Innocent in Wall Street

If a Brontosaurus were to snort in Wall Street, it would sound no stranger than did a two-column ad in the Wall Street Journal, fortnight ago. "WANTED FAST! . . . One man with $15,000 cash money or two men with $7,500 cash money each. . . . AND FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE PLEASE HURRY. I am just getting ready to dig a 4,300-foot well in Ector County, West Texas . . . and ... I don't believe there is even any doubt but that we will have anywhere from 50 feet to 100 feet of oil saturation and make anywhere from a 100 bbl. to a 1,200 bbl. well that will . . . produce oil longer than you or I will live. For $15,000 cash help right now I can give you one-half interest in the well and 80 acres, fully equipped including the tanks. . . . My time limit is getting short."

Its author was a wealthy, two-fisted Dallas wildcatter named Chester Allen ("Chet") Everts, who ran away from home at the age of u and made his pile in the oil fields. Wall Streeters, who know what it is to be spanked for selling strawberries without showing the whole basket, trembled for his hide. Last week SEC, not a connoisseur of Americana, spanked him. A sorry ad appeared in the Wall Street Journal: "... I have been notified by the Securities and Exchange Commission that in publicly making that offer I had violated their rules. My offer therefore is hereby publicly withdrawn until and if I can prepare a regular official offering sheet as required, at which time I hope to advertise the offering sheet. ... I sure didn't know I was breaking any law."

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