Chapter II: Part 2

In pursuing this method, few promoters have had the success of Dr. John Grant Lyman. He is credited with having gathered in a half million dollars in his International Zinc operations. This company was supposed to have valuable zinc properties in the Joplin district of Missouri. To unload its stock on the people of this country Lyman organized the firm of Joshua Brown & Company, Bankers, incorporated under the laws of West Virginia. Through them the stock was sold until the collapse of the scheme in 1901, when the investors found that what property it did own was heavily mortgaged. While the firm was taking in the money, Lyman maintained a racing stable, had a reputation as a daring automobilist, and even invaded the sacred precincts of the New York Stock Exchange.

LYMAN'S SCHEME TO GET STOCKING SAVINGS

Three years ago the papers throughout this country were filled with the advertisements of the Union Securities Company, selling the stock of the Boston Greenwater Copper Company. It was stated that the mine had cost $200,000 and that so much ore was in sight that an offer of $400,000 had been refused. The Union Securities Company, with offices in New York and in Goldfield, Nevada, started the stock at forty-five cents and lifted it to a dollar. It was merely another name for John Grant Lyman. Not only did the Union Securities company sell the stock to the public, but it also offered it to brokers at thirty-seven and a half cents, on their guarantee that it would not be sold by them at less than forty-five cents. The brokers began getting contracts for the stock and then were told that the Union Securities Company was all sold out.

Shortly thereafter, confederates of Lyman came to these brokers and offered stock to them at fifty cents a share; and the Union Securities Company at the same time telegraphed the brokers that it wanted all the shares it could get at sixty cents. That forced the brokers to buy of confederates; but when they shipped on the stock to the Union Securities Company, expecting to get sixty cents a share for it, Lyman was gone. It had not cost him much. He owed the newspapers of this country $150,000 for advertising, which went unpaid. He reaped $300,000 profits. Boston Greenwater Copper stock can still be found in many a stocking--of humble folk.

"SALTING" WITH A CIGARETTE

It is not, however, always the city promoter who furnishes all of the crookedness. He himself may be deceived by those who sell him the mine. Some of the most thrilling stories in literature might be written about salted mines. The sale of the Bear's Nest Mine, and the special train expedition to the salted Bear River placer field; the sale of the Mulatos Mine to a set of Chinamen, and scores of other instances in American mining history, have been regarded rather as big jokes than as great lessons. And as to such large jesting we advance in finesse. The old way of salting a placer or a quartz vein with a shotgun is now antiquated.

A little while ago a party of capitalists bought a Nevada placer on what they thought to be strictly a "cinch" basis. With their own hands they collected the specimen dirt from all over the claim, and they watched a Mexican miner pan the dirt at the creek. The pans showed up beautifully. They bought the claim. Later, it proved worthless. Afterward they remembered that the Mexican smoked cigarettes all the time he was panning, and that he was careless in expectorating, as well as in knocking the ashes off his cigarettes. The truth was that the highly intelligent Greaser was using the cigarette trick in salting the pan. There was much fine gold in his cigarette and under his lip!

THE MULATOS MINE SALTING SCHEME

All sorts of methods of salting mines, even to the injection, with a hypodermic needle, of strong solutions of mineral salts into a mining engineer's carefully sealed sample bags, have been worked. The most honest, careful, and expert mining engineers have been deceived time and again, and salted right under their own eyes. Even a bland Chinee may be fooled. Take the instance of the Mulatos Mine: The bunch of Chinamen who proposed to buy it insisted on a mill-run test on fresh-mined ore, taken out BY THEMSELVES, for a five-days' run. They were not taking any chances, in their own belief. The owners of the mine, however--so runs the story--had a platform of plank arranged above the timbers at the top of the drift where the Chinamen brought out their ore cars. On this planking a man lay face downward where he could see each ore car that passed. He had a rather hard life for five days on the sandwiches and water which he took up there with him, but he managed to drop a pinch or so of nice gold dust into every car of ore that came trundling under him. The mill-run was an entire success from the viewpoint of the sellers, although not from that of the buyers.

There is no working law, let us repeat, which actually protects the investor against this sort of thing, nor which always protects even the promoter, though he be honest. The game is risky all the way along the line, in spite of state laws against the heinous crime of salting, which latter hath as yet by no means lost its savor.

THE MAIL AND MINING THIEVES

As matters stand to-day, the man selling mining stock on a fraudulent basis fears the Post Office Department much more than he fears the District Attorney. That is the main protection which the public has against such schemes. But to depend upon it is like trying to stop Niagara with a dam of reeds. The man who induces you to take your money out of the savings bank in exchange for stock in a mine, through such operations as have been described, thrives by reason of his use of the United States mails. It is a mail-order business pure and simple.

