Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-05-06
MINING SHARKS SCARED.
Bucket Shop Raid Shows What Uncle
Sam Can Do.

THAT bucket shop raid which the
department of justice engineered a
few weeks ago has done a good deal
more than throw a scare into the
bucket shops It's got the fake finan-
cial agents, mining sharks and finan-
cial corn men of the country in a
state of blue funk for the first time
since the game got real good"
1t has for years been the business
of the man who said this to keep tabs
not only on the bucket shops but also
upon the financial crooks who roost
below Fulton street. In common with
a lot of other folks he has seen with
satisfaction the activity of the Wash
ington authorities in the matter of
bucket shopts here and elsewhere, be-
cause in his case ii has meant lit
tie less work.
There are more fake financial
agents selling gold bricks than ever
before" went on this authority.
Their number has increased very
much over what it was year ago,
yet a good many people may have
got the idea that their number has
greatly diminished, owing, perhaps
TO the fact that you don't notice so
many get rich quick ads in the news
papers these days.
There are two reasons for that.
One is that these crooks are more
afraid than they used to be i'm mis-
representing things. and the other
reason is that most of the newspapers
l,l. cob nf n H.
vertising without investigation year
ago refuse ii today.
1.-TWO or three years ago these
crooks relied almost exclusively on
newspaper advertising. They believ-
ed that it was just as easy to fool the
newspapers as it was to fool the man
with 500 in the savings bank and
that they could reap their harvest
and make Il getaway before anybody
found that what they said in their
advertisements was plain bunk. That
was before any of the big concerns
had been shown up as fakes.
About the biggest crook i'm this
line was Cardenio +. King, whom the
Sun was the first to show up and
who is now making shirts in Charles
town Jail King was a southerner
with a good deal of literary ability.
If he had been as clever a crook as
ne was a writer | doubt if he would
be where he is today.
In his early days he had written
for the newspapers and 1t had given
him a lot of confidence in his ability
to sling English. thing which most
of the financial takers haven't got.
CardeniO wrote nearly all of his ad-
yertiSementS and was one of the few
financial takers who have ever been
able to do this Most of the men
who think up crooked financial
schemes have to hire somebody else
to write for them, and it's the big
geSt expense they have.
For describing his own gold
bricks CardeniO +. King was the peer
of any financial faker that ever lived,
and ne set the high water mark for
the financial crooks of the country
i'm this sort of thing, not only in the
quality of his stuff but in its quantity.
His advertising bills overtOpped all
others: of course the gudgeonS were
paying for it. as they always are in
such cases.
Before King started out in big
type the financial crooks had been Il
little shy of too much type. but the
success which King had at first i'm
raking in the dollars i'm exchange for
nice looking certificates Of stock in
his King -CrOwther corporation, the
company that was supposed To be q
second Standard Oil. got all the
crooks busy on the literary game as
the easiest way to sell stock. Of
course they Overdid it. The first thing
that happened was that some Of the