Achieving Prosperity - Ultimate Collection. Thorstein Veblen
got tired, and then they stopped. If they had gone down ten thousand feet they would have found no coal. Coal is found in the new red sandstone; but theirs was the old red sandstone, which is a very fine old stone itself, but in which no coal was ever found, except what might have been put there on purpose, or possibly some faint indications. The hole they made, however, as my informant gravely observed, was left sticking in the ground, and if he is right is to this day a sort of appendix or tail to the well north-west corner of the State House Square. So, I suppose, any one who chooses can go and poke down there after it and satisfy himself about the accuracy of this account. Such an inquirer ought to find satisfaction, for “truth lies in the bottom of a well” says the proverb. Yet some ill natured skeptics have construed this to mean that all will tell lies sometimes, for—as they accent it, even “Truth lies, at the bottom of a well!”
Still a different sort of business humbug, again, was a wonderful story which went the rounds about fifteen years ago, and which was cooked up to help some one or other of the various enterprises for new routes by Central America to California. This story started, I believe, in the “New Orleans Courier.” It was, that a French Doctor of Vera Paz in Guatemala, while making a canal from his estate to the sea, discovered, away up at the very furthest extremity of the Gulf of Honduras, a vast ancient canal, two hundred and forty feet wide, seventy feet deep, and walled in on both sides with gigantic masses of rough cut stone. The Doctor at once gave up his own trifling modern excavation, and plunged into an explanation of this vast ancient one, as zealously as if he were probing after some uncertain bullet in a poor fellow’s leg. The monstrous canal carried him in a straight line up the country, to the south-westward. Some twenty miles or so inland it plunged under a volcano!
But see what a French doctor is made of!
Cutting down the great, old trees that obstructed the entrance, and procuring a canoe with a crew of Indians, in he went. The canal became a prodigious tunnel, of the same width and depth of water, and vaulted three hundred and thirty five feet high in the living rock. Nothing is said about the bowels of the volcano, so that we must conclude either that such affairs are not planted so deep as is supposed, or that the fire-pot of the concern was shoved one side or bridged over by the canallers, or that the Frenchman had some remarkably good style of Fire Annihilator, or else that there is some mistake!
Eighteen hours of incessant travel brought our intrepid M.D. safe through to the Pacific Ocean; during which time, if the maps of that country are of any authority, he passed under quite a number of mountains and rivers. The trip was not dark at all, as shafts were sunk every little way, which lighted up the interior quite well, and then the volcano gave—or ought to have given—some light inside. Indeed, if the doctor had only thought of it, I presume he would have noticed double rows of street gas lamps on each side of the canal! The exclusive right to use this excellent transit route has not, to my knowledge, been secured to anybody yet. It will be observed that ships as large as the Great Eastern could easily pass each other in this canal, which renders it a sure thing for any other vessel unless that shrewd and grasping fellow the Emperor Louis Napoleon, has got hold of this canal and is keeping it dark for some still darker purposes of his own—as for instance to run his puppet Maximilian into for refuge, when he is run out of Mexico—it is therefore still in the market. And my publication of the facts effectually disposes of the Emperor’s plan of secrecy, of course.
IV. MONEY MANIAS.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PETROLEUM HUMBUG.—THE NEW YORK AND RANGOON PETROLEUM COMPANY.
Every sham, as has often been said, proves some reality. Petroleum exists, no doubt, and is an important addition to our national wealth. But the Petroleum humbug or mania or superstition, or whatever you choose to call it, is a humbug, just as truly, and a big one, whether we use the word in its milder or its bitterer sense.
There are more than six hundred petroleum companies. The capital they call for, is certainly not less than five hundred million dollars. The money invested in the notorious South Sea Bubble was less than two-fifths as much—only about $190,000,000.
Now, this petroleum business—very much of it—is just as thorough a gambling business as any faro bank ever set up in Broadway, or any other stock speculation ever conjured up in Wall Street—as much so, for instance, as the well known Parker Vein coal company.
I shall here tell exactly how those well known and enterprising financiers, Messrs. Peter Rolleum and Diddle Digwell proceeded in organizing the New-York and Rangoon Petroleum Company, of which all my readers have seen the advertisements everywhere, and of which the former is the Vice President and managing officer, and the latter Secretary. In June 1864, neither of these worthy gentleman was worth a cent. Rolleum shinned up and down in some commission agency or other, and Digwell had a small salary as clerk in some insurance or money concern. They barely earned a living. Now, Rolleum says he is worth $200,000; and Mr. Secretary Digwell, besides about $10,000 worth of stock in the New York and Rangoon, has his comfortable salary and his highly respectable “posish”—to use a little bit of business slang.
Mr. Rolleum was the originator of the scheme, and let Digwell into it; and together they went to work. They had a few hundred dollars in cash, no particular credit, an entirely unlimited fund of lies, a good deal of industry, plausibility, talk, and cheek, considerable acquaintance with business, and an instinctive appreciation of some of the more selfish motives commonly influential among men.
First of all, Rolleum made a trip into the oil country. Here, while picking up some of his ordinary agency business, he looked around among the wells and oil lands, talking, and examining and inquiring of everybody about everything, with a busy, solemn face, and the air of one who does not wish it to be supposed that he has important interests in his care. Then he talked with some men at (we will say) Titusville and thereabouts; told all about his valuable business connections in New York City: and after getting a little acquainted, he laid before each of half-a-dozen or so of them, this proposition:
“You can have a good many shares of a first class new oil company about to be formed just for permitting your name to be used in its interest, and for being a trustee.” A thousand shares apiece, he said; to be valued at five dollars each, the par value however, being ten dollars. Five thousand dollars each man, and to be made ten thousand, as soon as the proposed puffing should enable them to sell out. After a little hesitation, a sufficient number consented. There was nothing to pay, something handsome to get, and all they were asked for it was, to let a man talk about them. What if he did lie? That was his business.
This fixed four out of the nine intended trustees.
Rolleum also obtained memoranda or printed circulars showing the amounts for which a number of oil land owners would sell their holes in the ground or the room for making others, and describing the premises. He now flew back to New York, and went to sundry persons of some means and some position but of no great nobility, and thus he said:
“Here are these wealthy and distinguished oil men right there on the ground who are going to be trustees of my new company.
“You serve too, won’t you? One thousand shares for your trouble—five thousand dollars. No money to pay—I will see to all that. Here are the lands we can buy,”—and he showed his lists. The bribe, and the names of those already bribed, influenced them, and this secured three more trustees. Two more were needed, namely the President and Vice President. Rolleum himself was to be the latter; his next move was to secure the former.
This, the most critical part of the scheme, was cunningly delayed until this time. Rolleum went to the Honorable A. Bee, a gentleman of a good deal of ability, pretty widely known, not very rich, believed (perhaps for that reason) to be honest, no longer young, and of a reverend yet agreeable presence. Him the plausible Rolleum told