622 
THE RURAL 
N 1£ W -VOKKER 
PUBLISHER’S DESK 
We wish to remind subscribers again 
to give full post office address and sign 
full name when writing to this or other 
departments of the paper. We cannot 
give attention to anonymous communi¬ 
cations. Subscribers’ names will not be 
published without their consent, but to 
insure attention we must have the name 
and address of every correspondent on 
1'ile. 
Five years ago I took one $15 Orange 
Judd Building Certificate of Herbert Myrick. 
1 have just sent it in and asked the return 
of tlie cash. The certificate was to draw 10 
per cent interest, but one dollar was to be 
paid for the American Agriculturist yearly, 
the 50 cents balance to accunmlatr and draw 
compound interest at four per cent, and they 
were to take out $2 for two years’ subscrip¬ 
tion when the amount was withdrawn. They 
have sent me a check for $1.3, saying noth¬ 
ing about the interest. They also promised 
a bonus, but that was optional. Please 
advise me what to do. The difference is not 
large, but the principle is. The terms 
seemed to be plain. I cannot see the joker 
except in the bonus promised; this being 
optional could not be collected, but the in¬ 
terest ought to be. w. k. h. 
Delaware. 
Figuring compound interest as prom¬ 
ised in the certificate on 50 cents for 
five years, the amount seemed to be $2.71 
that was yet due this subscriber, and we 
wrote Mr. Myrick on behalf of our 
mutual subscriber for an explantion and 
a check. In reply to our letter Mr. 
Myrick wrote direct to W.K. H. that the 
50 cents with interest would be due him 
“only had the certificate run until your 
death, but as plainly stated in its para¬ 
graph 4 if withdrawn previously you sac¬ 
rifice this accumulation.” Nevertheless 
a check for $1.45 was included. This 
led us to look up paragraph 4 of the 
certificate and we found this: 
“Guarantee of principal at any time after 
two years from date. The $15 represented 
by this Certificate shall be payable after 
30 days’ notice, upon written demand of 
said owner, less two dollars for two years’ 
subscription ensuing; if however tlie 50 
cents cash interest yearly has been pre¬ 
viously withdrawn, Orange Judd Company 
likewise reserves the right to call in and re¬ 
tire its certificates any time, upon said 
terms. Thus if you withdraw you get your 
principal back in full, less $2 for two years’ 
subscription ensuing, the simple interest 
meanwhile having paid for your paper. If 
you stay in you get all the accumulation 
of interest, bonus and compound interest 
and your $15 back in full at death all as 
specified herein.” 
The above is one of seven paragraphs 
printed on the back of the certificate. 
Paragraph 1 reads as follows: 
“Payment of interest at rate of 10 per 
cent per year ending August 1st shall be 
made in September ; provided that the with¬ 
in named owner subscribes for American 
Agriculturist for the year ensuing which 
shall be paid out of said sum at the net 
rate of $1 a year and balance remitted to 
said owner in cash or held subject to said 
owner’s order as owner directs.” 
The first paragraph on the face of the 
certificate says: 
“This certifies that W. K. Heysham of 
Flkland, Penn., has paid into the treasury 
of the Orange Judd Company the sum of 
$15 for building certificate, entitling said 
party to 10 per cent on said sum for Sep¬ 
tember for each year ending August 1st, 
etc.” 
After an experience of 25 years I am 
fairly well familiar with a class of pro¬ 
motion literature which apparently means 
one thing on casual reading, but which 
is shown to be susceptible of a different 
interpretation on closer analysis. This 
form of contract is to my mind the most 
convincing evidence of the intent of the 
promoter’s mind at the time of prepar¬ 
ing it. I have never seen a more char¬ 
acteristic sample of this class of liter¬ 
ature than the Myrick Building Certi¬ 
ficate and the selling literature connected 
with it. 
W. K. H. wrote, however, that while 
he would like to have his $2.71 he did 
not want to die to get it and left the 
matter with us for further adjustment. 
We again requested Mr. Myrick to send 
the balance of $1.51. To this he pays 
no attention and since the amount was 
so small we advised W. K. H. to collect 
the checks under protest and charge the 
balance to experience. He wrote that 
he really thought his certificate was 
backed by at least one brick of that big 
building. The only brick we could find 
back of that certificate was a possible 
gold brick. The Orange Judd Company 
that issued that certificate did not own 
any building, and if the people who 
bought the certificates were led to be¬ 
lieve the company did own a building, 
and that the certificate was a lien on it, 
those people were deceived. 
