Nothing further transpired until, some months later, I received a circular from the mining company reporting good progress with development work; also stating that owing to further need of funds to continue this work the directors had concluded to make another offering of treasury stock at the same reduced price at which they had sold the previous block, namely, _at five cents a share_! In the aggregate the advertising feature was probably more advantageous to the customers than it was to the grocery company (which soon afterwards went bankrupt); for although the purchasers, including myself, lost every dollar of their investment, it doubtless served as a warning (which in my case it certainly did) that prevented much greater losses in other swindling schemes. The task of preparing the prospectuses of the thousands of fake copper mining propositions and oil schemes that have been foisted on the public in the past twenty-five years, and made to appear especially attractive by a price of from five cents to one dollar a share, has developed some of the most remarkable inventive geniuses of modern times. Their advertisements and arguments have been so convincing that the contrary persuasions of bankers and brokers have been absolutely unavailing with friends and customers who have given orders to buy the stocks; and against their enticements there is positively no remedy short of experience. The tempting baits of every imaginable variety offered by the promoters and dispensers of these bogus stocks have been the means of filching hundreds of millions of hard-earned money from credulous people, who are misled to suppose they are getting in on the “ground floor” of a modern Aladdin’s Cave before it is opened to the public. But it always has been so, and probably it always will be. It would be as useless to warn the general public, or even particular individuals, against these alluring ground-floor propositions as it would be to warn a flock of goslins to keep out of a mud puddle. It’s like admonishing a boy against a hundred kinds of mischief; he will surely find some act of deviltry not included in the list, and his defence will be that you didn’t tell him not to do _that_. And this argument is the more unanswerable because you well remember having used the same stratagem yourself. [Illustration] THE PERILS OF OVER-ACQUISITIVENESS--THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN SPECULATION