Let us see what machinery the Government has to protect you and prevent the letter-carrier from bringing daily to your door the flamboyant literature intended to lure your money from the bank. There are five hundred Post-Office inspectors employed in watching Uncle Sam's mail wherever it is carried, in keeping the vast and complicated machinery of the Post Office Department oiled and working smoothly, in running down Post-Office robbers and mail thieves and, lastly, in keeping the mail free from frauds. Ninety per cent. of this force is required to do the routine work of the inspecting branch; that is to keep the machinery running smoothly and to prevent delays. That leaves just ten per cent. for actual detective work such as is necessary in running down thieves and in tracing frauds. In the New York district, which comprises the state of New York as well as New York City, there is a force of twenty-five men working under a chief inspector. Of the ten men assigned to work in New York City, by no means all have special detective ability, and the time of these is taken up almost entirely in catching actual thieves.

POST-OFFICE PROTECTION INADEQUATE

It is only the biggest and most barefaced scheme that under these conditions can receive any attention whatsoever from the department, and even then its force is hopelessly inadequate and incompetent for the work in hand, work requiring the highest-class detective ability.

About twelve years ago the Post Office Department ran down and convicted a swindler, Stephen Balliet, who was selling stock in a mine full of water in Oregon and was known as "the mining genius of the Northwest." He was tried three times, finally convicted, and sent to prison. That case cost the Post Office Department $18,000, took a man's entire time for two years, and required two trips across this continent. The Government has not tried since to get many such convictions.

Perhaps because of the pressure of other work, perhaps for other causes, investigations of this nature are allowed to languish. Some years ago, when the firm of Douglas, Lacey & Company was reaping its harvest, an inspector was assigned to investigate the concern's operations. He was one of the ablest inspectors of the service, a man with real detective ability and a knowledge of the devious ways of certain kinds of financing. He made a trip to Mexico and subsequently sent in a report to Washington recommending that a fraud order be issued against the concern and that its use of the mails be stopped. He waited a long time and then got word from Washington that more evidence was required. He made another investigation and sent in another report, recommending in even stronger language that the mails be barred and the public protected. While on this work he was constantly assigned also to other matters and finally was shifted to a station in the South. The concern collapsed some years later, leaving thousands of people in this country and in Canada bereft of their small savings. There was no fraud order ever issued against this firm, though shortly before it closed up it was informed that if it continued to sell stock its use of the mails would be stopped.

The burden of proof is on the buyer. If he turns to the District Attorney he finds perhaps a sympathetic official, without power to assist him. The man selling bogus mining stocks knows all this; therefore his harvest goes on. It is better than the green-goods game, better than the wire-tapping swindle, safer than selling any other form of gold bricks. A few years ago a reporter who was engaged in investigating the schemes of Cardenio F. King--now in Charlestown jail, but then posing as "the apostle of the golden rule in finance" and selling his stocks by the barrel in every mill town in New England--made a call on the late John B. Moran, then District Attorney in Boston and widely known as a reformer. He asked Mr. Moran's help in proving that King was a swindler.

"Young man," said Boston's reform District Attorney, "if King was selling corner lots in heaven and advertising them in the newspapers, I couldn't stop him, because I haven't anybody to send up there and prove that they are not there."

King wasn't selling corner lots in heaven, but he was selling stock in a Texas company that was the next thing to it, so far as tangibility is concerned. It was only when he actually took from investors money sent to him to buy real stocks, and pocketed it, that he was put in jail.

LAWS TO PROTECT INVESTORS

A plan for the protection of the investor by statute is embodied in a model law drafted by the American Mining Congress of Denver, and recommended for general passage:

AN ACT.

To Prohibit the Making or Publishing of False or Exaggerated Statements or Publications of or Concerning the Affairs, Pecuniary Condition or Property of Any Corporation, Joint Stock Association, Co-partnership or Individual, Which Said Statements or Publications Are Intended to Give, or Shall Have a Tendency to Give, a Less or Greater Apparent Value to the Shares, Bonds or Property, or Any Part Thereof of Said Corporation, Joint Stock Association, Co-partnership or Individual, Than the Said Shares, Bonds or Property Shall Really and in Fact Possess, and Providing a Penalty Therefor.

Section 1. Any person who knowingly makes or publishes in any way whatever, or permits to be so made or published, any book, prospectus, notice, report, statement, exhibit or other publication of or concerning the affairs, financial condition or property of any corporation, Joint-stock association, co-partnership or individual, which said book, prospectus, notice, report, statement, exhibit or other publication, shall contain any statement which is false or wilfully exaggerated or which is intended to give or which shall have a tendency to give, a less or greater apparent value to the shares, bonds or property of said corporation, joint-stock association, co-partnership or individual, or any part of said shares, bonds or property, than said shares, bonds or property or any part thereof, shall really and in fact possess, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof shall be imprisoned for not more than ten years or fined not more than ten thousand dollars, or shall suffer both said fine and imprisonment.

This law has been enacted in six states and a campaign for its general enactment is under way. But let not the credulous investor suppose that even such a law would guarantee him against loss. The Secretary of the American Mining Congress, Mr. James F. Callbreath, offers the following comment:

CAMPAIGN OF THE AMERICAN MINING CONGRESS

"I do not believe that any one law can effect protection to mining investors, nor that the protection afforded through the Post Office Department forbidding the use of mails for fraudulent advertising matter can fully cover that ground. The greater part of mining frauds are perpetrated without the use of the mails.

