These dirty sharking traps will always be set, and will always catch silly people, as long as there are any to catch. The only means of stopping such trickery is to diffuse the conviction that the best way to get a living is, to go to work like a man and earn it honestly.
CHAPTER XXII.
ANOTHER LOTTERY HUMBUG.—TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY RECIPES.—VILE BOOKS.—“ADVANTAGE-CARDS.”—A PACKAGE FOR YOU; PLEASE SEND THE MONEY.—PEDDLING IN WESTERN NEW YORK.
The readiness with which people will send off their money to a swindler is perfectly astounding. It does really seem as if an independent fortune could be made simply by putting forth circulars and advertisements, requesting the receiver to send five dollars to the advertiser, and saying that “it will be all right.”
I have already given an account of the way in which lottery dealers operate. From among the same pile of documents which I used then, I have selected a few others, as instances in part, of a class of humbugs sometimes of a kind even far more noxious, and which show that their devisers and patrons are not only sharpers or fools, but often also very cold-blooded villains or very nasty ones. Some of them are managed by printed circulars and written letters, such as those before me; some of them by newspaper advertisements. Some are only to cheat you out of money, and others offer in return for money some base gratification. But whatever means are used, and whatever purpose is sought, they are all alike in one thing—they depend entirely on the monstrous number of simpletons who will send money to people they know nothing about.
Of the nasty ones, I can give no details. Vile books, pictures, etc., are from time to time advertised, sold, and forwarded, by circular, and through the mails, and for large prices.
There have been some cases where a funny sort of swindle has been effected by these peddlers of pruriency, by selling some dirty-minded dupe a cheap good book, at the extravagant price of a dear bad one. More than one foolish youth has received, instead of the vile thing that he sent five dollars for, a nice little New Testament. It is obvious that no very loud complaints are likely to be made about such cheating as that. It is, perhaps, one of the safest swindles ever contrived.
The first document which I take from my pile is the announcement of a fellow who operates lottery-wise. His scheme appeals at once to benevolence and to greediness. He says: “The profits of the distribution are to be given to the Sanitary Commission;” and secondly, “Every ticket brings a prize of at least its full value, and some of them $5,000.”
If, therefore you won’t buy tickets for filthy lucre’s sake, buy for the sake of our soldiers.