These statements are mailed to the customers. When the manufacturer returns the loan shark greets him cordially and remarks:
"Unfortunately one of my clerks mailed out a lot of your statements last night, but I guess that won't matter. He stamped on them that they had been transferred to us and sent them out as he does everyone else's. He didn't understand. I am sorry."
As expected, the manufacturer, when he sees his business and confidence abused in this manner, flies into a rage. Then the suave agent takes the bull by the horns and issues his ultimatum.
"Our bank"—always "our bank"—"thinks we are not getting all the money coming to us from your account. They demand that in the future you deposit all your checks with us. I am sorry, for I know everything is straight, but your using us as a bank will last but a few days. Everything will then run smoothly again."
And unless some friend comes to the aid of the manufacturer the agency's prophecy comes true, and it does last but a little while.
SHREWD BEGGAR GRAFT.
Pretend to be Deaf, Dumb and Blind, Playing on Sympathy—How Philanthropy is Humbugged—Begging for Money to Reach Home—An Army of Frauds and Vagabonds—Mastering the Deaf Mute Language for Swindling Purposes—The Public Should be Careful in Disbursing Alms.
Speech is so common, eyesight so precious, that he who would appeal for charity needs no better warrant than that he is dumb or blind. In an age when words are multiplied and golden silence is seldom found, the very fact that lips can give no utterance is so unusual that their mute assertion of misfortune is seldom questioned. There is nothing so pitiful in all the world as an asylum for the blind. There is nothing which so draws one to share the burdens of another as the appeal of him in whom the wells of speech are all dried up. We sympathize with illness, we grieve at the misfortune which visits our friends, we mourn with them when bereavement comes, but all these things are in the course of nature. They are sad, but they may be expected. But then a figure in health rises and asks for charity in the hushed language of the mute, philanthropy halts and humanity gives alms. But if the dumb can evoke assistance, assuring of sincerity and disarming doubt, how hushed is the questioning when the blind apply! How much stronger than speech or silence are the sightless eyes that stare unblinking at a darkened world! How sad is the fate of that man who was buried by demons when God cried out, "Let there be light"!
But not every man is mute who stretches out his hand in silence. Laziness is such an awfully demoralizing vice that some who choose to beg a living and decline work are even base enough to feign a misfortune they ought to fear. Fellows who find the winter pinching and the ranks of vagabonds full to repletion arm themselves with a slate and pencil and haunt the public with appeals for help on the untrue claim that they are dumb. One of the most persistent beggars of this kind makes the rounds of residence districts with a printed card on which is stated the bearer's desire to reach his home in some distant city—the destination varies from time to time—together with a long-primer endorsement by a group of names which no one knows. The fraud always asks for some slight money offering—nothing can be too small—with which to assist him in the purchase of a ticket.
Usually his paper shows that he needs but a very little more, and he asks one, by a series of pantomimic signs, to enroll his name, together with the sum advanced, in regular order on a blank list which he tenders with his touching appeal. He is so well drilled as never to be surprised into speech, and looks with such straight, honest eyes into the faces of the women, who form much the larger number of his victims, that they cannot question him and usually give up a dime or a quarter without a struggle. The beggar can readily collect a good day's wages in this manner, and it is a matter of surprise if he does not receive an invitation to partake of food three or four times a day. He never lets his list get full. However small a margin he may lack of having raised the sum needed to buy his ticket to his home, he never gets quite enough, for nothing is easier than to stop in some secluded spot and erase the names of his latest donors, thus proving to those on whom he shall presently call that their help is not only needed, but will so nearly end the necessity for continued appeals. This class of beggar never looks like a dissipated man, is always polite, and bears refusal in so noble a way that nine times out of ten the flinty-hearted women who refused him at the back door hurry through to the front and give the more generously that they have harbored suspicion.