Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1878 — The “Unsuspecting” Farmer. [ARTICLE]

The “Unsuspecting” Farmer.

Every day brings us new developments in the swindle business. The “ tricks ” devised to entrap the unwary farmer are both numerous and ingenious. A correspondent tells us that two “nice-looking ” fellows, in a “ nicelooking carriage,” stopped for dinner at the house of an intelligent farmer of his acquaintance, not long since. They made themselves “ agreeable ” during the dinner hour, and succeeded in convincing “ mine host” that they were men of importance engaged in the laudable work of writing up the agricultural resources of the country for a well known metropolitan paper. After dinner they sat on the front porch and quizzed the farmer as to the resources of the district, average yield of crops, etc., etc. The time for departure arriving; they asked how much the bill was. “ Nothing! ”O, they couldn’t listen to that! They were well paid by the proprietors of the aforesaid journal, and could afford to pay their way. They couldn’t think of “ sponging.” They always “ paid fifty cents apiece for dinner and the same for horse feed, making a dollar and a half; hadn’t anything less than a ten-dollar bill,’, which they tendered to the farmer’ insisting that he must take the dollar and a half out of it and give them the change. This was accordingly done, an appeal to the wife’s butter money being necessary, however, before the change could be made. By this time the horse and carriage were at the front gate, and with many kind expressions on both sides, the two young men drove off, leaviug behind them a character for intelligence and generosity, which, had it extended over a Congressional district, would have been all that was necessary to secure them seats in Congress. A few days later the farmer went to town to pay his June taxes, when he found to his unbounded surprise that the bill was a notorious counterfeit, and that the same ten-dollar bills had been “ shoved off ” on no less than three other men in the county. The farmer returned home a wiser but humbler man, and now no inducements are powerful enough to make him entertain travelers, no matter how “ gentlemanly ” they may appear. —Practical Farmer.

The irregular paper which S. Angier Chace, the Fall River defaulter, negotiated during the last four years, amounted to about $3,000,000, more than $700,000 of which was discounted at New Yoffc, and more than sl,000,000 by one Boston .banking firm. He carried in all, after he got fairly started in his stealing, about $600,000 of this Illegal paper. His notes of five, ten, fifteen and twenty thousand dollars were maturing almost every day in the'year, and to meet the notes that were payable in Boston he would extend his discounts in New York, and vice versa. A politician gave this advice to his son-in-law, who was nominated for office: “Lean a little toward everything, and commit yourself to nothing. Be round, be perfectly round, like a bottle, and just dark enough so that nobody can see what’s in ye.”