(362 
PUBLISHER’S DESK 
All letters to Publisher's Desk depart¬ 
ment must be signed with writer’s full 
name and address given. Many inquiries 
are answered by mail instead of printing 
inquiry and answer, hence unsigned let¬ 
ters receive no consideration. 
You surely have a “punch” to your 
methods of helping the distressed. Here 
I have- been trying to get this matter set¬ 
tled for three months, and it took you less 
than three days. The company.dated its 
letter June 1. and I received it the 18th. 
It was postmarked the 17th. Any way. I 
am very thankful to you for helping me 
recover this $150, and I would like to 
show you my appreciation in _a more sub¬ 
stantial way. This makes $270 recovered 
by you for nie in six months. Enclosed 
you will find my dheck for $5. If you can¬ 
not accept it, apply it to a subscription. 
I thank you again and hope you may be 
able to help a great many more like me. 
New Jersey. F. l. h. 
* 
This is a gracious and generous ac¬ 
knowledgment of a willing service. We 
do not always meet with success, but we 
do find that the most reliable houses are 
willing to meet customers more than half 
way in order to have a friendly feeling 
‘and a satisfactory transaction. They find 
that it pays. A house that ignores a cus¬ 
tomer does not deserve his trade or that 
of his friends. 
The following information, shows out 
some frauds I think I took in 1917 : I 
bought two shares of stock (.each $10) 
from the Cleveland Silver Black Fox 
Company, Cleveland. Ohio, of which 
James R. Biggar was president and Ed¬ 
ward B. Scott was secretary. I received 
my certificate. About a year afterwards 
I wrote to the company, as I had not 
heard from them. My letters were re¬ 
turned. I wrote to the company’s brokers 
(Inman, Hurdle & Co., 92(> Guardian 
building. Cleveland. Ohio), and received 
no answer. I wrote to the president, sec¬ 
retary and two or three more. My let 
ters were returned. I never received a 
letter from them after I had got my cer¬ 
tificate. I thought it was time to do 
something, so I put the matter into the 
hands of the chief inspector at Washing¬ 
ton. D. C., as my business was done 
through the mails. He wrote: “The 
facts and evidence disclosed in the investi¬ 
gation did not warrant the issuance of a 
fraud order nor the institution of crimi¬ 
nal proceedings.” They must be frauds 
if they couldn’t write to me explaining 
why they failed or whatever they did. 
Will you let me know what you think 
about them, and what you can do? I 
will send you my certificate and other 
documents if you wish them. E. ir. B. 
Ohio. 
It is one thing to know a swindle has 
been perpetrated and quite another to 
prove i.t It is only when the officials 
have legal evidence of the fraud that they 
are justified in starting an action against 
the parties responsible for the fraud. This 
accounts for the failure of the Govern¬ 
ment officials to take action in th** above 
case. We are unable to help subscribers 
when they get caught in such a trap. We 
endeavor to stake a warning signal where 
the trap is located before the victim gets 
his foot in it when we can. 
We received our checks from John 
Daub’s Sons, Pittsburgh, but they are 
about $4 or $5 short. We are holding 
them until we hear from you. as we won¬ 
dered why he sent them to us if your at¬ 
torney was trying to collect them. They 
claim there were some chickens short, 
and say they might have been stolen. We 
gave them the number of chickens and 
turkeys shipped, and the weight: prices 
are f. o. b. our station, so we are not lia¬ 
ble. C. F. H. 
West Virginia. 
This is in acknowledgement of settle¬ 
ment fur shipment of turkeys in Decem¬ 
ber, 1019. We have been trying to col¬ 
lect for the shipment since last March, 
but we were unable to get any response 
from John Daub’s Sons until now. We 
have advised the shipper to accept the set¬ 
tlement, as it would cost more to collect 
the deduction for short weight than the 
amount involved would warrant. If this 
transaction is a fair sample of the firm’s 
manner of treating shippers, we must cer¬ 
tainly would advise our people to avoid 
the house of John Daub’s Sons when ship¬ 
ping to the Pittsburgh market. The fact 
that the firm has a good financial rating 
doesn’t warrant keeping patrons out of 
the money for more than six mouths, and 
ignoring all letters in the meantime. 
Several weeks ago I received the book 
■'Hindsights, or Looking Backwards at 
Swindles.” which you very kindly sent 
me. If every man had a copy of “Hind* 
7?k RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
August 21, lf)20 
sights” the public would save quite a 
large sum every year. Only very re¬ 
cently suburban lot swindlers operated in 
Philadelphia. Fortunately three of the 
leaders were arrested, but whether the 
public will ever recover their money is 
another thing. 
To thank you for your kindness in send¬ 
ing me the book, to show my appreciation 
and to wish the Rural Publishing Co. the 
best of success I write this letter. 
Philadelphia. G. K. T. 
“Hindsights” was published some years 
ago to give our friends information to 
show the systems usually used by fakers 
and swindlers to allure money from those 
who are unfamiliar with their methods. 
