THE HAND IN THE DYKE

"A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage but no one to know what it is", when promoted in 1720, caused the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. Involved in the ruin were not only the great enterprises headed by the South Sea Company itself but schemes for extracting silver from lead, for "furnishing funerals to any part of Great Britain", and even for a perpetual motion wheel, capitalized at a million pounds. Contemporaneously in France, Law's expansive scheme for exploiting the Mississippi. Valley collapsed, sweeping French aristocracy into bankruptcy. In more recent times there have been as many notorious, if not as comprehensive, wildcat projects culminating in "520 per cent Miller" and "Miracle Ponzi".

Now at last an agency has sprung up to prevent as well as punish this fraudulent promotion. Urged on by men like Governor Morse of the First District Federal Reserve Bank and startled by the statement of the Senate Committee on Reconstruction that the annual losses through worthless schemes can be conservatively estimated at more than a billion dollars a year, bankers established the Better Business Bureau last summer. Working through branches located all over the United States, this bureau has already exposed a number of "blind pools" which have absorbed the savings of thousands of ignorant and gullible persons. A product of the war but no longer promoted by patriotism to put their money into savings stamps, these "investors" have fallen easy prey to wildcat promoters.

With an educational campaign imperative because of these losses, the Better Business Bureau within a week has announced a comprehensive information service. In addition to newspaper publicity, the Bureau plans to reach the people through banks, Chambers of Commerce, Boards of Trade, labor organizations, and large mercantile institutions. By thus plugging thus plugging the hole in the dyke, the Bureau will divert millions of dollars yearly from the wildcat whirlpool and gradually drive the "Ponzi" specie of wizard from finance.