Word: pyramidal
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...four days ago, I joined a local pyramid club. I would have to attend three parties and give one of my own before the pay-off came, and I collected the $4096. All I had to do was wait 12 days...
...Pyramid Friendship Club craze reached the Eastern Seaboard. New Yorkers added their own characteristic stamp: increasing the ante from $1 to $5 and guaranteeing to pay off $10,240. There were also wild rumors of a $100 Wall Street club, which was supposed to give the lucky winner a cool...
...pyramids work like this: at his first party a new member hands over two dollars, becomes one of many "number 125" at the base of the pyramid. The next night he becomes a "number 11" and must bring two new members, each with two dollars, to keep the organization intact. On each subsequent night, as new members multiply and form pyramids behind them, he is pushed toward the peak of his pyramid, until on the 12th night he becomes a number i and theoretically receives...
...areas of the U.S. where it had taken root, feverish armies of men & women talked of little else; they recruited friends and set out for pyramid parties nightly like grain plungers trying to corner the wheat market. Calls on some suburban Detroit exchanges rose...
...Customers. The Pyramid Club idea also attracted a glib throng of amateur and professional confidence men -there were numerous ways of sidetracking money during its hand-to-hand progression toward the top of the pyramid. In Detroit, Assistant Prosecutor Ralph Garber said: "There are enough innocent people winning from $800 to $1,500 to keep the chain process alive. But I have yet to find anyone who has won the $4,096." But newspapers which warned against Pyramid Clubs or prosecutors who tried to break them up, quickly discovered that the pyramiders had no wish to be saved...