It was widely distributed at the time, but 
the growth and changes of subscribers 
since probably leave’ many of our present 
readers unfamiliar with it. If the meth¬ 
ods under which the rogues work are once 
understood it is easy to detect the decep¬ 
tion in the ordinary scheme. They are 
all based on general principles; and most 
of them depend on lack of information of 
the victims and on the gullibility of those 
who expect to get something for nothing. 
The cupidity of human nature is the big¬ 
gest asset of the swindler. 
Vermillion County Farm Bureau. Dan*- 
ville. Ill., has issued a special bulletin of 
the Farm Bureau "Booster" on the sub¬ 
ject of the Rio Grande Valley. Texas. 
Mr. L. II. Chocklcy of the staff seems to 
have made a thorough investigation of the 
territory and the real estate exploiters of 
this region. The region has some agri¬ 
cultural possibilities, according to Mr. 
Check ley. and he seems perfectly willing 
and anxious to give the section all the 
credit due it: but at the same time de¬ 
nounces the exploiters for the deception 
and fraud practiced on farmers in the 
North, who have no conception of the con¬ 
ditions and the obstacles that they have 
to overcome. The “sucker crop" seems to 
be the one never-failing crop of the so- 
called "magic" valley. This bulletin is 
printed for the guidance of Vermillion 
County. Ill., farmers, but anyone inter¬ 
ested in the region can. we assume, secure 
a copy by writing to the Farm Bureau 
Adviser. Dansville, Ill. 
Can you tell me anything about the 
Syracuse Portrait Co? I am having 
trouble with them about some group pic¬ 
tures they will not return. About a year 
ago two agents came to my home to get 
pictures to enlarge for this firm. I then 
lived at Oswego. X. Y. I hesitated a 
long time before I let them have the pic¬ 
tures. I told them I was going to move 
Nov. 1st. They promised to have the 
pictures delivered by the last of October. 
They never showed up. I never heard 
from them until Dec, 10. I received a 
letter saying they would be at my place 
with the pictures'between Dec. 10 and 22. 
I notified them right away that I had 
moved to another place and asked them to 
send my group pictures here. I did not 
hear from them, so wrote again, and fi¬ 
nally the third time, receiving no reply. 
After a while I wrote to the manager and 
told him I must have the pictures. To 
this he replied they held no picture except 
those that a deposit was made on. They 
did not ask for any money down. The 
enlarged picture was to be $4.98 when 
delivered, and I was not to be obliged *.o 
buy the frame from them, but just to ad¬ 
vertise their work they would do my 
father and mother on one card for $4.98. 
What can you do to help me get those 
pictures back? My father and mother 
are both dead, and that was all the pic¬ 
ture I had of them. The pictures cost me 
$3 and it is impossible to get any more. 
I have tried every way to get my pic¬ 
tures back and now am asking you t<> see 
if you can help me as I have seen how 
you have helped others. mbs. b. m. s. 
New York. 
We have taken the matter of the return 
of the original photos up with Syracuse 
Portrait C’o., which writes us as follows: 
When our deliveryman is not able to 
locate a customer, he destroys the large 
painting, and mails the photo back t*> 
the address given when the order was 
placed, as wo hold no photos here unless 
there is a deposit paid on same. If Mrs. 
B. M. 8. has not received her photo, we 
presume it has gone to the Dead Letter 
office. 
It would therefore seem that unless the 
photographs can be recovered from the 
Dead Letter office they are irretrievably 
lost. This is one of the dangers of deal¬ 
ing with these portrait agents. The work 
is usually unsatisfactory, besides the an¬ 
noyance and imposition of trick agents. 
The doctor’s wife was entreating her 
husband: “George, dear. I do need a 
new. fur coat to go with my new suit this 
coming Winter.” "I can’t promise you 
that for sure.” returned hubby, hesitat¬ 
ingly ; “but I’ll look over the list of my 
patients, and if there is one with an ap¬ 
pendix, I’ll get him.”—New York Globe. 
Spark Plugs and 
Silo-Filling 
W HEN you’ve got your tractor hitched up to the 
silage-cutter, you don’t want any shutdowns 
on account of poor spark plugs. Therefore —use 
Bethlehemsl 
Bethlehem Spark Plugs don’t go dead like ordinary 
tractor plugs. The mica in the Bethlehem de Luxe 
Tractor Plug is wrapped around a center spindle, then 
reinforced in little mica washers, compressed into a 
granite-like whole. Built for hard service. 
The great International Harvester Company, after 
exhaustive tests, has adopted Bethlehem Spark Plugs 
as standard equipment. 
Bethlehem Automobile and Truck Plugs are as depend¬ 
able as the famous Tractor Plugs. Studebaker, Marmon 
and 48 other manufacturers equip with Bethlehem 
Plugs. Write for your free copy of “Hit or Miss?”, which 
tells you what you want to know about spark plugs. 
BETHLEHEM SPARK PLUG CORPORATION 
E. H. Schwab, President 
Bethlehem, Pa. 
“Quality in Feed is Economy in Feeding” 
Send for Eifg Record Sheets and test Ubiko against the 
feed you are nowusin;. The results will surprise you. 
THE UBIKO MILLING COMPANY Dent. R CINCINNATI. OHIO 
•n you write advertisers mention 
The R. N.-Y. and you’ll get a 
See guarantee editorial page. 
