The cause of the failure of the Bullfrog district to make good was not
the absence of gold-bearing rock, for there is much of it in the
district, but it has been found that the per ton values are too low to
make the mines a commercial success. Bullfrog is situated on the desert
and has no timber and but very little water. Promoters and investors
did not realize this until mills were constructed. Then it was too
late. If the camp were situated on the timbered shores of the Hudson
River, the stocks of many of the mines of the district would probably
be in great demand at above par.
Probably the most remarkable fact regarding Bullfrog is that its
securities were more strongly recommended by Eastern brokers than the
Goldfield issues and became more fashionable at this early period in
Goldfield's history. Eastern brokers then had little confidence in
Goldfield; and at the very time when the stocks of Goldfield
representing inside properties, which later made good in an
extraordinary way, were being offered, they advised their customers not
to buy. The general cry then was that it was a fly-by-night offshoot of
the first great Tonopah boom, and the idea prevailed in the East,
because of the ascending influence of George Wingfield, then principal
owner of Tonopah's leading gambling hell, that Goldfield was a haven
for gambler's and wildcatters.
It was during the early days of the Bullfrog boom that my friend W. J.
Arkell's career as a mining promoter came to a sudden end. It will be
remembered that when he left Goldfield to go to Tonopah to make the
Tonopah Home deal his cash capital was $35. He closed the transaction
for the option on the million shares of Tonopah Home's capitalization
at a price around five cents a share. Then our "partnership," of three
days' duration, came to an end. Arkell journeyed back to San Francisco
and there declared me out.
Arkell was a prominent figure for a while as a San Francisco
mining-stock promoter. He listed Tonopah Home on the San Francisco
Stock Exchange. Then he started in to sky rocket the price. The rise
continued until the stock sold at 38 cents, an advance of about 700 per
cent, in a few months.
Then the psychological moment for Arkell arrived.
It leaked out that he had been financing his stock-market campaign by
buying reams of his own stock on one-third margin and at the same time
selling it, in like quantity, for all cash through other brokers. This
was equivalent to borrowing 66 2-3 per cent. of the market value. The
brokers and banks did the carrying. When Arkell's tactics were
discovered, indiscriminate short-selling by market sharp-shooters
ensued. Arkell's own hypothecated stock was used to make deliveries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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