The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1898-04-13
THEY MUST PAY OR FIGHT
Undue Methods Of a King Street Bill
Collector.

thing continues, salo "eii Ano !" -
King street merchant to reporter Tor
the Neaos and Courier yesterday. II
am in great deal Of trouble and the
chances are that my life is in dan
GER
An expression Of curiosity induced
him to continue, and he said:
ssTt's not my fault, you know; lts
all misfortune. For the past year or
so I have been having great deal OF
trouble with collectors. You see, run
ming retail business, with several
hundred people on your books at the
end of every month, you have to have
something of hustler to keep you
out Of the suds. The first man l had
was an old chap who needed nice,
light job and promised to give kind
of tone to the place. He was very
good old fellow, but he knew SO little
about hustling that after the first
week or so the hard cases quit lodging
him altogether, and got to slapplng
him on the back and calling him "old
chap.
~ soon saw that he wouldn't do,
and sried sleek young fellow, who
came here with a patent door bell, or
something Of the kind. Fortunately
| I required bond Of him, and when he
went to free Cuba recovered the
s36. 40 that he took with him from the
surety company. That was the near
est that 1 ever came to contributing to
the cause Of Cuba Libre, by the way,
and don't care to repeat the expert
! ence.
Following the patent door bell
man, I tried three or four young fel-
lows who thought they knew how to
brace the backsliders, and found my
self gradually getting further and fur
ther behind. You have no idea OF the
number and variety Of games that the
delinquents are up to, and was
forced to acknowledge, as one after
another went, that my collectors were
UNEQUAL to the task. Even a profes-
sional collector, who runs an agency
and claims to get more blood out OF a
turnip than any other man in the city,
was compelled to acknowledge after
short but heroic struggle, that he
found my crowd about the toughest he
had ever tackled. Somehow or other
he seemed to think that / had had the
i'll luck to get every particularly hard
case in the city on my books, and
frankly advised me to burn my bills
and advertise for new set Of custom
ers. might do better, he said, and |
could not do worse.
"Nel!. things went on in that way
until ten days ago, and I had about
made up mind to present my, custom
ers with clear receipts and go into
bankruptcy; when a red-beaded boy
came into the Office and asked for
lob. He had blue mark around his
left eye, and his nose was fully half
an inch out of plumb, but he had a
straightforward manner that attracted
me to him, and l asked him if he
could collect bills. 1t was easy to see
from the confidence of his reply that
he had never collected bill in his
life, though he claimed to have de-
voted the better part of his life to it.
So to take little of the starch out OF
him | carefully picked out few OF
the worst had -time-worn specimens
that had broken the hearts eft his pre-
decessors- and told him would give
him 10 per cent. for all he could get
out Of them. He had some very good
references, and l wasn't particularly
anxious anyway, as I had no idea he
would ever get his hands on cent.
So I sent him out. \ few minutes
later I had occasion to go up the
street, and at the corner fell in with a
crowd making for storm center on
the next block. Thinking that IL
street car had run over somebody l
fell in with it an fought my way to the
scene of the trouble. Imagine my
surprise when | found, not a mangled
victim OF electricity but my new col
lector demolishing the features OF the
hardest case on my books. His own
features were fairly well disguised
with knucklc marks. but the other
man looked like Whitehead torpedo
had struck him. \ policeman came
up about that time, and | lost another
hour going up to the Station House to
deposit good money for his appearance
before the Recorder next day. When
| asked him to explain he said: The
jay tried to get gay with him about a
bill and he had to call him down.