Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1915 — PRACTICAL JOKES ON PUBLIC. [ARTICLE]

PRACTICAL JOKES ON PUBLIC.

Some of the Clever ami the Ridiculous Hoaxes Americans Have Fallen For. About a year ago there died in Kelvin, Ark., a traveling salesman, Joseph Mulhattan, who conceived a hoax and fooled many editors, aroused the negroes of the north and south and amused the nation. Mulliattan originated the story that monkeys were to supplant the negro cotton pickers.

Mulhattan told the story so often that his earnestness made some newspaper men who printed the story think that it was possible, 110 figured it out on paper as a paying investiment. The monkeys, of course, would receive no wages, so that on the face of it much would be saved in the cost of picking the crop. Then, tco, the monkeys would increase rapidly. For a time the story that monkeys would supplant negroes in picking cotton was believed, particularly as tho experiment “was being tried on a Lousiana plantation.” The address of the plantation, however, was so vague no one was able to locate it.

Barnum loved to fool the people. A rival showman obtained a white elephant. Barnum by telegraph tried to obtain it and offered a huge sum. The owner of the real white elephant used Barnum’s telegram as a newspaper advertisement and poster, which made Barnum the more eager to 'get the animal. Falling in getting tlie white elephant, he cabled all over the world to get one. Then he resorted to subterfuge. He bleached an ordinary elephant, and did it so well that ho not only fooled the people who came to s-o it, but also a learned body of scientists, who gave him a testimonial to the effect that it was a genuine albino elephant.

Another Barn uni hoax was the giant of Cardiff, which was really a hoax of a hoax. Barnum failed in getting the real giant of Cardiff, but that did not deter him from showing the “original’’ Cardiff. George Hull, of Binghamton, X. Y., and Rev. Mr. Turk, of Ackley, Ohio, got into a dispute about giants - Probably it came about through discussion of a giant that Hull had in front of his tobacco shop. It may have come through an interpretation of the text; “And there were giants in those days ’’ So one is alive'who recollects the original dispute, so that one story is as good as another as to how the hoax began. Hull spent two years in the study of fossil remains and archaeology. Finally he got a slab of stone 12 feet long, 4 feet broad, 22 Inches thick, and had it carved according to specifications.

Mr. Hull very cleverly had the giant carved so that there might be a question, or a difference of opinion, as to whether it was a fossil or a prehistoric sculpture. The “giant” was rubbed, scrubbed, bathed, washed and pricked with: pores, an acid was used that would take off the look of Chicago and modernity. Finally it was shipped, buried on a farm of a relative of Hull and “discovered’’ by men digging a well. The digging or a well was plausible enough. Delegations came from all over the country, including both learned men and curiosity seekers. So great was the procession that it became quite profitable, and finally it attracted Barnum’s attention. He had failed to get the Cardiff giant, but it (lid not take him two years to have a replica of it in his museum. Newspapers have not been above hoaxing the public. One. newspaper in New York believed the old menagerie cages In Central Park were not sufficiently strong. It conceived a tale of the lions, tigers, leopards and other animals breaking out and killing and injuring people, and printed pages about it.

No story of hoaxes is complete unless New York’s well-known joker is mentioned. He is Brian G. Hughes, and he has perpetrated more than a dozen jokes that have made the metropolis chuckle. To perpetrate these hoaxes has, cost him much money; but in all of his tricks no one ever lias suffered particularly.

Probably his best known exploit, because it was so successful, was tho career of his tom cat Xicodemus, a tenement house cat he purchased, lor ton cents, and which he advertised as the $2,000 cat, “not for sale.” In its class, Nicodt mus carried off first prize at the show in Madison Square Garden.

When Hughes decided to enter his cat, which he termed his “Dublin brindle cat, Nicodemns,” which he “valued at $2,000,” he inquired “If there would tie any objection, because of its value, to having it cared for during the show, b/ its regular attendant.” There wan no objection, and when the show opened a negro, I robably Sam Smith, who had taken i art in a number of his hoaxes, appeared in a gorgeous livery. During tbe time tlira lute was a c rowd in. front of Xic odoiiiv'v Smith looke l »-ot carefully for the smallest coml rt pf the animal. Yew York Press' Subscribe tor The Democrat.