The Green Forest tribune., 1910-03-04

E=@NgE--==zzz->, } orchard from which E;l@ ~g he sold apples and
 pears, a COW that gave
 milk for the boarders at the summer hotel and hens that i laid eggs for them. John was making what the neighbors called a good liv- ing for himself and wife and three children.
 One day John went to the postofice and was surprised to receive nice, confidential letter from James W. Snowden, of t he Rio Vista Banana Company of New York, whose planta- tions were in Fl Campo. Brazil, offer ing him shares in the company at low figures that were soon to be advanced 50 per cent. There was a prospectus accompanying the letter explaining all about the plan. John didn't know Mr Snowden, but Mr. Snowden seemed to know him. and as he required but a little money, only $10 month. and guaranteed him two per cent. month on his investment. it was easy for John, on his way home to sketch future of purple and gold, especially as the circular said that the food prod uct of the banana is to that of the potato as A to 1 and to that of wheat as 133 to 1.
 Next day he sent the first $10 to ~ the Rio Vista Banana Company and by return mail received ten shares of a1(7-~ the stock and contract which he #<<% signed and forwarded to New York For p months he kept sending S1O month, but no dividend was returned Then he wrote to MT. Snowden. mak ing anxious inquiry as to why he was receiving no profit on his $25O invest ment. Mir Snowden replied that in G' the spring the Rio de Janeiro had TI overflowed it's banks and inc n1onta GH tion had been flooded This had killed I the banana trees and they had all had to be replanted; but the prospects, Were brie, for big crop the next season and the nlant tion would probably not require renaoal f 15 or 20 years. He must be a little na+ien+ q meantime bear in mind that the product of acre of bananas was A times that of Whe
 John shook his head, but sent two mo- ten-dollar installments. the last of which W; returned to him unsealed with the word "Fi titious" stamped in big type santingwi across the envelope. Dazed he asked the V lage postmaster what that meant
 Means there ain't no such company. that it's a fraud" explained the postmaste
 John said nothing, but went home lookir very thoughtful. Two hundred and seventy dc lars gone,
 But out of this experience John derive one satisfaction. When he received circui; from the Inland Seas Copper Mining Compa1 of New York, offering him large profits on small monthly investment he penciled u word Fictitious" across the top of it in b letters and sent it back But copies of u same circular caught three men in his count
 TCFr had bt,t it was stamped all over the banana bait upc which he had bitten, just as it is stampt upon the literature of many advertising cor panies that offer large profits to outside i vestors, only the dupes don't see it.
 John is the type of sucker who was fC merly caught by the green goods operator though in paying good money for second-har sawdust he would have said nothing about to Jennie. The only reason why John al thousands of others throughout the count are becoming part owners in coffee, banal and rubber plantations, gold mines, cottc fields, irrigation lands timber lands oil wei and many other enterprises instead of pu chasing green goods and gold bricks and gt ting into and out of similar games is becau these latter schemes are no longer profitab to their operators on account of the extren risk in conducting them.
 Evolution in fraud, as in everything els is the order of the day. The crooks have be- educating themselves. They have yearned f a higher order of things and they have tained to it. Besides the higher order things is the safer order. To sell a man brass brick for gold one is a crime and valid defense for it can be set up in cour but selling shares in a rubber company, whit is an easier game, is, on the face of it. not crime, and to convict such an offender of fral is often very difficult.
 In getting his education the sure-thng C orator has passed through various stages progress The now unsafe shell game go brick and green goods swindles which he opt ated with such profitable results in the eigl haIf-interest game which flourished ten yea ago and the employment game which is st going on, though not to it's former extent TT half interest advertiser sold you partnersh in anything from peanut stand to a pial factory and when you had bought it the ne thing was to find it, or if you found it you d covered the it belonged to somebody else, vi knew nothing about the man who sold it you The employment game consists of opportunity to sell on high salary the goo or stock of a company in which you must fir buy shares Then when you have paid ov your money you are assigned territory, ge orally a long distance from the company's ( fee and after you have gone, at your ov