Rawhide, Nevada, Gold Camp - The Heart of the Producing Area of Rawhide - Showing the Relative Proportions of the Important Properties
- Title:
- Rawhide, Nevada, Gold Camp - The Heart of the Producing Area of Rawhide - Showing the Relative Proportions of the Important Properties
- Alternate Title:
- Rawhide, Nevada, Gold Camp
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Nat C. Goodwin & Company
- Date:
- 1908
- Posted Date:
- 2017-04-14
- ID Number:
- 2190.01
- Collection Number:
- 8548
- File Name:
- PJM_2190_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1900 - 1919
- Subject:
- Money & Finance
Unusual Graphics/Text
Deception/Distortion - Measurement:
- 22 x 19 on sheet 58 x 46 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This map and the associated text of this brochure promoted the Rawhide Coalition gold mine in Nevada. (See also verso, ID #2190.02.) The promotion was a scam, engineered by one of the most remarkable swindlers of turn-of-the-century America.
Rawhide was a town 118 miles east of Reno, Nevada, where gold had been discovered in December 1906. "Only one mine could be developed in Rawhide, severely limiting production." Bakken 2006, 563. By October 1908, when this brochure was published, mining at Rawhide was past its peak and a fire had destroyed most of the supporting town the previous month. Ibid. None of that is disclosed in this issue of "Nat C. Goodwin & Company's Fortnightly Market Review." For example, the "most important" lease, Grutt Hill Mint, is said to be "now producing $25,000 a month, and is in the permanent dividend-paying class." The output of the second most important, Grutt Hill Coalition, "will equal that of the Mint."
It was the name of Goodwin, a well-known comedian, that appeared on most of the advertising promoting the Rawhide Coalition Mines, but only because he had been persuaded to act as the front man for one George Graham Rice, "a headmaster of the get-quick-rich promotion game." Guenther 1918, 585, 591. Rice was born Jacob S, Herzig, into a family of comfortable means, but turned early to gambling and crime. As a minor, he spent 2-1/2 years in the New York State Reformatory for theft, and less than three years after his release, he was sentenced to 6-1/2 years in Sing Sing for forgery. After his release from prison, he adopted the Rice identity (Ibid. 585) and set out on a lifetime of fraud.
The Rawhide venture was not Rice's first Nevada mining promotion, but it was one of the most successful. Having acquired an option on all the stock of Rawhide "on a shoestring," Goodwin & Company sold it to investors as if they were independent, third-party brokers. "Rice, with the aid of the Nat C. Goodwin Company and much more additional fake news disseminated through his Nevada Mining News, a publication he started about that time, was able to unload reams of new securities on investors . . . . All in all, Rice sold about 3,000,000 shares of these various enterprises; not all from Reno, but a considerable proportion from New York, where he moved his firm when the decent citizens of Nevada came to their senses and sent word to him that the state could be made as hot as one other place for any one whose presence was no longer wanted." Ibid. 591.
Two months after the publication of this brochure, Rawhide Coalition Mines collapsed, in part because of "the rapid circulation of rumors of the record of . . . its principal promoter in New York, George Graham Rice." New York Times, December 12, 1908. Interviewed by The Times "in his tapestry-hung reception room with an Italian marble fireplace" in "one of the best suites in the Hotel Patterson" on 46th Street, Rice described himself as an "honest miner." Ibid. In 1910, Rice and his associates in a successor firm were arrested for mail fraud in connection with his Rawhide promotions. Guenther 1918, 591. In March 1912, Rice pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year's imprisonment; he issued a statement that his methods had been "fair and honest as measured by the best standards of the Street" and had pleaded guilty only because his resources had been "exhausted" and he "was down to my last cent." New York Times, March 8, 1912.
For other maps in the collection related to fraudulent or suspicious financial transactions, Search > fraud.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Source:
- Nat C. Goodwin & Co. "Facts About Rawhide Coalition Mines Co. From Nat C. Goodwin & Company's Fortnightly Market Review No. 17, issued October 15, 1908.
- Cite As:
- P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartography, #8548. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
- Repository:
- Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library
- Archival Collection:
- P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartography
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.