speculates (gambles); few win. Where does the money go that is lost? Who gets it?

Are you aware that in catering to your instinct to "invest," methods to get you to part with your money are so artfully and deftly applied by the highest that they deceive you completely? Could you imagine it to be a fact that in nearly all cases when you find you are ready to embark on a given speculation, ways and means that are almost scientific in their insidiousness have been used upon you?

What are these impalpable yet cunningly devised tricks that are calculated to fool the wisest and which landed YOU? I narrate them herein.

What are your chances of winning in any speculation where you play another man's game? HAVE YOU ANY CHANCE AT ALL?

In playing the horse races in years past you had only one chance if you persisted—YOU COULD LOSE.

In margin-trading on the New York Stock Exchange, New York Curb, Boston Stock Exchange, Boston Curb, Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Stock Exchange, New York Cotton Exchange and kindred institutions, experience among stock-brokers proves that if you stick to the game you have only one chance—YOU CAN LOSE.

In railroad, industrial and mining-stock speculation, where you buy the shares outright and hold them for stock market profits, you have two chances; if you are of the average and your operations are for a period continuous—YOU CAN BREAK EVEN IF YOU ARE VERY LUCKY, OR LOSE IF YOU ARE NOT; and in justice to myself I must be allowed to explain that I had a much better opinion of the public's chances ten years ago than I have now, and that experience on the inside has taught me this.

The moral to the investor and speculator is "Never Again!" And yet you WILL speculate again. Experience teaches that so long as the chance of speculative gain exists in any enterprise, so long will the American public continue in its efforts to appease its speculative appetite.

G. G. R.

MY ADVENTURES WITH YOUR MONEY

  CHAPTER I

The Rise and Fall of Maxim & Gay

The place was New York. The time, March, 1901. My age was thirty. My cash capital, tightly placed in my pocket, was $7.30, and I had no other external resources. I was a rover and out of a job.

Since August of the year before I had been loafing. My last position, seven months before, was that of a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Democrat. My last newspaper assignment was the great Galveston cyclonic hurricane in which 15,000 lives were lost and $100,000,000 in property was destroyed. I covered that catastrophe for the New York Herald and other journals as well as for the New Orleans newspaper. It was a "beat" and I netted a big sum for a few days' hard work, but the money had all been spent for subsistence.

At the corner of Fortieth Street and Broadway I met an old-time racetrack friend, Dave Campbell. His face wore a hardy, healthful hue, but he bore unmistakable evidence of being down on his luck.

"Buy me a drink," he said.

"I've got thirty cents in change and I must have a cigar," I answered, "and you know I like good ones."

"Well, I'll take a beer," he said, "and you can buy yourself a perfecto."

No sooner said than done. The cigar and the drink were forthcoming. We sat down. It was a café with the regulation news-ticker near the lunch counter.

"Do you still bet on the horses?" asked Campbell.

"No, I haven't had a bet down in more than a year," I answered.

"Well, here's a letter I just received from Frank Mead at New Orleans, and it ought to make you some money," he said.

"There's a 'pig' down here named Silver Coin," the letter said, "that has been raced for work recently. I think he's fit and ready and that within the next few days they will place him in a race that he can win, and he will bring home the coonskins at odds of 10 to 1."

I had seen letters like that before, but my interest was aroused. I picked up a copy of the New York Morning Telegraph from the table. Turning the pages, I noticed a number of tipsters' advertisements, all claiming they were continually giving the public winners on the races.

THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA TO COIN MONEY

"Do these people make money?" I asked Campbell.

"Yes, they must," he answered, "because the ads have been running every day for months and months."

"Well, if poorly written ads like these can make money, what would well-written ads accomplish, and particularly from an information bureau which might give real information?" I queried. A moment later the ticker began its click, click, click.

"Here come the entries," said Campbell.

He went to the tape and ejaculated, "By Jiminy! Here's Silver Coin entered for to-morrow."

The coincidence stirred me.

"I've got an idea for an advertisement," I said. "Get me a sheet of paper."

It was supplied. I wrote:

And then I faltered. "I must have a name for the signature," I said.

I picked up the newspaper again and turned to the page containing the entries for that day at the New Orleans races. A sire's name was given as St. Maxim.

"Maxim!" I said. "That's a good name. I'll use it. Now for one that will make euphony."

"Gay!" said Campbell. "How's that? It's sporty."

Thereupon I created the trade-mark of Maxim & Gay.

In a postscript to this advertisement I stated that the usual terms for this information were $5 per day and $25 per week, and that the day after next Maxim & Gay would have another selection, which would not be given away free.

"Maxim & Gay" were without an address. Half a block away on Broadway, at a real estate office, we were informed that upstairs they had some rooms to let. I engaged one of these for $15 a month—no pay for a week. Two tin signs were ordered painted, bearing the inscription, "Maxim & Gay." One was placed at the entrance of the building and the other on the door upstairs. The sign-painter extended credit.

Before bidding me adieu, Campbell exclaimed of a sudden:

"By golly! I can't understand that scheme. How can you make any money giving out that Silver Coin tip for nothing?"

"Watch and see!" I said.

Around to the Morning Telegraph office, then on Forty-second Street, I went.

"Insert this ad and give me $7 worth of space," I said, as I shelled out my last cent.

When the advertisement appeared the next morning, its aspect was disappointing. The space occupied was only fifty-six agate lines, or four inches, single-column measure. It looked puny. Would people notice it?

That afternoon Campbell and I took possession of the new office of Maxim & Gay. Luckily, a former tenant had left a desk and a chair behind, in lieu of a settlement for rent. In walked a tall Texan.

"Hey there!" he cried. "Here's $5. It's yours. Keep it. Answer my question, and no matter what way you answer it, it don't make any difference. The $5 is yours."

I looked up in amazement.

"Give me the source of your information on Silver Coin," he said. "I bet big money. If your dope is on the level, I'll bet a 'gob.' If it ain't, your confession will be cheap at $5, which will be all the money I'll lose."

I showed him the letter from Frank Mead.

"That's good enough for me," he said, turning on his heel.

Silver Coin won easily at 10 to 1.

The betting was so heavy in the New York pool-rooms that, at post time, when 10 to 1 was readily obtainable at the race-track, 6 to 1 was the best price that could be obtained in New York. It is history that the New York City pool-rooms at that time controlled by "Jimmy" Mahoney were literally "burned up" with winning wagers. Pool-room habitués argued it thus: "If the tip is