Stock Swindling

In times such as the present, when money is very generally seeking investment, the security swindler plans to reap his harvest. Already the published tax lists have provided many valued suggestions to the Caesars as to the meat whereon they may feed. Promoters are becoming active in the ever-fruitful Middle West. In spurious securities as in women's hats, fashions come and go. The great oil stock mania has apparently burned itself out, but in its place has arrived a credulity concerning fake land companies, ingenious but unsalable patent devices with "millions in it," and other corporate novelties.

To this danger, investment interests are thoroughly alive. President E. H. H. Simmons of the New York Stock Exchange has initiated a broad program of effort against stock swindling, which bears the endorsement of President Coolidge and has been promised cooperation by the Federal and State governmental authorities, as well as by bankers and stockbrokers all over the U. S. Cases of apparent security frauds, if communicated to the New York Stock Exchange, are to be turned over to governmental authorities for vigorous prosecution. It is estimated that between $250,000,000 and $1,000,000.000 is annually lost in this country through stock frauds.