Another scheme adopted by get-rich-quick operators is to announce an advance in the price of the stock and urge that it be bought for the profit which can be made from the increase in its market value; this is what they all say. If a stock is offered for 10 cents a share and will be advanced to 20 cents a share, it is pointed out that the investor will make 100 per cent. This snare catches a great many victims. The stock has not advanced one mill in value; all that has taken place is that it has been arbitrarily marked up in price. If any effort to sell the stock were made by an investor, he would find out that there was virtually no genuine market for its sale.

All sorts of efforts are made to secure the consent of men having some reputation to act as directors for get-rich-quick schemes; some are innocently drawn into the game through an honest belief that it is a good thing and certain of success; others, again, act for a more mercenary purpose, giving their services in return for a salary or a big block of stock which they expect to sell at a profit.

A few years ago the stock of a certain telegraph company was widely exploited by a concern in the East which was as near to a disreputable promotion as it was possible to get without its authors breaking into the penitentiary. A number of very well-known public men acted as an advisory board, among them a famous clergyman. Yet not one of these men ever attended a meeting of the company. They consented to act as an advisory committee upon the plea of others that their presence would be a guarantee that the enterprise would be free from stock jobbery. The general reputation of these men was proof of their integrity; they were the innocent cat's-paws of crafty promoters behind the scheme, who used their names and high character to inveigle the public into buying the stock. This is by no means an isolated case. Any number of similar illustrations could be given. Get-rich-quick promoters are fully aware of the power the names of reputable men have upon the purse strings of credulous investors, and they employ every means to secure such men as directors in their enterprises.

Sometimes it occurs that men in good repute will believe they have a good thing. Very likely they have, but unfortunately they fall among the crooks in finance, who tempt them with promises of quickly raising all the capital to develop their enterprises and ruin them in a short while by their dishonest operations. This often happens. I remember a legitimate industrial enterprise which fell among the financial Philistines who robbed it from all sides and finally forced it into bankruptcy. After that experience it was impossible to raise any money for it.

If a fake advance in the price of a stock fails to entrap victims, then fraudulent dividends are tried. The backers of get-rich-quick schemes are never at a loss to spring any coup if it will suffice to bring them money. They will guarantee to buy stock back within a certain time at a higher price, if that will catch a sucker, with no intention of living up to their promises, and as they are financially irresponsible it is useless to start any legal action against them; no money can be recovered after once they obtain a strangle hold upon it.

A few years ago some get-rich-quick mining promoters devised, so they claimed, a plan for a guaranty against loss. The scheme consisted of a trust fund in which were deposited a certain number of shares in each of the companies they promoted. It was a sort of grab box. If the investor was dissatisfied with one stock he had purchased because it did not pay dividends or advance in price quickly enough, he could turn his stock into this depository and take out some other stock which he fancied the more. As all the stocks were equally worthless there was no protection against loss. But it was a good argument and had a good effect while the scheme had the flavor of novelty.

When this plan wore out its welcome, fake bonding companies were started. These companies guaranteed to repay the investor in twenty years, some in ten years, all the money they had paid for a stock, if in the meanwhile it did not prove profitable. This also sounded convincing, but not one of these bonding companies was ever solvent or could ever live up to its guarantee. After the authorities closed a number for operating an illegal business, all the others quickly disappeared.