The Butte inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1901-1912, 1901-12-07

To the great majority of persons who
capital and of American promoters in
London-the american INVASION" if you
Will-the fact is probably not realized
that London has always been the mod
eln worlds center for the floating of all
sorts of financial enterprises, and that
Americans have long been conspicuous
among the army of company promoters
W.lo have laid siege to the stronghold OF
british capital.
only. in the past success has been,
when achieved. less spectacular than
now, while thousands upon thousands OF
nldNidual failures. which have consti-
tutad one Of the most pathetic romances
Of the modern Babylon. have had their
sorry told, when chronicled at all. by the
lfiefest Of wspaper paragraphs.
The number Of Americans who have in
the past 80 years gone to London with the
purpose of enlisting British capital in
the thousand and one projects with
which they have been concerned can, of
course, only be roughly guessed at, but
al who have knowledge of the matter
know it to be exceedingly large.
Some of these have been concerned with
ambitious schemes involving millions
OF dollars and the erection of enormous
plants; others. again, have had in view
simply the disposition of a few acres
Of mineral lands or the sale Of an UNI
important patent.
1t is amusing at first to witness the
tribulations of these walters" and to
listen to their comments upon the Eng
l1shmen's "slowness.' Their disgust at
-,
days at all times and seasons is I'M
limited.
Just as they imagined they had the
proper people interested. along came the
Christmas and New Years holidays of
two weeks, or the Easter holidays of the
same le..stii, o. the Whitsuntde Holt
DAYS. the summer holidays (whose
length is quite indefinitely or the hunting
season; and BY the time the Londoners
got back to business the whole matter
had TO be gone into again, with the
chance that in the interval some other
scheme would nave claimed attention, to
the sieetracking of the particular one
in question.
1t is amusing at first, but it soon passes
into the pathetic. If a man has the
courage and the perseverance and the
means to keep himself alive he may win
out in the end, lacking them he gives
up the fight and devotes his energies
to earning a sufficiency to live upon.
There is one man in London who spent
two years in a cheap lodging house, but
has since made his hit" Now he lives
IN a handsome residence in the West
End. But he never forgets his temper
ary sojourn in the lodging house, and
often pays the old place visit, where
lie makes point of introducing himself
~ the occupant for the time being who
ever he may be, of the room which was
once his.
In such places may be found not only
the unsuccessful promoter, but hundreds
Of men whom misfortune has forced
from abodes of luxury.
"A gentleman emerged" said a New
Yorker, describing one of these places,
from one of tie dismal little chambers
wearing a silk hat and frock coat and
carrying walking stick with a silver
handle. His appearance was distin-
guished.
When he had gone the landlord told
us the mans history. He had come to
the house some nine months before, ex-
i'ecting to remain only a week or two.
he had then been in London about a
year endeavoring to interest capital in
III American enterprise in which he had
himself invested his last dollar
AT the end of the year his means
We're pretty we'll exhausted, and he had
leen obliged to give up the hotel where
he was staying and take the humber
quarters in which we found him. For
a while he had paid Is a week for one
of the better rooms, but as time dragged
ty and his business still failed to come
to a head he had been forced to still