I at once drew up a circular in these words. By the way, I had secured their engraving of the building, No. 23 William Street, with which the circular was headed:—
"Mayor's Office, New York.
"Dear Sir: This is to inform you that the great 'Banking House of G. W. Huntington & Co.,'—the above picture of which you have doubtless seen before,—has 'suspended operations' having fallen into the hands of the police. This house was a bogus lottery concern, which conducted its stealthy business in an obscure den, while pretending to occupy the building above represented, by the picture of which they more readily enticed their country customers to 'invest' in their shrewdly-devised schemes. If in dealing with them you ever secured a prize, it was only given to entice you into larger ventures. Beware of all such companies in the future. The mayor directs me to advise you that there are no legitimate lottery companies or agencies in the city of New York. None are allowed by law to do business here. All of them are bogus and fraudulent. His honor the mayor further suggests that you may, perhaps, do your unwary neighbors a service, by showing them, if you please, this circular,—or by at least informing them that all such companies and agencies in New York are fraudulent in their character. The mayor receives hundreds of complaints during the course of a year from the victims of these companies, or 'agencies,' and a list of all those to whom this circular is sent, is kept, and no notice of the complaint of any one of these will hereafter be taken. The mayor trusts that you, sir, will not only escape being imposed upon by these bogus lottery sharpers hereafter, but will so warn and instruct all your friends that they, too, will escape being victimized.
Respectfully yours,
"—— ——,
"Mayor's Special Clerk."
About eighteen thousand of these circulars were duly mailed to the addresses found in the captured books, and the books themselves were duly deposited for further reference. It would seem that this warning, scattered as it was into more than half the towns in the Union, ought to have lessened the number of victims to these swindling concerns; but I have been informed that some of them are in full blast to-day, and that all along, since the arrest of "G. W. Huntington & Co.," other concerns carried on heavy operations. Everybody, almost, it would seem, must have personal experience; will not, for some reason, profit by the experience and advice of others who have suffered—been bitten by sharpers. But I trust that this article will be heeded by all who read it. Perhaps it is a sufficiently clear exposition of the way these rascals proceeded, to make it evident that there is no trusting the pretences of any of them. Sure it is that there are at least five hundred thousand people in the land, who, if they were to read this exposition, could reflect that it must be, as it is, literally true, entirely unembellished by imagination to the extent of even a word, and that, too, from their own experiences; and they can now understand the modus operandi by which they were swindled.
All "gift enterprises," so common in New York, and other places, to-day, partake in their nature of these bogus lottery operations, and no man is safe who trusts a single one of them. He will be swindled in the end, in some way.
I could not well allow myself to cut this article short at this point, although my tale is, properly speaking, finished, and my contract under this head, with my publishers, fulfilled. There is something so marvellous in the human heart in the way of its disposition to adventure in order to make money easily; such a wonderful credulity in the minds of large numbers of people, and a willingness to fasten in trust upon the merest shadow of success, that perhaps these fraudulent concerns will never lack victims. But in studying the correspondence which fell into my hands,—over twenty thousand letters,—and with which I beguiled many hours during the six months in which I kept them, before burning them, I became apprised of the fact that the great majority of the "customers" of these concerns are illiterate; most of their letters being misspelled; that great numbers of them were young men, boys, and poor women; nearly all evidently mechanics, and from some of the States, such as Pennsylvania, many farmers. (Pennsylvania, by the way, furnishes more victims to petty frauds, I learned, than several other States which I might name, taken together.) She has a large number of citizens who are barely able to read and write poorly, and who probably do not read the public journals extensively, and are, therefore, not likely to be well informed of the current iniquities of the time. I seriously meditated, after having studied the "G. W. Huntington & Co." correspondence, the writing of a book on the matter of Swindling, in general; and this correspondence would have afforded me many pathetic things for comment. While looking over that correspondence, the tears often came irresistibly to my eyes. I recollect the letter of a boy writing from Easton, Penn., I think it was. He had, it appeared from his letter, sent many dollars to the company for tickets, a dollar at a time, and winning nothing from his ventures, was getting discouraged. He wrote an imploring letter at last, accompanied by a dollar, in which he begged the company to choose him a winning number. He told them it was his last dollar; (he was but sixteen years old, he said); that he should not be able to send again, if he failed this time, for he had to give every cent he could earn; (I forget what he said he worked at, but he named the business and the pitiable wages he got); that his father was a dreadful drunkard; one of his little sisters was "sick all the while;" another had broken her leg two months before, and the doctors thought she might have to lose it, and so on, a pitiable tale—a tale to stir the hardest heart, and written in that style which stamped it as undoubtedly true. At the bottom of this letter was a note for the clerk, in the handwriting of one of the firm. "Write to" (somebody, I forget his name, of course), "at Easton, and learn if this story is true; and if it is, let the boy draw five dollars in Scheme No." (so and so.) There was a note dated some days after, below this in the clerk's hand. "Letter received from Easton; story true; ticket issued." Probably that boy re-invested the whole five dollars. Drawing the money, his hope would naturally be excited; and now that he could buy a ticket in a larger "drawing," he probably sent the five dollars back, and lost them of course.
Widows, with large families, and who wrote most mournful stories, sending on every cent they could save (while half-starving their families in order to do so, probably), were among the number of correspondents. Clergymen of poor parishes sent for tickets, with long letters, in which they commented piously upon the matter of hazard and lotteries, in a manner to excuse themselves for sending, and hoping that they should draw something to help them out of their poverty and misery, and expressing their belief that "God would pardon them if they were doing wrong," were also of the number. Many letters were of a comical nature, the writers half-laughing at themselves for doing so foolish a thing as buying tickets in a lottery; but yet unable to resist the temptation. By some of the letters it was evident to me that the writers told abominable lies about their sufferings and trials, in order to excite the sympathy of the "agents," and induce them to use their best efforts to secure for them winning tickets. Some of the correspondents offered to give the "agents" half their prize money, in order to bribe them to select a successful ticket. Some of them sent counterfeit money. I found such notes as this at bottom of several letters, "One dollar counterfeit, two dollars good. Send tickets in Scheme No. 8." "Counterfeit; send back." These were evidently directions to clerks. If the writing in these letters which contained only counterfeit money had been good, I might have suspected the writers of perpetrating an appropriate joke; but the letters were evidently from ignorant people, some of whom, perhaps, knew that the bills they sent were counterfeit, and hoped that the great banking company, in their vast press of business, would fail to detect the bills. Many of the letters were written in excellent mercantile hand; but I noticed some badge of ignorance about all these, as well as about the poorly-written and misspelled ones. Probably ninety-nine in a hundred of the victims were made such through their ignorance of the world and the wicked men in it.