Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-04-19
THE DECLINE OF TEE MINING STOCK
MARKET.

looking to the protection OF the pupnc
against fraud in the management OF min
ing property. 1t will not be long before
they discover that the victory they have
won in the lobby is disaster for them
selves. The Legislative session just ended
offered them final opportunity to restore
tone and strength to the market, but their
Unsuitable greed blinded them to their own
interests. They assumed the position that
stock dealing should not be carried on at
all unless it could be carried ON dishonesty,
and the public will take them at their
word. To every man capable of analysing
the stock situation it must have been evil
dent for some time past that the conscience
less rapacity of the manipulators had at last
produced its logical results, and destroyed
all confidence in the business. The public
who deal in stocks are not over bright,
but the experience they have bought so
dearly must at length have opened the
eyes of even the stupidest. 1t had be-
come patent beyond doubt that every
thing in the form of genuine speculation had
been eliminated from the business. The
leading mines had fallen into few hands.
Their condition and prospects had been
surrounded with an impenetrable wall of
secrecy. The outside buyers were forced
to realize that every "boom " and every
depression was carefully arranged before
hand by the only men who possessed accu-
rate knowledge of the situation, and that
the single aim of all such operations was
to capture the money of the ignorant
masses. No confidence could be placed
upon reports, official or otherwise. The
game had been one in which all the per-
centage was with the dealer, and the only
possible result of investment was loss. In
the management of mining properties gen.
orally the controlling spirit was fraud. The
one object of those who held possession of
the property was to prevent the sharehold-
ers and the public from finding out its act
ual condition. Enormous and constant as
sessments were levied, and all adequate
exhibits of their application were withheld.
Milling rings, wood rings, water rings, rings
of every conceivable kind, were formed for
the purpose of increasing the draft upon
the public purse The few men who had
the inside track grew rich, but all
the thousands who dabbled in stocks grew
poor. The audacity and unscrupulousness
of the manipulators waxed greater as time
went on and they could not bring them
selves to surrender even so much of their
plumber as might serve for bait. They had
obtained everything in sight, but they
were not satisfied. They wanted a mort
gage on the future earnings of the entire
Pacific Slope. They believed that because
the public had been so easily fooled in the
past, they would be still more easily fooled
in the future. They could not perceive
that they had already over-abused their
opportunities, and that public credulity
and patience were exhausted. Yet this,
as we long ago pointed out, was the true
cause of that decline in stock speculation
which the managers mistook for mere
passing depression. 1t was in fact the be-
ginning of the end an end which was
sure to arrive speedily unless a new de-
parture was made in the stock business
We have no doubt that if some measure
like the Braunhart-T futile bill had been
enacted at the late session of the Legisla-
ture, it would have produced a marked re-
vival in the stock market. 1t would have
cut off most of the old-fashioned fraudu-
lent devices, but not before they had been
rendered useless by the withdrawal of
public confidence. The manipulators, had
they been wise, would have made virtue
of necessity in this regard, and have thus
initiated the people who get religion when
advancing age and infrmity preclude them
from enjoying worldly pleasures as of old.
A bill enforcing honesty and publicity in
mining management, and prohibiting the
arrangement of sham blooms" byfctitious
sales of stock, would in effect have been
little more than a recognition of existing
facts. To-day the practice of the old
tricks is impossible, simply because the
gulls have all been plucked bare, and
the breed has ceased to propagate itself.
Under these circumstances the manipula-
the business, and conducting it honestly.
They certainly did not intend to choose the
first of these alternatives, but practically
they have done so, for the market cannot |
revive under the old disabilities, and those
who expect to live by it have defeated the
only legislation which could have restored
it to activity. The attempt to establish d
new Mining Stock Board at New York is
merely an experiment to ascertain whether
the people of the Eastern States can be in
duced to take the place of the California
public which has been stripped so naked.
Should it succeed, no doubt there will be
an exodus of manipulators from Pine street,
and then the experiences of this coast win
be repeated on the Atlantic seaboard. But
here the old state of things can never be
restored, and the one condition of business
revival here is precisely that which our too
astute mining sharks have been work
ing so industriously to exclude. With
honest ard open management, and the rig
orous suppression of fraud, there might have
been a future for the stock business in
California. Without these reforms and
guarantees there will be an increase and
intensifcation of the languor and deafness
which have characterized the market dur
ing the past year. The outside public will
play no more at the old ''hogging" game.
They will keep their spare cash for invest
ments which at least afford some show of
profitable return. The value of stocks will
continue to decline until they are COM
pletely Invested of all speculative worth.
Paying mines will of course hold their
own, but the few paying mines can no
longer be employed to bolster up long
! line of worthless ones. The DAYS of Wild