stockholders, the names of dead men being used on the pay rolls
as "laborers." The mine boss and the local officers got big
salaries to keep their mouths shut. The real mine was in the
savings banks of America, in the pockets of non-residents. In
Nevada alone, in the past four years, more than twenty million
dollars have been invested in WORTHLESS properties. One engineer
with a government certificate could have saved the clerks,
stenographers, widows, washwomen, and orphans of America fifteen
million dollars at the cost of, say, five thousand. Would that
have been a good investment? What could a dozen do? What could an
efficient corps do? Is there here yet one more future task for
our patient and long-suffering United States Army? What police
work would pay better dividends?


THE PROMOTER AND THE CREAM

Even when the mine wins, the small stock-holder rarely wins. The
promoters often take the cream. Suppose a company is organized
for three million shares. One million is put in the treasury for
sale. Of this million shares, say, two hundred thousand are
offered at twenty-five cents. This raises a working capital of
fifty thousand dollars. Let us be very glowing, and suppose that,
with this fifty thousand dollars, we really uncover five million
dollars' worth of ore. The net profit would not exceed three
million dollars; so that the man who put in twenty-five cents
might, after a long time, get back a dollar. In the meantime, two
million dollars would have gone to promoters, in "commissions,"
and so forth. There are thousands of such cases, and still the
people continue to bite on such bait.