SUNSHINE IN BOTTLES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 82, 27 September 1911, Page 3

SUNSHINE IN BOTTLES

AMERICAN RUSH TO BUT GET-RICII-QUICK SHARKS. ,1200,000 SWINDLE. New York. August 10. Twr> "gct-rich-quick"' swindlers were arrcMid by the Federal authorities yesterday for selling shares to credulous Americans in a company organised to exploit bottled sunshine. The men are alleged to have secured C2DIUIOO from the public. They demonstrated with great, plausibility their ability to tap the sun and to store up electric energy taken from the sun's rays, and employed over a hundred agents throughout, the country on wliat is considered to lie one of themost ingenious lleecing operations ever attempted. According to the charge made, the men formed Hie Sun Electric lleuerator Company, and sold shares for whatever t.liev could get, the price varying from ,C I to Ci! 2s. Thousands of people were inveigled into the trap, and so-called "planLn" were erected in New York. Philadelphia. Baltimore. New Orleans, ami Houston. They consisted of a series of mirrors placed on the roof of a house connected by wires to jars, which in turn were wired to incandescent lights. (Dili agents took innocent investigators to a plant on a sunny day, and explained that by a secret process electricity was extracted from the lays of i the sun. and that, concentrated by the mirrors, the electricity was conveyed by the wires and stored in bottles. Then, to prove their assertion, a switch was turned on, and the incandescent lights became illuminated.

'This was accompli-hcd by means of a secret electric battery connected with a wire, running from the jars to the lights in such a manner as to he unuotieeable. The spectators were greatly impressed by the demonstration and were informed tliat one sunny day was siillieient to give enough energy to light any ofliec building for a week.

Circulars by the thousand were distributed among possible investors, reading: "To catch the sun's light, bottle it and have it oil tap to be turned on and otV at will is the latest feat of American inventive genius. Our new machine does more: it derives from the sun's rays a form of energy transformable into heat', and power as well as light. Thus becomes true a. dream of age* past, a dream which would seem as Utopian as any ulagic leal, of genie of Arabian tale-." Thousands of people rushed to the hottlod-sunshinc producers anxious to get into a company at its organisation, and then deposit fortunes in their hanks when the time came to sell the machine retail. The shares were only sold on conditio)! that the holders must not part with them within two years, which it. was believed would keep the purchasers from becoming reslless and trying to sell out before, all possible stock was disposed of. But one sceptical citizen who was risked to purchase some bottled sunshine stock informed the (luvernment authorities. and the arrests followed. These "gel-rich-quick" -windlos have been inllietcd on the American public so frequently in recent years that they formed tlio subject of one of Ihe most popular plays seen in Now York for many seasons. It was produced last winter and is still running . It is called "Het-rich-Hnick Wallingford." arid is taken from a series of short stories of the same name, whose author. Mr. ti. I!. Chester, has made a meteoric Might during -the past three years from being an obscure. .Western newspaper reporter to a. national fame as the chronicler of America's get-| rich-quick operators.