Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ... in the village, near the little home where she and the boy Clinton had seen such early struggles together. From miles around the people assembled there to pay their last and loving tribute to one whom all respected, whose long life of more than fourscore years had been helpful, hopeful, and faithfully devout. Her truest monument she left in their tender memory, and in the Christian manliness of her surviving sons. The two years following were prolific of speculation. The capitalists of New York grew wild with mining fever, and formed companies for Western operations with a reckless unconcern of consequences that now cannot be understood. Within a few months over forty million dollars of New York capital found investment in the West. Many companies were often organized in a day. Mining stocks became the craze. The best and most prudent business men of the metropolis caught at them eagerly, and clung to them as profitable beyond peradventure. Some of the mines were "wildcat," doubtless; many were " salted;" a few existed on paper alone; and the most, it is probable, lacked only money, experience, and fair mining equipment to be made paying properties. In the aggregate they were one huge rat-hole, into which money was poured like water and never pumped out. With others, gentlemen of the highest commercial honor and Christian integrity, General Fisk engaged in mining ventures, and lost. They had actual mines, in Arizona and elsewhere, and should have coined wealth from them, according to all mining theories; but those theories oftener fail than win. The veins cost unduly to develop; or water is remote and must be had at any outlay; or machinery eats up all the output; or the superintendent proves inexperienced, if not a thief-- something can...
