OQ4 
THE RURAb NEW-YORKER 
PUBLISHER’S DESK 
When publishers began to exploit their 
gold brick securities, we confess that 
we hesitated for a time to discuss them 
publicly. We answered many inquiries 
by mail and refrained from public crit¬ 
icism, which we knew the promoting 
publishers would claim was jealousy of 
a rival, and which even our friends 
might regard as ill advised. But when 
the evil assumed alarming proportions, 
and the danger to our subscribers mul¬ 
tiplied, we overcame our natural scru¬ 
ples, and told the truth as we found it. 
We could not allow any possible effect 
on ourselves to interfere with the service 
we owed the people who look to TheR. 
N.-Y. for reliable information. Among 
others we have found it necessary to 
refer to some of the Herbert Myrick 
exploitations. There may be those who 
thought our remarks caustic. If so, we 
ask them to read the following impas¬ 
sioned but withering arraignment of 
the Myrick schemes which appear in the 
June number of Munsey’s Magazine: 
“A DECORATIVE PROSPECTUS.” 
“Please advise me if you think the profit- 
sharing preferred stock of Myrick’s North¬ 
west Orange .Tudd Company would be a safe 
investment. I have always had a high re¬ 
gard for the Orange Judd Company, but the 
red-hot done they have been sending me 
recently makes me a little doubtful. I have 
been getting letters and circulars like the 
enclosed for some time, but 1 have not an¬ 
swered any of them, and I would like to 
know what vou think of the proposition. 
Washington, Ill. n. l. n. 
“We dislike being called upon to express an 
opinion on publishing ventures, but this de¬ 
partment would not be worth the space we 
give to it if we declined to answer such 
questions as that of our Illinois corre¬ 
spondent. Our readers will understand that 
we have no personal feeling against any 
promoter or promoters in the periodical 
field, and that such criticisms as we have 
printed are based solely upon sound and 
well recognized principles of finance. 
As we have repeatedly pointed out, the 
specially dangerous feature of these promo¬ 
tions—the feature that makes them, in the 
vast majority of cases, a most hazardous 
gamble, and in no sense an investment—is 
the fact that the publishing business is, as 
a rule, purely a good-will proposition, de¬ 
pending solely upon the prestige of a period! 
cal. and possessing no solid, marketable 
property. 
We should never advise the purchase of 
shares in any publishing company, unless 
the enterprise seeking its capital from the 
public was backed up with actual, tangible 
assets, and made a full report of its earn¬ 
ings and operations. We make no excep¬ 
tion with the company in question, for 
after a careful examination of its stock¬ 
selling literature, so aptly described by this 
correspondent as “red-hot dope,” we feel 
that it is highly advisable for those con¬ 
templating an investment to determine the 
financial responsibility of both the com¬ 
panies mentioned before purchasing shares. 
The importance of determining the status 
of this enterprise arises from the fact that 
the preferred shares of the Northwest 
Orange Judd Company carry what purports 
to be a guarantee of dividends and prin¬ 
ciple by the Orange Judd Company of New 
York. The latter concern has been in busi¬ 
ness for more than seventy years, and its 
name is well known to the farming com¬ 
munity. Inexperienced persons frequently 
buy a new company’s shares, merely on the 
strength of an old name, without question¬ 
ing the regularity of the proceedings or the 
concern’s ability to fulfil the alleged guar¬ 
antee. Those who would he safe should 
buy no stock whatever on a name or guar¬ 
antee, unless accompanied by full evi¬ 
dence that the guarantor can fulfil the con¬ 
tract. They should also understand the 
precise terms of a guarantee. 
The financial announcements of the 
Northwest Orange Judd Company are made 
in a flamboyant manner, in a circular of 
circus-poster proportions, with display type 
two inches high. Red and blue inks are 
used with great profusion. The broadside 
is also embellished with dollar signs ($.$$) 
—presumably to give the proposition an 
appearance of easy money. There is a free 
employment of such words as “safety,” 
“guarantee,” “dividends,” and the like. 
The whole is set- off by a large portrait 
of a prosperous looking gentleman, wearing 
spectacles, which reads, in red letters, the 
legend : “Herbert Myrick, president.” One 
finds this name appended to numerous 
communications offering stock for sale. 
When persons do not respond, Mr. Myrick. 
who is president of both companies, writes 
to say that he feels “somewhat hurt about 
it.” He offers stock again, and yet again, 
announcing that his purpose is “to do good 
to mankind.” 
