‘The idea is, Mo, that I am betting on my own judgement, I'll confer with anyone, first visit free, here in Kansas City. If I travel, it's my railroad ticket, two dollars a night for a hotel room, three dollars a day for food, costs such as livery stable rents as required by the survey, plus per diem consulting fee... all in advance. In advance because I saw while working for Mr Fones how nearly impossible it is to get a client to pay for a dead horse. Fones did it by refusing to budge until he had a retainer in hand equal to his projected expenses, applied overhead, and expected minimum profit... more, if he could squeeze it out.
‘It's on that per diem that I'll differ in my methods from Davis and Fones. I will use a formal, signed contract, with two options, the client to make his choice ahead of time. Forty dollars a day -‘
‘What!!'
But Briney had spoken seriously. ‘Mr Fones charged a client that much for my services. My dear, there are plenty of lawyers who get paid that much per diem for nice clean work in a warm courtroom. I want to be paid at that rate for trudging and sloshing and sometimes crawling through mines that are always cold and usually wet. For that price they'll get my best professional judgement as to how much it will cost to work that mine, including capital investment required before they ship their first ton of ore... and my best guess, based on assays, geology, and other factors, as to whether or not the claim can be worked at a profit... for it is a sad fact that, in the mining business as a whole, more money goes into the ground than ever is taken out.
‘That's the business I'm in, Mo. Not in mining. I get paid for telling people not to mine. To cut their losses and run. They often don't believe me, which is why I must insist on being paid in advance.
‘But once in a while I have had the happy privilege of telling someone, "Go ahead, do it! It will cost you this big wad of money... but you should get it all back and more."
‘And that is where the second option comes in, the one I really prefer. Under the second option I gamble with the client. I lower my per diem and instead take some points on the net, if and when. I won't take more than five points at most, and I won't do a held survey for less than expenses plus a per diem of fifteen dollars a day, minimum. That bracket leaves room to dicker.
Now-Can you write a model letter for me, explaining the tariff schedule? How they can have our best work, at our standard fee. Or we'll gamble with them at a much lower fee, and they will still have our best work.'
‘I'll try, Mister Boss Man, sir.'
It paid. It made us rich. But I did not suspect how well it paid until forty years later when circumstances caused my husband and me to count up all our assets and figure their worth. But that is forty years later and this account may not go on that long.
It paid especially well through an oddity of human psychology... or an oddity of persons seized by the mining mania, which may not be the same thing. Like this...
The compulsive gamblers, the sort who try to beat lotteries or slot machines or other house games, almost always were betting on striking it rich on some caim that could not be worked at a profit. Each of these saw himself as another Cowboy Womack... and did not want to share his lucky star with some hireling, even at only five points. So, if he could scrape it up, he paid the full fee, grumbling.
After a survey (when I was my husband's secretary) I would prepare a letter along these lines, telling this optimist that his best vein was:
- surrounded by country rock that has to be dug out to get at the high grade. The mine can not be worked successfully without drifting a new tunnel out to the north to the highway, through a right of way still to be negotiated via the third level of the claim to the north of yours.
In addition, your claim requires a blacksmith, a tool repair shop, a new pumping system, new ties and rails for approximately two hundred yards of track, etc., etc. - plus wages for eighty shifts per month as required by the bond-and-lease for an estimated three years before appreciable pay tonnage could be taken to the mill, etc., etc., see enclosures A, B, and C.
In view of the state of the claim and the capital investment required to work it, we regret to have to report that we recommend against attempting to work this claim.
We agree with your arithmetic as to the effect on the commercial feasibility of processing low-grade ore if the new Congress does in fact pass legislation requiring free and unlimited coinage of silver at sixteen to one. But we are not as sanguine as you are that such legislation will indeed pass.
We are forced to recommend that you sell your bond-and-lease for whatever it will bring. Or cut your losses and surrender it.
We remain, sincerely at your service,
Brian Smith Associates
By
Brian Smith, President
This report was typical for an old claim being reopened by a new optimist - the commonest situation in mining. (The West is pocked with holes where some prospector ran out of money and luck.)
I wrote many letters like that one. They hardly ever believed unfavourable reports. They frequently demanded their money back. Then a client often took the bit in his teeth and went ahead anyhow... and went broke trying to satisfy a bond-and-lease on country rock assaying only enough silver per ton to go broke on, plus a trace of platinum and a whiff of gold.
The clients attempting to mine gold were even worse. There is something about gold that has an effect on human judgement similar to that of heroin or cocaine.
But there were also a few rational investors - gamblers, but gambling the odds correctly. Offered a chance to reduce upfront expenses in exchange for points, they often took that option... and the claims selected by these more level-headed people were more likely to merit a go-ahead from Brian.
Even these worthwhile mining claims usually lost money in the long run, through failure of their owners/operators to shut down soon enough when the operations stopped paying their costs. (Brian did not lose when that happened; he simply stopped making money from his percentage of the net.) But some of them made money and some of them made lots of money and some of them were still making money regularly forty years later. Brian's willingness to postpone his return other than a modest fee put our children into the best schools and Brian's quondam secretary, Mama Maureen, into big, fat emeralds. (I don't like diamonds. Too cold.)
I see that I've missed telling about Nelson and Betty Lou and Random Numbers and Mr Renwick. That's what comes of being a Time Corps operative; all times look alike to you, and temporal sequence becomes unimportant. All right, let's fill in.
Random Numbers may have been the silliest cat I've ever lived with - although all cats are sui generis, and Pixel has his supporters for the title of funniest cat, unlimited, all times, all universes. But I'm sure Betty Lou would vote for Random Numbers. Theoretically title to Random lay in Brian, since the cat was his bride's wedding present to him, somewhat delayed. But it is silly to talk of title to a cat, and Randie felt that Betty Lou was his personal slave, available at all hours to scratch his skull, cuddle him, and open doors for him, a conviction she supported by her slavish obedience to his tiniest whim.
Betty Lou was Brian's favourite sweetheart for, oh, pretty steadily for three years, then as circumstances brought them together for years and years. Betty Lou was Nelson's wife, Nelson being my cousin who played fast and loose with a lemon meringue pie. My past had come back to haunt me.