The Hocking sentinel. [volume] (Logan, Ohio) 1871-1906, 1886-05-06
pOsta; Detectives.

The maintenance of large force Of
trained detectives, or "inspectors," as
they are designated upon the rolls Of
| the Pos. Office Department, has greatly
/ purified this branch of the service in
the particular mentioned. An infinite
number of swindles are still carried on
through the agency of the mails.
Swindlers reach their intended vic
tins by circulars and By advertisements
in careless or character!css newspapers.
The former method is preferred by
sharpers, as being the least likely to
come under the notice of the official
spies of the department. 1t is an easy
matter to obtain full lists of any re-
isuuired number of names. running up
into the millions. Lottery companies
make a business of selling lists of the
names of their patrons, and other
swindling concerns which obtain origi-
nal lists are addicted to the same prac-
tice.
Countrymcn who reply to any one of
the hundreds of snap advertisements
wonder how it is that the hundreds ..
fascinating enterprises from one end OF
the country to the other obtain their
addresses. and they feel, some way, that
they must be persons of importance.
Their vanity is flattered, and in innum-
erable instances they undergo a regular
course of training before they acquire a
sufficient fund of experience to enable
them to realize that they are on the
wrong side of the institution for the
minded.
The art craze, which during the last
few years has spread over the country
like an epidemic, has developed a swim
die that is very hard for the department
to reach, and which affords livelihood
for large number of enterprisiDg and
inscriptions persons The knaves tax
the great army of unsophisticated girls
who imagine they have artistic tastes by
showing them, through the medium OF
circulars, how they can put themselves
in the way of earning comfortable in
comes with the expenditure of a trifiing
sum for an outfit. They promise to take
work that is produced according to their
SYSTEM" and require small cash
payment in advance from the favored
artists. The department finds this .
most troublesome class of cases to deal
with, the originators protecting them
selves very completely, as arule, against
prosecution.
The Post Office Department spent
months trying to break up the scheme
of a man who contracted to send pianos
and organs from his manufactures in
Maine and California to any part of the
country on payment of 81 or SIS or 81
to defray the cost of boxing She instru-
ments The articles were received ac-
cording to contract, but they proved to
be cheap toy pianos and organs, the ex-
pense of boxing which was about 10
per cent of the sum received in each
case. Another fellow made lot Of
money by boxing and forwarding very
cheap mouth-organs to all who patron
lied him through the mails.
The proprietor of i harmless cure for
deafness reaped harvest of $50 or $40
day for long time. His headquar-
tiers were in New York. The President
of bogus medical college did a pros
porous business in selling spurious di-
plomas, but as the men who bit at his
bait were confessedly as great swindlers
as he was, the department was long
time getting at him. This was q swim
die pure and simple.
An army of ruralists forwarded hard
earned dollars for L ''mowing-machine
knife-shsrpener, simple, effective" and
received in return sticks dipped in emery
dust and pieces of iron. Another in
genious operator found market for
thousands of copies of a cheap edition
of the Scriptures by representing the
book to be collection of very tough
stories. 1t is not recorded that the de-
partment interfered with this mission
sionary enterprise.-Rar.tord Globe.