The Myrick poster-prospectus, tacked up 
on a barn door, by the side of others pro¬ 
claiming the virtues of various brands of 
axle grease and horse liniment, would serve 
admirably for decorative purposes; but it 
falls woefully short of fulfilling the recog¬ 
nized requirements of a financial announce¬ 
ment. It does not, for instance, give the 
name of the State in which the Northwest 
Orange Judd Company is incorporated. 
There is no list of directors. The amount 
of authorized capital is not mentioned, nor 
is anything said as to how much of the 
stock is common and how much is pre¬ 
ferred, or how much of the preferred is 
being offered for sale. Even the stock sub¬ 
scription blanks do not give these details, 
nor do they appear on the form of the al¬ 
leged “guarantee of principal and inter¬ 
est.” 
Of several things that have attracted 
my attention in connection with the stock 
offering of the Northwest Orange Judd 
Company, I have found this guarantee by 
the Orange Judd Company of New York 
the most interesting. Mr. Myrick—having 
the character of his stock-selling literature 
in mind, perhaps—explains the reason for 
the guarantee quite clearly. He says : 
“I thought, perhaps, that some of my 
readers might possibly have the idea that 
this was a ‘get-rich-quick scheme,’ and they 
would be afraid of it.” 
The same thought flashed through my 
mind the instant I set eyes on the litera- 
ture. It caused me to read the posters 
carefully, and to note Mr. Myrick’s many as¬ 
surances that his is not a “wild-cat scheme,” 
nor “any fly-by-night speculative proposi¬ 
tion.” You also have Mr. Myrick’s printed 
word for it that the enterprise is not a 
“fake,” or a “blue-sky affair.” These as¬ 
surances are repeated twenty or thirty 
times, until you wonder if Mr. Myrick does 
not protest too. much; but there may he 
added force in reiteration, and in this in¬ 
stance, upon as many occasions as Mr. My¬ 
rick asserts that his scheme is not a 
“fake,” he adds that he is an honest man, 
or modestly prints letters assuring him not 
only that he is honest, but also that he is 
a “big money-maker,” a person “of re¬ 
markable executive ability,” and a "public 
benefactor.” 
The letters signed with Mr. Myrick’s 
name, and the “red-hot dope” which accom¬ 
panies them convey the impression that the 
preferred stock of the Northwest Orange 
Judd Company carries a straight and un¬ 
qualified guarantee of the Orange Judd 
Company of New York as to both dividends 
and principal; but such is not the case. 
There is practically no guarantee of prin¬ 
cipal. As to the guarantee of dividends— 
provided the Orange Judd Company feels 
bound to assume such, and is capable of 
living up to the terms of the agreement— 
these are not guaranteed unqualifiedly, as 
is usual when one speaks of a “guaranteed 
stock,” but for a term of five years only. 
A careful reading of the letters and lit¬ 
erature sent out in connection with this 
proposition discloses a surprising amount 
of word-juggling. Again and again you 
encounter the “guarantee of principal and 
interest”; but here and there in the cir¬ 
cus poster, or in a red and blue “dodger,” 
or in a yellow handbill, which explains the 
double “guarantee,” you find expressions 
such as these: 
The dividends on your money are guar¬ 
anteed, as' specified in the guarantee. 
The money you invest, as well as the 
dividends thereon, are both guaranteed 
just as stated. 
Your money is safe, because you can 
have it back when you want it, at the time 
and in the manner stated. 
The italics are ours. Of course, they 
qualify the proposition ; but printed without 
emphasis in a running sentence, in a mass 
of material bearing on guarantees and 
double guarantees and the like, an inex¬ 
perienced person might never notice the 
quibble until he had bought the shares 
and read the terms of the “guarantee” on 
the certificate. Then lie would find a state¬ 
ment in formal language that the Orange 
Judd Company of New York guaranteed the 
dividends for five years only, and that 
furthermore it “agrees” at any time “dur¬ 
ing the sixth year from the date” of the 
certificate, on sixty days’ notice in writing, 
to purchase the stock at par, one hundred 
dollars a share. 
In the literature of the company no men¬ 
tion is made of money set aside in a trust 
fund, or of the appointment of trustees to 
carry out the terms of this guarantee or 
agreement. I find no resolution of the 
board of directors, no record of its ap¬ 
proval by the shareholders of the Orange 
Judd Company of New York, and no at¬ 
tested statement that all the necessary 
formalities of such a guarantee or agree¬ 
ment have been complied with. I do not 
know, therefore, whether the arrangement is 
binding upon the company or not, or 
whether it might be repudiated in case the 
Northwest Orange Judd Company should 
prove unsuccessful, and the purchase of its 
stock at par should become a bad bargain. 
