Mexico weekly ledger., 1898-10-06

Next came a philosopher who pro
posed to extract enough gold from anti.
mony to reduce the price of gold SO as
to place q superabundance of it within
the reach of the poorest. Every family
should be made wealthy. This theory
was exploited, and a great deal more
gold was extracted from the pockets OF
fools than from antimony. The silver
| cranks were to be killed off this time
dead sure pop. Finally the newspapers
killed this idiotio lie to protect the
| idiots who had more money than brains
by explaining what every man with
even a smattering of metallurgy already
knew-to wit, that gold exists in mi
mute quantities in antimony. But before
the papers killed this promising scheme
the sapient officials of the United States
| mint solemnly investigated this "newly
discovered process" Elaborate furnace.
were built and q good deal of money
blown in only to discover at last that ii
was q humbug pure and simple. So 1t,
too, was relegated to the dumping
ground Of exploded theories, and nee
more the single gold standard propa-
| gandists were sent { o grass with bleed
ing ayes and broken noses. They had
another lesson to the effect that ''you
cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's
ear or "a whistle out of a pigs tail. +"
They were sadder if not wiser men,. But
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be, blessed.
So along came DR.. Emmens, inventor
Of high explosives, and solemnly assured
an expeotant world that he had disoov-
cred a process for making gold. He
ought to have remembered the philos-
ophy of the old saying, lex nihilo
nihii, +" but he didn't. His process is to
subject silver-only think of it, ye sill
yer lunatics-to subject silver to very
low temperature, high pressure and pro-
longed vibrations, thereby changing the
silver into a denser metal, which he
named ''argentaurum," OF "silver
gold"
Again the single gold standard breth-
rem were made happy by that hope
which, being deferred, maketh the heart
sick. There were millions in DIR. EN-
mems theory. But when Professor
Crookes examined this newfangled
"argentaurum" in his spectrosoope he
declared it to be simply an alloy of gold
and silver and came from the fact that
a trace of gold is found in most silver
ores-most largely in Mexican silver
ores, which, by a strange confederation
of events, were the very ores which the
learned DR.. Emmens prefers in his
operations at his argentaurum labora-
tory zeal New York" Little wonder
he preferred the Mexican silver ores,
for it stands to nature and to reason
that the more gold you put into a cruel
BILE the more gold you will get out Of
it. So the golden dream of Dr.. Emmens
and his hackers went the way Of the
world, and a regular London fog set
tied down upon the goldbugs.
The Sea Water Fake.
1t ia said that "a sucker is born every
minute" and it certainly must be true.
The late lamented Phineas T. Barnum
solemnly asseverated that ''people love
to be ~humbugged" and by acting upon
that idea amassed a vast fortune by his
greatest show on earth"
After all the foregoing fraudulent
schemes had been exposed in rapid sue
cession it would appear that people
would with one accord eschew all tneo-
Iies for obtaining gold except the time
honored plan of mining for it. Not SO,
however, for the most preposterous one
remains to be noticed. Gruff old Thomas
Carlyle once wrote this ~portentous SEN
tence, ''In Great Britain there are 3d.
600, 900 people-mostly fools" The per
cent of fools in this country is not SO
large as that, but there are enough.
Knowing this, a slick gentleman
down east-who is now with full pock-
cts a fugitive from justice and the wrath
of his dupes-rigged up a theory that
all the waters Of all the seas were rich
and heavy with ''gold in solution, and
his plan was by electricity to precipi-
tate this gold-into his pockets. He did
not succeed in bagging much sea gold,
but he did succeed in extracting a great
deal Of gold out of the vaults of certain
denizens of New York and in placing it
where it would do him the most good.
He got him up 1.-THE Electrolytic Marine
Salts company and capitalized it at
10, 900, 600 shares of stock, par value
81. Nothing small about him. He pro-
posed to bore with a big auger-and he
did. He bored q lot of rich simpletons
for the hollow horn. He had a small
plant-somewhere off the New England
coast. In his prospectus he claimed that
with his tiny apparatus he vas extract
ing 81, 600 of gold a week from 1.-THE
briny" at the small cost of $500. There
Is an unlimited amount Of sea water
ergo, by increasing the plant the output
Of gold would be increased until-well,
it was a sort Of perpetual motion gold
making machine with infinite possibili-
ties. Put 5000 in the slot and pull out
81, 600. Colonel Sellers with his famous
eye salve wasn't a marker to this new
discoverer. Oh, how the goldbugs bit
The New Workers and New E~nglanders
ELL over each other in their haste to
purchase stock, and they got it-by the
yard, bale, cord, any measure you
please. They've got it yeti guess.
They are apt to keep it, tool guess
unless they use it to kindle the fire. No
doubt it is beautiful stuff, ornamented
with the great seal of 1.-THE E%lectrolytic
Marine Salts company" Gazing upon
this handsomely printed stock, they can
ruminate upon Puck's saying, "What
fools these mortals ber'
How Ii Was Worked.
The modus operandi was this:
"Sea water was passed through sluice-
ways and chemical accumulators, treated
electrically and a deposit of gold fol-
1owed!" Surely that was a process and
q result calculated to make the average
human mouth water ~copiously.
Everything went ON swimmingly.
Stock sold in blocks big as a Dakota
wheat farm; the promoter rolled in
rapidly increasing wealth, until it was
discovered that the sideways were
"salted" with gold dust from the Rocky
mountain region-and about the same
time the promoter of 1.-THE Electrolytic
Marine Salts company had disappeared
as suddenly and completely as though
A tale Ia told of q bashful girl who
went into a Chillicothe grocery store
the ofhar dav- CARVING acme live