The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

to “No. 43,” giving in a row all those memoranda which Rolleum had obtained in Venango County and the region round about, of the descriptions of the real estate which the landsharks up there would be glad to sell for what they asked for it.

The Prospectus said the capital of the company was one million dollars, in one hundred thousand shares at ten dollars each. But in order to obtain a working capital, twenty thousand shares are offered for a limited period at five dollars each, not subject to further assessment.

And it added, though with more phrases, something to the following effect: Hurry! Pay quick! Or you will lose your chance! In conclusion the whole was wound up with many wise and moral observations about legitimate business, interests of stockholders, heavy capitalists, economical management, and other such things; and it bestowed some rather fat compliments upon the honorable Abraham Bee and the Trustees.

Having concocted this choice morsel of bait, they set it in the great stream of newspapers, there to catch fish. In plain terms, with some cash and some credit⁠—for their means would not even reach to pay in advance the whole of their first advertising bill⁠—they managed to have their advertisement published during several weeks in a carefully chosen group of about thirty of the principal newspapers of the United States.

The whole web was now woven; and Rolleum and Digwell, like two hungry spiders, squatted in their den, every nerve thrilling to feel the first buzz of the first fly. It was natural that the scamps should feel a good deal excited: it was life or death with them. If a confiding public, in answer to their impassioned appeal, should generously remit, they were made men for life. If not, instead of being rich and respected gentlemen, they were ridiculous, detected swindlers.

Well⁠—they succeeded. So truthful is our Great American Nation⁠—so confiding, so sure of the truth of what is said in print, even if only in the advertising columns of a newspaper⁠—so certain of the good faith of people who have their names printed in large capitals and with a handle at one end⁠—that actually these fellows had a hundred thousand dollars in bank within ten weeks⁠—before they owned one foot of land, or one inch of well, or one drop of oil, except those three pints in the vials on the office shelf!

And remember this is no imaginary case. I am giving point by point the exact transactions of a real Petroleum Company.

Everything I have told was done, only if possible with a more false and baseless impudence than I have described. And scores and scores of other Petroleum Companies have been organized in ways exactly as unprincipled. Some of them may perhaps have proceeded as real business concerns. Some have stopped and disappeared as soon as the managers could get a handsome sum of money into their pockets for stock.

What the result will be, in the present case, I don’t know. The New York and Rangoon Petroleum Company, when I last knew about it, “still lived.” They had⁠—or said they had⁠—bought some land. I have not heard of their receiving any oil raised from their own wells. They have sent off a monstrous quantity of circulars, prospectuses and advertisements. They caused a portrait and biography of the Honorable A. Bee to be printed in a very respectable periodical, and paid five hundred dollars for it. They had themselves systematically puffed up to the seventh heaven in a long series of articles in another periodical, and paid the owner of it $2,000 or so in stock. They talk very big about a dividend. But although they have received a great deal of money, and paid out a great deal, I do not know of their paying their stockholders any yet. If they should, it would not prove much. For it is sometimes considered “a good dodge” to declare and pay a large dividend before any real profits have been earned; as this is calculated to enhance the price of shares, and to make them “go off like hot cakes.”

I shall not make any “moral” about this story. It teaches its own. It is a very mild statement of what was done to establish an actual specimen⁠—and far from being of the worst description⁠—of a great part of the Petroleum Company enterprises of the day.

It is whispered that somehow or other the trustees and officers of the New York and Rangoon do not own so much stock of their company as they did, having managed to have their stock sold to subscribers as if it were company stock. If this is so, those gentlemen have made their reward sure; and Mr. Peter Rolleum, having the cash in hand for that very liberal allotment of stock which he gave himself for his trouble in getting up the New York and Rangoon Petroleum Company, is very likely half or a quarter as rich as he says.

XXV

The Tulipomania.

Alboni, the singer, had an exquisitely sweet voice, but was a very big fat woman. Somebody accordingly remarked that she was an elephant that had swallowed a nightingale. About as incongruous is the idea of a nation of damp, foggy, fat, full-figured, broad-sterned, gin-drinking, tobacco-smoking Dutchmen in Holland, going crazy over a flower. But they did so, for three or four years together. Their craze is known in history as the Tulipomania, because it was a mania about tulips.

Just a word about the Dutchmen first.

These stout old fellows were not only hardy navigators, keen discoverers, ingenious engineers, laborious workmen, able financiers, shrewd and rich merchants, enthusiastic patriots and tremendous fighters, but they were eminently distinguished (as they still are to a considerable extent) by a love of elegant literature, poetry, painting, music and other fine arts, including horticulture. It was a Fleming that invented painting in oils. Before him, white of egg was used, or gum-water, or some such imperfect material, for spreading the color. Erasmus, one of the most learned,