It is, of course, advisable for a share¬ 
holder to determine the regularity of a con¬ 
tract of this kind. It seems specially ad¬ 
visable in connection with, Mr. Myrick’s en¬ 
terprises, for it appears that a serious mis¬ 
understanding has arisen about a somewhat 
similar guarantee which he gave not long 
ago. 
In 1010, according to the testimony in a 
recent lawsuit, Mr. Myrick and his asso¬ 
ciates acquired, for forty thousand dollars, 
an agricultural paper, known as the Minne¬ 
sota and Dakota Farmer. They formed 
tli£ Northwestern Orange Judd Company of 
Minnesota, and paid the owners for the 
property in the stock, indorsed by the 
Orange Judd Company of New York as to 
six per cent dividends annually, and with 
an agreement to purchase the shares at 
par, on six months’ notice, up to October 
15, 1915. 
A holder of twenty-two shares of this 
stock gave notice, in due course, that he 
desired to sell it; and as it was not pur¬ 
chased at the' expiration of six months, he 
brought suit to enforce the guarantee and 
to recover twenty-two hundred dollars. 
Mr. Myrick asserted that the service in suit 
was irregular, and set up as a defense that 
“said guarantee, if any there was, on which 
said alleged claim is based, was not exe¬ 
cuted and was not to be performed in the 
State of Minnesota.” The case is now on 
appeal to the supreme court of the above 
State, the lower court having decided 
against Mr. Myrick. 
In the meanwhile it appears that the 
Northwest Orange Judd Company was in¬ 
corporated in South Dakota, with a capitali¬ 
zation of half a million dollars. Presum¬ 
ably the new concern has taken over the 
Northwestern Orange Judd Company of 
Minnesota, for it publishes what appears to 
be the same agricultural paper, though the 
present title is the Northwest Farmstead. 
It is this company’s stock that is offered 
for sale, the issue being five hundred thou¬ 
sand dollars—apparently against property 
which was sold for forty thousand dollars. 
Whether the “guarantee” of the Orange 
Judd Company of New York on the shares 
of the Northwest Orange Judd Company of 
South Dakota is of greater value than a 
similar guarantee on the shares of the 
Northwestern Orange Judd Company of 
Minnesota, remains to be seen. Personally, 
1 have some doubts about it, for I find 
that on October 4. 1911, Mr. Myrick, under 
oath, deposed : 
That the interest and only interest which 
the Orange Judd Company of New York lias 
in the Farmstead is a contract, whereby 
the Orange Judd Company of New York 
is to print and publish the Farmstead for 
a stipulated' percentage as a manufacturers' 
profit, and the Northwest Orange Judd 
Company of South Dakota is to pay and 
to make good this percentage, if the profit 
does not reach the sum agreed upon. 
The circus-poster prospectus, enclosed iu 
Mr. Myrick’s letters of very recent date, 
contains many references to the guarantee 
of the Northwest stock by the Orange Judd 
Company of New York, which appear to 
be at variance with Mr. Myrick’s deposition 
that the New York concern has no interest, 
except to publish the paper for the North¬ 
west Company for a stipulate^! manufactur¬ 
ing profit.” 
Will you please let me know if the Farm¬ 
ers’ United Chemical Co.. Reading, Pa., is 
reliable ? w. h. 
Pennsylvania. 
We have had complaints from farm¬ 
ers that they could not get delivery of 
goods ordered and paid for from this 
company. Neither could they get their 
money returned. Last year a farmer 
sent an order with remittance and got 
only a part of the goods. No attention 
was paid to his protests until we took 
it up for him. They then promised to 
ship balance, but we have no informa¬ 
tion that this was done. 
I have received $8.34 to-day from the 
United States Express Company for the 
case of eggs shipped July 11, 1910, to W. 
W. Elzea. I thank you for making them 
settle, for I could not get any settlement 
from them. If you will accept the money 
I will send it to you, as I do not see how 
you can spend so much time for nothing— 
about one year and a half on this claim. 
New York. C. n. w. 
This claim came to us in October, 
1910. The express company claimed 
the case of eggs was receipted for by 
Elzea’s man and Elzea stated it was 
not; that they had received a certain 
number of cases, but the one from our 
subscriber was not among them. The 
responsibility was shifted from one to 
another. We submitted the papers we 
had and they were lost or mislaid by 
the express company. The express 
company blamed Elzea for refusing to 
furnish information asked. He finally 
sent the lists of shipments to us; and 
after receiving it, the express com¬ 
pany finally adjusted the claim, j. j. d. 
June 8, 
Whex you write advertisers mention The 
R. N.-Y. and you’ll get a quick reply and a 
“square deal.” See guarantee editorial page. 
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