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AVIATION

Volume I.  MAY, 1911  Number 5

FAKE AEROPLANE COMPANY EXPOSED

In its campaign against bogus stock companies AVIATION has won its firs moral victory. L. A. Rockwell, styling himself The Rockwell Investment Company, has absconded from San Diego with $75,000 of moneys paid in for stock on a proposition which AVIATION declared bogus on the face of it.

The editor of AVIATION personally took up the investigation of the Rockwell proposition and with the assistance of several members of the Aero Club of California and the Aero Club of San Diego prepared affidavits and presented the case to the San Diego Club.

Admitting the strength of the case and the necessity of action, the directors of the Aero Club of San Diego made plans to take up the prosecution of the Rockwell concern, but first busied itself in defense of a suit in equity brought by D. C. Collier against Harry S. Harkness and the club for the liquidation of express bills, after which it had proposed to take up the Rockwell matter.

Meanwhile, AVIATION believing haste was necessary in a case of this character, laid its evidence before other authorities. Rockwell, scenting trouble for himself, and having cleaned up a neat sum, decided to skip out while the coast was clear.

Rockwell is gone, and the authorities, not to mention countless "stockholders," are after him.

This magazine has no criticism to make against the Aero Club of San Diego. Its officers were sincere in their desire to take action, and they probably would have done so in time; but bogus stock companies wait for no man, and haste is necessary.

The Rockwell incident should be lesson for us all. The United States is full of these companies and everybody should combine to drive them out.

Comments by the press on the Rockwell case show what a menacing situation is presented by these fakers.

Takes Aged Man's Last Dollar

The chapter of sweat and toil has been added to the history of the Rockwell investment company.

Stockholders whose hands showed the hard use of the plane and the saw met yesterday afternoon in the denuded offices of their company to discuss means for a readjustment of the business.

Their appearance showed that they had never been accustomed to the ease of revolving chairs or the elegance of Persian rugs. They were not embarrassed to sit on a scantling placed across two carpenter's sawbucks. In the corner where the mahogany desk of their chief once stood was a homely pine table and back of it an improvised stool. A periodical had been left lying on the window sill. It was open and along the full width of the page ran the caption of the story, entitled "The Last Grain of Dust."
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