The publicity, promotion and brokerage activities of the corporation were of such magnitude, and withal so simple, that they at once challenged the attention of the Street. Before the Scheftels corporation was half a year old veterans of the financial game began to opine that some big interest was behind the concern. Its dashing market methods, its mighty publicity measures and its unbridled assurance attracted much notice. From every quarter expert views reached the Scheftels company that its manner of doing things was convincing on the point that it knew the business. But the general opinion of the talent seemed to be that the new corporation was spending too much money and that it could not win out unless a big boom in mining shares ensued. The market tactics adopted by the Scheftels company in its promotion enterprises were as old as the hills. On the New York Stock Exchange they had been employed in a thousand instances before. The method will probably survive all time. The corporation sought to distribute the stocks of which it became sponsor in turn--first Rawhide Coalition, then Ely Central, later Bovard Consolidated and finally Jumbo Extension--by the approved Wall Street system of establishing public interest and inquiry and causing an active market. The aim was to establish higher prices for the securities, always within the bounds of intrinsic and reasonable speculative value. All efforts were directed this way. Plans like this are, however, sometimes thwarted. Markets get sick. More stock presses for sale than the "inside" has money to pay for. Stocks break in price. Then the promoter can't make any money and might lose a lot of it. Since money-making is his primary object, and stock distribution secondary, he has got to do some close figuring when markets are subject to the price-breaking habit. That's where B. H. Scheftels & Company, through its brokerage business, found, after a short period, that it held within its grasp the power to insure itself against declining markets. Without promotion stocks on hand--obtained by wholesale at lower figures than values warranted--in which it could profit to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars on a rising market, the million-dollar annual expense of the Scheftels company would not have been justified. Once the market sought lower levels and no profit could be made on the promotions, it meant a discontinuance of the business on the large scale. The corporation's insurance was the open market in stocks on the general list and its brokerage business. From time to time it openly shorted tens of thousands of shares of stocks in which it had no promoter's interest whatever, by going out in the open market and selling them to all bidders against future delivery, by borrowing them from brokers and selling them for immediate delivery, and by short sales generally.