"The proposed law, in our judgment, is the longest possible step toward preventing mining frauds. A second step has been taken in the form of a publicity law. My belief is that no system of laws, either state or national, will prevent men from gambling in mines more effectually than such laws now prevent gambling in its more common forms. These may restrict and furnish protection to those who are wise enough to open their eyes, but it will be impossible to protect all the fools all the time. It is the purpose of the American Mining Congress, after having secured the enactment of laws providing penalties for fraudulent representations and requiring publicity, to perfect an organization to SECURE EXECUTION of these laws, and also to carry on campaigns of education showing to investors, first, that mining is a legitimate business and not a gamble; second, that mines are found and not made; third, that investments in mining should be made with the same care and prudence exercised by business men when embarking in other business enterprises. . . . The next work of our organization will be along the line of developing some manner of control of corporations by which paid-up capital stock shall represent actual value."

Mr. Callbreath would seem to be one fore-doomed to his own troubles; yet it is clear that he and his organization stand for legitimate mining as opposed to prospect-selling. In strictly accurate phrase, it is the prospect which is found, and the mine which is made and investment cannot properly begin until a body of ore has been blocked out in a proved prospect. Add to the glamor of risk the haze of fraud, and the foregoing will show the nebulous condition of mining investments in relation to mining laws in America to-day.

What we really need is a Bureau of Mines at Washington. Nobody protects the mining investor. Nobody guards the widest open gate into the savings deposits of this country.

The American Mining Congress, it should be stated, had a quasi pre-inaugural pledge from President Taft in favor of a Federal Bureau of Mines. Toward this we have made a start. A bill establishing this Bureau has already passed both the House and the Senate, and bids fair to become a law. But the activities of this new department will be confined to safe-guarding mineworkers. The next step should be to enlarge the province of the Bureau so as to include the supervision of the mining industry for the protection of investors.

It seems quite likely that the states and the nation will need to unite if adequate protection to the investing public is to be expected. But when did state and nation unite to solve a great popular problem? When did section ever unite with section or even resident with nonresident? This is America.

THE ENGLISH WAY OF MINING--HONEST BUSINESS

Back of any movement of this kind there must be popular interest in popular education. Thus far, the greater publicity idea is of more value than anything at hand. We may perhaps. best do our own little part by offering some studies in the theory of mining, showing just WHY it is risky, and just HOW we ought to tabulate the risk. In addition to this, we can present, and should perhaps first present, some of the results of intelligent mining as pursued in other countries.

Take the Rand Mines of South Africa, operated on the English basis--mines which turned out more than $12,500,000 in one month not long since. The English method of operating on the Rand is this: A corps of experts is sent to examine a proposed property--that is to say, a proved prospect. If their report be favorable, an estimate is made of the cost of a five-or seven-compartment shaft, to be sunk, say, 3,500 feet. The cost of producing a year's supply of ore for the mill is then considered. The cost of the mill and the cyanide plant is also figured. The total cost is then cast up, and the company is ready to be formed for a half million to five millions of dollars, according to existing conditions. This money is paid in, and is ready to start operations. These men mine carefully, using all possible scientific knowledge and practical experience as guides. The operation may have risk, but it is perforce honest.

THE AMERICAN WAY--A GAMBLE

Now let us examine conditions not infrequent in the United States, by no means assigning wings to all English mining men, or hoofs to all Americans:

A prospector discovers mineralized rock. He locates one or more claims as controlled by the laws of the district where he is. Perhaps others also locate more ground. A little work is done, and then the claims are up for sale. A claim is perhaps sold for a few hundred to several thousand dollars; sometimes the seller receives in addition stock in the company to be formed. No attention is paid to the geology, but a company is formed ostensibly for the purpose of mining, with a capital of one million shares at one dollar par. Perhaps four hundred thousand shares are placed in the treasury to be sold for development purposes. Of course the whole thing is as yet on a wholly gambling basis. The property is still a prospect and not a mine, and hence it is not possible to put it on an investing basis. Comparatively few companies have ever used the services of a real expert, although very possibly the company furnishes a report made from a purchasable local "mining engineer," one of the cheapest commodities in any mining district, where the wide hat and the high-laced boot often take the place of a mining education and a reputable character. This is the stage at which, this is the basis on which, most of the mining "investments" of America are made.

In this state of affairs grafters find their opportunity. Prices in a boom camp are always above any sort of industrial warrant. There were literally millions of dollars poured into Goldfield and Tonopah for claims which never had any careful examination by competent men. Fortunes were made by local promoters and "operators" out of claims which could not show ten feet of actual work. Sometimes the entire capitalization was sold out, and the promoters put the money in their pockets. One operator of this kind sold $130,000 worth of stock, and omitted the precaution of putting even ten per cent. of it in the treasury. Fortunately, he got into the penitentiary. Many of his fellows never had actions brought against them except under the postal laws, which naturally are inefficient. There was one shaft of a hundred feet which cost twelve thousand dollars, charged up to the 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.

