Advance Gold Mining B. & L. Co.
3579. (San Antonio, Tex.) I write to ask information of the condition of the "Advance Gold Mining Bonding & Leasing Company." What said company is doing, what property it has, and what it is doing with it?
I presume it is somewhere in Colorado. Its secretary is H. A. Clapp, at Cripple Creek. Has Mr. Clapp ever made a success of any mining scheme?

Ans.: The Advance Gold Mining Bonding & Leasing Company was organized December 26, 1896, under the laws of the state of Colorado with a capital of $1,500,000, consisting of 1,500,000 shares of a par value of one dollar each, and every share to be issued full paid and non-assessable.
Five hundred thousand shares were placed in the treasury, and of this amount 100,000 shares have been sold and taken, say 98 per cent, by people living in the city of Battle Creek, Michigan; about 2,000 shares went to New York state, and the same amount to Wisconsin. The money obtained by the sale of this stock was expended, it is claimed, in improving the property owned by the company.
The company claims to own by United States patent, the Mary Jane Lode mining claim (No. of patent, 10,006), situated on Raven Hill, joining the Doctor mine, which holds the record for big production, having produced one carload of ten tons, which returned the owners the neat sum of $85,000; also joins the Ingham and Mattie D., Jack Pot, and other well-known Cripple Creek producers.
Raven Hill is the same hill that contains the Elkton, Moose, Tornado, Red Umbrella, and many others, and is right above the town of Anaconda, and about one mile from Cripple Creek.

The property is equipped with a good shaft house and blacksmith shop and hoisting machinery and tools of all kinds for working, and the shaft is now down 110 feet, and timbered to the bottom with a double compartment shaft. At 100 feet a drift has been run about 50 feet to catch a well-known producing vein which crosses the ground, but work on this drift was discontinued because the shaft was not considered deep enough to give the company sufficient stopping ground, provided the vein was caught at the 100-foot level, and so sinking was resumed, and it is the intention to go to 150 feet before doing any more drifting.

The company has at this time 400,000 shares in treasury and $760.25 in cash and no debts. None of the officers receive salaries of any kind, and the property, we understand, is being operated in an economical manner.

The officers are: Mr. A. R. McIntyre, president (superintendent of Grand Trunk railway); John K. Lothridge, vice-president (railway mail service), both from Battle Creek, Mich.; H. A. Clapp, secretary and manager of Cripple Creek and W. P. Seeds, of the law firm of Seeds & Parker, Cripple Creek, treasurer; and Frank Timmis, of 420 Reaper Block, Chicago, Ill., director.

From the time Mr. Clapp was 18 years of age, he was in the banking business in Michigan until three years ago, when he went to Colorado, and since then has been in the mining business.

In addition to the property mentioned above, the company claims to own the Annex Lode mining claim, situated on Beacon Hill, joining Raven Hill. This property is not patented, and has a shaft down 60 feet.
Last July, 1897, they claim to have sent an expedition to Alaska, with the result that they own one claim there, which pans at the rate of $7 per pan, and that the leader of the expedition reports that they have taken out approximately $12,000 in gold, one-fourth of which belongs to the Advance Company.