selling stocks on wind and water--have made use of this fact.
To-day in the majority of cases we have, in place of the
prospector or the company selling stock direct to the suckers,
the financial or fiscal agent. He operates either under the name
of a banking firm or as a security company, which is generally a
registered trade-name intended as a cloak to cover the names of
individuals not desirous 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 the first to assert
that he has been deceived as well 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 carrying on the exploitation. He prepares all the
literature. One of the advantages he claims for his proposition
is the wide distribution of the stock as a safeguard against
assault by wicked Wall Street interests.


CULLED TWO MILLIONS IN FOUR YEARS

In this wide distribution, however, lies one of his own greatest
safeguards against either criminal or civil prosecution.
Scattered over the country are his investors--the mill hand, the
poor seamstress, the humble artisan, whose total investments,
comprising perhaps all their savings, seldom exceed one hundred
dollars each; and, with their savings gone, there isn't money
left to pay carfare to the office of the financial agent, let