We realized very clearly that some arrangement would have to be perfected to avoid a repetition of the trouble which the New York Stock Exchange brokerage firm had made us.
The removal to New York of B. H. Scheftels & Company, Chicago stock brokers, representatives there of Nat C. Goodwin & Company of Reno, and a merging of brokerage and promotion interests of the two firms took place.
There was precedent for the move. There are a thousand other corporation interests in this country that are closely affiliated with Stock Exchange and other brokerage houses, through one or more of their directors or owners being partners in the business. As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to lay your finger on a single big interest of this kind that has not such a representation. These houses, of course, make it a rule to recommend the purchase of stocks in which their principals are interested. Affiliations of this kind are found essential to successful financing of enterprises. A number of New York Stock Exchange houses which are headed or controlled by men who are heavily interested in mining ventures that require financing are exponents of this method in the mining field.
Most of these have succeeded in promoting projects in which they or their associates are heavily interested, with the aid of the banking and brokerage facilities thus afforded. Principally by the use of the market literature and accompanying market manipulation, these houses have placed with their customers the securities of their firm members and associates. They have encompassed this by maintaining a brokerage, banking and promotion business without parading before the public, although never denying, the mixed nature of their business.
For the reader to comprehend the necessity for transacting the business this way, he should understand the underlying principle of financing an enterprise by the route of the listed stock market.
There are two ways of financing any enterprise with other people's money. One is by the primitive method of appealing directly to the public for subscriptions in huckster fashion, taking the money and then refraining from listing the stock or establishing an open market for it. You can't finance an enterprise of consequence these days by any such procedure. It is practically impossible to borrow from banks or from loan-brokers on any security that has no fixed market value. A market must be established, for without a market on which to sell, intelligent investors won't buy.