THE PUBLIC = THE MINE

Instances of actual Nipissing rises caught in time by the lamb are very rare. I rom first to last, the PUBLIC is the mine, AND THE RETURNS COME OUT OF THE SAVINGS BANKS. In some mines "high grading"--the carrying away of valuable pieces of ore by the miners themselves--is fought as sternly as the diamond stealing by the Kaffirs in a Kimberley mine. In yet other mines, far more numerous, high grading is encouraged among the miners. The report gets out that the ore is so rich that the miners steal it in their dinner pails. That booms the stock. WALL STREET MAKES THIS MONEY OUT OF THE MARKET AND NOT OUT OF THE MINE.

In spite of all warning and all examples, the average American will to a certain extent persist in gambling in mining stocks. Supposing this to be true, it is of value for the investor to learn something of the theory of mines, something enabling him to pass on the natural value of any mining stock which is offered to him. What, then, is a mine? What are some of the inevitable features in developing a mine?

In the first place, there must be prospecting. This is sheer and unavoidable risk on the face of it, and it is attended with economic waste which cannot be avoided. Of a hundred prospectors, ninety-nine die poor. The failures must be charged off to industrial waste attendant upon inherent conditions of the mining industry.

Again, in the development of a mine after it is located and proved in part, there is more unavoidable economic waste. The rock is blank and silent. It can only be explored by means of expensive drifts and drillings. In one mine at Bisbee, Arizona, a shaft was sunk which had drifts at the 600-and 900-feet levels, all without result. Later on they found a blanket of copper between those two levels, from which six million dollars were taken. Even in old established mines there is something of a chance, and there are often unwittingly false standards of values. Which is no argument for making all gamble that which originally was part gamble.

Any mine, no matter how rich, or how large, begins to be exhausted from the time the first pick is stuck into the ground and all its profits ought to be figured on the basis of diminishing deposits. When your deposit is drawn out, your bank does not honor your check. A mine is the reverse of a mortgage or a bond. The security does not remain stable nor increase in value, but, on the contrary, CONTINUALLY DECREASES in value. In a mortgage, six per cent. is wisdom; in a mining return, it is folly. A mine, instead of being figured on the basis of a mortgage, ought to be figured on the basis of a term annuity. That is to say, on the basis of a wiping out date. When the mine is done paying dividends, there is no return of the face of the principal invested. Yet the great and gullible public forgets this all-important fact, which differentiates mining from every other form of business.

CRACKER-BOX INVESTORS

There is every probability that the average investor never heard of a proper "amortization charge" in the management of a mine. Until he shall have heard of it, until he shall have learned something of the terms of life annuities, he ought never to invest a cent in any mining stock. After he actually has learned the theory of amortization, he will observe that ALMOST EVERY MINING STOCK LISTED IN PUBLIC PRINTS IS SELLING AT AN INFLATED VALUE. That is to say, even the best and most stable of mines are overrated, not to mention the purely wildcat ventures. Some mines may naturally be long-lived, others short-lived; yet, if either pays a good, stiff dividend, THE PUBLIC MAKES NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TWO and will buy the stock of either. In this investing, the public has no protection on the part of the government, on the part of honest publicity, or on the part of its own careful education.

In the MAJORITY of cases, a mine ought to pay annually perhaps twenty per cent. of the investment, to be profitable. That is to say, the actual value of any mine is rarely over five times actual dividends paid after expenses of operation. How many mines are capitalized on any such real basis as that? The answer lies in our own ignorance, and in the shrewdness of the men who sell us mining stocks. Stocks that are the best dividend-payers often sell at TEN or TWELVE times the face of the annual dividends. Let the mine hit a brief streak of bonanza, and the stocks will climb yet higher. We buy such stocks, or worse; but even a fundamental acquaintance with the theory of mines would show us that such an investment is usually a bad one. In a mortgage we do not look to the interest to pay us back our principal; in a mine we MUST look to DIVIDENDS to pay us back our PRINCIPAL AND INTEREST also. When the mine is done, our principal is gone. But how many mining investors ever thought of that? And how many, when offered a ten per cent. "guaranteed dividend" for five years on their money, ever stop to reflect that, for instance, I could take your money and put it in a cracker box, and myself make money by paying it back to you, ten per cent. a year for nine years--and then explaining what had happened to the cracker box! Now, most of us are just such cracker-box investors. We pay out millions and millions annually, just that foolishly. And our nation, our states, allow us to do it. They even--as recent legal proceedings prove--allow the "inside" operating stockholders to borrow money to pay dividends to the "outsiders." That keeps up the "values" in the market. It does not enhance the real value in the mine.

ENGLISH VS. AMERICAN MINE REPORTS

Again, granted even a valid and a well-managed mine, how much information regarding it does the average investor in the stock secure? In a general way, he knows in advance that all mining, whether placer or quartz, is very expensive. Beyond that, he gets the annual report of the officers, which will tell perhaps the names of the men who are spending his money, the total earnings, the total output, the balance sheet, the statement of capital stock issued--and little else. All of which means nothing!

