The Humbugs of the World, P. T. Barnum [suggested reading .txt] 📗

6. The city politicians, in office and out of it, who were wont to receive the aid of the Funks (a very energetic cohort) at elections, and who in return unscrupulously used both power and influence to keep them from punishment.

All this cunning machinery was brought to naught and New York relieved of a shame and a pest by the courage, energy, perseverance, and good sense of one Yankee officer⁠—Russell Wells, a policeman. Mr. Wells took about six months to finish up his work. He began it of his own accord, finding that the spirit of the police regulations required it; prosecuted the undertaking without fear or favor, finding not very much support from the judicial authorities, and sometimes actual and direct discouragement. His method was to mount guard over one auction shop at a time, and warn all whom he saw going in, and to follow up all complaints to the utmost until that shop was closed, when he laid siege to another. Various offers of money, direct and indirect, were made him. One fellow offered him $500 to walk on the other side of the street. Another offered him $1,000 to drop the undertaking. Another hinted at a regular salary of hush-money, saying “he had now got these fellows where he could make as much out of them as he wanted to, right along.”

Sometimes they threatened him with “murder and sudden death.” Several times they got out an injunction upon him, and several times sued him for slander. One of their complaints charged, with ludicrous hypocrisy, that the defendant, “with malicious intent, stood round the door uttering slanderous charges against the good name, fame, and credit of the defendant,” just as foolish old lawyers used to argue that “the greater the truth the greater the libel.” Sometimes they argued and indignantly denounced. One of them told him, “he was a thief and a murderer, driving men out of employment whose wives and children depended on their business for support.”

Another contended that their business was just as fair as that of the stock-operators in Wall Street. I fear that wasn’t making out much of a case.

But their threats were idle; their suits, and prosecutions, and injunctions, never came to a head; their bribes did not operate. The officer, imperturbably good-natured, but horribly diligent, watched, and warned, and hunted, and complained, and squeezed back their money at the rate of $500 or $1,000 every month, until they were perfectly sickened. One by one they shut up shop. One went to his farm, another to his merchandise, another to emigrant running, another (known by the elegant surname of Blur-eye Thompson) to raising recruits, several into the bounty jumping business.

Such was the life and death of an outrageous humbug and nuisance, whose like was not to be found in any other city on Earth; and would not have been endured in any except this careless, money-getting, misgoverned one of New York.

Lottery sharks⁠—​Boult and his brothers⁠—​Kenneth, Kimball and Company⁠—​A more central location wanted for business⁠—​Two seventeenth lies⁠—​Strange coincidence.

I have before me a mass of letters, printed and lithographed circulars, and the like, which illustrate well two or three of the most foolish and vicious swindles [it is wrong to call them humbugs] now extant. They also prove that there are a good many more fools alive in our Great Republic than some of us would like to admit.

These letters and papers are signed, respectively, by the following names: Alexander Van Dusen; Thomas Boult & Co.; E. F. Mayo; Geo. P. Harper; Browne, Sherman & Co.; Hammett & Co.; Charles A. Herbert; Geo. C. Kenneth; T. Seymour & Co.; C. W. White, Purchasing Agency; C. J. Darlington; B. H. Robb & Co.; James Conway; S. B. Goodrich; Egerton Brothers; C. F. Miner; E. J. Kimball; E. A. Wilson; and J. T. Small.

All these productions, with one or two exceptions, are dated during the last three months of 1864, and January 1865. They are mailed from a good many different places, and addressed to respectable people in all directions.

In particular, should be noticed, however, two lots of them.

The first lot are signed either by Thomas Boult & Co., Hammett & Co., Egerton Brothers, or T. Seymour & Co. When these four documents are placed together, each with its inclosure, a story is told that seems clear enough to explain itself to the greenest fool in the world.

These fellows⁠—Boult and the rest of them, I mean⁠—are lottery sharks. Now, those who buy lottery tickets are very silly and credulous, or very lazy, or both. They want to get money without earning it. This foolish and vicious wish, however, betrays them into the hands of these lottery sharks. I wish that each of these poor foolish, greedy creatures could study on this set of letters awhile. Look at them. You see that the lithographed handwriting in all four is in the same hand. You observe that each of them encloses a printed handbill with “scheme,” all looking as like as so many peas. They refer, you see, to the same “Havana scheme,” the same “Shelby College Lottery,” the same “managers,” and the same place of drawing. Now, see what they say. Each knave tells his fool his only object is to put said fool in possession of a handsome prize, so that fool may run round and show the money, and rope in more fools. What an ingenious way to make the fool think he will return value for the prize! Each knave further says to his fool (I copy the words of the knave from his lithograph letter:) “We are so certain that we know how to select a lucky certificate, that if the one we select for you does not, at the very least, draw a $5,000 prize, we will”⁠—what? Pay the money ourselves? Oh no. Knave does not offer to pay half of it. “Will send you another package