Show the prospector and his burro A man can sometimes draw a good hand to a duce said the prospector to his bur burro ro and once in a while a man can clean out a roulette wheel with a quarter but this occurs but rarely and should not be taken as the general rule as the only effectual method of beating a faro game that I 1 know of is to hold a gun in one hand and a gunny sack in the other in the mining game as I 1 have told you before there are a number of getrich get rich quick methods that are not sanctioned by blackstone or authorized by mine conditions and yet I 1 can point out a number of mining men even in this camp whose properties are not paying running expenses upon whose stock assessments are regularly levied ind and who notwithstanding these discouraging circumstances are able to own the highest priced autos who are constantly investing in valuable real estate and who always have plenty of money this may seem strange to you and yet there are many with intellects not as feeble as yours who cannot satisfactorily explain how it is that the manager of a longde long de berred hope is always flush with the coin of the realm when his mine has not earned a cent in profit for lo 10 these many years you might well imagine that he has succeeded in drawing a good hand to a duce 77 but none whatever for he has in reality re aliby been running a bluff and has taken in the jackpot with no cards in his hand wort worth mentioning and all because he was able to put on a bold front while under cover he had been manipulating the deck the deck in question is the mine over which he has the management and the true c conditions of which are only known to him to be plain with you this man made his money from stock manipulation and not from actual mine earnings for instances when an assessment was pending and when ore shipments were few and far between he would buy in all of the stock of his company that he could at a ridiculously low price not long afterwards a strike in the property would be announced and many teams would be engaged to haul the ore to the market op through a well established medium of publicity the large array of suckers would be advised that the strike while enormous had not been fully demonstrated as yet the well known conservatism of the company being adverse to any stock booming until the extent of the discovery had been disclosed although it was whispered that insiders were buying heavily of course as even a burro could see there would then be a rush of outsiders of suckers galore to get onto the inside and the stock they succeeded in buying at a high figure was nearly always the low priced stock so recently gathered in by the astute manager in due time of course the ore hauling teams would be laid off ore shipments would dwindle away to almost nothing another assessment ses would be levied and the game would be played over again just the same as the dealer at a faro game shuffles his cards anew after raking in all of the chips and coin on his table you seem to think that this is a nice and genteel way of making money for it looks so legitimate and this is where the trouble comes in for as you say a man has a right to buy and sell mining stock in the open market and it is because of favor from the gods that he is in position to know exactly when to buy and when to sell but to my mind his is a shortchange short change business just as reprehensible as the action of certain brokers who fall fail to deliver stock upon which payment has been made keeping the money and falsifying the books it is true that uncle sam may get after ter the last named class just as he is now doing in the east but I 1 want to tell you that the man who buys from the thrifty mine manager and gets hisscock his stock but is absolutely robbed of his money is no better off than the man who pays for stock he does not get the only difference being that the man who manipulates the market is immune from prosecution while the other has to prove in the courts that he was conferring a favor on his clients in forcibly undertaking the care and responsibility of their money for them it want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector when I 1 buy mining stock in a property in which a strike is reported I 1 want to know that the strike is genuine I 1 want to know that the management is honest that he is not living beyond his means that he is really in earnest in looking after the interest of company stockholders that he is paying his share of assessments sess ments and willing to dig into his own pockets in order to meet his obligations and not into the pockets of others I 1 want to know if I 1 am buying a burro or a thor ough bred horse a mine or a prospect a and nd there you are and then some |