Mr. Schwab's lack of caution, however, is instructive to the losing speculator. It furnishes a startling example of the danger in banking alone on an honored name for the success of an enterprise, and it also drives home the truth of the adage, "Every shoemaker should stick to his last."
Incidentally, Mr. Schwab's mining career points another moral. It is this: Don't think, Mr. Speculator, because a promoter represents the chances of profit-making in a mining enterprise to be enormous, and you later find his expectations are not realized, that the promoter is _ipso facto_ a crook. Big financiers are apt to make mistakes and so are little ones. Undoubtedly grave misrepresentations are made every day, and insidious methods are used to beguile you into forming a higher opinion regarding the merit of various securities than is warranted by the facts. But mine promoters are only human, and honest ones not infrequently are carried away by their own enthusiasm and themselves lose their all in the same venture in which they induce you to participate.
When Montgomery-Shoshone was enjoying its market hey-day the Bullfrog Gold Bar Mining Company was promoted at around 15 cents a share on the usual million-share capitalization. A year later the price jumped to $2.65 on the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and the stock was widely distributed among investors. Recently the company was in the sheriff's hands. The biggest losers in this venture were Alabama people, who had great confidence in the promoters.
Other Bullfrog derelicts in which the public lost vast sums of money were Gibraltar, Bullfrog Steinway, Shoshone National Bank, Bullfrog Homestake, Bullfrog Extension, Denver Rush Extension, Mayflower, Four Aces, Golden Scepter, Montgomery Mountain, Original Bullfrog, etc., etc.
Mining-stock brokers of the cities went into ecstasies over Bullfrog during the height of the boom in that camp. Philadelphia mining-stock brokers fed Tramps Consolidated of Bullfrog to their clients. Pittsburg brokers recommended Montgomery-Shoshone. Butte brokers placed large blocks of Amethyst. Gold Bar was distributed by brokers of the South. New York brokers were behind Gibraltar, Four Aces, Denver Rush, Montgomery Mountain, Eclipse, Golden Scepter, National Bank and a score of others.