A chain of stores in various cities for no other purpose than the
obtaining of goods under false pretenses from wholesale merchants is
the latest novelty in the swindling line. It has often been remarked
that the originators of plans to dupe the public might coin their
brains into cash without nearly the draft upon their originality that
is called for by the devising of a swindling game. But the criminal
instinct or incentive seems to lay its hold upon persons who might
otherwise fill a leading and respected place in honorable avocations.
The men who conceived the system of credit for goods to the value of
many thousands of dollars, which they quickly disposed of in different
cities by auction and attractive sales, closing up their stores and
decamping when they had converted the credited stock into cash, were
swindlers of unusual calibre.
The police of several cities now have the task of unearthing the
frauds and bringing them to justice. They may or may not succeed in
so doing, as the scheme was craftily laid and carried out. A harvest
of $100,000 as the returns for a daring exploitation of the credit
system will be regarded, even by the gilt-edged among the robbing
fraternity, as a fine stroke of craftsmanship. The ingenuity of these
cormorants calls for constant readjustment of honest persons to the
conditions created. The lesson of the so-called bargain-house fraud
will be conned, and for a long time to come it may be practically
impossible for the same scheme to be worked again. But the feature of
such enterprises is that they are designed only for the one operation.
After that they become worthless to their originators.