The Great Match Stick Swindle
A Superior Court judge exposes a massive stock-selling scheme that bilked nearly 1,000 investors out of $95,000.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In the superior court Saturday, Judge Snell gave his opinion in the case of Mulholland against The Washington Match Company, holding the plaintiff had been induced by fraudulent representations to subscribe for $400 of stock and was entitled to recover his money. The court declared the methods of the company were reeking with fraud and were a worthy subject for the prosecuting attorneys of King and Pierce counties. The plaintiff purchased the stock based on representations that the company owned Holes' invention, a patent for a machine capable of producing matches at one-fifth the cost of labor as any other existing machine. It appeared from evidence that nearly 1,000 different persons had purchased stock totaling $95,000. Judge Snell found that Holes never had any such invention or patent, and the corporation was nothing more than a scheme to prey upon unsuspecting persons. A prospectus for the company was signed by James Hamilton Lewis as president.
“I am satisfied that this corporation was begotten in fraud and was nothing more or less than a scheme devised to sell stock.”
This 1903 case of a 'get-rich-quick' manufacturing scheme mirrors modern concerns about tech-startup fraud and retail investor exploitation, proving that speculative bubbles often promise technological salvation to cover for a complete lack of assets.
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