Summary Of The Nestegg Mining Company

Businesses in the late 1800s took a stimulating transition as it went from a modest family operated structure into a more contemporary model. It was crucial for enterprises to quickly adjust to this conversion, or the results would prove to be tormenting. A great example of this is shown from the article, “Late-Victorian Gentlemen Entrepreneurs Venturing into New Worlds of Canadian Business: The Nestegg Mining Company, 1896-98.” written by Patrick Chaplin. Throughout the article, Chaplin discusses the process of assembling the Nestegg Mining Company and how the business development strategies utilized by the Victoria men ultimately lead them to their collapse. Accordingly, this review will provide the essential ideas presented by the author,
and the nature of the writing portrayed by Chaplin to further acknowledge his opinionated bias.
Chaplin begins the article with four Victoria businessmen who were eager to enter the industry for inland resource development, and created the New Egg Mining Company.
The company got off to a rough start from the beginning as they utilized various tactics to operate their business. This was accomplished through the issuing of treasury shares to investors nationally for capital accumulation. Chaplin explains that Nestegg ran into countless crisis situations resulting from numerous payment issues and often had to be bailed out by the inhabitants of Victoria (Chaplin 13). Due to the horrendous publicity and financial instability of Nestegg, the trustees had to restructure their corporate team to resolve underlying issues. With increasing debt complications, the company attempted to merge with an alternative gold mining company to increase capitalization. Chaplin proves that although this strategy provided short-term benefits to Nestegg, the company still faced with substantial internal damage, and unethical administrative practices. Their final opportunity to survive relied upon a deal with Whitmore which would ease the company’s fiscal pressure. The failure to complete the deal eventually lead to the shutdown of Nest
egg.
For the most part, Chaplin consistently discusses the overall framework of the environments which allows the readers to comprehend the rationale behind the breakdown of Nestegg. For instance, he demonstrates how traditional family capitalists were unable to quickly respond to the evolving transition of modern business. This unfamiliarity essentially lead the management team to operate business in a misleading perception. Chaplin points out that rather than focusing on mining production, they simply were solely concentrated on the vision of amassing capital through exploitive speculative promotion. In addition, the company’s methodology of generating dishonest claims, and mishandling money to gain investors’ wealth showed how defective the company’s strategy truly was. These errors were evident when Secretary Ellis had called Nestegg a “potential dividend payer” (Chaplin 15), and when an executive’s son had mishandled capital. Furthermore, Chaplin also elucidates how Canada was relatively new to developing modern management methods and would require the experience of an American and British enhancements (Chaplin, 31). Although this may be true, Chaplin fails to support his justification behind it. All things considered, Chaplin does a notable job in presenting his ideas thoroughly, especially with regards to understanding the fundamental concepts used by the Victoria men.
Frequently, Chaplin possessed comprehensive knowledge of management and financial theory, which permits the audience to apprehend the reasoning behind Nestegg’s failure. Chaplin also provides the information in a practical and functional manner which empowers the readers to grasp the material naturally. At the same time, Chaplin delivers numerous quantitative figures throughout the article which may obfuscate the interpretation to readers. He also uses a variety of reliable sources during the course of the article, although he uses a reasonable amount of sources that were written in Toronto. As a result, this may question the credibility due to the nature of the business mostly arising in Western Canada. On the contrary, the author showed a strong bias towards O’Farrell and an apparent preference towards him. For instance, he claims that O’Farrell was the best choice to resolve the property crisis (Chaplin 11), and also calling him essential to Nestegg’s survival. (Chaplin 16) During the end of the article, Chaplin lists various holes in the management and specifies many individuals. However, he does not list O’Farrell’s actions despite his mishandling of property. A possible reasoning behind his preference may be due to the loyalty and demeanor he showed as a Trustee by working until Nestegg’s
departure. In conclusion, the article written by Patrick Chaplin is a great source of material to help readers understand the difficulty of managing business in the late 1800s. His clear portrayal of the Nestegg Mining Company demonstrated how their inability to adopt modern tactics, unethical business promotions and deficiency of knowledge eventually lead to their plummet. This review establishes the author’s standpoint of how traditional family capitalists were unable to successfully transition themselves into using the American and British tactics. Although he systematically covers the internal aspects of Nestegg, readers are impotent to fully comprehend what really went on with the company due to his bias towards O’Farrell. In essence, Chaplin provided the audience with the understanding of how unproven men embraced to rapidly changing environments and how their audacity and gallantry was vital throughout the course of the company’s life.