The Monte Cristo Mining Boom Was Real. These Stock Companies Weren’t.

The dispatch in yesterday’s Post-Intelligencer from St. Louis, regarding the raiding of the “Washington Stock Exchange,” which the police claimed was a gambling resort and a swindling concern, created a good deal of interest in the city among mining men. The dispatch stated that E. H. Spear, manager of the concern, declared he was not running a gambling game but a legitimate mining exchange, and enumerated as carried on the names of the following companies, “based upon good claims in the Monte Cristo mining district”: the Alban, the Beta, the Copper, the Delta and the Essex Gold and Silver Mining companies.

There can be no doubt but that the concern is a swindle, for an examination of the plat of the Monte Cristo district does not reveal claims held by any of the companies named, the nearest approach to the names mentioned being the claim of the Albion, while the St. Louis concern spoke of the “Alban.” Spear is quoted by the dispatch as saying that the companies were organized in 1893, each having a set of officers and a board of directors, and that J. R. Willy is president and E. H. Spear secretary of the several concerns. Mining men in this city who are interested in the Monte Cristo district do not know of the existence of any such men as Willy and Spear and declare the whole proposition to be a great “fake.”