Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

400 Radio Broadcast follows: "He makes the impossible possible, receives while in motion with the aid of its International Radio set and loud speaker." At the hearing on the criminal libel complaint, a young electrician, who had originally equipped the motor car, testified that he had used a standard radio set and apparatus made by the Westinghouse and General Electric companies and that none of. the apparatus which he put on the car had been manufactured by the "I. R. C." The company had advertised that its financial adviser was: " Internationally known to business men and has been the associate of such well-known magnates as J. P. Morgan,. Cornelius N. Bliss, Gov. Benj. Strong, Jr., J. D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the late Henry P. Davison, Herbert Hoover, and a score of others." In various other ways, stock salesmen referred to this same man as "former financial adviser to J. P. Morgan & Company," or as "former member of the Advisory Committee of J. P. Morgan & Company." The subject of these laudatory remarks testified that he had never acted as the financial adviser of J. P. Morgan & Company. He resigned his position with the "1. R. C." as soon as he discovered that these misrepresentations were being made about him. The truth of the assertion made by the bulletin that the "I. R. C.," had, without authority, used the name of a junior officer connected with one of the best known trust companies of New York City, as a director of the "I. R. C.," was likewise proven in court. Another radio company, whose affairs were scrutinized by the Better Business Bureau, promised to mend its ways at once. This company had gone even further in misrepresentation than the "1. R. C.," but its activities had been very limited. The company had been organized by a few men who knew practically nothing about the radio field, except that radio sets had leaped to instant popularity and that prospects of the money-making possibilities in the industry appeared to be good. The company was prepared to market a $5,000,000 stock issue, ostensibly for the purpose of manufacturing radio sets and parts. An elaborate sales circular, which had been sent through the mails, contained several full-page pictures of the exteriors and interiors of factories located in various New Jersey towns. The sales circulars did not actually state that these pictures were taken of buildings owned or operated by the new radio company, but that was the inference that any one would draw from hastily looking over the booklet. A brief investigation disclosed that the company owned nothing and that the pictures were of factories with which the company had entered into tentative agreement to supply it with various radio parts. Within two or three months the company had three times changed its president and had twice changed its entire Board of Directors. The "moral pressure" effort of the Better Business Bureau led to the abandonment of stock-selling by this company. Another company had stolen, almost word for word, the corporate name of a radio manufacturing company which was recently taken over by one of the largest corporations engaged in the manufacture of radio sets. All of these companies sketched, in their sales literature, the enormous profits made by various remarkably successful industrial enterprises, such as the telephone and telegraph industries, and indulged in various blue-sky speculations which led prospective stockholders to believe that radio might rival the telegraph and telephone in profits to investors in companies that manufactured apparatus. They failed to tell the public they had no "service" to sell, which is the source of profits of the long-established telephone and telegraph corporations. There seems to be a widely prevalent belief that the salesmanship of wild-cat stocks are endowed with marvelous salesmanship ability. As a matter of fact, such stock salesmen, as a general rule, are men of very mediocre calibre. They do not depend on cleverness, but on effrontery and tricks that are almost childish. They know certain practices that are prevalent among men of their type. And one reason they succeed in selling their securities is that they are early in a new field, offering stock in companies in fields which have greatly aroused the public's curiosity and interest. Promoters of fake companies work on the theory that "where there is public interest, there also may be found public confidence," and salesmen of fake stock play their strongest card when they trade on the public's hopeful confidence in the success of enterprises in fascinating new fields of science and industry.