Book Description

This significant study offers information on the British inventors who brought capital to America's mining industry in the late nineteenth century. The author devotes primary attention to the promotional activities that led to the organization and operation of more than 500 English joint venture stock companies between 1860 and 1901. In excerpts from general and specialized British periodicals, he shows how the success or failure of American mining projects was faithfully reported. British investors were intrigued with brochures and pamphlets written about the American frontier and its tremendous mineral wealth, which was supposedly there for the asking. Englishmen returning home with vivid descriptions of successful "strikes", American promoters hawking shares, public officials pushing mining schemes, and the Yankee colony that congregated at London's Lanham Hotel are other aspects of this unusual story.