We believe there is vet a balance due 
W. K. H. of about $f.51, and we are 
going to keep on demanding it until we 
get it or until Mr. Myrick proves that 
one of his certificate holders must die 
to get the 10 per cent interest Mr. 
Myrick promised him as a return for his 
investment. 
Speaking of the Conservation Com¬ 
pany of Hampton, N. J., the Hackets- 
town Gazette says: 
After making a groat bluff of building a 
factory for tlie manufacture of silos, tlie 
concern actually built a little office build¬ 
ing and dug a trench and there the devel¬ 
opment stopped. AVe do not know how 
much stock was sold to farmers of the 
county, but they got David Wood of Great 
Meadows for $1,000 by making him gen¬ 
eral superintendent of the plant. It was 
the usual type of story they told Mr. AA'ood. 
and the fact that two leading Hamilton mer¬ 
chants appeared as vice-president and 
treasurer of the company appealed to the 
victim. Neither the vice-president Bigelow 
or the treasurer Baylor had invested a dol¬ 
lar. Each had been given a share of stock 
for the use of honored names. This is the 
usual game of promoters, giving stock to 
men of local influence to stand as stool 
pigeons for their game. Taking in David 
AA.’ood seems to have been a mistake. He 
became inquisitive and found out things. 
This lead to his discharge and perhaps to 
the exposure of the stock-selling scheme on 
which it was based. 
This was the John W. Woodruff of 
the old American Farm Company fame 
referred to by The R. N.-Y. some weeks 
back. The local paper goes on to quote 
what appeared in The R. N.-Y. and it 
is a pretty safe inference that there will 
not be any more stock of that particular 
scheme sold in the vicinity of Hampton, 
N. J. We learn that the Grand Jury 
has been investigating the sale of stock 
to Mr. Wood with a view to bringing 
an indictment in case the facts war¬ 
rant. 
Will you kindly let one of the old sub¬ 
scribers’ of The R. N.-Y. state, in justice 
to Southwest Georgia and the county of 
Sumter, in which the Ware-Progress Com¬ 
pany is located, that the concern was pro¬ 
moted by Northern people and principally 
from Ohio, as I understand it. So far as 
I know no native resident of the county had 
any investment in it, either as stockholder 
or promoter, a. w. s. 
Georgia. 
We are very glad to print the state¬ 
ment. We have before stated that the 
honest people of the Southern States 
regret the promotion land schemes there 
quite as much as the honest people of 
the North do. Any sincere purchaser 
wishing to go to those States can get 
reliable and trustworthy information 
from the honest residents of the neigh¬ 
borhood if he asks it and goes about it 
in the right way. The promotion 
schemes do them no good. It is the 
agents and schemers who make the 
money out of them, and from a native 
honesty, as well as from personal inter¬ 
ests, the honest people of the South 
would be glad to discourage the promo¬ 
tions. The people of the North can 
help by refusing to play sucker to the 
land promoters. 
In 1900 I moved from the western part 
of the State to this eastern section of 
Pennsylvania. I had one of the E. A. 
Strout Company catalogues, which said the 
seller paid this commission for the sale of 
farms. 1 was a stranger and went to AA’. 
W. Leister, the Strout agent at Quaker 
town, Pa. He showed me several farms, 
and told me they were selling on a five 
per cent commission basis. On his repre¬ 
sentations I bought a farm for $5,800, and 
settled for it, supposing that this was the 
seller’s price. I had made the first pay¬ 
ment before I learned that the owner's 
price for the farm was $5000. I then real¬ 
ized that they had got $800 from me un 
justly. The Strout catalogue stated plain¬ 
ly that the commission came from the 
seller, not the buyer. They may call it a 
legal transaction, I do not. I thought they 
might make it right through you. 
Pennsylvania. w. j. h. 
E. A. Strout & Co. seem to have a 
very efficient agent in W. W. Leister. 
We receive many complaints from peo¬ 
ple who bought farms through him near 
Quakerjown, Pa. Mr. Leister has writ¬ 
ten us several long letters, not denying 
the justice of the complaints, but shift¬ 
ing the responsibility on the Strout 
company. We confess we cannot ac¬ 
cept Mr. Leister’s line of reasoning. No 
doubt the Strout company formulated 
the schemes, but Mr. Leister carried 
them out and according to several com¬ 
plaints represented that he was selling 
on a commission. In this he repeated ; 
verbally what the Strout catalogue told 
in print on page 28 of Strout Farm 
Catalogue No. 30. Moreover the Strout 
company had no personal, knowledge of 
these people. They were strangers. Mr. 