A well-regulated English company is obliged to go much farther than this. A good annual report will show the advertisement of the general meeting of stockholders, the list of directors and officers, reports of directors, giving details of the condition of property, including the development work, the tonnage of production, the values recovered from such tonnage, the costs of operation, the profits for the period covered, the balance sheet of accounts, the profit and loss statement, including a working cost estimate, the appropriation list showing what has been done with all the earnings, the reports of managers giving details of the development work, the estimated values of ores EXPOSED ON THREE SIDES, the probable values of ores not so well exposed, the working expenses, the construction account, general remarks on the physical condition of the property, and a map of the property itself.

What American promoter would trouble himself to make such a showing as that to the American sucker? Even if such detailed information existed in the records of the average American mining concern, the sucker could not get access to the books even did he have the temerity to demand it.

Professor H. S. Munroe, of the Columbia School of Mines, when asked whether such a thing as general supervision of mining investment could be possible, answered: "Yes, if some philanthropist will give us ten millions to endow such an institution, and maintain a corps of engineers in the field who will do work similar to that accomplished by J. Curle under the auspices of the London Economist. Such work should, of course, cover all incorporated mining companies, not merely a few hundred of the more prominent gold mines; and it should be continuous and not spasmodic. Such a plan is of course Utopian, but I feel that anything less would be likely to do little good. Even Curle's opinions began to lose their value within a month or two after they were written, and are of less value every year. Mining can never be put on the same basis as agriculture, for the reason that the risk of failure is infinitely greater, and that it is impossible to prove the value of any mine or mining region without spending a large amount of capital, the greater part of which will inevitably be lost in this work of initial development."

Those are the sober words of an expert who spends his life in studying the theory and practice of mining. If such words shall teach us a little wisdom, so much the less need for laws. But let us consider what the laws ought to do in order to protect you for the sake of your family, and for the sake of society, and for the sake of the savings which lie back of the prosperity of this country.

Let us agree that no government can guarantee the safety of any investment. Let us admit that digging gold can never be put on the same amortization basis with digging potatoes, for instance, because the soil remains for more potatoes, whereas the ore of a mine is exhausted and does not raise more ore. Nevertheless, although the industries of potato growing and ore digging are not the same, the principles lying back of them ought to be precisely the same; and our governments, both state and national, ought to see to it that they are kept precisely the same, and controlled on the same plane legally. If it be true that no government can watch after every mine, none the less any enlightened government can establish general conditions for engaging in mining or engaging in the sale of mining stock; and, perhaps with yet better results, it can establish a general supervision over the mining intelligence of the public, just as it does over the agricultural intelligence of that public.

NEEDED: A FEDERAL BUREAU OF MINES

The enactment of good mining laws, punishing the proved intent to commit a fraud as well as the fraud itself, and seeing to it that capital stock shall be paid up, seeing to it also that all moneys spent by a mining corporation shall be traceable from start to finish, is the natural first step toward the purification of American mining methods. Beyond that, the national government could take a hand in the game through a federal Bureau of Mines. There must be some clearing-house of intelligence and of values in this country, some place from which our intelligence may start and to which it may return. The public must have accessible reports of engineers, state or federal, of a sort entitled to confidence.

The nest of vermin in our large cities, inhabited by those who make a living out of the ignorance and eagerness of small investors, must be smoked out once and for all. In this work, state and national governments, popular education and intelligence, and the aid of the better class journalism of America, all must be enlisted. The pages of our press might well be far cleaner than they are. The publication which prints the advertisements of a fake-mining enterprise is itself a party to the fraud. A Bureau of Mines chief can sit behind the desk of every advertising manager in the counting-rooms of every newspaper and magazine in America. The press of this country, when it likes, can, by taking thought, somewhat dim the splendor of the mahogany in many an elegant suite of offices in New York, Boston, or elsewhere. It can reduce the reckless and senseless expenditure of ill-gained wealth which is making civilization a mockery in America, and branding our republican form of government as a failure.

We will have a different way of life, or another form of government. We will have a better administration of law in the United States or we will have another political party, possibly another political system. We will clear up this rotten society, or we will try how we like a different organization of society. The people of America are beginning to murmur. The burden of the murmur is that they have long enough been betrayed. Unspeakable injustice has been done the people of America under the forms of law and government. It is coming to be said that our law and government have not an even hand for all, that a few are allowed to despoil the many. When a people murmurs, let a government beware. Meantime the more that certain unspeakable things are reduced in, and eliminated from, Wall Street and the other "financial centers," the better for our schools, our taxes, our farming, our industry, our living, our CHARACTER, our country.

After all, the government of this country, as we now have it organized, depends on the CHARACTER of its average individual citizen. The end of this abuse of fake-mining enterprises begins now, here, with you and me, in OUR intelligence, in OUR love of a square game. By taking thought we can add a cubit to our OWN stature, and so add to the stature of OUR laws and of our national morality.

