Several years ago the turf syndicate was in its glory. A poor girl, fresh from the old country, would scrub floors for a week or take in washing for a month in order to pour money into the pockets of these swindlers. Thanks to the efforts of Detective Clifton E. Wooldridge, of Chicago, and others, this particular fraud is now a thing of the past.
But the enormity of this tremendous crime against the poor may be appreciated from a study of the following figures.
Turf "investment" companies that have failed, absconded or have been driven to the wall by prosecutions during the last few years and the amount of money estimated to have been lost in the swindles give the following astonishing record:
| E. J. Arnold & Co. | $ 4,000,000 |
| John J. Ryan & Co., St. Louis, Mo. | 1,500,000 |
| Brolaski & Co., Chicago | 200,000 |
| Benedict & Co., Chicago | 200,000 |
| The Mid-Continent Investment Company, Chicago | 150,000 |
| The Mason-Teller Company, Chicago | 50,000 |
| The Douglas-Daly Company, R. S. Daly and N. C. Clark, Chicago | 125,000 |
| The Armstrong-Baldwin Turf Commission, J. P. McCann and O. L. Wells, Chicago | 100,000 |
| The Money-Maker, C. A. Pollock, manager, Chicago | 15,000 |
| Gulf Pacific Trust Co., F. Lehman and R. G. Herndon, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco | 50,000 |
| Investors' Profit-Sharing and Protective Association, Chicago | 12,000 |
| J. J. Shea & Company, Chicago | 10,000 |
| Standard Investment Bureau, Chicago and San Francisco | 25,000 |
| The Security Savings Society, W. R. Bennett, Chicago | 1,500,000 |
| The Investors' Protective Association, Frank E. Stone, Chicago | 200,000 |
| D. W. Moodey & Co., Chicago | 50,000 |
| Co-Operative Trust Co., L. M. Morrison, Chicago | 150,000 |
| Edward L. Farley & Co., Chicago | 75,000 |
| Inter-Ocean Commission Co., J. T. Mitchell, Chicago | 75,000 |
| Hugo Morris & Co., Chicago | 50,000 |
| Al Fetzer & Co., Co-Operative Turf Pools, Hammond, Ind. | 500,000 |
| Co-Operative Investment Association, L. H. Myers, New York | 150,000 |
| American Stock Co., W. M. Nichols, New York | 100,000 |
| Mutual Security Co., C. Dudrey, New York | 100,000 |
| Henshall, Bronner & Co., New York | 75,000 |
| W. W. O'Hara & Co., Cincinnati | 50,000 |
| Crawford & Co., New York | 35,000 |
| Paul Pry's Investments | 70,000 |
| The Belt Company, N. S. Goodsill, Hammond, Ind. | 150,000 |
| Drake, Allison & Co., Hammond, Ind. | 175,000 |
| McClellan & Co., John McClellan and John Murphy, proprietors, New Orleans, absconded | 50,000 |
| New York Co-Operative Company, New York | 20,000 |
| W. J. Keating Company, New York | 20,000 |
| The Fidelity Trust, Wm. J. Young, San Francisco | 25,000 |
| C. E. Cooper & Co., Cincinnati | 15,000 |
| C. E. Cooper & Co., Covington, Ky. | 10,000 |
| C. E. Collins & Co., George D. Jones and Charles Thompson, New York | 30,000 |
| ————— | |
| Total | $10,162,000 |
Gigantic Turf Swindle.
Among the first of the get-rich-quick schemes into which the public poured millions was the "turf investment" concern. The "literature" of probably no other class of swindle was so plausible as this. The promise was to pay 5 and in some cases 10 per cent on the investment each week. The method by which the promise was to be fulfilled was this: The money invested was to be placed in a pool and used as capital in playing the races. A standard bet of a certain amount was to be made. If this wager was lost, enough money out of the pool was to be bet on the horse picked by the managers of the concern in the next race, to recoup the loss on the first race, win the amount set out to win on the first race, together with a like amount on the second race. If this wager was lost, the process was to be repeated on the next race, and so on until a wager was won. Each time there was a winning, a large enough sum would have been bet to recoup all losses on previous races and win a fixed amount on each of the races played. Some concerns claimed to play the favorite horses in the betting, others the second choices to win and others to bet according to "inside information" derived from horse owners and jockeys.
Regardless of the variations of the scheme, the general plan was the same. The prospectuses, in a most plausible way, set forth the claim that "beating the races" was merely a matter of having a large enough capital at hand to continue the progressive betting plan.
By the claim that horse racing was as legitimate a calling as dealing on the Board of Trade or Stock Exchange and possessed the additional advantage of being open to persons of small means, a strong appeal was made to the poor.