Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1869 — LOCAL MATTERS. [ARTICLE]

LOCAL MATTERS.

Thursday, January 21, 1809. l®"“An itinerant anotioneer of cheap goods’ has been holding forth in Mr. Goalding’s building for a day or two. Our advice is to give all such institutions a severe letting alone. Patronize your home institutions. They will give you better bargains than you can obtain of these migratory swindlers.” —Crown Point Remitter. Good, sound, wholesome ndvicc, and just such us the people of Rensselaer should lieed. Every winter some one of these swindling institp- ' tions is sent hero to gull the unsophisticated with the refuse and remhants of city stores making room for their spring stock. With a great flourish of posters, gabble of tongues hud ringing of bells, the brazen-faced gentry make their advent, not to benefit you, not to sell cheaply, not to give “value received,” but to benefit themselves at your expense, to sell at the largest margin, and to carry off—-out of the county—all they oan lay their grasping fingers on. They say soft things to the women, and sharp|things to the men; they bow, and scrape, and flatter; they pocket your money and—laugh at your greenness and backwoods gullability. We have seen two rival bidders run up the price of an article at one of these sales one hundred and even two hundred per cent above the cost of first-class goods retailed at the stores in the town. Of course the man of tiie hammer was all smiles and.jokes; he bad a soft thing; lie got an exhorbitant price for bis wares, and you stood the expense of the treat. Not unfrequentiy is it the case that persons having unpaid accounts with one of our home merchants, of six months’ or a years’ standing, will patronize one of these Arabs of trade, thus wronging the neighbor and friend who is ready and milling to accommodate, and compelling hint to wait months and months for that which justiy belongs to hitu, and many tfines forcing him to pay ruinous interest upon loans, made necessary by this very delay, to keep his business from failing, while the mountebank interloper, a carpetbagger, a cheat—who takes the “ready joliu” or don’t trade—gets the money ami you —get swindled. That's what’s the matter; and there's w here the laugh comes in.