Montana oil and mining journal. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1931-1953, 1938-04-16

HE WHO LOOKS BACK
WILL. DIE OF REMORSE

In Africa, far out upon the dusty
veldt, hundreds of miles from the
nearest civilization, there lived a
rancher. This rancher was doing
pretty well, but both he and his fami-
ly yearned for the bright lights and
wanted to get into something that
would produce more income with less
hardship. They wanted the best that
life had to offer, with the minimum
of effort but which afforded the max
imum of security.
His holdings ran into the thousands
of acres. In fact his ranch domain
was so large that he had seen, in
person, only very small portion of
it, always leaving the rounding up
of cattle and other livestock to his
hired hands
One day there came news of vast
diamond strike in a district only
few hundreds of miles from his ranch,
His imagination was fired by the
tremendous fortunes to be made in
diamond mining. After a time he
found a purchaser. for his vast ranch
with its comfortable living, and hied
away to the diamond fields with his
family. He invested in leases and
started to dig for diamonds. But for
some reason or other he did not find
any diamonds
Broke, sick and discouraged, this
man finally dropped in to take a last
look at the old ranch place before
settling down to a small job as
clerk in nearby village.
The first glimpse of the old place
filled him with amazement. A new
ranch home had been erected. Scores
of hired hands were rushing about.
The place gave the unmistakable i'm
preston of great and profitable &C
tivity. In a daze he wandered into
the big house and confronted the new
owner.
Hello, Bill" the new owner shout
ed ioyfully. "Glad to see you again,
and I want to thank you for selling
me this place You know he said
confidentialy. you had not been
gone more than few weeks when
one of my men discovered rich
diamond field in one of the back pas
lures where the men seldom ever
went. -
We were reminded of the foregoing
story when we were visited this week by
a MoEtanan who was an early day in
weston in oil in Kevin-Sunburst field.
He had bought stock in the early pro-
motion companies and when these failed
he looked elsewhere for his investments
He has been putting his money into
drilling company in another state, where
they are drilling $500 feet to get wells
comparable with Cut Bank producers
His wells costing around 100000
each will pay out. but so slowly that he
cannot look forward to much profit, at
best yet he looks upon his investment
as STABLE He feels that there is
tremendous amount of oil in the ground
to back up his investment He thinks
in terms of millions of barrels of OIL IN
a given area.
He is in about the same state of mind
as the stock gambler who buys stock
at 10 and sees the other gamblers bid
it up to Is, 20, 25 and on up. His
stock is paying him a good rate OF res
turn on 10, so he keeps the stock. rather =
than selling. His idea is to sell when
the price is as high as he thinks 1t IS
going to 60 But that time seldom ar
rives for the average investor. He thinks ,
in terms of the VALUE of his stock and
feel himself rich-until the crash comes,
as It always does, and the price is catl-
pulled down by the same traders VINO
pushed it up.