Show the prospector and his burro by will C I higgins you have asked me said the prospector to his burro can a crook make good this is a queer question for you to ask for I 1 know you have always been a great admirer of leather top boots and are somewhat awed by the flashy individual who wp wars rs a big diamond on his necktie and sparklers spar klers on his fingers but I 1 never imagined you had any doubts as to the ability of such gentry if they are not honest y and straight to land on the top of the ladder in the final roundup and I 1 see I 1 must give you credit for being able to make finer distinctions between right and wrong than your appearance would indicate it certainly is remarkable how a crook will seem to have his own way for months and perhaps for years and how easily he to dupe the public in general but if you will hike back over a period of from five to ten years you will find that the crook who took everything by storm in those days has either faded out of sight so to speak or is serving time for his crimes behind stone walls and iron bars or if he has managed to wriggle through the meshes of the law he is at least down and out and reduced almost to rags fruitlessly tries to regain some of his former prestige and fails in even small promotions for tho the sucker even will refuse to take his bait when the crook cannot keep up his front any longer not so many years ago continued the prospector an eastern mining operator arrived if iq one of our leading districts and succeeded in winning the confidence of quite a large following he really had the knack of picking out first class properties and succeeded in rounding out a group of promising mines in the development and operation of which he was joined by t number of oe new york and boston business men of wealth and excellent standing these men believed the promoter to be the real thing and banked on him to their last dollar and it looked as if the mine would be a winner almost from the start and heavy ore shipments were inaugurated almost from the very beginning then the promoter who was also president and manager of the company started in at smelter building ore shipments ceased after the first consignment for some unexplainable reason and in order to furnish means lor for the completion of the necessary to place more of si smelter nelter it was the treasury stock on the market the directors made every effort to supply the sinews of war through the sale of this stock and were almost sweating blood to pull the enterprise through when it was found that large blocks of stock were being sold at a price far below what the treasury stock was being offered for an investigation was started and it was found that the cheap stock which was flooding the market in competition with the sale of treasury stock all came caine from one source and that this stock was the personal holdings of the president who had several hundred thousand shares and mind you the president was always loud in his advice to shareholders to keep their stock and to buy more while he was feeding his own stock to the public through underhand methods of course this exposure raised a rumpus in the company but the president cared little for this as long as lie he had made a killing and his feelings were not hurt when he was forced to resign his position with the company the company never did recover from the blow and its property has never since been worked upon a scale commensurate with its merit and value As for the promoter he cut quite a wide swathe for a while and tried his hand again at several promotions all of which failed because the story of his treachery became public and no one had any confidence in him and every year since his crooked work became known he has fallen lower and lower in the scale of his operations and now he is heard from now and then in an effort to place a prospect or a mere hole in the ground with wage earners widows and elevator boys As a fact he is down and out and his punishment is just as great as if the iron hand of the law had im aured him as a pest for he is practically as helpless and impotent to do further harm as if breaking rock on a chain gang or marching the lock step in stripes and bars 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector it has always been a wonder to me why men of talent and ability are so blind that they cannot see that they could win more of the long green besides honor and respect by being absolutely honest in their dealings with their fellow men for it is just as easy to succeed by doing the square thing as it is to live a life of deceit and dishonesty but in the makeup of some men there is seemingly a streak of criminal instinct which prevails over their better natures and while many such may thrive and flourish for a certain length of time they are sure in time to overreach the bounds that have kept them within the limits of respectability and honor and thereafter they have no more standing than the kaiser or an 1 I W W and th there ere are and then some y m |