The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-06-13
BUYS AND SELLS JOB LOTS.
Anything From Cannon to Rubber
Boots Fish for His Net.

bOOte IISh LOT HIS Net.
From the Washington Post.
Jake" Dackert. the man who makes
a business of going about the country
buying and selling any old thing that
comes his wayne is better known as
"Dackert the Dickerer"-was in WASH
lngton while ago to attend a depart
ment sale of condemned typeWriters.
Dackert is an acute business man, who
makes money, and plenty of it, through
his catholicity of taste in buying-and
selling-things Anything which comes
his way for which there seems to him
to be the slightest chance TO get a price
'Dackert the Dicekerer" will buy
for his price. He has bought and sold
job lots of secondhand street sprink-
lers time and again at a profit, and
he has bought and sold more hope
less looking old steamboats, than he
has fingers and toes-and made big
money out of them.
Il made a buy a few years ago that
L thought was going 20 chisel ms" he
said, in relating some of his expert
ences when in Washington. The gov
eminent through the military author
tiles, auctioned off at a Western post
a lot of out of date cannon-brass af-
fairs of the type known as Napoleon
cannon. l didn't have it figured out
how could scare up a war with any
body, but l bought in these cannon
anyhow, at figure at which 1 could
have made good by selling the brass in
case l couldn't get rid of the things
any other way.
We'll 1 sat down and waited for
some of the South and Central Amer
lean republics to get scrapping with
each other, and for their sWarthy
agents to show up in this country for
the purpose of byuing munitions of war,
but it happened that the republics
down there were positively hugging
one another in brotherly amity and
peace, and it began to look a sure
thing that my Napoleon cannon 'ud
have to go to the scrap heap if 1 ex-
pected to get my money back on them.
However in the month of May an
idea with respect to those cannon hit
me, and hired talky young fellow
to carry it out. Sent him through
lot of Middle Western towns and had
him put it to the authorities of these
towns how badly they needed cannon
to be placed in the town public square
or park, for saluting purposes on the
Fourth of July and other patriotic and
ceremonial occasions. 1t went all right
that scheme. My oily young man was
out only six weeks, but he got rid of
every one of those Napoleons, and at
mighty tidy figures at that
What dye think you'd do with a
big circus tent if you had it on your
hands? l was UP against that question
few years ago, and it kept me awake
lot O. nights, not because I'd paid so
much for the tent-for l hadn't-but
because l hate to have any of my buys
lying around loose and not working. l
don't store up anything for any very
silva hlo nnrinH 7 this tent from q
big show that was about to start for
Europe. 1t was patched in quite a few
spots, but it was in good shape. The
only reason the show handed it over
to me for a song or less was that the
outfit had been supplied completely
with new tents before starting for the
other side.
II had the tent and the poles and the
running gear of the thing slowed in
warehouse, and l used to go down
there once in d while and gaze at it
and wonder what in the dickens I'd
ever be able to do with it, since no
circus that l had offered it to-and
that was all of them-wanted it. 1t
was too big for any ordinary camp
meeting, and it could have been cut up
into about 500 gypsy tents.
Just when it began to seem to me
that the only way I'd ever get my
coin back on that tent would be to
send it to a mill to be turned into pa
per. 10, and behold l see an ad in
st. Louis newspaper that makes it all
right The organizers of a big summer
school in Central Missouri were adj
vertising for just as big a second
hand tent as could be purchased for
reasonable figure. 1 got just sixty
times what Id paid for the tent from
hose people, I'm sorry to say that the
second day after it was raised by the
summer school folks one of those
Western tornadoes came along and
ripped it into ribbons
at may be that I've had a lot of
bullheaded luck in this game but it's
a fact that something always turns up
to give a value to some of the most
impossible truck l get hold Of. Six or
seven years ago I bought 5000 and some
odd pairs of mems rubber boots that
had been wet down some, but not at
all damaged, in a fire that ruined the
manufacturing plant. Now, rubber
boots are pretty slow sellers at the
best of times, and by the time you've
got rid of 5000 pairs of rubber boots
you'll be ready to go off on vacation,
especially if they've been made just a
teeny little bit off color by water from
the firemen's hose.
"But l got the things at such scan
dalously small figure that just had
| to buy 'em, willy nilly. Stored 'em in
a warehouse and began to keep up
such a steady thinking as to how I'd
ever get rid of them that 1 didn't hear
my wife half the time when she was
asking me for money 1 circulated
| around among the dealers, and they
gave me the hoarse boot and the happy
| boiler, and told me that they'd have
been selling me gold bricks years be-
| fore if they'd known 1 was such a
come-on.