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Am rican Aoriculturist, March 31,1923 
“Where Shall I Invest My Savings?” 
Lock the Door Before the Horse Is Stolen—Bitter Tears Won t Bring Him Back 
By GEORGE T, HUGHES 
I T is about time I haji another heart to 
heart talk with the readers of the Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist about the money they 
have saved and what to do with it. It 
is so easy to make a mistake when some glib- 
tongued salesman comes along and offers 
stock in a chain store, a finance company or 
an oil corporation. And the picture he draws 
of wealth and prosperity sure to follow pur¬ 
chase of his particular stock so often hypno¬ 
tizes the unwary and then the money is gone 
forever. It is too late then to write to the 
paper and in ninety-nine cases out of a 
hundred nothing can be done. 
So let us begin at the beginning and lock 
the barn door before the horse is stolen. In 
the first place bear in mind that it took a 
long time to save the money you 
want to invest. If any farmer 
ever got rich quickly by farming 
the case has never been called to 
my attention. On the other hand 
there are countless numbers who 
got poor quickly by “investing” 
foolishly. So take plenty of time 
before entrusting the money it 
took you so long to accumulate to 
someone else to keep. 
Take Plenty of Time 
And above all do not be de¬ 
ceived by the claim that if you 
do not seize the particular op¬ 
portunity the moment it is pre¬ 
sented to you it will be gone for¬ 
ever. That is always a lie. The 
only thing that will be gone for¬ 
ever will be the opportunity to 
lose in that particular way. It is 
a favorite device of swindlers to 
tell their prosrective victims that 
the price of the rubbish they are 
selling is to be advanced on a cer¬ 
tain day. That is an infallible in¬ 
dication of fraud. No good investment op¬ 
portunity passes in a day, or a week or a 
month. 
Second, leave all new enterprises alone. 
Even though founded in perfect good faith 
by honorable and responsible men, the 
chances on the average are all against -suc¬ 
cess. More business men fail than farmers 
and all new enterprises are essentially specu¬ 
lative. When you are going to invest you 
want something that is seasoned. That is 
something which has proved itself over a 
period of years and the records of which are 
easily accessible to the average intelligent 
man. 
The swindlers will tell you how much 
money you could have made if you had in¬ 
vested in Henry Ford’s enterprises when he 
was an unknown and struggling inventor or 
how much money you could have made if you 
had put your savings into Graham Bell’s first 
telephone. That is all true, but for every 
Henry Ford and every Graham Bell there 
are a thousand others who lose every cent 
they put in these new ventures. It is a 
gamble you cannot afford to take. Leave 
that to the man who doesn’t care whether 
or not he,loses. 
An Exception to the Rule 
There is only one exception to this rule 
about new enterprises. If a company is be¬ 
ing formed in your own locality to engage 
in some business, the chances for success in 
which you are capable of estimating, that is 
an entirely different situation, but it must be 
a local enterprise, one you can actually see and 
one the progress of which you can constantly 
watch. Do not buy stock in some company 
the operations of which are conducted one 
hundred to one thousand miles away, siniply 
because some prominent people in the neigh¬ 
borhood have done the same thing. Because 
the leading lawyer in the adjoining county 
seat has invested his money, there is no rea¬ 
son why you should do the same. Perhaps 
he can better afford to lose than you can. It 
is another favorite device of stock salesmen 
to give a list of people in the neighborhood 
who have succumbed to their wiles. It won’t 
do you any good to have them lose their 
money. 
There are some kinds of stock which are 
peculiarly dangerous and first among all 
these is the oil stock. Now. whatever you do 
do not buy any oil stock of any kind at any 
time anywhere. There is no more uncertain 
business on earth than oil production, not 
even agriculture. There are good oil com¬ 
panies whose stock has a ready market, but 
not even they are suitable investments for 
a farmer. 
Don’t Send Good Money after Bad 
And if you have been so. unfortunate as 
to put your money into one of these fake oil 
promotions, don’t send any more good money 
after bad. In the general course of events 
the unhappy “investor” who has put his sav¬ 
ings into one of these oil fakes gets a let¬ 
ter saying the company has gone into the 
hands of a receiver, but that the investment 
can be saved and the “assets” conserved by 
exchanging your stock for stock of some 
other concern which is going to take over the 
defunct.. The only thing necessary is a small 
additional subscription. Stop right there. 
It doesn’t make much difference how often 
you exchange one oil stock of this class for 
another. One is worth about as much as the 
other, but money is worth saving. So just 
because you have lost once do not lose twice. 
And do not buy something you cannot sell. 
Nobody wants a perpetual investment. Some 
day you may want to realize. You may need 
money either for the farm or for some un¬ 
expected emergency in the home, so you want 
an investment which you can turn into cash 
or at least one on which you can borrow. 
