The promoter of these enterprises does not permit himself or his affairs to come under the scrutiny of the banks, the Stock Exchange, or the Clearing House. He fights shy of the curb market as it is now organized, and avoids the watchful eye of the metropolitan newspapers that enjoy the pastime of exposing frauds. His ways are ways of darkness. His methods are mailing lists; his victims are that numerous progeny born every minute; the lure is the engraved letter-head with its “Wall Street,” its list of “Directors,” and its subtle assurance that this precious property now literally “given away” bears the endorsement of the elect, and is known and approved by the whole financial community.
Whenever he can do so, the artful gentleman behind this bait contrives to have a market for his wares. He cannot do this anywhere in New York, for the curb market, once the refuge of the swindler, is now closed to him, thanks to the improved morale of the curb brokers themselves, and to the recommendations of the Hughes Investigating Committee. Consequently the dishonest company promoter is forced to manufacture his market in another city, where fluctuations in the price of his wares are made to order, usually on a rising scale, without interference by the authorities.
More often still, this market and its rising prices do not exist at all; in any case it is only a fraudulent attempt to excite the cupidity of speculators into the belief that there is active trading in the particular stock offered for sale. “The mines,” says the Chairman of the Hughes Committee in discussing these swindling operations, “are situated in distant places, as Nevada, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and even in South America. In proportion as they are remote, inaccessible, and subterranean, they are attractive to the class whom Tacitus had in mind when he said: “_Omne ignotum pro magnifico_.”[48]
The halcyon days of these enterprises are now drawing to a close. Their field of operations is becoming more and more limited, the postal authorities are redoubling their energies, the newspapers are closing their advertising columns, and the victims who have birthdays every minute are, it is hoped, growing wiser. In any case immense losses have been incurred, and immense harm done. To appreciate the extent of it, one has but to look over the circle of one’s own acquaintances, and count the worthless specimens of the engraver’s art that have found a resting-place--permanently, I fear--in homes ill-prepared to house them. Each one of these chromos has left its sting--each one has excited a bitterness and resentment that, in the misdirected anger of losers who will not see their own folly, is too often flung at Wall Street and at the Stock Exchange.