"Do you mean to say that the odds against a man making money on Union Pacific on any given day are only 6 to 5 when he buys the stock _on margin_?"
"Not on your life!" he said. "A margin trader on the New York Stock Exchange, unless he has sufficient capital behind him to hold out against 'inside' manipulation, which has for its purpose the 'shaking out' of the speculator, has not got _any_ chance! He is bound to lose his money in the end. I am talking about people who buy stocks, pay for them in full and get possession of their certificates and 'sit tight' with them."
Mr. Elliott was a plunger and lost large sums in the gambling-houses of Goldfield and Tonopah. He lost $20,000 in a night's play in the Tonopah Club, then owned by George Wingfield and associates. When asked to settle he tendered a check for $5,000 and a certificate for 100,000 shares of Goldfield Laguna Mining Company stock, then selling at 15 cents. This was accepted. Within a year Laguna sold freely at $2 a share.
This incident illustrates how the foundations were laid for some of the big fortunes which were amassed in the Goldfield mining boom. When George Wingfield came to Tonopah in 1901 he brought with him $150, borrowed from George S. Nixon, then president of a national bank at Winnemucca, Nevada, and later United States Senator. Mr. Wingfield's fortune is now conservatively estimated at between $5,000,000 and $6,000,000.
Success having been won by the Patrick Elliott & Camp promotions, I was considering whether or not much of the money-making that was being done by the promoters around Goldfield was not due to my own peculiar ability to reach the public, and I even meditated on my fitness to become a promoter on my own account. The best properties in Manhattan, by common consent, were the Stray Dog, the Jumping Jack and the Dexter. These were sure-enough producers of the yellow metal. They were shippers and were held in high esteem by mining men. I found it impossible to purchase the Dexter because the company was already promoted and the stock widely distributed at around $1 a share. George Wingfield was then and is still interested in the Dexter. The Jumping Jack was unincorporated. The stock of the Stray Dog was practically intact in the hands of the owners. The price asked for the Jumping Jack was $85,000. Stray Dog was held at $500,000.