A. M. Chisholm

“ Joint stock-companies are the basis of modern finance. I've given you one example, And then I know a dozen other ways of making a killing. I won't touch anything that doesn't look like big money."
"You'll know about mines, of course," said Maisie innocently. "You studied geology, didn't you?"
"A little," admitted Mortimer modestly "But you don't need to know anything about mines to make money out of them; it's not the mining that there's money in—it's the manipulating the stock." ”

“ The West is the place to make money, and in the new mining-town, Galena, I will find all sorts of opportunities. Why, young Hackett told me that his father, the senator, often buys a claim for five hundred dollars and sells it for a cool hundred thousand. It's capital that's wanted. Here's how it is. Say I strike some old miner with a good property. I buy half his interest for thousand dollars. Then we form a joint stock-company with a capital of million. ”

“ Twenty-five thousand isn't so much. I know plenty of men who have half of that a year, and they think they're poor. Of course, if we were satisfied to settle down in a little house in this back-number village and vegetate we could get along, but it won't do for me. ”