American Fork citizen. [volume] (American Fork, Utah) 1912-1979, 1916-09-30

fraud There was no John Smith J'
Whatever name they used, IN my Of
/ the towns the watches wer. bright
and Kept fair time.
n vas aI q trick TO sell 70 ''a eN.
press agents m hundreds o.. small
towns So watches at $3.50 each 1t
ua. great trick, the success Of
which depended on the skillfu knowl.
edge OF human nature possessed by
my two clever bosses.
Zoo "a roW days after we began send.
iue ont Jne letters the returns came
I'm. Express orders, money orders,
checks and currency. We realized
about So from each watch after de.
Quoting the express and { o. D
charges $50 we kept 1t up until VIC
had marketed thousands Of watches
ia this way.
~ believe those fellows win buy
sun straight remarked one Of my
bosses 10 the other one day They
have fallen for the watches and other
things" For we had sent out other ar
uclo5 OF jcvelry on the same plan and
bad discovered an especial demand fol
rcyo'yors. gums etc.
We moved Hto more commodious
quarters We prepared little an
nouucoment on a single sheet Of pa
per. the size of letter sheet. giving
Illustrations OF the articles for which
we had discovered the demand and
printing the price, tor, her with
stated value greatly In excess Of the
market price 1t was miniature cata
loEuc, a mail order catalogue, because
we sent IT only to the addresses Of
those WHO lived in the small towns
aud in the country.
But we suffered for lack Of names
We must have names. as the express
agents and railroad agents had been
loaded up. They were on TO the
game now So we selected one or two
weekly newspapers which had a cir
culatiou I'm the small towns aud among
the farmers and we inserted an adyyr
tisomout I'm which we announced
fine revolver at q very low rrico
Yet this price gave us more than ona
hundred per cent on the cost TO MS
We selected other newspapers and ad
vertised watches, guns, jewelry etc.
As the names came in we filled the
orders and sent 10 each customer our
little catalogue leanet. The orders
came In by the hundreds. by the thou
sands.
My salary was increased. 1t rose to
SO, to $l2, to $15, to $25 a week.
wore no more secondhand clothing.
/ went to a night school, where
studied hard. learned shorthand
and typewrlting. My value to the
business was increasing all the time.
My bosses made thousands OF dollars.
Our catalogue leanet increUed page
by page as we added various articles
But we did not carry these articles
in stock. Oh. no. We had arrange.
ments with various wholesale houses
to oil our orders when they came in
We never bought a dollars worth OF
goods until we had the money IN
hand, We were doing business on
| other peoples money Can you imag
ire anything so easy and 80 profitable
/ a ,stomer would send MS $40 with
which co. mi an order We would 70
to the whoiosa,, house and pay 81 OF
80 for thc article ud p 10 the Gus
toner and keep Tie difference. which
was our profit or course, there were
Office expenses 20 pay. There were
printing bills and postage bills, but
they were merely incidental to the
great profits which we we're placinp
In the bank
We planned al, sorts Of things. We
discovered that the woman in the
household was the egsy one TO de>'
with, so we played mp to the female
: contingent We appealed to her vanity.
to her love Of home decoration. to
her love Of her children. etc. We
wrote out carefully our catalogue con
tents ana then We worked it over
dozen times TO rot the best talkinc
/ points for the women. We laughed
over IT, We shouted aloud when some
particularly apt phrase or sentence
would be evolved which sounded as
though 1t would hit the spot.
oh, yes, we studied human nature
. We laughed at the poor country mer
/ chants who found their trade Slipping
away from their stores and diverted
. TO us by the clever printed matter
when we sent out There would be