The Aberdeen weekly. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1878-1933, 1910-03-11

W NC lepiah'eu' out the prospects We're bright
Tor big crop the next season and the nIanta-
ton would probably not require rona,.1 Gov
10 or 20 years. He must be a little natiapt and
meantime bear in mind that the product of an
acre of bananas "A times that Of wheat
John shook his head. but sent two more
ten-doilar installments. the last of which was
returned to him unsealed with the word "Fic-
ttious" stamped in big type slantingwise
across the envelope. Dazed he asked the vii
iage postmaster what that meant.
Means there amt such company or
that It's a fraud" explained the postmaster
John said nothing. but went home looking
very thoughtful. Two hundred and seventy dol
lars gone!
But out of this experience John derived
one satisfaction. When he received circular
from the Inland Seas Copper Mining Company
of New York. offering him large profits on
small monthly investment he pencied the
word Fictitious" the top of it in big
letters and sent it back But copies of the
same circular caught three men in his county.
Now. if John had but known it. Fictitious
was stamped all over the banana bait upon
which he had bitten. just it is stamped
upon the literature of many advertising COM
panes that offer large profits to outside in
vestors. only the dupes don't see it
John is the type of sucker who was for
merly caught by the green goods operator
though in paying good money for secondhand
sawdust he would have said nothing about it
thousands of others throughout the country
are becoming part owners in coffee, banana
and rubber plantations, gold mines, cotton
fields irrigation lands. timber lands, oil wells
and many other enterprises instead of pur-
chasing green goods and gold bricks and get
ting into and out of similar games is because
these latter schemes are no longer profitable
to their operators account of the extreme
risk in conducting them.
Evolution in fraud. as in everything else.
is the order of the day. The crooks have been
educating themselves They have yearned for
a higher order of things and they have at
tanned 10 it, Besides the higher order of
things is the safer order. To sell man a
brass brick for gold is crime and no
valid defense for it can be set up in court:
but selling shares in a rubber company. which
crime. and to convict such an offender of fraud
is often very difficult.
In getting his education the sure-thing OPP
orator has passed through various stages of
proeress The now unsafe shell game gold
brick and green goods swindles which he oper
ated with such profitable results in the eight
les and the early nineties made way for the
baIf-interest game which flourished ten years
ago and the employment game which is still
going on, though not to its former extent. The
half interest advertiser sold you partnership
in anything from peanut stand to piano
factory and when you had bought it the next
thing was 10 find it, or if you found it you dis
covered the it belonged to somebody else. who
knew nothing about the man who sold 1t to
Won The employment game consists of
opportunity TO sell on high salary the goods
or stock of a company in which you must first
buy shares. Then when you have paid over
YOUR money you are assigned a territory. gen.
orally a long distance from the company's Of
fee. and after you have gone, at your own