Adventure Magazine Cover — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

764 Maybe you think, dear reader, that a man who caters to the gambling instinct of his fellow men, be his intentions honest or dishonest, is a highly immoral person. Is he? Do you know that the gambling instinct is responsible for the wonderful growth of the mining industry in the United States? Would you believe that without the gam- bling instinct the development of the great natural resources of this country would be almost impossible? With rare exceptions every successful mining enterprise in the United States has been financed in the past by appealing di- rectly to the gambling instinct. In the dec- ade antedating this year considerably more than a billion dollars was raised and in- vested in this way. oe Conservative investors who are satisfied with from three to six per cent. on their money do not buy mines or mining stocks. Speculators (gamblers) who are willing to risk part of their fortune in the hope of gain- ing fivefold or more in a year or a few years—these are the kind who invest in mines and mining stocks. There are legions of these. Not less than 500,000 men and women in the United States, according to the best statistical in- formation obtainable, are stockholders of mining companies. In fact, the gambling instinct finds em- ployment in the mining industry long before a property has reached the stage where it can be classed as even a prospect worthy of exploration. The prospector who follows his burro into the mountain fastnesses or across the desert wastes often gambles his very life against the success of his search; those who grub-stake him gamble their money. The gambling instinct seems bound to continue to play an important rdéle in the mining industry for all time, or until either the fortune-hunting instincts of man are eradicated or all the treasures of the world shall have been mined. Now, if the practise of catering to the gambling instinct is baneful, ’m a male- factor. So, too, would then be such lofty- pinnacled financiers as Messrs. Rothschild, Rockefeller, Morgan, the Guggenheims and others. My own thought is that it is custom and the times which are responsible for the maintenance of the great game, and not individuals. Adventure The truth is, we are a race of gamblers and we allow the captains of industry to deal the game for us. NEXT to money and political power, publicity is recognized by all ‘‘ doers” as the most powerful lever to accom- plish big things. Not infrequently publicity will accomplish what neither money nor po- litical power can. Generally, publicity can be secured and controlled by either money or political power. When Rawhide was born I had neither money nor political power. The camp needed publicity. I had nothing to secure publicity with but my wit. I promptly re- quisitioned what wit I had, and used all of it. There is an important difference between owning a series of excellent gold-mine pros- pects, which have tremendous speculative possibilities, and the public recognizing them to be such. It is one thing for a man- ufacturer to be himself assured that his article is a better product for the money than that of his competitor. It is another thing for the consumer to be convinced. Therein lies the value of organized pub- licity. To focus the attention of the great Amer- ican investing public on the camp of Raw- hide was the proposition before me. How was this to be accomplished? Display ad- vertising in the newspapers is costly and requires large capital; the purchase of reading notices in publications which ac- cept that class of business, even more so. One major fact stood out from my early experience as a publicity agent in Goldfield. Few news editors have the heart to consign good copy to the waste-paper basket, par- ticularly if it contains nothing which might cause a come-back. 7 I resolved to “‘press-agent”’ the camp. SOME PRESS-AGENT STUNTS PReeePLY the most scientifically press- agented camp in Nevada had been Bull- frog. Bullfrog was born two years after Goldfield. ‘The Goldfield publicity bureau by this time had greatly improved its art and its efficiency. When the Bullfrog boom was still young the late United States Senator Stewart, an octogenarian and out of a job, traveled from Washington, at the expiration of his term, to the Bullfrog camp. There he hung out Conn Ghbooks ©