The "brass-band" promoter, be it understood, is therefore not without honor in the Far West. Deprive the mine prospector of the services of this style of enterprise projector, with his operating machinery, namely, facilities for appealing to the speculating-investing public, and you hit the small Western mine man a solar-plexus blow. Conversely, every obstacle placed in the way of the mine promoter of loud methods and moderate means is an added cause for rejoicing on the part of the Wall Street multi-millionaire mine capitalist.
When B. H. Scheftels & Company, with whom I was identified, were raided by the United States Government in September, 1910, a wail went up from the Western mine operator to his Representative in Congress. The best sentiment of the Far West, as I was able to gather it, favored the idea that the last hope of the small Western mine owner had been shattered. During the short period of B. H. Scheftels & Company's activity in New York it raised directly nearly $2,000,000 for Western mining properties and indirectly influenced in that direction at least $10,000,000 more.
The raid was a body-blow to the small Western mine owner who needs capital to develop his properties and has no affiliations with capitalists. Since the raid I do not know of a mine owner of any of the great Far Western States who has successfully financed a mining proposition in the East except by delivering his property in its entirety into the hands of some big interest, which has taken it over for a sum insignificant by comparison with what the public may ultimately be expected to pay for it when the stock is finally marketed on the curbs and exchanges.
After I had conducted the big camp publicity campaign of Rawhide, which I had done with a view to centering the attention of the American investing public on the speculative possibilities of the stock of the Rawhide Coalition Mines Company, and in that way endeavored to finance the proposition--after I had failed by this method, in the teeth of the bankers' panic of 1907-8, to dispose of enough stock to finance the company for deep mine development, mill equipment and the payment to the original owners of the price for the control agreed upon, I came to New York, late in October, 1908, bent on trying to succeed in the encompassment of my original purpose both by direct appeal to the public through display advertisements in the newspapers and by making a deal for part of the enterprise with the "big" fellows.