The Lumber Land Swindle
A band of unscrupulous swindlers is targeting the local labor force with promises of massive returns on timber land investments.
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.
A gang of swindlers, pretending to represent a corporation designated the Michigan and Maine Lumber and Milling Company, with headquarters at Tacoma, have recently been operating in this city. They approach laborers with an agreement where, for an advance of $25, the company claims they will locate 160 acres of timber land for the victim. They promise that within seventy days, they will secure a purchaser who will pay $1,000 for said land. The contract includes a gag clause forbidding the victim from revealing the agreement to anyone else, claiming that if they do, they forfeit their money. Their operations are necessarily confined to the poorer and more ignorant classes, playing on the illiterate laborer's credulity with pretty speeches. After the allotted time has expired, the victim realizes they have been duped, but pride and shame keep them from making it known. The perpetrator is described as a man rather under medium height, stout, with black hair and eyes, wearing a small derby hat.
“No methods of swindling are so much to be condemned as those intended to defraud the poor and ignorant working classes.”
This scam mirrors modern predatory investment schemes and 'get-rich-quick' fraud that targets vulnerable workers. Even in 1891, the press recognized the specific cruelty of exploiting the working class's lack of capital and legal resources.
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