In the beginning, let us distinguish between the fraudulent promoter and the uninformed promoter. The fraudulent promoter is he who recognizes this great and worthy ambition of many people to buy a spot to which they can some day retire and work and rest and dream and enjoy the coming and going of the seasons, and the sunshine and the shadows, and who capitalizes this ambition, with that industry as his stock in trade which, at the particular moment, happens to offer the most attractive inducements. Those familiar with the industry he is exploiting, can tell him by his actions, by his words, by his nods and winks. It is hard for the crook to disguise himself to the informed.
Distinguished from the fraudulent promoter is the uninformed promoter, but, so far as results are concerned, there is not much difference between them for the innocent investor. They both lead him to failure. They are unlike only in this, that the pathway of the one is lined with deception, crookedness and chicanery; of the other, with blasted hopes based upon good intentions but bad information. Both lead to the self-same sepulcher which in the distance looks white and beautiful but when reached is filled with the bones of dead men.
There is not much difference after all, when one comes right down to the facts, between the crook who starts out deliberately to get one's money and the fellow who starts out in ignorance and makes great promises of returns that he knows nothing about. Both succeed in getting one's money and both succeed in misleading those who have a desire to lay aside something for their old days. We naturally feel more charity for him who has good intentions, but who fails, than for him who starts out with bad intentions. But, after all, only results count.
Did you ever receive the literature of one of these various concerns that has pecan or apple orchards to sell? How beautiful their schemes look on paper! With what exquisite care they have worked out the pictures and the language and the columns of figures showing the profits! While writing this article I have before me a prospectus of a certain pecan company that prints columns of attractive figures. Fearful, however, that the figures would not convince, it has resorted to all the various schemes of the printers' art in its portrayal of the prospective profits from a grove set to pecans and Satsuma oranges, and it tells you in conclusion that it guarantees by a bond, underwritten by a responsible trust company, the fulfillment of all its representations. Yet what are the facts? Their lands are located in a section where the thermometer falls to a point that makes highly improbable the profitable growing of Satsuma oranges. And all their figures are merely estimates of the wildest character, printed in attractive columns, based upon nothing.