Thorstein Veblen - Achieving Prosperity - Ultimate Collection

He found a customer; sold a one-dollar greenback for ninety cents; then sold some half-dollar bills for twenty-five cents each; then flung out among the crowd what a fisherman would call ground bait, in the shape of a handful of “currency.”

Everybody scrambled for the money. This liberal trader now drove slowly a little way along, and the crowd pressed after him.

He now began, without any further promises, to sell a lot of bogus lockets at five dollars each, and in a few minutes had disposed of about forty. Having, therefore, about two hundred dollars in his pocket, and trade slackening, he coolly observes, with a terseness and clearness of oratory that would not discredit General Sherman:

“Gentlemen—I have sold you those goods at my price. I am a licensed peddler. If I give you your money back you will think me a lunatic. I wish you all success in your ordinary vocations! Good morning!”

And sure enough, he drove off. That same cunning chap has actually made a small fortune in this way. He really is licensed as a peddler, and though arrested more than once, has consequently not been found legally punishable.

I will specify only one more of my collection, of yet another kind. This is a printed circular appealing to a class of fools, if possible, even shallower, sillier, and more credulous than any I have named yet. It is headed “The Gypsies’ Seven Secret Charms.” These charms consist of a kind of hellbroth or decoction. You are to wet the hands and the forehead with them, and this is to render you able to tell what any person is thinking of; upon taking any one by the hand, you will be able to entirely control the mind and will of such person (it is unnecessary to specify the purpose intended to be believed possible). These charms are also to enable you to buy lucky lottery-tickets, discover things lost or hid, dream correctly of the future, increase the intellectual faculties, secure the affections of the other sex, etc. These precious conceits are set forth in a ridiculous hodgepodge of statements. The “charms,” it says, were used by the “Anted e luvians;” were the secret of the Egyptian enchanters and of Moses, too; of the Pythoness and the heathen conjurors and humbugs generally; and (which will be news to the geographers of to-day) “are used by the Psyli (the swindler mis-spells again) of South America to charm Beasts, Birds, and Serpents.” The way to control the mind, he says, was discovered by a French traveler named Tunear. This Frenchman is perhaps a relative of the equally celebrated Russian traveller, Toofaroff.

But here is the point, after all. You send the money, we will say, for one of these charms—for they are for sale separately. You receive in return a second circular, saying that they work a great deal better all together, and so the man will send you all of them when you send the rest of the money. Send it, if you choose!

Now, how is it possible for people to be living among us here, who are fooled by such wretched balderdash as this? There are such, however, and a great many of them. I do not imagine that there are many of these addlepates among my readers; but there is no harm in giving once more a very plain and easy direction which may possibly save somebody some money and some mortification. Be content with what you can honestly earn. Know whom you deal with. Do not try to get money without giving fair value for it. And pay out no money on strangers’ promises, whether by word of mouth, written letters, advertisements, or printed circulars.

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A CALIFORNIA COAL MINE.—A HARTFORD COAL MINE.—MYSTERIOUS SUBTERRANEAN CANAL ON THE ISTHMUS.

Some twelve years ago or so, in the early days of Californian immigration, a curious little business humbug came off about six miles from Monterey. A United States officer, about the year 1850, was on his way into the interior on a surveying expedition, with a party of men, a portable forge, a load of coal, and sundry other articles. At the place in question, six miles inland, the Lieutenant’s coal wagon “stalled” in a “tulé” swamp. With true military decision the greater part of the coal was thrown out to extricate the team, and not picked up again. The expedition went on and so did time, and the latter, in his progress, had some years afterward dried up the tulé swamp. Some enterprising prospectors, with eyes wide open to the nature of things, now espied one fine morning the lumps of coal, sticking their black noses up out of the mud. It was a clear case—there was a coal mine there! The happy discoverers rushed into town. A company was at once organized under the mining laws of the state of California. The corporators at first kept the whole matter totally secret except from a few particular friends who were as a very great favor allowed to buy stock for cash. A “compromise” was made with the owner of the land, largely to his advantage. When things had thus been set properly at work, specimens of coal were publicly exhibited at Monterey. There was a gigantic excitement; shares went up almost out of sight. Twelve hundred dollars in coin for one share (par $100) was laughed at. About this time a quiet honest Dutchman of the vicinity passing along by the “mine” one evening with his cart, innocently and unconsciously picked up the whole at one single load and carried it home. Prompt was the discovery of the “sell” by the stockholders, and voluble and intense, it is said, their profane expressions of dissatisfaction. But the original discoverers of the mine vigorously protested that they were “sold” themselves, and that it was only a case of common misfortune. It is however reported that a number of persons in Monterey, after the explosion of the speculation, remembered all about the coal-wagon part of the business, which they said, the excitement of the “company” had put entirely out of their heads.

An equally unfounded but not quite so barefaced humbug came off a good many years ago in the good old city of Hartford, in Connecticut, according to the account given me by an old gentleman now deceased, who was one of the parties interested. This was a coal mine in the State House yard. It sounds like talking about getting sunbeams out of cucumbers—but something of the sort certainly took place.

Coal is found among rocks of certain kinds, and not elsewhere. Among strata of granite or basalt for instance, nobody expects to find coal. But along with a certain kind of sandstone it may reasonably be expected. Now the Hartford wiseacres found that tremendously far down under their city, there was a sort of sandstone, and they were sure that it was the sort. So they gathered together some money,—there is a vast deal of that in Hartford, coal or no coal—organized a company, employed a Mining Superintendent, set up a boring apparatus, and down went their hole into the ground—an orifice some four or six inches across. Through the surface stratum of earth it went, and bang it came against the sandstone. They pounded away, with good courage, and got some fifties or hundreds of feet further. Indefinable sensations were aroused in their minds at one time by the coming up among the products of boring, of some chips of wood. Now wood, shortly coal, they thought. They might, I imagine, have brought up some pieces of boiled potato or even of fresh shad, provided it had fallen down first. They dug on until they got tired, and then they stopped. If they had gone down ten thousand feet they would have found no coal. Coal is found in the new red sandstone; but theirs was the old red sandstone, which is a very fine old stone itself, but in which no coal was ever found, except what might have been put there on purpose, or possibly some faint indications. The hole they made, however, as my informant gravely observed, was left sticking in the ground, and if he is right is to this day a sort of appendix or tail to the well north-west corner of the State House Square. So, I suppose, any one who chooses can go and poke down there after it and satisfy himself about the accuracy of this account. Such an inquirer ought to find satisfaction, for “truth lies in the bottom of a well” says the proverb. Yet some ill natured skeptics have construed this to mean that all will tell lies sometimes, for—as they accent it, even “Truth lies , at the bottom of a well!”