The Potter Journal

A Swindle.

The number of people who like to be swindled is always large, and the number who like to accommodate them does not seem to be small. It is no matter of surprise when a new method of gulling the unwary is exposed, but the remarkable thing is how often the old tricks are played over again, and with what persistence a system of roguery that has been thoroughly laid open is adhered to, and what success it meets with. Last year, for instance, the certificate jewelry business was so completely unmasked in these columns that the enterprise of its conductors was a good deal discouraged.

But this year we find them again at work under another and more ambitious name. Then it was as the individual firm of Brown, Jones & Robinson they did business. Now, in Boston and Washington, swindling has become a joint stock enterprise, rascality gets itself incorporated, and under the name of the New York Jewelers' Manufacturing Association, volunteers to relieve the public of its superfluous cash.

This concern advertises gold and silver watches, jewelry, silver ware, gold pens, and many other articles of great value, to be sold for $1 each. Not an article in the list is valued at less than $8, yet none is to cost more than a dollar, and there are no blanks in this lottery, but all prizes.

So that it is seen at once to be an enterprise of the purest benevolence. That everybody who wants a gold watch for a dollar may know how to get it, we copy the following extract from the advertisement—without charge, on this occasion:

One million certificates, bearing upon their face the names of the articles as above enumerated, are each inclosed in plain envelopes, and sealed, indistinguishable one from another, mixed and placed in a repository, from which they are drawn as ordered, without choice. The sealed envelopes containing certificates marked with the name of the article, descriptions, and marked price it entitles the holder to, will be sent by mail to any address at 25 cents each; on receipt of the certificates, the purchaser ascertains the exact article he is entitled to, which he can obtain upon the return of the certificate and $1 to the office of the Association.

Not wishing, however, to encourage too sanguine hopes, we copy also our former account of the success of an experiment made last year by an incredulous individual who was so curious as to wish to find out how it was these people made money by selling gold watches for a dollar. He spent a hundred dollars for the 'certificates' above referred to, and found himself the lucky possessor of a lot of paper tickets purporting to represent property to the value of $2,153, and this property he was entitled to receive on the further payment of $158. Not wishing, however, to impoverish these really benevolent Samaritans, and reflecting, perhaps, that he had already spent $100 for which he had as yet received nothing but "certificates," he selected a hundred of those that promised the most valuable articles, and sent them for redemption—paying another $100 for the articles. He received a lot of watches, jewelry, gold pens, &c., of which the nominal value was $599.

Very good investment of $200, was it not? But stop a minute. We said nominal value. As the articles were all gold and silver—at any rate, professed to be—it was easy to ascertain their actual value; so they were sent to the United States Assay Office, melted up, and a certificate of the net proceeds returned.

And how much does the ingenuous reader suppose this $599 of gold and silver proved to be worth? Just nine dollars and sixty two cents ($9.62)? That was what our friend got for the Two Hundred Dollars cash he had invested. And that is about what anybody will get who chooses to invest money in the New York Jewelers' Manufacturing Association.

Our attention is just now drawn to this subject by remarking that the police of Washington interfered last week to stop the operations of the concern, and even showed themselves so hard hearted and insensible to generous impulses as to arrest the principal and assistants on charge of Swindling. "Evidence was produced," says the telegram, "to show that the gift concern partook of the character of a gambling institution. The parties were held to bail before the criminal court." In Boston also, they met with discouragement from the police, so that in two cities at least their facilities for swindling have met with serious check.

The certificate jewelry business is, in fact, under whatever name carried on, nothing but a gigantic fraud, extending far and wide over the country, and causing many innocent but rather green people losses they can ill afford. During the war, the soldiers were cheated enormously by it. Millions of dollars have been paid for utterly worthless stuff. Somehow, the business ought to be stopped.—Tribune.