And the best way to find out about that is 
before you buy any security to go to your 
local bank and ask the president how much 
money he will loan you on that security if 
you buy it. Unless he is willing to loan on 
it you should not be willing to purchase it. 
For a banker won’t loan money on a stock 
or a bond which he cannot sell in case the 
loan is not paid. 
The local banker is your be.st advisei- in 
matters of this kind. He will be glad to help 
you. And when the stock salesmen tell you 
that they do not want this particular stock to 
be monopolized by bankers and Wall Street 
shut your ears. It is all bunk. They do not 
want it to be monopolized by the bankers and 
wealthy men because they know they cannot 
sell it to bankers and wealthy men. When a 
man becomes possessed of an overwhelming 
desire to work for the good of his fellow- 
men, he doesn’t go into the stock selling 
business. A theological seminary is the 
place for him. 
Finally do not expect top large a return. 
You cannot get something for nothing in this 
world and it is almost always true that the 
higher the return the greater the risk. Just 
now you can get from 51/2 to 6 
per cent in sound investments and 
if you confine yourself to that 
grade of security you will be bet¬ 
ter off ten years hence than if 
you take chances on something 
that appears to give a higher in¬ 
come. 
Now don’t hesitate to write to 
the American Agriculturist if 5 ''Ou 
want information. Very often 
when a security about which you 
ask is one of local distribution 
only, we cannot give any specific 
advice, but we can and will to 
the best of our ability try and 
select safe and conservative se¬ 
curities for the savings of our 
readers. 
Some Typical Inquiries 
Financial Department:—Two years 
ago I purchased some stock in the Cru¬ 
sader Film Corporation, 25 West 43rd 
Street, New York City. Could you 
inform me if this company is reliable 
and if the stock is worth hanging on 
to? I have never received any intei’est. 
The agent says that he will sell my 
stock for me, but insists that it will be paying big 
in a yery short time.—E. P., New York. 
Stock of this kind is speculative in the 
highest degree and in no way suitable for in¬ 
vestment. Unless you can afford to assume 
the risk involved in the moving-picture busi¬ 
ness, which even with the best of companies 
is very high, we think you ought tto dispose 
of the stock if you can. 
Buy Something that has a Market 
Financial Department:—The Home Correspond¬ 
ence School of Springfield, Mass., are selling a new 
issue 7 per cent sinking fund preferred stock at $25 
a share. Are they good and safe investment, to turn 
called Victory Loan bends into, or would Pennsyl¬ 
vania R. R. selling at 47 be safer? Also kindly tell 
me what you think of the Eugene Christian Vitamin 
Food Company 8 per cent cumulative preferred 
stock, and the Parry Oil Company stock of Texas 
at $i.50 per share.—G. K. W., Pennsylvania. 
Probably the Pennsylvania stock is the 
best of the investments you name, but even 
that is not suitable as a substitute for a Vic¬ 
tory loan. Certainly our earnest advice is 
to avoid all oil stocks. At the best they are 
gambles and at the worst plain swindles. 
Also it is impossible to appraise preferred 
stock of a correspondence school or a food 
company without an analysis of earnings over 
a period of years which are not available to 
us. It is our opinion that your best course 
would be to reinvest in another Government 
bond. Assuming you will not take this ad¬ 
vice because it is too conservative, we can 
recommend as a sound investment the pre¬ 
ferred stock of the Jones & Laughlin Steel 
Company, which sells about 107%, pays $7 a 
year in dividends and so yields about 6.4 per 
cent. There is a good market for this stock, 
so that if at any time you need to use your 
money you can always get it. Except for the 
Pernsylvania issue that is ^true of none of 
the .sLoU.s you speak of. 
Look Out For the Sharks ! 
T he newspapers recently carried a pathetic story of an aged couple 
who invested and lost $35,000 in worthless stocks. It was every 
cent they had in the world and all of their lifetime savings. Their 
money was fooled away from them by the glittering promises of an 
unscrupulous broker who promised to make them millionaires. The 
man is seventy years old and blind, and to-day he and his wife are 
penniless, and were it not for charity, they would be hungry. 
It is because the world is full of sharks absolutely without mercy, 
and full of people who believe that they can get something for noth¬ 
ing that we are constantly printing articles like the one by Mr. 
Hughes on this page. We are trying to warn our people to keep 
hold of their money and never make an investment without the advice 
of a competent lawyer or bapker, and without being absolutely sure 
that their lifetime savings are being put where they will be secure. 
In almost every neighborhood there is somebody who tried to get rich 
too quickly and is now filled with hopeless and bitter regret. 
Read Mr. Hughes’ common sense article and remember it. He is 
the best .financial expert that we can hire and he knows what he is 
talking about. Following his advice may save you a thousand times 
the cost of this paper.—The Editors. 