WHAT YOU AND I CAN DO

As for you and me, when next we see the flaming advertisement advising us that the Madre d'Oro, Montezuma's fabled Mother Vein of Gold, has once more come to the surface of the earth on Manhattan Island or near Plymouth Rock; when next we read counsel that because mining pays in Michigan it ought to pay in Nevada; when next we are advised to get into the game at once because this is our LAST CHANCE--we might at least ask to see the report of the engineer, likewise the record and antecedents of the engineer; and many, many other things. Perchance we might write and ask the mining promoter what, in his belief, is the proper amortization charge in his particular mine. At which the average mining promoter would probably fall dead.

***************************************************************** Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910

HOW THE MAN CAME TO TWINKLING ISLAND {page 64-73} By MELVILLE CHATER

OUT of the great world came a man to the wooing of Susanna Crane. From the vague southwest he came, now skirting the chimneyed towns and elm-bordered village streets, now exchanging the road for the bright rails and perhaps the interior of a droning freight-car, now switching anew through the edge of odorous pine woods, yet leaving behind him always a wary, broken trail.

The man was tall and strong, with hair that gleamed red in the sun, and eyes of a reddish brown. He walked with the free swing of a world wanderer, yet always his heart strained for a glimpse of the Canadian border; for some hundreds of miles behind him lay the Vermont marble quarries whose dust still faintly blanched his clothes, and there, in a drunken flight, he had killed a man. He did not know that in fleeing from justice he was rushing into the arms of love; he did not even know that he was in the Ragged Woods, with Twinkling Island just off the coast; he only studied the tree bark and snuffed the breeze, and knew that the sea was near. At length, well satisfied with the distance he had come since dawn, he cleared a space among the pine cones, then lay down, and, lulled by the ancient whisper of the wind in the treetops, closed his eyes.

He was of the Ulysses breed, this man, a wanderer of the earth, acquainted with many cities, one whose shipwrecks and misfortunes had but whetted his love of life; and even while he slept, there came upon him, as of old Nausicaa came upon Ulysses, a woman. She, too, was straight and strong; her dark face was framed by a blue-checked sunbonnet; she carried a large basket filled with blackberries, and her lips as well as her hands were stained. She saw the man lying in a shaft of the sunset, and started back, then, tiptoeing past, bent forward slightly to examine his face. In that lingering gaze a twig cracked beneath her foot. He sat up instantly, tense, expectant; then for a silent space their eyes caught and clung. Thus the first pair might have gazed when Adam wakened to find her who was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, standing over him.

"Did I scare you, Miss?" at length asked the Man. "I thought--well, I didn't know who you might be at first." His gaze deepened into unconcealed admiration. "I wouldn't scare YOU for anything!"

"I ain't so easy scairt," the girl returned defiantly. "Ef I was," she went on in her fresh, young voice, full of queer, upward inflections, "I wouldn't be a-berryin' in Ragged Woods after sundaown."

She marched onward, her head thrown well back. Twenty steps later the Man was again at her side.

"Pardoname, little one!" he said. "But, seein' you ain't scared, an' thar bein' no blaze in these yere parts, maybe you'd put us on the trail. Guess I'd a-gone on siesterin' till midnight if you hadn't a-happened by--gracias a Dios!"

Her glance shot suspicion at him as though she scented banter in the strange, foreign phrases; then she said:

"Ef you mean you wanter git to Potuck, whar the railroad starts, you've got to walk three miles back to the Potuck Road; then it's three miles west to Potuck taown."

"An' what lies on ahead, whar you're goin'?" he asked.

"Why, nothin'," she returned with a child's surprised simplicity. "Nothin' but Twinklin' Island an' father an' me."

There was silence then, but the Man watched the strong, straight lines of her face, her keen black eyes, her wealth of black hair tumbled into the back-fallen sunbonnet. At length he said quietly:

"Think I'll g'long over with you to your island, camarada. Maybe your father's got a bite o' something for a hungry man. I pay the freight, sabe? 'Twon't take me more'n a couple o' hours to make the railroad to-night."

To this she vouchsafed nothing, but swung onward, shifting her heavy basket from one hand to the other; then a strong grasp intervened, and she found herself burdenless. In the village streets of Potuck and Nogantic, shamefaced lads had offered such help a hundred times, and she had accepted it, flattered by their homage; but the quick, silent action of this big, red-haired man thrilled her with strange anger.

"I don't want no help," she said proudly, "I kin carry that."

"Not while I'm here, chiquita mia!" He smiled downward, and his body seemed to loom over her like a shield. "Say, when I woke up an' seen you, do you know what come into my head? A little Navajo squaw I knowed once. Her name was Moonlight Water, but the fellers called her Little Peachey. But she was twenty-five, and you--well, now, how old might you be?"

"Goin' on eighteen," she would have answered nonchalantly to any one else; for him there woke from the depths of her nature a fierce retort:

"Give us that basket! I ain't a-goin' to let you carry it a speck further."

"ALL right," he acquiesced with broad, kind humor, vet without relinquishing his burden. "ALL right, chiquita mia! Never you mind me, Little Peachey!"

They gained a bare tongue of land lapped by water. She stepped into a canoe, the Man following. Very quickly he took the paddle from her and put forth with strong, practiced strokes, cheering himself onward with snatches of a queer, guttural burden which he had picked up from a negro chantey-singer on some Southern cotton-wharf.

