Money Charged for Fake "Outfits."
To those who reply to this advertisement a circular letter is sent stating that the work required consists in filling in with bronze paint store-window price tickets printed in outline, one of which, partly filled in, is inclosed as a sample.
If you don't know just where to go
Or how to do the thing that you
May have in mind—or if you find
That you can't rise—then advertise,
A "Business Chances" ad advances
Your desires to many buyers—
And our Want Ads, if you use them,
Bring so many—you can choose them.
The circular states that the work is easily done, requires no previous experience, and that all that is necessary, is to do the work in a neat manner. Two dollars and a half a hundred is offered for tickets filled in as described, and the prospective victim is assured that she can easily gild at least 100 tickets a day. She will require an "outfit," of course, the cost of which is generously put at the remarkably low price of $1.10.
In return for her $1.10 the victim receives a handful of window tickets, a small bottle of bronze paint, and a brush for applying it—the actual value of the articles furnished, including postage, being fully covered by the extra 10 cents.
The worst is yet to come. When the woman, having parted with her money and having spent her time in filling in the handful of tickets sent her, returns them, at her own expense, she receives, not a check in payment for the work done, but a circular letter stating that her work is "unsatisfactory." She may possess the talent of a Rosa Bonheur and a department store ticket writer rolled into one, but she will never succeed in selling a cent's worth of bronzed price tickets to the fakers who sold her the "outfit." Their business is not to buy but to sell, and her fate is not to sell but to be sold. Similar to the work-at-home scheme is what may be described as the letter-writing dodge. The following is a typical advertisement of its class:
LADIES—Earn $20 per hundred writing short letters. Stamped envelope for particulars. Gem Manufacturing Company, Cassopolis, Mich.
When the woman anxious to earn an honest penny replies to this ad. she receives the following letter:
Dear Madam:
We pay at the rate of $20 per hundred or 20 cents for each letter sent us in accordance with our printed circular of instructions, and make remittances to you of all money earned by you at the end of each week. The letter which we send you to copy contains only eighty words, and can be written either with typewriter or with pen and ink, as you prefer, and you can readily see that you can write a number of letters during your leisure time each day.
You do not pay us one penny for anything, except $1 for the instructions and for packing and mailing the Ideal Hoodwinkem which we send you.
There is no canvassing connected with the work, and if you follow our instructions you can earn good wages from the start.
When the victim sends her dollar for the instructions and for the Ideal Hoodwinkem (or whatever the name of the article the fakers are selling happens to be), she discovers that the 20 cents is not to be paid merely for writing a letter. Oh, no! The 20 cents will be paid only for such letters as induce some other woman to part with a dollar for one of "Our Ideal Hoodwinkems." The following letter, which is sent after the unsuspecting one's dollar has been safely salted down, lays bare the true inwardness of the scheme:
Dear Madam:
We herewith hand you trial blanks, also copy of letter which you are to write. You are to send these letters out to ladies, and for every letter which you write and send out and which is returned to us with $1 inclosed for one of our Ideal Hoodwinkems, with your number on the letter, we will send you a cash commission of 20 cents.
It is needless to say that the fakers do not expect their victim to be so stupid as to send out the letters on the terms indicated. The object of the plan is accomplished when "dear madam" parts with her dollar for the letter of instructions and the Hoodwinkem, which would be dear at 10 cents.