery, listened to a Goldfield committee and permitted a dispatch to be sent to Washington over his signature representing that such conditions existed.

Thereupon Brigadier-General Funston, at the head of two thousand troops, was ordered to Goldfield. The State being without any militia and the representations made by Governor Sparks in his dispatches being strong on the point that a state of anarchy actually existed in Goldfield, the President finally succumbed.

The maneuver was as swift as it was unexpected. Nevada people at first could not understand what it was all about. Dispatches from Goldfield to Reno said the town was quiet. The nearest approach to an overt act of recent occurrence that had been chronicled was the alleged theft a few days before of a box or two of dynamite, about 300 feet of fuse and a quantity of caps that were said to have been clandestinely removed from the Booth mine in Goldfield. The theft, if theft there was, was charged to the miners, but proof was lacking.

On the arrival of the troops in Goldfield the Goldfield Consolidated announced a new wage scale, reducing the miners' wages from $5 to $4 and in some cases from $5 to $3.50. This was a new move, calculated to rouse the ire of the wage workers and to prolong the lockout. Messrs. Nixon and Wingfield's bank in Goldfield announced at the same time that it would thereafter discharge all of the pay-rolls of the company in gold. But there were no pay-rolls of any consequence then, the mines being shut down.

General Funston on his arrival in Goldfield interviewed mine operators, union miners and citizens generally with a view to determining the necessity for maintaining Government troops there. He discovered that the Administration had been buncoed. The General wired the President his opinion. President Roosevelt quickly dispatched a commission to Goldfield to conduct a public inquiry. This commission consisted of Charles B. Neal, Labor Commissioner; Herbert Knox Smith, Commissioner of Corporations, and Lawrence O. Murray, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor. They heard testimony day and night for a week.

They reported to President Roosevelt that there was no occasion for the presence of troops in Goldfield and that the statements telegraphed to President Roosevelt by Governor Sparks, indicating the existence of a state of anarchy, were without justification. The report was given to the Associated Press and received wide publicity. The President also issued a broadside backing up the findings, which was telegraphed far and wide.

Eastern editorial writers poured out torrents of abuse on Governor Sparks. Senator Nixon went unscathed.

THE DEATH OF GOVERNOR SPARKS

Feeling under a weight of obligation to Governor Sparks, who had headed nearly all of the Sullivan Trust Company promotions as president, I tried editorially in the Nevada Mining News to justify the Governor's action. But it was a wee voice drowned in an ocean of adverse opinion and was entirely without echo. It didn't even soothe the Governor.

The Governor, honest, simple old man, broken in purse, in health and in spirit, grieved over the President's denouncement, took to bed, and died of a broken heart.

At his imposing funeral pageant in Reno, which was attended by thousands of mourners, who had come from all parts of the State to pay homage to the grand old man and who followed the hearse to the cemetery, Senator Nixon and his partner, George Wingfield, were conspicuous by their absence.

Even at the moment when the grave closed over his remains the troops were leaving Goldfield.

"It's the 'Dead March,'" said one of the bereaved.

The bringing of Federal troops to Goldfield accomplished its purpose. The Miners' Union was destroyed and sufficient time was gained to enable the financial atmosphere to clarify. By the time the troops departed, Goldfield Consolidated had rallied to $5 per share. The panic was over. Money was comparatively easy again.

I ask the reader's indulgence for having devoted so much space to the facts bearing on the appearance in Nevada of United States troops at a time when there was no valid occasion for their presence. I feel that it is an important chapter of my experiences and is fraught with interest to the general reader, because it illustrates how easy it is to direct the powerful machinery of our great Government so as to carry out the machinations of evil-minded men.

You might think, after this demonstration of the lengths to which Senator Nixon went to accomplish a set purpose, and after witnessing the success which attended his efforts, that a poverty-stricken individual like myself, who had had the hardihood to conduct a newspaper campaign in the Senator's own home town against his financial and political activities, would judge it the better part of valor to emigrate from the State. Well, I didn't. I stayed right on the spot. That I would hear from Washington later I had no doubt, but I stuck, just the same, until my business interests called me away.

I wasn't wrong in my deductions. Within a few months thereafter there came a visit to my office in Reno by a postal inspector, who was apparently "sicked on to the job," and but for the quick intercession by telegraph of United States Senator Francis B. Newlands of Nevada with the Postmaster General at Washington, I am certain that potent influences even at that early day would successfully have "started something." But of this more at another time, I am ahead of my story.