Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1901-05-21
Small Investors Awakening to True
Condition.
OIL PASSING SPECULATIVE STAGE
Spectators Have Made Fortunes, but
1t Is the Money of Widows, Orphans
Clerks and Others of Moderate
Means That Constitute Them.

Beaumont, Texas, May 15.-Now
that the gambling stage has passed,
investors in oil stocks and oil lands in
the Beaumont field are into things in a
practical manner and the outlook
from the point Of view of the majority,
is anything but promising. Speculat-
ors have made fortunes in day, but
somebody will have to pay for it, and
the small investor is awakening to a
realization of the true condition of af-
fairs, and is fast learning that it is his
money that has gone to
make up these fortunes and
that his chances for getting it back are
not SO bright as he thought they were
two weeks ago. The small investor
his purchased oil stock. Classed as
small investors are thousands and
thousands of widows, seamstresses,
clerks, children and even domestics,
who have poured their savings into
the treasury of some one or more OF
the oil companies here. What they
will get is best told in the words of
one of the most prominent promoters
on the ground, who has made a for
tune:
Il have just left my old friend
L
sorrowful sight. He bought Beaumont
Oil land last week and is already out
just $4,000 on the deal. He spends
his time now asking everyone who
comes to see him if that well they are
boring two miles from his land has
come in OF course it hasn't, and he
knows it, but he asks just the same
and when he gets mo- for an answer
he pours some more cold water over
his head and sits down to wait for the
next visitor
Il certainly feel sorry for old Brown,
but his case is not half so pitiful as
that of the widows and orphans who
have been robbed out here. Robbed?
Yes, that's the word, for they never
had the ghost of a show to win out.
You don't know what it means to buy
Beaumont oil stock-the ordinary. ey-
cry day kind you see hawked about the
streets and sent broadcast about the
country.
Three Hundred Companies.
Nearly 800 oil companies have
been organized in Texas in the last
month, and ninety per cent of them
will never pay dividend About ten
out of every hundred have something
bordering on the substantial to offer
the public in the way of speculative
investment; the others have nothing
more than little tract or
two of land, bought for song, which
is located somewhere in eastern Texas
and around which no effort has been
made to find oil. They may strike oil
no one can tell about that-but their
chances are small, and even if they do
strike oil their stock has been watered
until no oil well in the world would
ever pay interest on the investment
The promoters came out all right for
they got big cash bonuses out of the
treasury from the funds realized from
the sale of the stock, so it doesn't
make much difference to them wheth-
er oil is struck or not. And then
there are the heavy salaries of the
officers to be paid all the time the
stockholder is waiting for the well, if
any is ever bored, to get down far
enough to even hope for oil; and the
stealing and entertainments sure to be
reported sooner or later. But to get
down to facts and figures.
Cost of Opening Market.
"A first class oil gusher in the Beau.
mont field is worth $1,250,000. This
is the price they have heen sailing for,