B. H. Scheftels & Company, Incorporated, mining-stock brokers,
successors to B. H. Scheftels & Company, for many years stock brokers
in Chicago, opened its doors on Broad Street, New York, on January 18,
1909. For a long period B. H. Scheftels & Company of Chicago had been
advertised as the Eastern representatives of the corporation of Nat. C.
Goodwin & Company of Reno, of which Mr. Goodwin had been president. It
was now announced that Nat. C. Goodwin had become vice-president of the
new corporation of B. H. Scheftels & Company. Because Mr. Goodwin was
by profession an actor and not a stock broker and because of the
personal abuse he suffered in unfair newspaper criticism which followed
the "break" in the market price of Rawhide Coalition a month before, he
was quite willing to serve as vice-president instead of president.
Besides, he could not spare the time from his profession to attend
closely to the business.
The new corporation of B. H. Scheftels & Company made its bow to the
public by at once featuring in its market literature advice to purchase
stock of the Rawhide Coalition Mines Company. I became publicity
manager for the Scheftels corporation, manager of its promotion
enterprises, and was placed in charge of the protection of the
corporation's interests in all markets where its stocks were traded in.
Soon I was conducting a fresh campaign with investors that became so
hot, so exciting and so big that for nineteen months I labored on an
average sixteen hours a day, including Sundays, without being able to
complete in a single day a day's accumulated business. The business
grew until B. H. Scheftels & Company were actually spending more than
$1,000,000 annually for office and publicity expenses. In the nineteen
months of its existence it bought, sold and delivered approximately
15,000,000 shares of mining stock. The Scheftels corporation broke
every record in this regard that was ever made by a mining-stock
brokerage and promotion house in the history of Wall Street. Throughout
its career it was viciously attacked from many directions, but it held
its own. Through its hold on the mining-stock speculating public, who
were getting fairer treatment than ever before, it survived the
concerted onslaughts of a number of important interests which it had
competed with and antagonized, until one day in September, 1910, on a
warrant sworn to singly by one George Scarborough, since permitted to
resign, clothed with the office and power of a special agent of the
Department of Justice, its offices were raided, its books and papers
seized, its property confiscated, and its officers and employees
arrested.
The annual expense of B. H. Scheftels & Company was $1,000,000 or more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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