In this game of plucking the dollars of the poor and the
ignorant, there has been a gradual improvement in methods. The
constant aim has been, first, to increase the amount of the
harvest; second, to reduce to a minimum the risk the reapers run
of detection and punishment by the authorities. Experience in
most lines of commercial activity has shown that the middlemen
often gather in the largest profits and have the smallest losses.
Many of those working the mining game--and by this is meant
selling stocks on wind and water--have made use of this fact.
To-day in the majority of cases we have, in place of the
prospector or the company selling stock direct to the suckers,
the financial or fiscal agent. He operates either under the name
of a banking firm or as a security company, which is generally a
registered trade-name intended as a cloak to cover the names of
individuals not desirous of publicity.
The financial agent of this description is in reality the
organizer and promoter of the mining company whose stock he
sells. But should trouble come along, he is the first to assert
that he has been deceived as well as his customers. He sells the
shares of the mine on a commission basis so large that
practically nothing is left for development. He takes out of the
money secured large salaries and the entire expense of
advertising and carrying on the exploitation. He prepares all the
literature. One of the advantages he claims for his proposition
is the wide distribution of the stock as a safeguard against
assault by wicked Wall Street interests.