Of course, none of the money that poured in ever was bet. Had 5 per cent a week on all the millions contributed by the public to this form of swindle been actually derived from the bookmakers, every penciler in the country would have been bankrupted in a month. The remarkable feature of the "turf" investment scheme is that this phase of the matter seemed never to occur to investors, and the other palpably impossible phases of the operators' claims were also overlooked in the effort to secure 260 per cent a year on the investment made.
Get-Rich-Quick Schemes.
As in the horse swindles, the older investors were paid their dividends from funds sent in by new ones. No attempt was made to win dividends in the market. As the gullibility of the "suckers" became a little dulled, innovations to increase the plausibility of the schemes were made and new forms of bait devised.
"Turf swindles" have flourished, while the victims, who number tens of thousands, dare not raise their voices in protest or complaint, well knowing that they would not only be the butt of ridicule in their community, but also that the world at large would rather rejoice at their losses, and courts and juries would probably waste little sympathy on them. Consequently the safest swindles operated today are those having race-track betting for their basis.
In the latter part of 1902 there were upwards of twenty-five of these schemes in operation in the United States. New York City was the headquarters for about ten, and the balance were located in St. Louis, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Brooklyn.
Their prosperity was evidenced by the ability of managers to buy advertising space in the leading newspapers, to pay the printers for the most elaborate booklets, circulars, etc., and Uncle Sam for postage stamps, with which they were extremely liberal, usually sending a stamped envelope, for reply, to prospective investors.
Extracts which I give below from the literature of five of these concerns offer a fair criterion for the whole mass which I have before me, and demonstrate the turf swindlers' method of extracting money from the unsophisticated. Fully 25 per cent of their "investors" are women, while the whole number who contribute to their scheme is made up of persons who would not be seen betting at a race track or pool room, but who have consciences that will permit them to make money "honestly or otherwise."
