Methods vary among such fraudulent operators, but new victims
continually are found. The "sucker list" of one firm in Wall
Street numbers 110,000 names, selected as those of persons who
will bite more than once at a mining scheme, and whose records
show that they have so bitten. This operator proudly declares
that the only way a sucker can get his name off that list is to
die. In the reorganization of the firm of Douglas, Lacey & Co.,
of New York City, it was discovered that 20,000 persons had money
invested in stocks of the company.
The best bait in this particular operation was a "trust fund"
established for the benefit of stockholders. The proceeds of the
better-paying mines were to be applied to pay dividends for those
which were less successful. In this way, the various directors of
the many Douglas-Lacey Companies explained, it was impossible for
the investors to lose. But they did lose. The reorganization,
intended to save some of the better properties, wiped out more
than seventy per cent. of the small stockholders--widows,
schoolteachers, stenographers, washwomen, scrubwomen--all who
once had a dollar in the stocking.
Burr Brothers, Inc., of New York, used the effective bait of the
instalment plan of payment. Their literature and advertising
offered sudden wealth at twenty cents a share, payments to be in
instalments, "the best twenty offers" to be accepted. It was
pointed out that if one made one's weekly payment large enough to
be included among the fortunate twenty, one could have a nice,
clean certificate sent to one immediately, and pay for it at
one's leisure. If you think the operators could not afford to do
that, you are ignorant. There was an old negro woman in the South
who often importuned her white friends for funds to build a
certain somewhat mythical church. They asked her what she
received for the time spent in collecting. "I has what I gits,"
was her frank response. She enunciated a great modern mining
principle which has made fortunes in Denver, Butte, New York,
Boston, and many other places where handsome lithographic work is
done, and where advertising space can be bought in journals
considered reputable.