Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — TRICKS OF TRADE. [ARTICLE]

TRICKS OF TRADE.

What Becomes of Furniture Sold at Auction. There are many tricks in the auction business, the .same as there are in every other trade. A woman has household goods which she wishes to sell, and, being ignorant of the ways of doing business, decides to call some one in the second hand furniture trade, who wishes her to hold a 1 ‘sale” at the house. The fact is duly advertised, the red flag is swung from the porch, the neighbors call and walk curiously through the rooms, eyeing, spying and whispering. Their gossip concerns the sadness of the thing, the shoddy furniture, the nice things, how bad it is, how glad they are, how sorry they are, until the whole range of human love and hate has been manifested at this, the breaking up of another household and the exposure of the family idols. The poor woman is there herselL telling how much she had paid for this or for that, and what a shame it is to sell these nice things at such a great loss. The auctioneer cuts short further moralizing by rapping with his hammer in the parlor and announcing that the sale has begun. When it is ended the woman finds that articles of household virtu which cost not less than $1,500 have brought her less than $l5O. Who bought the goods? In her excitement, in her commotion at the sight of her disrupted home, in the midst of the wild alarms of the auctioneer, the pressure of the people and the presence of strange faces, she did not observe, and she may not know until she reads this article, that nearly all her property was bought by a dealer, the friend and confidant of the selling agent; in fact, by the auctioneer’s own silent partner, to whom, at the very lowest rates, a rascally auctioneer “knocked down” the goods. Maybe, walking along one of the avenues some weeks later, she will see the furniture she formerly owned displayed in the identical second-hand shop from which the auctioneer came and directed her “sale.”