The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1914-04-28
FAKE OIL SCHEMES
BEING EXPLOITED
"Gold Brick" Man Was Only a Crude
Blunderer in Comparison With
With the New Promoter.

As means of getting rich quick the
sale of worthless oil stock is supplant-
ing the sale of goddess gold mines, and
for smoothness the Wallingsfords Of the
oilstock business are making their pre-
decessors, the gold-brick men and the
fake mining promoters, appear crude and
incompetent. Uncle Sam has put out of
business more than one oil-stock swind-
Ter for using the mails to defraud the
public, but many of them are too clever
| to violate the letter of the law. They
sail as close to the wind of misstatement
as they dare, publishing carefully word
ed advertisements which convey totally
false statements. One of their fayorite
the property they are booming has been
Endorsed by the government oil experts.
As might be imagined, the men who
really make examinations of oil lands for
the government are by no means pleased
with this now familiar deception. DIR.
George Otis Smith, director of the United
States Geological Survey, said in re-
cent extended interview:
Nothing is doing the oil business
more injury than widespread sales of
worthless oil stock, and nowhere is there
more need of blue-sky laws to deal with
such promotions. IL is interesting to
note that, most Of these takers try to
make it appear that the geological sur
vey has Endorsed their properties and
predicted that oil will be obtained from
them. As a matter of fact, the survey
does not make reports on private hold
ings and its reports as to oil fields which
it has examined are never given to pro-
moters or to anyone else in advance of
publication. If people who are solicited
to buy oil stocks On the strength of
alleged Endorsement by the government
would insist on seeing publications in
which it is distinctly stated that oil may
be found in the field that is being pro-
NOTED, or would write to the survey at
Washington inquiring if there are such
publications. the loss of their savings
would be avoided.
Past Masters in Fraudulent Advertising
"The cleverness of some of these pro-
moters is nothing short of marvellous
Recently a pamphlet has come to my
attention advertising so-called oil prop.
critics near Moorcroft, Wyoming, and
stating that the lands owned by this
particular company are surrounded by a
naval petroleum reserve. As matter
of fact, the government has never made
and does not intend to make a naval
reserve in this part of Wyoming. Ger
tain lands in the vicinity were at one
time temporarily withdrawn pending ex-
animation as to their oil character, but
after biologists of the survey had ex-
amined them the entire area was CLASH
fed as 'non-oil' in February.
More recently a widespread advertis-
ing campaign has been carried on in the
newspapers by company claiming to
own oil lands east of Denver. Thous- |
ands of dollars must have been expended |
in full-page advertisements worded with |
eonsummate cleverness. Prominent in |
the headings is the statement, Read |
what your Uncle Sam thinks about it,
Throughout the advertisement are para
graphs most slSillfully framed to convey |
the impression that government geolo-
gists have examined this property and
upon it favorably, although no.