A new black cloud showed itself on the horizon. A labor war was threatened in Goldfield. It was very apparent, from the conduct of George Wingfield, that he was baiting the miners, and it appeared to be the general opinion of the people of Goldfield that he was trying to precipitate trouble. The miners had asked for higher wages. The Sullivan Trust Company, which was operating seven properties with a monthly pay-roll of $50,000, was the first to express a willingness to grant the terms. Wingfield and Nixon refused. The miners asked for arbitration. It was refused. The mines were then shut down for a few days and the terms of the leases were extended. Heavy selling in all Goldfield stocks took place during the shut-down. Rumors could now be heard on every side that Wingfield and Nixon were dumping overboard big blocks of stock. Could it be possible that they themselves were scuttling the ship that had given them such glorious passage? Again the Sullivan Trust Company was called upon to stand behind the market. Soon a cry of distress was heard in the camp from investors and stock brokers who had overloaded themselves with securities and who were in debt to the banks to the extent of millions, with stock of the camp put up as collateral. Inquiry revealed the fact that all Goldfield and Tonopah banks were overloaded. This condition had been brought about by the liberal terms which had been granted by the Wingfield-Nixon banks during the "ballooning" of Goldfield Consolidated, when the confederacy, according to common belief, was unloading millions of dollars' worth of stocks in the small companies and was using the proceeds to finance their purchase of the stock of several of the integrals that formed the big merger. I began to get next to myself and to "smell a rat." I had never had so much as an argument with either Mr. Wingfield or Mr. Nixon, had never been engaged in any business transactions with them, and the campaign against the trust company, which I felt sure had been conceived at the outset in the interests of the Republican political machine, I now suspected was part of a general scheme to get hold of anything and everything that was valuable in the camp. By smashing the Sullivan Trust Company they could hurt the Democratic party of the State, with which we were affiliated, and for which it was currently believed we were supplying the sinews of war. By smashing us they might also cripple the bank with which we were doing business, and which in both Goldfield and Tonopah, particularly Tonopah, was a formidable competitor of their banking interests. And thus they might also facilitate a decline in the market which would shake out of their holdings borrowers at their banks.