University of Virginia Library

THE "SUCKER LIST" IN WALL STREET

Methods vary among such fraudulent operators, but new victims continually are found. The "sucker list" of one firm in Wall Street numbers 110,000 names, selected as those of persons who will bite more than once at a mining scheme, and whose records show that they have so bitten. This operator proudly declares that the only way a sucker can get his name off that list is to die. In the

reorganization of the firm of Douglas, Lacey & Co., of New York City, it was discovered that 20,000 persons had money invested in stocks of the company.

The best bait in this particular operation was a "trust fund" established for the benefit of stockholders. The proceeds of the better-paying mines were to be applied to pay dividends for those which were less successful. In this way, the various directors of the many Douglas-Lacey Companies explained, it was impossible for the investors to lose. But they did lose. The reorganization, intended to save some of the better properties, wiped out more than seventy per cent. of the small stockholders—widows, schoolteachers, stenographers, washwomen, scrubwomen—all who once had a dollar in the stocking.

Burr Brothers, Inc., of New York, used the effective bait of the instalment plan of payment. Their literature and advertising offered sudden wealth at twenty cents a share, payments to be in instalments, "the best twenty offers" to be accepted. It was pointed out that if one made one's weekly payment large enough to be included among the fortunate twenty, one could have a nice, clean certificate sent to one immediately, and pay for it at one's 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. "I has what I gits," was her frank response. She enunciated a great modern mining principle which has made fortunes in Denver, Butte, New York, Boston, and many other places where handsome lithographic work is done, and where advertising space can be bought in journals considered reputable.