Page:Advanced Australia.djvu/27

Australia would turn out an El Dorado. The original capital was only £150, subscribed by a syndicate of ten speculators in Adelaide, the capital city of the colony of South Australia, who each risked the price of a second-hand bicycle to send a prospecting party to Coolgardie, in June 1893. A little more than four years afterwards, when the liquidation commenced, the assets consisted of 25,000 Associated shares, 10,000 Lake View Extended, 100 Lake View South, 200 Royal Mint shares, and £1513 in cash, and there were no liabilities. The value of its holdings were a couple of months since:—In the Great Boulder, £1,662,500; Lake View Consols, £2,812,500; Associated Mines, £2,475,000; Ivanhoe, £1,875,000; Kalgoorlie Mint, £100,000; Lake View South, £220,000; Lake View Extended, £65,750; Great Boulder, No. 1, £65,000—total £9,275,750. There have also been distributed to the shareholders £3,421,000 in shares and £950,000 in dividends, making a gross return of £13,646,750. That these are not mere paper values—such fairy coinage as that which makes millionaires in a month in what is known as a land boom and, before it can be realised, turns into insolvency schedules—is shown by the fact that the above mines have already produced 17 tons of gold, to the value of £2,250,000 sterling. The process by which one man's investment of £15 is in five years turned into £1,364,675 has, as I have said, its other side, and many wasted millions are to be placed to the debit of the account. But the thousands who lose their small stake can generally afford to do so, or, at any rate, suffer so little that they prefer holding their tongues to admitting that they have been the dupes of a glowing prospectus and the victims of a glib promoter. So the game goes merrily along, and there is always money forthcoming for the schemes that