It will not be out of place to interject here a few words about the methods employed by the Salvation Army in recruiting its shopmen. They are unfortunate people out of work without a home, down-and-out in spirit, perhaps just released from hospital or prison. They receive some food, a bed remembered with a shudder in years to come and they receive a few pennies for work which represents many dollars to the Army. Mental and physical constraint is constantly exercised over them. The discipline of a Salvation Army Industrial Home is very similar to the prison rules of twenty-five years ago. All these brokendown men to whom the Salvation Army “grants a temporary home” were originally promised regular work and employment through friends of the army. Naturally, it is in the interest of the Army to keep them as long as possible, especially if they happen to be good workmen, and only such men are really welcomed with open arms. They will not receive the promised employment as long as the Army can possibly keep them in its own shops. To quit the “home” is synonymous with an escape from prison and usually they are worse off when they quit the Salvation Army than before they went in. The few cents they earned they were compelled to spend in small purchases in the Salvation Army Department Store. Thus the Salvation Army robs unfortunate men and women of the last shred of their faith in humanity.
The Salvation Army is the greatest bargain hunter in New York. Trained bookmen and art experts choose the most valuable among the books and pictures brought in on collection wagons. They employ connoisseurs of bric-a-brac and do a large business with the antique dealers.
Connoisseurs
When a man has made money in America he at once becomes a victim to the craze for an artistic home. The tradespeople with whom he comes in contact in order to achieve his artistic desires speak of art and rugs and paintings. He reads in the newspapers about Mr. So-and-So who spent thousands of dollars for antique furniture or for pictures in auctions, and he begins his walks on these dangerous and costly grounds where one may buy for goodly sums the ephemeral fame of a collector and a lover of objects of art. The reputation of an art expert seems to go with the objects as well as the wrapping paper and string.
It is the dream of every antique dealer once in his life to enter one of those coveted garrets where treasures of six generations are stored in boxes, in cases and trunks. To enter this garret at the invitation of some real estate owner or lawyer who represents an estate anxious to sell the house and to clear out the ‘rubbish’; to buy the contents of such a garret for a few dollars and to find a painting by Rubens or Tintoretto or Martha Washington’s wedding slippers or a suite of magnificent Colonial furniture ... sure enough these are red-letter days in the career of almost every antique dealer. Only recently, for instance, in an old garret on Ninth Street, an old Persian rug was discovered which no second-hand dealer would have paid fifty cents for, an expert rug man realized its value, gave eighteen hundred dollars for it in competition with other dealers and sold it to a famous rug collector for twenty-six thousand dollars.
Some time ago a buyer of Marshall Field in Chicago saw a painting in one of the minor art shops of the city. He liked it and purchased it for fifteen hundred dollars. It was marked six thousand dollars and put on sale in Marshall Field’s art gallery. It is a standing rule of this art gallery to resell once a year all their purchases. This particular painting seemed unsalable. It was reduced and reduced for a number of years, but it could not be sold. Finally a picture speculator bought it for six hundred dollars, took it back to New York, sold it in an auction sale for ten thousand dollars. The picture was sold and resold eight times during the following six months and ultimately found a final resting place in the mansion of a very well-known man on Fifth Avenue. He paid for it one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Not the man who keeps shops and stores has the great adventure in seeking after the old and antique. But people who are “picking up things,” attending action sales here and there, visiting junk shops and second-hand shops all over the city, constantly expecting to find something and never tired or disappointed. I know highly educated men unusually gifted, possessing expert knowledge that in many cases surpasses the “infallibility” of our museum authorities, who prefer the free life of buying and selling to high-priced positions in art shops and in art galleries. I know one man who is “picking up” a living by looking through the book-stalls of dealers and buying odd volumes for small amounts of money and selling the same books to rare-book dealers for as many dollars as he pays cents.
Auctions As Amusement Places
REAL enjoyment of life is caused by life’s contrasts. And what greater contrast than to witness Mrs. Astor, for instance, bidding against a second-hand furniture dealer from Second Avenue for a curious crazy-quilt, soiled, torn and catalogued as genuine, direct from some old farmhouse?