Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1902-10-21
WHAT GRANITE
Mountains Did For The City Of
St. Louis.
PalatiaI Residences and rlagnifi-
cent Office Buildings, Banks and
Car Works at rladisOn, ResuIt
of Its Stock.

| one venture IN wild cat mining
scheme invariably places the person
who was foolish enough to invest
his money in such a venture, in the
attitude Of one bitterly opposed to
investment in mining stock. Be.
cause unpriucipled scoundrels ex-
ist who promote such Legitimate
concerns and take the unsuspecting
public into investing in its stock, is
no reason why every man who is
connected with mining corpora
tion is thief and a william.
Mining is just as safe, just as le-
gltlmate, and when conducted along
business lines, three times as profit
able as banking This may seem
extremely radical to some people,
but if they will look up the percent
age of bank failures since 1850,
they will find that the amount of
money lost in such failures greatly
exceeds that lost in mining. On the
other hand, the dividends paid by
mines in the last fifty years greatly
exceeds that paid by banks in the
same space of time.
Why, when you come to think of
it, what makes the banks but the
mines. Were it not for the gold and
silver extracted from old Mother
Earth, where would our present
system of banking and finance be.
If the gold and silver production of
the world, and the United States
produced alone in 1901 Sill, 795, 100,
was to cease for twelve months the
greatest panic the world has ever
known would soon sweep the
strongest financial organization off
the face of the earth. The credit
system upon which the majority Of
all deals are consummated would tot
ter and in it's fall thousands of the
strongest banks and business firms
in this broad land would be crushed
never to rise again. The present
money in circulation would be
quickly gathered up and soon a
stringency in the money market
would send gold so far above par
that it would be a basis of credit
alone instead of a medium of ex-
change as well.
The man who gets bit in a fake
mining scheme is the one who hol.
lers the loudest. The man who in
yestigates thoroughly before invest
ing in mining stocks and places
his money in the hands of we'll
known business men who are ope-
rating a favorably located mine
with good prospects and who in IS
per cent. of his investments gets
good returns on the same, goes on
about his business and says moth
ing. AS a result the wise man says
nothing and the world hears the
braylng of the ignorant ass. AS a
result the man who loses SIS, makes
more noise over it than the man
who makes a thousand.
When the history of stock trans.
action is written, the story of Gran
lite Mountain must occupy a promi-
nent place. Perhaps no single eu-
terprise ever brought such sudden
and great wealth to single com.
munity. 1t reads like romance and
one is almost inclined to doubt the
truth, and were it not that st.
Louis is such a near neighbor to us,
one might be inclined to believe it
all a hoax; but the substantial evi.
dence of reality exists in the form OF
great public buildings and palatial
homes, and ali chances of it being
q fairy episode is eliminated.
Only ten years ago, one cold and
misty morning in the early spring,
two strangers with barely clothes
enough to cover their backs, and
hardly enough money between
them to live on for week, |
alighted in the old Union
Depot from a Burlington train.
They came from the far West, had
been prospecting for two years in
the Rockies and were on their up
pe~s as it were.
Messrs. Clark and Mcclure came
to st. Louis with mining PROPOSE
ton. Day after day they hawked
the stock Of rheir company about
the streets of that city, but it