ey nevertheless were calculated to stimulate in the most
casual reader an irresistible desire to sell all that he had and
invest therein.

Originally the dealers in valueless securities did not take the
trouble to purchase any properties but merely sold their stock and
decamped with the proceeds. Of course such conduct was most ill-
advised and unnecessary. It was obviously criminal to sell stock
in a concern that has no existence, and several of my clients having
been convicted of grand larceny, for this reason I took it upon
myself to advise the others actually to purchase lands, mines, or
other property and issue their stock against it. In this way their
business became absolutely legitimate--as strictly honest and within
the law as any of the stock-jobbing concerns of the financial
district. To be sure, the mine need not be more than the mere
beginning of a shaft, if even that; the oil-well might have ceased
to flow; the timber land might be only an acre or so in extent;
but at any rate they existed. Their value was immaterial, since
the intending purchaser was not informed in the advertisement as
to the amount of gold, silver, or copper mined in any specific
period, the number of gallons of oil per minute that flowed from
the well, or the precise locality of the timber forests, but merely
as to the glorious future in store for all who subscribed for the
stock.

This vital distinction has always existed in civil as well as
criminal law between what is fraud and what is legitimate encouragement
to the buyer. To tell the prospective vendee of your old gray mare
that she is the finest horse in the county is not fraud even if
she is the veriest scarecrow, for it merely represents your opinion
--perhaps colored in part by your desire to sell--and is not a
matter of demonstrable fact. To assure him, however, that she has
never run away, had blind staggers, or spring halt, when these
assertions are not true, is "a false statement as to a past or
existing fact," and as such constitutes a fraud--if he buys your
horse.

Now, it frequently has happened in my experience that gentlemen
desiring to find purchasers for securities or property of little
value have so carelessly mingled statements of fact with opinions,
laudations, and prophecies as to their goods, that juries have said
that they were guilty of fraud in so doing. Thus the lawyer becomes
at every turn indispensable to the business man. The following
cir