Like many another man whose success has been extraordinary, George Graham Rice gave no hint of genius until he was past 30. Just when he abandoned his real name of Jacob Simon Herzig no one knows. His youth was punctured with one jail term for grand larceny and another for forging his father's name to a check. Shortly after the turn of the century he founded Maxim & Gay, "Turf Information Bureau," in Manhattan. His "information" was good and he often sold 5,000 tips a day at $5 each. Having a great love for the horses and no faith in his own tips, he soon dropped the $3,000,000 he had so quickly acquired. But he learned enough about sucker psychology to follow his true calling. And it was not long before he was rated the most successful and the most tireless stock swindler in the U. S.
His early promotions sent him to jail in 1910 in connection with the failure of a brokerage house and he swore he was through forever. He even wrote a big-seller, My Adventures with Your Money, exposing all the tricks of his trade. But back he came and this time for big money. To inspire faith among ignorant investors, his "financial" sheet, The Wall Street Iconoclast, attacked margin trading on the New York Stock Exchange, advised widows & orphans to keep their money in savings banks, recommended the purchase of sound listed securities. But the Iconoclast also managed to keep such Rice stocks as Idaho Copper, General Mining and Colombia Emerald constantly in his readers' minds. He even had his own stock exchange, the Boston "Curb." When Rice stocks soared, shareholders would receive telegrams from Promoter Rice exhorting them not to sell. Presumably that was just the time that Promoter Rice did his best selling, for he is estimated to have bilked the public of nearly $25,000,000.
On his own admission Promoter Rice has spent a total of $4,000,000 on lawyers' fees in various attempts to keep out of jail, and his attorneys have included Max D. Steuer and onetime U. S. Senator James Reed.† But in 1928 George Graham Rice was convicted of using the mails to defraud in the sale of Idaho Copper shares and sentenced to Atlanta Penitentiary for four years. An additional five-year sentence was suspended on condition that he report regularly to a probation officer after release.
Last spring George Graham Rice arrived in Manhattan, suave, paunchy and in his usual high spirits. On leaving jail he had taken a pauper's oath but reporters found him in a swank 16-room apartment. To a list of 200 names picked at random from among his Idaho Copper stockholders, he sent greetings and asked them if they were "meeting the challenge" of the New Deal. The response to this "feeler" was good.