Straight ahead lay the island, breasting the Atlantic swell. Seen from the distant hills, the red sunset strikes its outpost cliffs for a moment's splendor, and so it is called Twinkling Island. The girl said not a word, nor indeed was it necessary. He found the beach without trouble, helped her ashore, and carried the canoe up the slope on his back. A hundred yards onward they encountered a low, rambling house and the vague shape, in the twilight, of an elderly man smoking his pipe on the steps.

The stranger set down the canoe and gave an account of himself. But even as the great Ulysses was wont to name a false lineage and give a feigned story to his hosts, so this man said his name was McFarlane--which it was not--and told a wily tale of having been directed to a logging camp where hands were needed, of alighting at the wrong station and losing his way in an attempted short cut through the woods. Meanwhile his listener, a man of weather-beaten face and a great shock of gray hair, observed him with shrewd attention. At length he replied:

"Thar's few strangers git to Twinkling Island; but so long as you're here, you're welcome to our plain victuals. The money's neither here nor thar. Git supper, daughter. Seems you're mighty particular to git that canoe high an' dry to-night."

The girl wheeled abruptly and strode indoors, flashing at the stranger a covert, half-defiant glance.

"Gals are queer cattle," mused old Crane, drawing off his fisherman's boots. " 'Pears to give 'em a kind o' satisfaction to set a man to work. Her mother was just the same, before her."

The guest said nothing; but the realization that the girl who had grudged his taking her basket had afterward suffered him to carry her canoe quite an unnecessary distance, seemed to yield him no unpleasant thoughts.

They sat down to supper in a low'ceiled room of smoked rafters. The stranger ate hungrily and with few words, yet always his gaze followed the girl's slim figure as she moved to and fro, waiting on the board. As the food disappeared, the talk sprang up. The girl brought in a huge pitcher of cider and left the men by the fireplace, while she passed back and forth, clearing away the dishes. Crane set out a decanter of whisky, which spirit he mixed sparingly with his cider, as did also his guest--none too sparingly.

Now was the Man's heart loosened, and he told of all he had seen and done and lived; of his spendthrift youth, passed aboard tramp freighters between Lisbon and Rio, Leith and Natal, Tokyo, Melbourne and the Golden Gate--wherever the sea ran green; of ginseng-growing in China, shellac gathering in India, cattle-grazing in Wyoming. He spoke of Alaskan totem-poles, of Indian sign language, of Aztec monoliths buried in the forest. He sang "Lather an' Shavin's," "La Golondrina," "The Cowboy's Lament," and, clicking his fingers castanet-wise, hummed little Spanish airs whose words he would by no means translate.

Crane marveled that this man should be still on the hitherward side of thirty; and as the stranger sat there, his very clothes, poor rags of civilization, seemed to bulk with heroic lines, his face to reflect man's primal freedom, while his every word rang with the sheer joy of the things he had seen and known.

At a break in the talk, the girl, who, though she had constantly busied herself about the room, had missed not a word, nodded significantly to her father, then walked from the house and out into the night. He glanced after her for a moment, then turned with a queer smile.

"We're all 'baout the same, I reckon," he said, "so far as furren countries is consarned. That's to say, a man allaways conceits thar's a heap o' promise waitin' for him, somewhar over yonder. Naow, you've seen sights enough for a hundred men. Contrariwise, thar's my gal--never been further'n the Caounty Fair. But that don't stop her; no sirree, human nature can't be stopped. Every night, fair or storm, she walks daown an' sits on the rocks, lookin' seaward, before she turns in. She's done it ever since she was SO high. Why, thar's nothin' to see but the Atlantic an' a piece o' foreland to the northwest! But her fancy is, the sea's a-bringin' her somethin'--that's what she used to say as a kid--somethin', she don't rightly know what. _I_ say it's just furren countries--pieces she's got outer story books, an' yarns she's heard the fishermen tell--that's what's she's hankerin' for, Mr. McFarlane. So ye see, as I say, we're all 'baout the same, that way."

"When I first seen her," began the Man tentatively, "I could ha' sworn that--See here, now! Ain't thar still the leavin's of a redskin outfit up this way?"

"Why, yes," returned the other, with some compunction. "I don't talk much 'baout it--not that it's a thing to he ashamed of; but I wouldn't give the gal a handle to think herself different from any one else hereabout. The truth is, her mother's mother was pretty near to a full-blooded Ojibway--not the kind you've seen plaitin' baskets for summer boarders, but a clean, straight-backed red woman, an' she claimed descent from one o' their big chiefs. I'm English stock myself, but the wild breed mixes slow: it's in her blood, Mr. McFarlane, and sometimes it worrits me. Thar's days she won't speak nor eat, but just goes off to the woods an' makes little trinkets out o' pine needles an' bark, and then I know the fit's on her. And proud! Thar's not a man hereabout she'd lift an eye at, and one feller that wouldn't take "no" got his head split open with an oar. Sometimes I've thought that ef she was married to a strong man--strong AND kind, d'ye see?--'twould be the best thing for her."

