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H .GOODWIN'S WEEKLY 5 H MINING AND FINANCIAL The story of the stock market in the last week or two sounds something like a fairy tale the kind of fairy tale that has been heard so of ten by the small tradesman, farmer and laboring man in the east. It is a story of shares selling for the price of a stick of chewing gum,' advanc ing almost over night one and two hundred per cent. It is the dream of the little investor come true. The fairy wand, which in this case is an octagonal bar of iron that looks very much like a miner's drill, has touched May Day, New York Bonanza and Utah Consolidated of Tintic and ef ted a transformation. Any one with a sheet Oj the magic paper bearing one of these talis manic names needs only to put the paper into the market to gather silver where he sowed cop pers. The charm, it is to be feared, has not worked well east of the Wasatch mountains. Most of the little investor folk one hears of be yond the mountains have the wrong names on their slips of paper. Very grand names some of them are, and the wizards who sold them said that the price was low and would increase many fold in a few months when the mines with the grand names began to pay dividends. But the mines where the magic has really worked are not christened with fancy names and no wizards have been hawking their certificates about and promising dividends from them. They are so familiar that one reads of them every day in the market quotations and the little investor folk east of the Wasatch mountains, not having wiz ards to explain it, did not know that such sim ple, commonplace names were really talismans. It seems appropriate to describe market con ditions' in words of one syllable, for it has been a children's size market. The profits have gone almost exclusively to tb" itockbuyers who invest on the scale on which schoolboys buy gumdrops and ice cream cones. Well known, well located listed stocks lately quoted at from a half cent to three cents a share have been the feature. Looking backward everyone wonders why these particular issues were ever permitted to get so low, especially while shares in the undeveloped prospects of undeveloped districts were selling at from ten to twenty-five cents, half the proceeds or less reaching the treasuries of the companies. Stocks of the latter kind are the sort of pros pects that usually find buyers in the east. Such offerings are accompanied by personal solicita tion and can be made to uproar much more de sirable than shares whose only advertising con sists of monotonously low prices on the stock list. A New Yorker or a New Englander who has never been west of the Mississippi can scarcely be expected to give weight to the fact that the listed stock is in a proved mining zone while the virgin prospect is not. Therefore the lion's share of the recent upturn goes to the local dabbler in slocks and the eastern owner of low-priced m'n ing shares wonders gloomily why fortune ignores the prospects in which he is interested and smiles on the other fellow. Between prospects and mines is a twilght zone w In which the approximation of true values is more I difficult than in the well-defined classes. A pros- , pect is a prospect and the wise man always takes into account the possibility of losing what he puts into it, discounting values in proportion to the risk. Mine values are based primarily on the ore in sight, the worth of equipment and the character of the development. But a prop erty that is part prospect and part mine is a more complex proposition. One must strike-two separate valuations and mix them in the right proportions. The South Columbus Consolidated of Alta is in the latter category. First a pros pect, it came to be rated as a mine, lapsed Into the prospect class again and is now something between the two. Its ore is as hard to classify as its status. Some of the rock is of shining grade, some of no value whatever, and a lot more is doubtful shipping or milling ore if metal prices are high and smelter charges low; waste if the opposite conditions prevail. The self-evident proposition that an arrangement whereby work can be prosecuted will be to the advantage of the company recommends the Alta-Hecla mer ger to the management. But the success or fail ure of the merger plan is simply an incident in a great unfolding that will decide the destiny, not only of the" South Columbus and the Alta Hocla, but of a score of Alta and Big Cottonwood prospects. Do the ore bodies of the district carry wealth at great depth? Is is feasible to conduct deep mining operations there? If both these questions be answered in the affirmative, mere technicalities of organization count for little; the prospects will grow into big mines. The pre ponderance of evidence is all in favor of descend ing veins and values. The debate hinges on the second Question. If it shall be decided that the district s,an be drained to one thousand or two thousand feet and economical transportation se cured, there will have to be a merger that is a merger! Mines and prospects by the 'dozen must go into it and momenrous projects financed on a momentous scale. A real sensation was caused this week by reports from a strike in the tunnel of the Colum bus Extension tunnel at Alta. Ten feet of sul phides were encountered at a vertical depth of 1,800 -feet and the dip of the ore shoot indicates unlimited stoplng ground. Copper is the pre dominant metal, forming about 10 per cent of the ore and silver is present in large quantities. If the strike turns out to be nearly as big as it was thought to be in the enthusiasm engendered by Phttt Undtrwtod & Undtrwttd, N. T. I HANS VON KRAMER H Whose wonderful invention for wireless telephoning fl from a moving train has been successfully tested M by the London & Brighton Railroad com- H pany and the system ordered installed. B Passengers can send and receive M messages regardless of the H speed of the train. , M itu first announcement it will be a potent mag- H net for capital. The Extension company is. only I H four years old and may be called a personal en- ! H terprise of Clarence McCornick and Tony Jacob- i son. Between them they own nine-tenths of the l; total capitalization, which is 300,000 shares. i til GARRICK THEATRE RLY I I INDEPENDENT PHONE 3737 BELL PHONE 1557 ijH SUNDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER FOURTH I Will be the Opening Performance of jH WILLIAM INGERSOLL I And Stock Company, playing a Season of High Class H - Productions, Presenting the Classy Society Drama x H "Brother Officers" I Beautifully Staged and Superbly Mounted 1H - B Evening Prices 25c and 75 c Matinees Wednesday and Saturday ,j H PFPTAT LABOR DAY MATINEE MONDAY, SEPTEMBER FIFTH 1 I O JT Mil KJ R.X.J MATINEE PRICES 25 AND 50 Cls. Sale of Seats Begins Today 10 a.m. Next Week, "THE WALLS Of JERICHO"