Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1876 — The Begging-Letter Mania. [ARTICLE]

The Begging-Letter Mania.

Whether the begging-letter is an Americanism or not, this deponent saith not, but it Is undoubtedly on the increase. Distinguished strangers are invariably burdened with appeals for money. Dom Pedro found twelve of them awaiting his arrival, and it is reported over sixty others have been suppressed by his private Secretary. The Duke Alexis, when he was in America, was bored by begging letters from all sources, many of them from pretended Russians. But it is the home millionaires who* are the worst bored of all. Somehow it has roused the begging letter-writers into uppsual activity that Commodore Vanderbilt has been sick nigh unto death. The letters asking for help which have been addressed to the Commodore during the last three weeks number several thousand. The number received by such well-known benevolent gentlemen as William E. Dodge, Robert Lenox Kennedy, Ribert Lenox, Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Wood, ,Geo.

8. Coe, John Q. Jones, and others, exceed belief. One of the gentlemen lira) named is In the habit of sending SIOO checks once a year to worthy Protestant ministers throughout the country, and he is almost tamed from this practice by the begging letters received. The most remarkablrlatter-dsy Instance of begging letters lithe number received by Judge Hilton and Mrs. A. T. Stewart., They have allowed the Herald to print some of them, and this is probablv the shortest way to stop the practice. Doubtless some of these letters are from really needy persons, but the mania for writing private appeals is an nnmixed evil.— N. Y. Cor. Chicago Tribunt.