The small fry mining promoter, who is not a member of the Stock Exchange, pays no toll to the big game, is beyond the discipline and control of the governing body of the New York Stock Exchange and is not a part of the machinery, sets up a competitive business which caters to the gambling instinct in the way of fluctuating mining stocks. The speculating public gets action, likes it, and invests money that might have been used in margin-trading on the New York Stock Exchange or for "investment" in the constantly fluctuating low-priced industrials or higher-priced mining stocks that are sponsored by big interests with New York Stock Exchange affiliations. Promptly the machinery of Wall Street is used to crush him. Column upon column is printed in the magazines and newspapers about Get-Rich-Quicks. A conviction for crime is obtained of a real Get-Rich-Quick offender--a little fellow who is guilty, but no more so than his "licensed" brother higher up, who is doing infinitely greater damage. The _one_ that a coterie of high-class Wall Street thimbleriggers are really "after," because he thwarted them in their swindling operations by exposing them in his newspaper, but against whom they can not make a case, has a skeleton in his closet. They bring it forth, dangle it in the air, make the public think he, too, must be a scoundrel, and he is raided by a Government agent during the uproar; and they "get away" with it. The "righteous" crusade against "Get-Rich-Quicks" is press-agented to the limit. The public "falls" for the "dope." At last the Government has acted to protect investors! Wouldn't it wilt you? Were P. T. Barnum to be reincarnated and his hum-bugging mind by some miracle expanded a million times, it would still be impossible for him to conceive such a gigantic faking of the American public as it has been put to in the last few years. And the public isn't "on." Shrewd schemers on Wall Street keep pulling the wool over the eyes of the "sucker-public," and not only see no reason why they should discontinue the practice but find it very lucrative to continue doing it. THE MARKETING OF MINING STOCK As a rule, it takes much money to make a paying mine out of a promising prospect. Later on in the mine's progress, through the constructive period, other very large sums are generally required to pay for the blocking out of an ore reserve and to supply milling facilities for the reduction of the ores.