Every now and then somethin’ about minin’, minin’ sensations and minin’ swindles comes up. Now minin’ in New York–where, by the by, most of the minin’ is done, the bore in the mines not bein’ half as important as the minin’ board–was just as skillfully played twenty or twenty-five years ago as it is today.
There was the old McCulloch mine, for instance. A few men club together, called ‘emselves the North State Company, and bought a mine for $1,500 cash.
Then they spent about a thousand dollars in the newspapers and about five hundred dollars in various ways. Three thousand dollars all told. Well, on the strength of this $200,000 shares were issued at five dollars per, and thousands upon thousands of shares were sold and the shareholders along with ‘em, at four dollars a share. This was at the rate of over thirty-three hundred percent on the original investment.
The Gardner Hill company came near makin’ a million and a half profit on an investment of thirty thousand dollars, which was doing very well for beginners.
There was a Pole at that time in New York named Kowalski. He was a gentlemanly individual, and very clever in his line, possessed of two things which pretty often go or come together–financial ability and a powerful imagination. He had some influential relatives, too, and altogether was just the man for the treasurer of a “fancy” minin’ company. So he became just such a treasurer. For a while Kowalski and his mines flourished. The stocks did well, and Kowalski did better. But the big war clouds obscured the heavens; Lincoln was elected President, the South seceded, and the stocks Kowalski was interested in fell, and kept on fallin’ till they reached zero, or thereabouts.
Kowalski did all in the power of mortal man to keep up his stocks and himself. He displayed wonderful ability and Imagination, but neither could save him.
So one day the able and imaginative treasure took a walk–and never came back. He was always neat in his personal appearance. Well, the day he started out for his last walk he was dressed even neater than usual. But there was a wild somethin’ in his eye which people remembered afterwards.
He wandered down to the river and looked at the waters a while and the shippin’. Then he looked round for a convenient place to plunge himself in, and then he plunged himself in. He couldn’t or wouldn’t swim. So that was the last on earth of the able and imaginative treasurer, who was really a remarkable man. Somethin’, on a smaller scale, like Ralston, of California, who afterwards committed suicide.
By the by, three or four big minin’ operators have killed ‘emselves, and all of ‘em, like Kowalski and Ralston–by goin’ into the water and drownin’ ‘emselves. One would think that they would have had enough of waterin’ their stocks, without waterin’ ‘emselves.
The Mariposa stock made probably the biggest excitement of any minin’ stock in the world–not excepting General Schenk’s famous “Little Emma.”
It interested not only America, but all Europe, especially France, and it involved in its history, before it got through, the State of California, and John C. Fremont and Morris Ketchum.
When the grand smash came the French laws pronounced Fremont guilty of a penal offense, and as they couldn’t get hold of him, got hold of one of his relatives, and sent him to the galleys. Powerful imaginations are not appreciated as they ought to be abroad. Still, as things go in this country, and are justified by public opinion, Fremont was not so much to blame. And, for that matter, jobs to which “Mariposa” was innocence itself have been successfully “floated” for awhile in London and Paris.
Oil companies have, like minin’ companies, developed a good deal of poetical power, enablin’ people to see and describe what never existed.
One of the most brilliant “poetic and oil” companies ever started was the old “Napoleon.” This was worthy of its name, big and dazzlin’, and nothin’ in it.
The “Napoleon” claimed to have, oh! such magnificent lands in Kentucky, and on the strength of its prospectus, which had as much imagination to the square inch as anythin’ in Longfellow or Tennyson, the stock went up from $2 a share to $32, which was decidedly “Napoleonic.” But when a row took place, and an investigation, lo and behold! the only thing there was to behold, or to get hold of, belongin’ to the company, was an office, and about ten dollars worth of petroleum in very fine glass cans.
Talk about the poetry of finance, you will find it, and plenty of it, in minin’. You must be very fond, indeed, of poetry, if you don’t find enough to suit you. One of the nicest poets in the country, E. C. Stedman, has always been a successful oil and minin’ operator, and chiefly on account, I dare say, of his imaginative temperament.
But the boss poet was Ulrich de Comeau, for he knew how to combine fancy with fact, and when to leave imagination and fall back on hard pan. De Comeau was a good judge of a woman, a horse, a man, and a speculation, and seldom failed in his dealin’s with any one of the four.
He speculated wildly and poetically in oil and minin’ stocks till just the right time. Then precisely at the right moment he retired from the street, turned his stocks into a stock farm, and changed his fancy dead stock into fact, and livestock, somewhere out in Illinois. How much wiser and luckier than poor Kowalski!
[Editor’s notes: Most of the above column was adapted from Men and Mysteries of Wall Street, by James Knowles Medbury, Fields, Osgood and Co., 1870, in the chapter “Mining Board.” Mining and Petroleum stocks were traded on separate boards in the 1860s and 1870s, but were prone to wild speculation and manipulation. Following several notable crashes, mining and oild stocks were incorporated into the NYSE.]
