The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1914-01-31
The Status of Mine Promotion

The promotion OF mining companies is industry that is of the
greatest Importance to mining progress, when conducted along legi-
innate lines. 1t is an industry that has come into bad repute through
the operations of wildcat promoters and those who, i'll the methods
they have employed, have barely skirted the bounds fixed by law and
whose primary object has been the sale of mining stocks, by means fair
or foul, with no earnest intention Of making mines. Periodically the
mining promoter has found his way paved with flowers; the public
willing and anxious to buy mining stocks of whatever value Or lack
thereof, but these times have been when money was easy and the
counrys business at the high tide of prosperity.
At other times-it might be said, at all other times-the business
of the legitimate promoter, the man with a meritorious enterprise that
has needed financing, has found his progress beset with many and often
insuperable difficulties. The chief reason for the existence of these
obstacles to business has without question been the timidty of inves-
tors, and the public at large, who have been witness to the damage
wrought in flush times by the fy-by-night type of promoter; the one
who, during the period of frenzed stock buying, has flooded the coun-
try with full page advertisements, circular letters and extravagantly
worded prospectuses, in his stock-pedding campaign. Mine promotion
can be, and in innumerable instances is, conducted on lines that make
it fully as honest, legitimate a business as bond hotation, real estate
selling, or the financing of irrigation projects or other enterprises.
Under the heading: The Ethics of Mine Promotion Parke
Claiming, a mining engineer of world wide reputation, in a contribu-
ton to the AnnalEt, writes as follows:
presume that a great deal of nisconception regarding mines
is a relic of forty or fifty years ago, when mining was not an in
dustry, but was IN adventure. The west was unprospected, and
when rich re was discovered, the cost of converting it into cash
was relatively low as compared with the product, or, in fact, was
negligible. A mining scheme was something like the quest for
buried treasure, where success depended not upon the cost of the
adventure, but upon the luck which one had. The successful
ventures were dang1ed in front of the eyes of business and pro-
fessional men by those INSCRIPTIONS individuals who cared moth
ing for the investor.
In the meantime, mining has become a recognized industry in
which the highest technical skill is employed in prospecting for
orebodies, in developing them, and in finally equipping and operat-
ing them. But the memory of the INSCRIPTIONS promoter still
fingers in the mind of the investor, and he therefore confounds
their operations with those of people who make mining a business.
Probably few people realize today that the United States
Steel corporation is primarily a mining company, its main assets
being its holdings of favorably situated iron ore and coking coal
lands. The same thing applies to the larger coppermining COM
panies, and to many of the gold properties, such, for example, as
those n the Rand, or in southern Alaska.
In modern mining the first and primary deideratum is to get
a large body of ore. The question OF grade and the cost OF work
ing it determines its ultimate value. AS have frequently pointed
out, there are really only two primary sources of wealth in the
world, mining and agriculture, and mining is just as important as
in determining the value of a mining company as in arriving at
the value of a railroad, still there is one factor in mining which
gives IN added value, and that is, the continued chance of finding
either new or richer ore upon a property which is being exploited.
1t is said that the success of a few St. Louis business men in
unexpectedly developing a large mine in Montana a number of
years ago has induced so many people from that city to go into
the development of prospects that the sum total of expenditures
for this class of work has been far greater than the dividends
poured into that city from the original successful mine. On the
other hand, those investors who have gone into the porphyry copper
mines, either iii their early days or when the price of copper was
low, have reaped a most satisfactory reward. The tendency
nowadays is for good mining companies to give annually not only
figures of cost and production, but estimates of actual ore develop
ed, and also the opinion of its managers as to its future prospects.
Carson Appeal: The finding of new and rich ore in the Florence,
Orc and other Goldheld properties, and it is not bull either, presages
the coming back OF that camp. Goldheld was hit hard when the panic
it would have gone out OF sight altogether had it not been for the won
derul Consolidated mines. Their production was the inspiration that
kept hope alive, and those men who remained, putting their money into
the ground to prove their faith, will in a short time gain their reward