Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-13
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Customers Should Be Active.

Mir. Editor: Your editorial on pro- | tecting the public from dishonest mer-
 chants, in your issue of this date, IS | the right word, well said. The gov protected the people from the swln- 1 ding lotteries. Later after equal neglect, it forbid swindling in the mat | ter of impure food and railroad rates. i selling goods for thirty to forty times the actual value of the plant food con- | tained in them the states analysed | them and advised the farmers of their | true value. Cities try to protect their 1 citizens and visitors from gamblers | Yet there is great neglect in many | lines of Swindling, as fraudulent min | ing and industrial companies, rubber plantations. real estate, etc. One Of the meanest swindleS is the offering | of work to women at home, merely to | rob them of a dollar or two deposited ] for security or material. I have seen l it stated that computing scales are so adjusted that customers are SWindled
 on nearly every purchase, and that this fact is used as an argument to ! induce the merchant to buy them. The merchant who when detected in giving short weight offers as excuse the fact that paper bags marked five and ten pounds are filled with the various goods when the clerks are not busy with customers without weighing, is liar and fool as well as thief. Paper bags are so marked, but every merchant knows that no two classes of goods weigh the same, and a bag that will hold five pounds of sugar may hold but one pound of crackers or ten pounds of shot. Every family should have scales for weighing their purchases and thus learn what n1er- chants to avoid and patronize.
 One of the biz swindles of the pres ent day is in tte ground feed sold to the farmer for his stock. It is adul- terated with powdered corncobs floor sweepings, buckwheat hulls, and prob ably with the refuse starch from glu- cose factories. Another method is to pounds of corn, while other merchants in the same town sell 112 pounds, thus giving the dishonest merchant bet ter profit, or reputation of selling cheaper than his honest competitor.
 The giving of short weight in coal is so unlikely to be detected, the tempta- tion to make an extra profit proves too great to be resisted by many deal a simple matter to determine the weight of a wagon load or bin of coal, by measure. I have found that a load of anthracite coal of chestnut size at point of delivery weighs a pound per 31 cubic inches. As thrown in bin it would take probably 32 cubic inches to weigh a pound, but it is an easy matter to determine by filling a box holding 50 or 100 pounds, measuring the box and weighing the coal. To get the weight of a load of chestnut coal, multiply length in inches by width, and this product by the depth The writer received a load last fall measuring 10S 1-2x44x13 inches, mak- ing 62,062 cubic inches of coal, and this divided by 31 gives 2,002 pounds, and gave me confidence in my dealer I have not always been so fortunate as in this instance. Dishonest coal deaI- CTS will soon cease to give short weight if customers measure the coal on de- livery.
 E. P. ROBINSON
 PackervilIe, Conn. Jan 10, 1910.