The sale of treasury stock was slow, but sufficient was disposed of to warrant the expense for mine development of at least $2,000 a month for six months, and that appeared far enough to provide for in advance.
Pending the making good of this proposition in a financial way, I determined I would help finance a newspaper publication at Reno which would give to mining-stock speculators an unbiased statement of mining and market conditions as they existed. In the mining camps it was considered tantamount to financial suicide for the home publication to reflect on the merits of any locally owned property. Strictures were looked upon as "knocks," and "knockers" are taboo in mining camps. Moreover, mining-camp papers could hardly make both ends meet at the time without support from inside interests, and unprejudiced statements of fact that were detrimental to a local property could hardly be expected.
Merrill A. Teague was made editor of the new publication, which was called the _Nevada Mining News_. Mr. Teague had just blown into Reno from Goldfield where he had been connected with the Nevada Mines News Bureau, a daily market sheet. Before coming to Nevada he had served in an editorial capacity on the _Baltimore American_ and the _Philadelphia North American_. Mr. Teague is the possessor of a facile pen. At $50 a week, which was his stipend at the beginning, I was convinced that the _Nevada Mining News_ had a cheap editor. When news was scarce he could write more about nothing than any man I ever met before. Incidentally, he could go further without finding a stopping place in a crusade than any man I had ever bumped up against. That was his drawback. However, compared with the work of other newspaper men then employed in Nevada, his stuff was in a class by itself and was commercially very valuable.
Mr. Teague was on the job just a week when he cut loose with an attack on United States Senator George S. Nixon of Nevada in a front-page story headed "Goldfield in the Grasp of Wall Street Sharks." The article declared that Senator Nixon, needing $1,000,000 to conclude the merger plans of the Goldfield Consolidated, had got it through B. M. (Berney) Baruch of the New York Stock Exchange, factotum of Thomas F. Ryan, at terrible cost. The loan was made at a time when Goldfield Consolidated was selling around $10 per share. In consideration for the loan, Senator Nixon, acting for the company, gave Mr. Baruch an option on 1,000,000 shares of treasury stock of the Goldfield Consolidated at $7.75 per share. At the time Mr. Teague commenced his onslaught Goldfield Consolidated shares had slumped from $10 to $7.50. Mr. Teague alleged that the market on the stock was being juggled and speculators were being milked. Mr. Baruch, he asserted, had sold the stock down to $7.50 per share on the strength of his option, and was now tempted to break the market, sell the stock short and cover all at much lower prices.