The _Mining Financial News_ had always been an entity. It had up to then been assisted financially at periods by mining promotion concerns with which I had been identified and was always a quasi house-organ for this reason. But it invariably preserved a certain independence in its news columns and at least such partial independence of ownership as enabled it to stand on its own bottom.
MORE TRUTH ON THE "MINING FINANCIAL NEWS"
WHEN the _Mining Financial News_ removed to New York Mr. Scheftels used much persuasion to get the owners to transfer title to the Scheftels company. Admittedly, if the Scheftels company could boast ownership of the newspaper at the head of its editorial page, it would be a great feather in the Scheftels cap and might lead investors to think that an organization which could own and publish a first-class, metropolitan newspaper of the _Mining Financial News_ variety must for that reason alone be worthy of financial credit.
Thompson, Towle & Company, members of the New York Stock Exchange, print a small sized pattern of such a newspaper, called the _News Letter_. Hayden, Stone & Company, and Paine, Webber & Company, of Boston and New York, are said to have much influence with the _Boston News Bureau_, a newspaper which features news of mines and mining share markets. The _Boston News Bureau_ at times has printed no display advertisements and at other times has. It is considered by Boston mining-stock brokers who handle the Michigan and Arizona copper securities as a necessary complement to their market literature. _Walker's Copper Letter_ and the _Boston Commercial_ are other examples. _Walker's Copper Letter_, which carries no advertising, for years has said the very nicest things about copper securities promoted and fathered by important Boston and New York interests. Needless to state, what _Walker's Copper Letter_, the _Boston Commercial_ and the _Boston News Bureau_ say about the mining propositions of their friends is as a rule based on fact. The point is that promoters find it necessary that news happenings regarding the markets, the securities and the mines in which they are interested be given broad publicity.
It was the idea of the owners of the _Mining Financial News_, of which B. H. Scheftels, president and 25 per cent. owner of the capital stock of B. H. Scheftels & Company, was not one, that anybody who would supply the sinews while the paper was getting on its feet and was establishing itself, was entitled to all the publicity which the paper could consistently and honestly give it. With this understanding the Scheftels company assumed to take all of the income of the _Mining Financial News_ and pay all of the running expenses until such period as the newspaper might become self-sustaining.