I was an enthusiast. I believed in the merits of the camp, and my
enthusiasm undoubtedly carried itself to the readers of my
advertisements. But the quality of the advertising copy did not
entirely explain my success in bringing the money into Goldfield. The
stock offerings undoubtedly _struck a popular chord_. Tens of
thousands of people who for years had been imbibing the daily
financial chronicles of the newspapers, but whose incomes were not
sufficient to permit them to indulge in stock-market speculation in
rails and industrials, found in cheap mining stocks the thing they
were looking for--an opportunity for those with limited capital to
give full play to their gambling, or speculative, instinct.
Time and again promotions were almost completely subscribed by
telegraph in advance of mail responses reaching Goldfield; and it
frequently needed but the publication of a half-page advertisement in
40 or 50 big city newspapers, of a Sunday, to bring to Goldfield by
wire before Monday night sufficient reservations to guarantee
oversubscription in a few days.
It was easy to give full play to my penchant for experimenting, in the
evolution of mining-stock promotion in Goldfield. The old system, and
the one which recently has enjoyed much vogue among financial
advertisers, was the endeavor first to get names of investors rather
than immediate results from the advertisements, and to follow them up
by correspondence. In spending the first $1,000 appropriated for
advertising from Goldfield, I split the money between two newspapers on
one day. I constructed large display advertisements and appealed for
direct, quick replies. This succeeded.
BUILDING GOLD MINES WITH PUBLICITY
A little later I organized a news bureau as an adjunct of the
advertising agency.
It is acknowledged that this news bureau accomplished much for Nevada.
As a matter of fact, it is generally conceded by Goldfield pioneers and
by mining-stock brokers throughout the country that the news bureau was
directly responsible for bringing into the State of Nevada tens of
millions of dollars for investment, and was indirectly responsible for
the opening up of the Mohawk and other great gold mines of the
Goldfield camp and of the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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