Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1897 — Look Out For Fakes. [ARTICLE]

Look Out For Fakes.

The folly of buying goods of peddlers is fully illustrated in the steel range business mentioned in this paper sometime ago. Last week’s Wabash Tribune gives a list of 130 names of people in this county who have bought ranges of the peddlers who have been operating in this county with Wabash as headquarters and adds that “many more names could be added to the list if space permitted.” These peddlers sold their ranges at $69 and this list of names represents nearly SIO,OOO taken out of the county. This is a big sum of money, but when it is considered that the price paid for the ranges is about twice what they can be bought for at any good hardware store in the county, it assumes the proportions of an outrage, A store in this city is offering a good steel range for $33. It is only very recently that ranges have come into use among the farmers and nine men out of ten do not anything about them or what they are worth. For that reason a slick-tongued peddler can very easily impose upon a customer and get any price he asks. We have no doubt that a large number of the people whose names appear in the list are “too poor” to take their home paper which always exposes frauds of this kind.—Rochester Republican.