Stock in them was sold on the sidewalks by bally-hoo men with megaphone voices.

It seldom required more than a few hours to dispose of an entire issue, for this was a credulous and an elated mob, and its daily fare was exaggeration.

Stock exchanges were opened up where, amid frenzied shoutings, went on a feverish commerce in wildcat securities; shopgirls, matrons, housemaids gambled in shares quite as wildly as did the unkempt disreputables from the oil fields or the newcomers spilled out of every train.

People trafficked not in oil, but in stocks and in leases, the values of which were entirely chimerical.
But this speculative frenzy was by no means local.

Burkburnett became a name to conjure with and there was no lack of conjurers.