At this the stranger, who had missed no word, leaned quickly forward, the firelight striking his firm face. With the poise of conscious power he said quite simply:

"I'm the man!"

They eyed each other a moment, Crane measuring the Man who had come, the Man inviting measurement.

"You mean--?" asked the father. He paused as if welcoming interruption, but it was not in this man's slow, sure nature to interrupt. "Tell us what you do mean!"

"I mean," repeated the other slowly, "that I'M THE MAN! I love that little gal, I want to marry her. O' course you objeck: that's natural, that's right. I like your objectin', an' I'm going to fight it to a show-down. First you'll say, `You're verruckt--crazy.' See hyar now! I've lived life, I have, and I've seen a drove o' women, hither an' yon, but not one of 'em could hold me, no more'n an ordinary slipknot could hold stuff on a packsaddle. I'm no lightweight, an' I need the diamond hitch. But to-day, when I seen Little Peachey in the scrub over yonder, why, it was different, and I knowed it right quick. Ever broke a horse, have you? Well, before you've got your lassoo coiled, the critter's eyes'll tell you just what sort o' tea-party you're goin' to have. Thar was a man once--a hoss wrangler--an' the easier a hoss broke, the more he'd mouch around an' hang his head, real melancholy and sad-eyed. The only minutes o' slap-bang-up joy that came his way was when he corralled a bucker whose natural ability to roll on him an' kick his brains out left no percentage o' chance in the player's favor. Maybe that's what I seen in Little Peachey to-day. Just now you said the wild breed mixes slow. It does: for it sticks out, waitin' for its own kind. And by that same token, blood talks to blood--aye, even without no Indian sign-language. Maybe all these years Little Peachey, settin' out on them rocks, has been a-watchin' for more than foreign countries."

"Aye, mebbe that's all right." Crane paced the floor, and his voice rose savagely: "Don't know but what your palaver mightn't win plenty o' foolish gals. But who are ye? What's your trade? Whar's your folks? Thar's lots o' rogues afoot. Do you allow I'd let the first stranger in Ragged Woods talk marriage to my daughter? What have you said? What's between you? Out with it, or I'll have you in Rockledge Jail by to-morrow morning!"

The Man who had come nodded response with imperturbable gravity.

"I like your talk," he said. "It comes straight off the hip, an' it calls for a straight answer. What have I spoke to her? Nothin'! What's between us? Nothin' but the makin's! Next, touchin' myself: Since sixteen I've been kickin' up the dust o' the earth till my home is anywhar immediately convenient. Once I had a brother in New Orleans, another in the Northwest, and another who drank himself accidentally into the British army an' died in the Sudan. We were wanderers, the lot of us. I'm Scotch-Irish, and my old mother used to claim we harked back to the kings o' some outfit I've forgotten. But blood-facts is no more proof than specimens from an unprospected claim. Friends? I make 'em everywhar: any one on the top o' the earth who's got the makin's of a man kin call me friend. Yet right here an' now I wouldn't touch the twelve apostles for an assay on my character. 'Cause why? 'Cause I hold that, just like a man lays in his own little square o' earth, so a man stands alone on his own little piece o' reputation. Good or bad, friends or no friends, it's his'n; and the Almighty files a pretty good chart of it right on his face. I want you to size me up accordingly."

Again the father gazed deeply at the Man who had come, and again the Man gave him the full of his eyes. Crane's glance shifted suspiciously from the other's face to the decanter and back again; the Man immediately responded by lifting his glass.

"Fill that up three times raw," he said, "and I'll swaller it in three breaths, just to show you what a drink IS. No, sir, it's hot your picayune drop o' spirits that's talkin'--it's me. Acabado! Finished!" And, tossing the contents of his glass into the fire, he replaced it upside down on the table.

"Yes," said Crane wonderingly, "you're sober--and you're honest. You certainly are honest!" He paused as if to steel himself. "But what o' that? Why should you come between me and my child in one night, after these twenty years we've spent--we've spent--" Simultaneously his words failed and his shoulders drooped. "See here, now: Stay along and work for me awhile. I'll give you half shares in the boat. But just wait, wait awhile. Some day you'll speak to her about it, and then--then mebbe I'll see it different."

But the Man rose restively.

"It comes hard on you," he mused, "aye, mighty hard; but it ain't all my doin', Mr. Crane, nor yet Little Peachey's. It's something bigger'n the lot of us: it's nature. You might as well put your back up against a landslide. As to stayin' on here, 'tain't in me: I must hit the trail to-morrow morning. But to-night thar's somethin' in here"---and he struck his breast--"that won't keep: it's got to be said. I've spoken my little piece, an' you say you size me for a man. Bien! Bein' a man, I take no favors. No sir, I ain't no empty-handed brave. Little Peachey bein' the squaw for me, an' I havin' told you so, an' smoked your tobacco an' drunk your whisky, I hereby deliver."

He drew out a roll of bills and tossed them upon the table, observing whimsically:

"Two hundred an' thirty-odd dollars, honestly come by, an' all the estate, real or otherwise, whereof I stand possessed. Money talks. Take it; it's yours. An' now I'm goin' to find Little Peachey."