Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1902 — The Steel Range Graft. [ARTICLE]

The Steel Range Graft.

Chunibusco Truth. From a number of onr exchanges we learn that the country in a number of oounties is being overrun with men and teams selling steel ranges to the formers. At LaPorte a shipment of 300 ranges was unloaded last week and ten men with teams were going over the country selling them at from 975 to |7B apiece. The LaPorte Bulletin deolares that the same ranges can be bought right in the city from local dealers at from S4O to |SO and yet the formers keep on baying from these foreign sharks. The Troth has but little sympathy for a farmer who gets skinned by a shark nor for the home dealer who loses the trade. The former deserves no sympathy for the reason that he refuses to take his home paper and keep posted as to the kind of goods and at prioes his home merchants carry. And the dealer who won’t advertise his goods need not expect to compete with department stores and traveling fakirs. Dry goods houses, hardware firms and in fact all olaaaes of business that are well advertised have not much trouble in holding their trade and farmers who take the home papers as a rale don’t get skinned out of their eye teeth. We knew a farmer once, by the name of David Bowser, who, when asked by the editor to subscribe for the paper, declared that he was too poor to afford it, bat in less than a week he went up against a Bohemian oats scheme that oost him |3OO, and by the time he had fought it and got beat he had expended S6OO.