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.