Some of our citizens are paying a high price for education in art and
book swindles. People, generally, are becoming experts in detecting
small frauds and attacks upon their pocketbooks, and are becoming wise
to pious dodges that run into spiritualism, clairvoyance and fortune
telling, but when a large, smooth scheme is broached, they get caught.
It may be that we have concentrated our minds upon so many trifling
schemes to part us from our money, that we have laid ourselves bare
to big operators in big frauds like that perpetrated upon the Patten
family of Evanston. The clever fakir reached for $40,000 in an "old
book" game and came very near gathering in the pot. He did get $2,600,
which was a very neat job.
It appears that there is a wide-spread system under the operations of
which Chicago book lovers, and others all over the country, have been
bilked out of a sum estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The same system is applied to paintings by the "old masters," for
which some Chicago men have paid fabulous sums, only to find them
imitations. The expert frauds are geniuses in their peculiar calling,
and would deceive the elect if listened to. A bright, smart, well
groomed man with letters of introduction from high quarters, often
forged, perhaps with a title, breaks into society and bides his time
to make a big haul. The vanity and foibles of the high-steppers and
nobility worshipers are pandered to with masterly skill, and then a
mere suggestion of untold values in books or paintings is breathed in
secret. Do the big fish bite? Some of them swallow the bait and it
has to be cut out of them before they will give it up. It is becoming
so easy to gull some people, that the crime should consist in the
betrayal of innocence rather than in the successful fraud. While
guillible people continue to parade their guillibility to the world,
there will always be frauds to take advantage of them. If anybody
doubts the fact that people can be easily defrauded, let him visit any
old book store, antique furniture dealer, oriental rug concern, even
junk shops. He will find an amazing army of faddists, who are willing
to pay any exorbitant price for some cheap fraud because a gentlemanly
man, or an opium-smoking Chinaman, tells him it is the real thing.
When business is dull at the shops, agents visit front doors, back
doors, or invade society with some bogus job of "art" works and
realize enormous sums.