and the public protected. While on this work he was constantly
assigned also to other matters and finally was shifted to a
station in the South. The concern collapsed some years later,
leaving thousands of people in this country and in Canada bereft
of their small savings. There was no fraud order ever issued
against this firm, though shortly before it closed up it was
informed that if it continued to sell stock its use of the mails
would be stopped.

The burden of proof is on the buyer. If he turns to the District
Attorney he finds perhaps a sympathetic official, without power
to assist him. The man selling bogus mining stocks knows all
this; therefore his harvest goes on. It is better than the
green-goods game, better than the wire-tapping swindle, safer
than selling any other form of gold bricks. A few years ago a
reporter who was engaged in investigating the schemes of Cardenio
F. King--now in Charlestown jail, but then posing as "the apostle
of the golden rule in finance" and selling his stocks by the
barrel in every mill town in New England--made a call on the late
John B. Moran, then District Attorney in Boston and widely known
as a reformer. He asked Mr. Moran's help in proving that King was
a swindler.

"Young man," said Boston's reform District Attorney, "if King was
selling corner lots in heaven and advertising them in the
newspapers, I couldn't stop him, because I haven't anybody to
send up there and prove that they are not there."

King wasn't selling corner lots in heaven, but he was selling
stock in a Texas company that was the next thing to it, so far as