The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-09-18
GOLD BRICK AND
FAKE GOLD. MINES
Emerson Hough Tells Some Of
the Methods
FRAUDULENT SCHEMES
He Also Gives Some Wise Advice to
the Unwary Who Are Not
Familiar with Fake
Systems

In this game of plucling 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 minimum the risk the reap
ers 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 Today in the majority of cases we
have, in place of the prospector or the
company selling stock direct to the suck
ers, the financial or fiscal agent. He OPP
crates either under the name of a bank
ing firm or as a security company, which
is generally a registered trade-name in
tended as a cloak to cover the names
of individuals not DESTROYS 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 first to assert that he has been de-
ceived as we'll 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 carry
ing on the exploitation. He prepares all
the literature. One of the advantages he
claims for his proposition is the wide dis
tribution of the stock as a safeguard
against assault by wicked Wall street in
terests.
| In this wide distribution, however lies
one of his own greatest safeguards
against either criminal or civil prosecu-
| ton. Scattered over the country are his
investors-the mill hand, the poor seam
stress, the humble artisan, whose total
investments, comprising perhaps all their
savings. seldom exceed 500 each, and,
with their savings gone, there isn't money
| left to pay car fare to the office of the
| financial agent, let alone to undertake a
civil suit or enlist the aid of the authori-
| ties.
A Great Business Principle
| Burr Brothers, Inc, of New York, used
| the effective bait of the installment plan
of payment. Their literature and adver-
| Using offered sudden wealth at 20 cents
| a share, payments to be in installments,
1.-THE best 20 Offers to be accepted 1t
was pointed out Il Pt If one made ones
weekly payment laYge enough to be in
cluded among the fortunate 20, one could
have nice, clean certificate sent to one
Immediately, and pay for it at ones
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. 81 has what gits' was
her frank response. She enunciated
great modern mining principle which has
made fortunes in Denver Butte, New
York, Boston and many other places
where handsome photographic work is
done, and where advertising space can
he bought In Journals considered reputa-
| ble
| Some Mine-snlting Stories
| 1t is not, however. always the city
promoter who furnishes all of the crook
e1ness. He himself may be deceived by
those who sell him the mine. Some of
the most thrilling stories in literature
might be written about sailed mines. The
sale of the Bears Nest mine. and the
special train expedition to the sailed Bear
| River placer field: the sale of the Mu-
llatos mine to a set of Cinnamon, and
scores of other instances in American
mining history, have been regarded rather
as big jokes than as great lessons. And
as to such large testing we advance in
finesse. The old way of sailing a placer