Leister on the other hand was a neigh¬ 
bor of these people, and no doubt had 
the confidence of many of them. They 
would take his word for a statement 
when they might be inclined to question 
a stranger. In this sense Mr. Leister 
not only carried out the scheme of the 
Strout company, but he betrayed the 
trust of bis neighbors. How he can 
hope under such circumstances to place 
the onus of the whole scheme on the 
Strout company is more than we can 
figure out. Mr. Leister seems to have 
shared liberally with the Strout com¬ 
pany in the profits made on there deals. 
In one case he consented to an adjust¬ 
ment of a complaint against one of his 
deals but there are numerous complaints 
now which he does not attempt to ad¬ 
just. In justification of his part in t-he 
scheme Mr. Leister writes: 
I am clearly not at fault In this or In 
any other similar transaction, as they (E. 
A. Strout Co.) have eontinualiy assured me 
that to work as they instructed was the 
correct and proper way to do. 
We assume that Mr. Leister is a 
full-grown man, and knew the nature 
of the scheme when the Strout company 
proposed it. He could have declined it. 
If the Strout company had proposed to 
him to pick pockets on the street, he 
would hardly go ahead and do it, and 
justify the act as instructions from his 
employer. As far as many of these 
men are concerned the money may as 
well be taken out of their pockets, j 
They were led to part with it, and got : 
no value in return for »it. And after ! 
it all Mr. Leister had the effrontery 
to send an advertisement of his busi¬ 
ness to The R. N.-Y. for publica¬ 
tion. No. thank you. We did not ac¬ 
cent it. He might want to pay for it 
with money received from the Strout 
company transactions. The R. N.-Y. 
wants no tainted money. 
When Mr. Leister wrote us putting the 
blame on the Strout company he was 
out of their employ. Now he is with 
them again. They settled with Mr. El¬ 
lison and with Mr. Minick since we filed 
the complaints; but there are other 
cases of exactly the same nature, dif¬ 
fering only in amount, which they have 
so far refused to adjust. 
On June 24, I sent post office order to 
W. II, Beck. Sherburne, N. Y.. for 30 Barred 
Rock eggs for hatching, to cost $3. as he 
advertised in the National Poultry Magazine 
(published in Syracuse). 1 heard nothing 
from him for about three weeks, although 
1 wrote repeatedly: then the eggs came. 
The time lost in setting the eggs so much 
later, alone, injured their value to me, but 
when they were opened, seven were broken, 
one of which was rotten. The 23 eggs ; 
hatched six chickens, two of which were j 
Rose Combed and one entirely black. Even [ 
a child could have told they were valueless ; 
mongrels. I wrote for my money to be re- j 
turned, but could get no reply, w. H. b. 
New York. 
Mr. Beck admits in a letter to ns that 
a great many of his hens were sitting 
at the time, and as he did not gather 
the eggs himself possibly they had been 
under bens for some time before he 
shipped them—still he refuses or neg¬ 
lects to refund the money. 
April 20, 
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TRACTION 
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Write for Catalog 3 today, or better still, now. 
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FINDLAY, OHIO 
RAW GROUND LIME 
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HOW TO G ROW 
ON YOUk farm or country estate 
It is now time to plan and prepare for the summer planting. You can groru Alfalfa on your 
farm! But you must meet your particular soil conditions- therefore- we will ■without cost or ob¬ 
ligation give you expert advice on tlie selection of seed—seed bed preparation—planting and 
care necessary to meet your requirements and secure a perfect stand with the aid of 
FARMOGERM INOCULATION 
Standard throu ghout the world 
I.et us tell you of the method of growing Vetch with your spring planting of Oats to increase the Oat crop 
and enrich the soil at the same time. Also how to seeni e the some results by growing Soy Beans or other le¬ 
gumes with your Corn. All spring sow n clovers should he inoculated, and a little fertilizer applied. n( !". means 
more hay. Cow Peas and Soy Beans for Hay—as milk producers, cannot be excelled. This is practical inform¬ 
ation of value to erery farmer. 
TELL I'S YOllIl PLANTING IDEAS KOK THE YEtlt AND LET I S HELP YOU PLAN IT EI'ONOM- 
IL'ALLY AND EFFICIENTLY I 0K SOIL ENRICHMENT AND GENERAL FARM IMPROVEMENT 
EARP-THOMAS FARMOGERM CO., Bloomfield, N. J., U. S. A. 
- Our New Book No. 54 Sent free 
