It was believed in Nevada at the time of the failure of the mining-camp banks, the State Bank & Trust Company and the Nye & Ormsby County, that the Nixon institution in Goldfield would have found it hard to weather the storm but for the fact that the Goldfield bank was believed to have upward of $2,000,000 of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company's money on deposit.
When the State Bank & Trust Company went to the wall Senator Nixon, in an interview published in his Reno newspaper, charged the failure of the State Bank & Trust Company to me. He alleged that the State Bank & Trust Company lost $375,000 by the failure of the Sullivan Trust Company ten months before, and that I had broken the bank. The liabilities of the bank were $3,000,000, and its Sullivan Trust Company loss was only "a drop in the bucket." The Senator didn't fool anybody, not even himself. His effort was an ill-concealed attempt to prepossess the public against me, and was received by Nevada people as such.
Senator Nixon indulged in some more "interview" with a view to stemming the tide of liquidation in Goldfield Consolidated. Notwithstanding the fact that the company had only recently resorted to the sale of treasury stock for money-raising purposes, he asserted that a quarterly dividend, payable January 25th, would probably be declared. Beyond a question this statement was made for market purposes at a time when the Senator was sweating money-blood.
The stock promptly tobogganed farther on the strength of the dividend forecast. The Senator's interviews had now become a standing joke in the community. Speculators and brokers had learned the wisdom of "coppering" anything the Senator said.
A large force of miners was discharged from the Goldfield Consolidated properties. The action of the company in laying off its men at such a distressful period was denounced. It was alleged that Senator Nixon's Goldfield bank could not afford to pay out the money on deposit to the credit of the company because it was required for bank purposes. The money was apparently being hoarded during the money stringency to help the bank out of a tight place. After-events appeared fully to confirm this theory.
Right in the teeth of the panic, during the depressed and troublous days of the latter part of November;--when current finance was deeply affected; when Goldfield Consolidated was selling below the $4 point and the entire Nevada share list had suffered an average depreciation of about 85 per cent. from the "highs" reached during the Goldfield boom of the year before; when the State of Nevada was racked from end to end by the serious losses incurred by citizens through the failure of the Nye & Ormsby County's and the State Bank & Trust Company's chain of banks, totaling nearly $6,000,000, and it appeared that the credit of the State had already been shattered almost beyond repair--a fresh blow was administered.