The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1876-07-27
The Dead-Beat Nuisance.


better days; with the promise and, at
first, with the purpose, of paying; but
at last he wears out his friends, and
begins to prey upon society at large.
He has no resource but borrowing
borrowing on the basis of any story
that he can invent. He wants money
to bury his wife, his child, to feed a
starving family, to get to some place
where he has friends. Many pretend
to belong in the South, and are only
anxious to get back. Many in New
York have just come from the South,
their trunks pawned for passage-mon-
ey, and they want to get to Boston.
Some are just from hospital, where
they have for a long time been i'll.
They have been dismissed without
money, and want to reach their
friends. The ingenious lies that are
peddled about New York, in any single
day, by men and women fairly well
dressed, for the purpose of extorting
from sympathetic and benevolent
people, sums varying from one dollar
to twenty-five dollars, would make a
series of narratives quite sufficient to
set up modern novelist. So earnestly
and consistently are these stories
told that it is next to impos-
sible to realize that they are not
true; yet we suppose that the expert
ence of the general public, like all the
private experience with which we are
acquainted, proves that ninety-nine
times in hundred they are pure, Of
most impure inventions.
The genteel female dead-beat is, per.
haps, the hardest to get along with
She puts on airs and dignities. She
talks of her former fortune, and of hel
expectations. She has sources of in
come at present shut up, but sure tc
be opened in time. Or she has small
income, terribly inadequate, at best,
but not yet due. She wants something
to bridge over the gulf that yawns be-
tween the last dollar and the next.
Sometimes she lubricates her speech
with tears, but dignity, and great self
respectfulness, and a beautiful show
of faith i'll God and man, are her prin-
clpal instruments; and it takes a purse
that shuts like steel trap to with
stand her appeals. Some of these
women selfshly stay at home, or in
some nice clearinghouse, and push
out their children, and even their
young and well-educated daughters, to
do their borrowing for them. One
whom we know-confessedly non-at-
tendant at any church-rails at the
church for not supporting her. ''Pret-
ty followers of Jesus Christi she
thinks the church members are.
The moment man begins to lie for
the purpose of getting money, or for
the purpose of eXcusing himself for
the non-payment of a debt, that mo-
ment he changes from man to dead
beat. We thus have dead-beats in
business as well us out of business
men who ''shin" from day to day, and
never know in the morning how they
are to get through. They live con-
stantly by eXpedients. OF course, it
cannot take long to reduce them to the
most disgraceful dead-beats.
We have already, in a previous num-
Der, chronicled the statement made by
one Of our most truthful public men,
that there is in this city a house that
harborS the professional dead-beat, and
furnishes him with romances to be
used in the practical extortion of
money. In this house there is book
kept, in which are recorded the names
of benevolent men and women. with
all their histories, traits, weak points,
etc. These romances and this knowl-
edge are impaired in consideration of
a certain percentage of the money col
lected through their use. Whether
we call this organized beggary or
organized robbery, it matters little.
The fact itself is enough to put every
man upon his guard, and to make him
decline Gas fixed rule, never to be de-
Waited from, except in instances where
his own personal knowledge warrants
HIM IN doing so to give anything to
who comes to him with n
story and an OutStretched palm. Nine
ty-ninc times in hundred the story is
a lie, and the teller of it a professional
dead-beat, who deserves to be kicked
from the door. Personally, we have
never known a case in New York city
OF this sort of begging or borrowing
that was not fraud. The money
loaned never comes back, or the beg
gar, by some forgetfulness, comes
round again.
The only safe way to manage these
and adroit scamps is either
to turn them over to the investigation
Of some society, or to call police
man. Fortunately, there is in large
of houses the District tele-
graph, by the means of which police
man can be summoned in a minute or
two, without the visitors knowledge.
In many instances, the policeman will
know his man at first sight. Every
tollar given to these leeches upon the
social body is direct encouragement
10 the increase of the pauper popula-
ion; and, if the matter is still regard
ID carelessly, we shall, in twenty years.
De as badly off as Great Britain in this
particular. What we give goes for
UNI, as rule, and we not only foster
dleness, but we nourish vice and
rhine. We need to make a dead set
lgalnst tramps in the country and
lead-beats in the city, if we wish to
ave our children from reign of pau
,erism, only less destructive of the !
and the best interests of the
COUNTRY than the reign of war.-Dr. J. |
7. Holland, in Sc1ibner for Aug,tst.
Conditions FavOring the Produc-
ton of Malaria.