ALASKA REYNOLDSIZED

Really, according to local report, these nuggets of native copper
had been taken from sluice boxes on Chittitu Creek, 235 miles
inland. Reynolds, so ran the story, had treated them with an acid
bath to brighten them, knowing that bright bait is better. At any
rate, the good, sober New Englanders went back home and sent him
$300,000 more, which set him entirely "dippy," in local phrase.

Reynolds's scheme was to run all the barber shops, laundries,
bars, and pretty much everything else on the Alaskan coast. A
certain Sam Blum had a store and bank; Reynolds wanted it; and
Blum, it is alleged, annexed $50,000 of the New England money as
a forfeited first payment on his property. A steamship company,
it was said, got $75,000 of money on a forfeit. So the good New
England savings merrily disappeared, in one of the most
spectacular farces ever known in Alaska; which latter is too good
and valid and valuable a national possession to permit to be
Reynoldsized, as it has been. Reynolds, in the belief of one who
knew him well, was a combination of the ignorant enthusiast, the
wild promoter, and the crazy man; and as for Brady, another
Alaskan called him "nothing worse than an innocent old ninny."
Yet, even with so sorry a mental equipment, these two took
something like half a million out of conservative New England!
The ease with which money can be raised for such enterprises by
the deliberately fraudulent or the unintentionally insane
continues one of the wonders of our civilization.