In the January, 1906, issue of the _Ladies' Home Journal_ Mark Sullivan
contributes an article on the business of securing from well-known
people testimonials indorsing and praising nostrums. Mr. Sullivan
learned that three men, rivals in trade, make a business of securing
these indorsements. They are known as "testimonlal-brokers."
A representative of a patent medicine who was anxious to exploit his
preparation through the press approached one of these brokers and made
arrangements for the delivery of one hundred signed testimonials from
members of {094}congress, governors and men high in the Army and Navy.
The following is the memorandum of the agreement as drawn up by the
broker:
"Confirming my talk with Mr. ------, I will undertake to obtain
testimonials from senators at $75 each, and from congressmen at $40,
on a prearranged contract.... A contract for not less than $5,000 would
meet my requirements In the testimonial line.... I can put your
matter in good shape shortly after congress meets if we come to an
agreement.... We can't get Roosevelt, but we can get men and women of
national reputation, and we can get their statements in convincing form
and language..."
It was for this reason that years ago Mrs. Pinkham, at Lynn, Mass.,
determined to step in and help her sex. Having had considerable
experience in treating female ills with her Vegetable Compound, she
encouraged the women of America to write to her for advice in regard to
their complaints, and being a woman, it was easy for help ailing sisters
to pour into her ears every detail of their suffering.
No physician in the world has had such a training, or has such an amount
of information at hand to assist in the treatment of all kinds of female
ills.
This, therefore, is the reason why Mrs. Pinkham, in her laboratory at
Lynn, Mass., Is able to do more for the ailing women, of America than
the family physician.' Any woman, therefore, is responsible for her own
suffering who will not take the trouble to write to Mrs. Pinkham for
advice.
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The way in which the testimonial is actually obtained is thus described
by the broker:
"The knowing how to approach each individual is my stock-in-trade. Only
a man of wide acquaintance of men and things could carry it out. Often
I employ women. Women know how to get around public men. For example,
I know that Senator A has a poverty-stricken cousin, who works as a
seamstress. I go to her and offer her twenty-five dollars to get the
senator's signature to a testimonial. But most of it I do through
newspaper correspondents here in Washington. Take the senator from
some southern state. That senator is very dependent on the Washington
correspondent of the leading newspaper in his state. By the dispatches
which that correspondent sends back the senator's career is made or
marred. So I go to that correspondent. I offer him $50 to get the
senator's testimonial. The senator may squirm, but he'll sign all right.
Then there are a number of easy-going congressmen who needn't be seen at
all. I can sign their names to anything, and they'll stand for it. And
there are always a lot of poverty-stricken, broken-down Army veterans
hanging around Washington. For a few dollars they'll go to their old
Army officers on a basis of old acquaintance sake and get testimonials."
It goes without saying that such testimonials are a fraud on the
purchaser of the medicine thus exploited.
"Not one in a thousand of these letters ever reaches the eyes of the
'doctor' to whom they are addressed. There wouldn't be hours enough in
the day to read them even if he had the desire. On the contrary, these
letters from women of a private and delicate nature are opened and read
by young men and girls; they go through not fewer than eight different
hands before they reach a reply; each in turn reads them, and if there
is anything 'spicy' you will see the heads of two or three girls get
together and enjoy (!) the 'spice.' Very often these 'spicy bits' are
taken home and shown to the friends and families of these girls and men!
Time and again have I seen this done; time and again have I been handed
over a letter by one of the young fellows with the remark: 'Read this,
isn't that rich?' only to read of the recital of some trouble into which
a young girl has fallen, or some mother's sacred story of her daughter's
all!
"Then, to cap the climax of iniquity, with some of these houses these
names and addresses are sold at two, three or five cents a name to firms
in other lines of business for the purpose of sending circulars. As
a fact, often the trouble is not taken to copy off the names and
addresses, but the letters themselves, with all their private contents,
are sold!
"This is the true story of the 'sacredly confidential' way in which
these private letters from women are treated!"--Statement of a man who
spent two years in the employ of a large patent medicine concern, as
told in "How the Private Confidences of Women Are Laughed At." Edward
Bok, _Ladies' Home Journal,_ November, 1904.