Scores of telegrams were received from out-of-town customers to whom
the margin respite was wired. One of these read:
You may look for a tidal wave of business. Your princely action
warrants 21 guns for the House of Scheftels.
Another one was to this effect:
The whole situation was greased for your descent. It was a
shoot-the-chutes and a bump-the-bumps proposition. Congratulations
on your survival.
Hundreds of letters of a similar tenor poured in upon us. Many of these
came from the camp of Ely itself, where large blocks of the stock were
held by mining men on the ground.
Thursday the stock closed at $l-3/4; Friday it advanced to sales at
$1-7/8 and hung there.
The Scheftels organization now drew its first long breath. Friends and
enemies alike marveled how the corporation had managed to survive. We
had held the fort, but at murderous cost.
I got busy with the publicity forces at my command. Through the
Scheftels Market Letter and the _Mining Financial News_ the story
was told of the whole dastardly campaign.
The Weekly Market Letter of the Scheftels company on November 13, 1909,
devoted 24 columns to the story of the raid.
That the Guggenheim-managed Nevada Consolidated was well pleased with
the publication of the _Engineering & Mining Journal's_ attack seemed
clear to me. The reason was this: In its attack the _Engineering &
Mining Journal_ stated that two drillholes put down by the Nevada
Consolidated in the immediate vicinity of Ely Central had failed to
show better than nine-tenths of one per cent. copper ore which, the
article said, was below commercial grade. (At this late date, October,
1911, they are mining ore in the steam-shovel pit of the Nevada
Consolidated that will not average more than eight-tenths of one per
cent. copper transporting it to the concentrator, more than twenty
miles away, and treating it at a profit. But this is not the point.)
An engineer of international prominence telegraphed the Scheftels
company from Ely as follows:
Two drill holes mentioned in _Engineering & Mining Journal_
article were completed only last week. Results must have been
telegraphed to New York.
These holes gave great trouble on account of caving ground. I heard
drill runners say they were stopped on that account and were in ore
in bottom. In any case, it is not conclusive of unpayable ore in
vicinity. This condition often occurs.
I could write a book in reply to the _Engineering & Mining Journal's_
tirade, showing the utter flimsiness of the statements it made. Limited
space forbids anything more than an outline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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