Product Details
CompanyEmma Consolidated Mines CompanyCertificate TypeCapital StockDate IssuedJune 14, 1918CanceledNoPrinterAmerican Bank Note CompanySignaturesHand signedApproximate Size10 3/4" (w) by 7 3/4" (h)ImagesShow the exact certificate you will receiveGuaranteed AuthenticYesAdditional DetailsIssued to and signed by con man George Graham Rice
Historical Context
The Emma Consolidated Mines Company was incorporated in Delaware in the fall of 1916 to acquire the companies that owned the title to the Emma group of five claims in Alta, Utah.
The company also owned a group of eight claims in the Little Cottonwood District, which adjoined the Wasatch Mines Company.
Financial World magazine questioned the sturdiness of the company, in particular because its association with a known con artist - George Graham Rice. In 1922, Volume 37 of the magazine contained this piece:
Some of the Western newspapers are carrying a call to the Emma Consolidated Mines Company stockholders from George Graham Rice to let him hear from them. This artful swindler has his nerve with him, for, after getting them into this proposition on statements that were far from the truth, he now wants them to put further confidence in what he might want to do in their behalf. He may have another mining scheme brewing and intends to adopt the plan of having the Emma shareholders turn in their holdings together with some additional cash with each share of stock. If that is his game then the Emma shareholders, who act upon such a suggestion of his, would be only throwing good money after bad. New York County has a new district attorney and it is The Financial World's hope that one of the first things he does is to bring Rice back to New York. He is out on bail now but the freedom he has enjoyed has enabled him to continue his swindling operations. The last one was the Broken Hills Mines the flotation of which compelled him to suddenly move out to California when the State authorities started to proceed criminally against him. As long as a man of such viciousness is permitted his freedom the public is not safe from his conniving.
George Graham Rice
George Graham Rice (June 18, 1870 – October 24, 1943) was a convicted stock swindler. He was known as the "Jackal of Wall Street."
Rice got an early start on bilking people by scamming his family. He was born as Jacob Herzig of Jewish immigrants prosperous in the fur business in New York's Lower East Side. He observed how cheats could rig dice and card games, and used the same principles to cheat at marbles. He was prodigiously smart, and a smooth talker, but honest application bored him. He went on to live a dandified youth by bouncing checks on the family business; the father honored the checks but had the son arrested. Jacob was sent to a reformatory where he befriended an elderly con man, Willie Graham Rice, learned some of his friend's techniques, and adopted his name.
Among the principles that Rice learned was that con men had to play upon the greed of others. A certain amount of greed may drive all commerce, but con men took advantage of the eagerness of their marks to be involved in a shady deal, like buying a share of supposedly stolen gold for a pittance, only to find that the gold is no such thing. Then the sucker would be unlikely to complain to the law, because of embarrassment and fear of exposure of his own cupidity. The fake gold swindle and similar ruses were small stakes; when Rice emerged from the reformatory, there was an expansion in securities markets with their associated anonymity that was a perfect arena for a smart con man, and the mark was not the man on the street but thousands of investors, some with deep pockets.
Rice's first endeavor was based on horse racing. He would not be the one betting on the races; he formed a race-tipping service for subscribers of his racing paper. The subscriber database (or sucker list) were those who were eager to put up subscription fees for the benefit of getting advanced word on fixed races. Rice's firm crowed about its successes, and Rice was indignant when the firm did so well that shoddy imitators began to play the same tricks. Rice took out warning ads in the racing papers proclaiming, "Anyone doing business in Chicago representing himself to be our agent, IS A SWINDLER!" The scheme had a good run for a couple of years, and then federal authorities closed it down. Rice had taken in millions, but he never held on to money for very long; like many con men, he had an affection for gambling (in Rice's case, it was the then-popular card game faro), and he was the sort of unskillful gambler that thought he could beat a card game he knew was fixed.
Still, Rice was nothing if not versatile. He went west to Nevada, where prospecting towns were springing up. Not for him was the toil of digging; instead, he formed a brokerage to sell penny mining stocks; he might be said to have originated the penny stock system. There were plenty of worthless mining properties, but if he could bribe mining engineers to say they were not worthless but priceless, and if he could get advertisements out to distant states, he had a good income. He was good at publicity and getting newspaper articles written about himself and his lucrative business. He even arranged a colossal boxing match in the camp of Goldfield, Nevada, a mixed-race bout that went forty-two rounds and lasted two hours and forty-eight minutes, a record that current boxing rules ensure will never be broken. If you wondered: yes, the match was fixed.
The mining business boomed and failed, and Rice returned to Wall Street. He wasn't part of the official Stock Exchange, but entered the Curb Exchange, the outdoor market that was unregulated. It was a perfect environment for Rice; those at the Curb Exchange were dealing not just in buying and selling stocks, but also shifty loans and bribes to public officials. Rice hired a clipping service to scour for obituaries or articles about philanthropists' latest donations to find new marks. He kept a meticulous database of suckers, with listings like this one: "Prominent philanderer. Age 72. Gave $100,000 to college and another 3,000 acres of land. Supports former mistress, Broadway chorus girl."
It was within the arena of the Curb Exchange that Rice met and partnered with Arnold Rothstein, a powerful gangster who may have been America's first organized-crime boss and who was implicated in the notorious fix of the 1919 World Series. Rothstein's legal team was to prove invaluable for Rice, who became a target for a crusading New York prosecutor. Rice's legal success had two parts. First, the lawyers used the "clog-and-snarl" strategy during the trials for fraud, bringing in reams of confusing evidence and challenging every assertion by the prosecutors, to the confusion of the jury. Second, if he was hounded out of one scheme, he quickly rebounded with another. He did get a four year sentence handed to him a few weeks after the market crash of October 1929, and he served it in a penitentiary in Atlanta, where Al Capone invited him to share his cell and the luxuries therein. "I'll take Al's word," said Rice, "quicker than anybody on the stock exchange."
The bust of the depression years changed everything. The public was more wary, and the government more vigilant. The age of the big, flashy con was over, and it is hard to trace Rice's last years. No newspaper included an obituary when he died in 1943.
Related Collections
