The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-05-16
Schemes Uncle Sam Has to
 Guard Against
MAILS USED BY LOTTERIES
Endless Chain, Absent Treatment and Dozens of Other Schemes Have at Times Used Malls
 to Defraud.
BY FREDERIC j. HAskIN.

likes to be humbuged. Early confidence games began in America when the first traders gave handful of glass beads to the Indians in,exchange for valuable furs. The Indians seem to have liked it. The ordinary methods of sending information about his schemes from place to place by word of mouth, or by a demonstrator, soon grew too slow for the American con- fidence man, and long before the seventies he was working the mails for all they were worth in pushing his ideas. There was no law against 1t, because such a contingency had not been foreseen, and soon there appeared in papers and in cir culars sent through the mails most as- founding offers by which the ambitious might amass fortune by the expenditure of only few cents.
 Lotteries made use of the malls for sending out their circulars and for gather ing in the coin that spendthrift souls sent their way. Wonderful offers to heal far-away patients by means of mag netsm hypnotism, mind control or by 1 simple medicines hitherto unknown crowded the mail bags, and called for an increase in the postoffice force. Astrolo- gers and phrenologists solicited patronage in printed letters that were rich in mystl- cal lore and overflowing with queer rhe- | torical combinations. Bond Investments | banking schemes, turf enterprises, mnes great tropical plantations, and dozens of get-rich-quick schemes found voice in circulars cards and letters The unso- phstiaated country woman was told in a surprisingly friendly letter how she could find a most remuneratve life at hone by doing sewing or .embroidering or | soliciting, and her equally unsophsticated husband became Initiated in blind pool schemes for speculating in stocks.
 Then the government awoke to the re- alizatlon that the people were being swindlcd, that It's own postal service was the quickest means of doing the swindlng, and that 1t was being used for all that 1t | was worth. In s72 things had grown so noticeable in the mail swindling line that the attention of Congress was drawn l 10 it and a law was enacted making it punishable by fine to mail through any l postoftice letters or circulars concerning Illegal lotteries" or schemes devised to deceive and defraud the public. In
 the illegal was stricken from the law and all lotteries came under the ban, An older law, dating back to 1868 had also prohibited the sending of lottery stuff by
 
 looked the attaching of any kind of pen 1 atty to it; so it was necessarily of little | use,
 In lseo the law was made to apply not l only to lotteries as they are generally known but to all so-called gift concerns and similar enterprises offering prizes de- pendent upon lot or chance" Year by year the law has frightened It's grip on 1 the mails and any scheme that savers of l fraud is promptly brought under the notice of the postoffice authorities and 1 sifted down to tho bottom. All offers of 1 work or of commodities or of prizes for l guessing contests are given the respectful l and careful attention of the postal author ities, and if there is any suspicious air l about it the promoter of the scheme is | promptly brought before the bar of jus l tice and given an opportunity to prove the l truth of his offers. From the passage of the act of 8eo to the end of the last fiscal year 24o9 fraud orders" were is- 1 sued by the postoffice department, and if the persons against whom they were l issued did not comply at once with the l law, suits, fines and other unpleasant things followed.
 The average swindler who uses mails | is a willy fellow. He has learned the art of wording his offers so they attract the remote and indifferent educated, and so 1 plausible do his statements sound that 1 he finds easy and2 ready victims. One | Is frankly amazed at the credullty of the l human race. A typewriter company of New York induced persons to send $2.5O as a guaranty of good faith in "copy ing at home" scheme in which the pur- chaser was to have typewriter and 500 sheets of paper and copy letters at $2 50 a thousand. The typewriter proved to be a toy affair that was useless for the work. The purchaser was out $2 and the firm in that much.
 One clever New York firm bought up a lot of letters from an agency to get ad- 1 dresses, then wrote each person that he or she had won a prize which would be sent on receipt of $1.37 to "cover cost of 1 boxing and packing charges. Each de- l lighte1 person invariably sent the amount and received a piece of cheap jewelry worth a few cents. A blueing company offered "new automatic tension sewing machine" to persons selling thirty pack ages of wash blue at 10 cents apiece. | 1ne machine proved to be a toy affair, l and tho letter in answer to a woman's threat to sue is hled away as a mark l of genuine cleverness on the part of the | artful dodger who originated the scheme. l Rogue detective agencies were thick in l the land for awhile. For a certain sum of money they would send star, certih- cate of membership, credentials. etc., to | the purchaser ana not until the aston ished victim had been hauled up before unfeeling magistrates for carrying a gun or for impersonating an officer, did the luckless fellow realize that he had been | the victim of a scoundrel.
 l The south was wrought up considerably | a few years since over the operations of "'rhe National Industry Council" which extor.ed money from the negroes under the pretense of helping them get pension money. By request of the organization a bill was introduced into congress pro- viding pensions for ex-saves. This was used as a means of swindling the trust ing negro out of his hard earnings. It was declared that $100, 100000 was to be sent at once into the southern states, | anu under one pretext or another money was obtained from those who were ex- pectnS a share of the pension. This and several like organizations were suppress ed by fraud orders. Another set of en- | terprising folks who found the negro an easy prey followed on the heels of these. A Chillicothe (Ohio) firm advertised a fund that would turn the blackest skins white, and others offered liquids that would make kinky hair straight. Many of these were injurious preparations and fraud orders have put most of the firms out of business.
 A Dallas firm found a ready market for mineral rods,'' which were supposed | Si1x ho