Pine Bluff daily graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1893-1942, 1914-01-29
TRAINED MONKEYS
GREATEST JOKE
ALLEGED AUTHOR OF WIDELY
CIRCULATED HOAX PASSES
AWAY IN ARKANSAS.
Trained Monkeys Were Supposed to
be Employed in Picking Cotton
In Louisiana.

\ the Qeatn III KELVIN, Ark, or Joseph
Mulhatton, travelling salesman,
noted in his day for conceiving
hoaxes. He at one time claimed
credit for having invented the train
ed monkey hoax, in which a Louisiana
cotton grower was supposed to have
imported seven monekeys to displace
negroes &C cotton gatherers. This is
interesting; it would have been doub-
" interesting were it certainly true,
but there are doubts. Ordinarily it is
unkind to dispute the word of man
that is dead, but justice to an un-
named Munchausen of the Pacific
Coast, and to another down in Geor-
,gia prompts denial of this report.
OF course, history offers instances of
great minds having flowed along thu
/ same channels, ,butvit may have been
that Mr.. Mulhatton, in his zeal, told
and retold the monkey story until
7 even as did the man with the myth
ical bear--he believed that he himself
had originated it.
The trained monkey hoax is one
of the most readable ever sent out on
I an interminable journey through the
American newspapers. The Califor-
MIA version was first printed, with
photographs, in. the Herald, an after
non paper in San Jose, Cal. 1t seems
that prune grower in Santa Clara
County had had difficulty in getting
his prunes picked. Prunes, you know
are not plucked from the trees. They
are allowed to ripen and drop and
then are gathered from the rough,
broken ground underneath the trees
This work is tiresome. Japanese are
about the only persons able to stand
the wearing on the knees that results
from schambling about the orchard
This grower, in common with other
growers, disliked japanese sometimes
but he could get no other satisfactory
help.
Then came the monkey idea
{ Wheather it originated with the
grower or with. some obscure reporter
may never be told. The obliging or
chardist "gave out" an interview ex-
planning his plan to train monkeys
to pick prunes. He had facts and fig
IN do
STABILITY. No trace controversies, nc
gnarled and calloused knees-just
profits and monkeys. He said that he
has ordered 500 monkeys from Pana-
ma and that he would send them out
In gangs of 10. each gang under a
keeper. To supply an obvious and
\ embarrassing deficiency as to proof, 6
passing circus was visited and few
monkeys sent "aloft" into a prune
tree and there photographed.
The STORY earned some much
needed money for the reporter. ant
then it began its journey through thu
exchanges. A Georgia man read i
and wrote to one Eastern paper tina
8 the same idea-the trained monke,
4 scheme-had been tried in Georges
before the Civil War. A cotton plan
ter had it all worked out on pape1
! and could prove to the most skeptica
that 10 monkeys could do the work o
one negro. The Georgia story re
4 lates that the planter actually di'
got some monkeys to work, but tina
instead of 10 monkeys doing as mucl
Il work as one man. 1t required 10 mel
4 70 watch one monkey, and then tn
monkey did no work.
81 this hoax has lived. Many PEG
e III have asserted priority rights. bu
rho Gan tell exactly where and hoy
n 0ri6 inated? 1t is just one of thos
81 px1es which are told and retold s.
int the tellers themselves be
IS fhe Indianapolis News.