Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-01-01
WRITTEN REcoRDUNIoNJ
The Ventures and Adventures Of Charlie Gould;
A ROMANCE OF THE STOCK MARKET.
WRITTEN FOR THE REcoRD-UNIoN.]
,eY EDWARD r. cAHILL.
CHAPTER VII.

working OF violent Safeguarding ex-
element on the masses of a great city
These brief fits of madness are nothing new
to the world. Paris went through spell
OF such temporary excitement in the days
when John Law made the Rue Quincampoix
historical, and London went mad when the
South Sea scheme fioated its iridescent
bubbles on the market. We are told how
the Saccharissas and Belindas of that day
pawned their diamonds, if not their honor,
60 buy South Sea stock. In Paris, the Rue
Quincampoix, the neighborhood of the
house in which John Law resided, was
blocked, day after day, by impossible
crowds, and the quack fnancier from Edin-
burgh, and ex-gambler from all the cities
of Europe, controlled the destinies OF
France. Duchesses went down on their
knees to him to beg for shares in the great
Mississippi scheme, and live Indians were
imported from their native wilds, or manu-
featured at home, as specimens of the vast
undeveloped wealth of the new countries
Such excitements usually arise after a
series of prosperousy years, when thatpatient
ass, the public, has waxed fat, and is ready
to kick. The savings of the people, so to
speak, are eating their heads off at low IN
terest in the banks, or at no interest in
some old stocking. Sometimes the neces-
sary blood letting is done by the ravages of
war and the payment of indemnities and
there are people who, forgetting the fact OF
the quick recovery of nations after such
wars but more often is it done by some
seducing speculative mania. At such
times few men are clear-headed and cool
enough to keep themselves harmless, and
women are foremost in the strife for gain.
The old, beaten paths of industry are
looked upon with coRtempt, for who will
hammer shoe-leather if gold is to be picked
up on the streets? Men who in sober mo-
ments viii tell you that Safeguarding is
the curse of the country, that it is the
cause of ruined homes and broken down
men and worthless women, can scarcely
keep themselves clear from the awful draft
of the whirlpool, and will blindly risk that
which they think they can spare. Money
laid by for sickness or misfortune, money
apportioned for the payment OF old debts,
all is swallowed up by the same greedy
monster. Nothing else is talked about;
on the street it is dollars and cents and
stocks, and in the house it is stocks
and dollars and cents. The public
press rings with it, and the very
priest in the pulpit tells the money
changers of the beauties of wealth and
the fuller life " which it brings IN its
tram. San Francisco presents an admit
rable field for an operation of this kind.
Wages have averaged higher in the State
of California for twenty-five years than
in any other part of the civilized globe,
and the natural consequence is that
large body of individually small accumu-
lations has grown up In the savings
banks of that city are deposited some
sixty odd millions of dollars, the result
Of years OF work and patient boarding.
These accumulations, collectively so large,
belong to vast number of individuals,
and will not average over 500 to each
depositor The interest which they draw
(some seven or eight per cent per annum),
Is small according to Pacific coast ideas on
such subjects. Two per cent. per month is
not, OF recently was not, considered a
usurious rate, and, naturally, depositors
grow impatient at the small earnings of
their capital, when others seem to be get
ting rich so fast and so easily. Occasional
cases Of what, in the ph-aseology of the
country, is called ga quick raise" are
quoted ad nauseum, while the vast number
of those who lose their all and even Grip
pie themselves for life is passed over
and ignored Safeguarding is the great
vice of the coast, and more especially
of San Francisco. As city, it can count
more millionaires than any other of, per-
haps, double its size and collective wealth,
and this fact is the necessary result of those
periods of wild excitement through which
it periodically passes. No real wealth is
created at those times, nothing is produced,
and nothing added to the collective capital
of the world. Men boast of how they are
growing richer every day, forgetting that
until they realize they have nothing really
tangible in their hands. Their supposed
wealth merely consists in the disposition
of an excited public to give an enormously
inflated price for certain pieces of paper,
which frequently represent nothing else.
A body OF ere is discovered in some of the
mines on the Comstock lode by the manip.
ulators who have the control OF their work
ing. By means of the diamond drill Dor.
ings can be driven deep into the rock, and
secret information obtained in advance
Mere inspection of the mines is useless and
misleading, for the expert who can see
through stone wall has yet to be discov-
cred. Work on the mine in question will
then, in all probability, be stopped, and an
assessment levied, or some other
means taken to throw down the value
of the stock, which is quietly gathered
at low rates by those in possession
of the secret Presently, when this
operation is complete, it begins &c be whis-
pered about that rich developments are
about to be made. The press teens with
illusions, mysterious at first, and gradu-
ally gaining strength and volume, and
then crosscuts to show the size of the
ore body are made, levels are
opened, and work on the mine is car.
ried on briskly. In the mean time the
shares, being well under control, are bid
up higher and higher day after day, as
may easily be done when few shares are
offered, and the greater part of the sales
are not really bona fde. A friendly expert
is admitted to the mine he makes glow
ing report Of the vast wealth uncovered,
and a picturesque interview with re-
porter is published. A map appears in
the daily papers, showing vast ore body,
of at least two columns In extent. Maps