Connecticut western news., 1907-05-16
THURSDAY, MAY 16, 1907.
BAIT

The other day we observed in one of the metropolitan publications full page advertisement of 8 western mining syndicate. The man who wrote the ad- vertisement evidently has an intimate knowledge of human nature and is . ments that will appeal to class of people who have little money to invest and who may be influenced, by glitter ing promises, glowing estimates and oonvinoingly expressed probabilities of fabulous returns, to part with their hoards without giving proper thought to the matter or considering it sufficiently to see the many inconsistencies with which the majority of these propositions are teeming and which are but very thinly clothed, even in the alluring ad- vertisements.
 We trust that no member of THE NEWS family of readers is in 8 position to say, that he or she has been induced. by promises of this sort to part with his or her cash with the result that not only was it found impossible to obtain any interest on the investment but that when an effort was made to regain the principal, the excuse was advanced that on account of unforeseen and unantici- pated circumstances, because of the breakage of machinery or for dozens of other stock reasons, the company was unable to carry out it's plans and much to it's regret" it was unable to com ply with request for a refund of the money invested.
 But failures are not confined to the widely advertised mining propositions. Thousands of dollars of eastern capital have been lost ill western banks, in western mortgages or in various other western schemes where the promises of immense profits were used to bait the victims.
 And now let's reason this thing bit. Has it ever occurred to you when read ing these advertisements, accompanied by pictures of lore ready to ship or -four twenty three oil wells in operation" that if there is such enormous profit in these ventures that there should not be the slightest difficulty in procuring suf- ficient capital from the ranks of the moneyed men to develop the properties to any desired extent rather than to spend large amount of money in ad- vertising and to so thoroughly circulate their literature that it reaches even the remote parts of the union in an effort to obtain small amounts of money from people who can ill afford to make the in vestment? Don't this appeal to you as being bit strange?
 And then, again, the men behind these schemes are totally unknown to you, men in ninety-nine cases out of every one hundred of whom you never heard until you saw their names connected with these announcements. You have, said many times, and rightly too, that one reason why you hesitate to patronize a catalogue house is because you cannot see what you are buying whereas i'll purchasing of your local or vicinity dealer, the wares are displayed for your inspection and you decide to buy or not to buy with the full knowledge of their quality In such an instance a small amount of money is involved but ill the case of the western syndicate, where perhaps the fruits of months or years of earnest labor are concerned, the invest ment is made without investigation or without due consideration and in che be- lief that every word contained in the advertisement or in the attractive pros pectus is gospel truth. It don't occur to the prospective and minimizing in- ventor that these strangers should be asked to give some more tangible evil dence of their ability to do what they promise to do than to merely issue un- supported statements.
 We do not maintain that all these concerns are frauds but we do maintain that some of them are and if there is a reader of THE NEWS, with money in vested where it is drawing @ reasonable rate of interest who is tempted to place it with one of these unknown and un- tried concerns, we admonish him to give the matter serious thought and careful investigation before taking the step.