Spokane Had Mining Fever, and the Men Selling the Stock Had the Only Sure Thing
A Yakima correspondent visits Spokane and finds a city where hotel clerks, newsboys and waiter girls are all buying mining shares — and where even Ezra Meeker has traded hops for a stock prospectus.
The mining boom which is now occupying the attention of Spokane's population to such a large extent presented to me, as a visitor of a week in that city, some interesting phases.
The first friendly face I spied upon the morning of my arrival there was that of Ezra Meeker, ex-hop king and farmer, ex-editor and politician. With an eye to business, I approached him for an interview in regard to the hop outlook.
"My dear sir," he replied, "I am no longer identified with the hop business. Any information you may desire, however, about the great mining districts that are tributary to this city will be cheerfully given. Now I have some nice little properties, the stock of which I am handling, that are bound to develop into bonanzas. What, you don't want to invest? Well, good bye."
The hotels were jammed and the streets blockaded with people talking nothing but mines, mines! The offices of the mining companies are numberless and fill the most prominent quarters in the city. The merchants have their mines, the professional men, the laborers, the waiter girls in the hotels, the newsboys — all put their spare cash into mining stock; and the fellows who sell the stock make the profits.
“The merchants have their mines, the professional men, the laborers, the waiter girls in the hotels, the newsboys — all put their spare cash into mining stock; and the fellows who sell the stock make the profits.”
Spokane in the 1900s was a speculative boomtown where mining shares were peddled to newsboys and hotel waitresses, and the Yakima correspondent saw plainly who was left holding the paper. The same arithmetic runs through every modern gold rush — crypto, meme stocks, and the speculative land plays now shaping Yakima's own growth — and the seller, not the buyer, still books the profit.
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