A Nation of Petty Gamblers
Read Chapter 1: Scheme to Defraud
Read Chapter 3: Larceny in Laramie
Lotteries had once been “quiet affairs, of no very great general interest.” George Washington ran one, so did Ben Franklin, and even the clergy played them.
But it was no business for amateurs, and in time the operators did the only thing they could—they hired promoters, and asked them to “advertise in the Papers, and have Hand bills struck off, and dispersed thro your neighborhood.” That was a mistake.
The first casualty was the truth. Whereas early lottery handbills specified the precise number of blanks, or losing tickets, the new ones vowed that there were “not two Blanks to a Prize.” And having been invited in, the hard-sell artists took over—by 1820, New York was home to 190 lottery offices, and America was on its way to becoming “a nation of petty gamblers,” as Herbert Ashbury wrote.
Meanwhile, people were moving from the cities, so the hustlers followed, hiring distant postmasters to pass out handbills or tack them on their walls. Allen’s Lucky Office said in one that a $25,000 jackpot had been shared by “a patriotic soldier who had lost a leg in the service of his country.” And how could readers win such a sum? “Orders from the Country, (post paid) promptly attended to,” Allen’s advised.
This system worked for a time. But there was a better way, and the promoters found it when Congress, reacting to the growing moral outcry against lotteries, put an end to this form postal moonlighting.
In February 1837, Mr. A. Paisley, of Gloucester, Mass., received a packet by mail from Sylvester’s Exchange & Commission Office, of New York. It consisted of one large of thin, newsprint-style paper, folded over to make a one-piece circular and envelope, and it was sealed, like other letters of that time, with a red wax wafer.
“I beg leave to submit to your attention to the annexed - Our brilliant Schemes to be drawn in the month of March either of which professes attractions far superior to any Scheme yet laid before you. Early notice is thus given that my most distant correspondents may not be disappointed.”
The handwritten piece went on to describe the lotteries from Southern or border states as “beautiful, grand, splendid and brilliant.” And it included this reassurance: “All communications strictly confidential.”
Behold an early piece of junk mail. Primitive forms of it had been sent by abolitionists and groups like the American Sunday School Union, but lottery agents mailed it in bulk, for the sole purpose of making money. And in this they were first.
It was a risky business, given the backwardness of the post office. For one thing, there was no home delivery. The average person found out that he had gotten mail by reading a newspaper ad headlined “Letters,” and he had to pay to retrieve it, for there was no rule that postage be paid in advance.
Some people couldn’t pay 25 cents for a long-distance letter, and some wouldn’t—even lottery agents warned: "No unpaid letters received in our office.”
Worse, postmasters routinely pilfered mail. “So keen was the scent of the robber, that, like an animated ‘divining rod,’ he could indicate unerringly the existence of gold, or its equivalent beneath the paper surface soil,” wrote a postal agent of one such thief.
But none of this stopped the promoters, who by had by 1850 discovered as other mail fraud artists had, that “the art of lithography can be employed to multiply confidential letters to any extent.” They weighed the risk against the yield, then papered the country with offers, almost all containing an apology:
“Trusting you will not find us intrusive…”
“We crave your indulgence for intruding on your valuable time…”
“We accidentally met with your address…”
Each piece contained detailed instructions on how to order.
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“We will receive Bank Notes on all solvent Banks throughout the United States or the Canadas, at par, in payment for tickets,” wrote Smallwood & Co. in 1854. “In making odd change please use Post Office stamps, they being more convenient than silver. In ordering tickets by the package or otherwise, examine our Bulletin, enclose the money and direct to our Address. Write your name and address in a plain hand.”
Smallwood added that the tickets would be returned in “strong safety envelopes,” and promised that “Correspondents may place the utmost confidence in the regularity and safety of the mails, as very few or no miscarriages of Money happen when properly directed to us.”
And who handled the money when it finally arrived? Men like William France, a “common drunk” who once rigged his own lottery so that he would win the grand prize. And he used the name of a competitor, Murray, Eddy & Co., for one of his own mailings, prompting that firm to complain that it was “being daily robbed by a man who, at the same time, swindles the public and makes the Post Office Department the innocent accomplice of his guilt.”
Not that Murray, Eddy & Co. was any better. Its main offering, the Kentucky Lottery, had been chartered in 1838 to improve the water supply in Frankfurt, Kentucky—a project long since completed. Murray, Eddy put it best: “Associations are constantly formed in the Lottery business, ephemeral in duration and fraudulent in design.”
These con men had no more concern for the public than they did for one another. In 1861, Schoofield & Co., of Baltimore, sent a mailing for the Delaware State Lotteries. The package contained a small brown envelope with Schoolfield’s name and post office box stamped on it—one of the first return envelopes. The note that went with it implied that a prize was a sure thing.
“Dear Sir: From what we can learn of Public Sentiment we are satisfied that there exists a strong feeling against Lotteries in Your State - and desiring to remove all such prejudices by selling a good Prize to some influential person in your locality who will give it publicity, - we take the liberty to enclose you a Scheme of the Consolidated Lottery of Delaware Drawing April 24th - Class 68.”
Another agent said that he was “anxious to sell you a prize and create an excitement in your neighborhood.” And that evolved into this: “We are confident that if a good Prize was sold by us to some person in your neighborhood who would show the money and give it publicity that it would greatly extend our business and add to our reputation as Prize sellers. For this purpose, we have thought proper to tender you the Prize upon condition that you will use your influence among your acquaintances in our favor.”
Not all these letters explicitly stated that the person would win. But they inferred it, and by 1865 the mails were flooded with letters offering prizes to people who would show the money. And they now had the means of delivery. thanks to national events. Abraham Lincoln took office in March 1861 . In May, partly to pay off a political debt, he appointed Montgomery Blair, a border-state moderate and former U.S. attorney, as postmaster general.
Blair was reviled by radical Republicans. But Lincoln wrote of his service as postmaster that “I remember no single complaint against with you in connection therewith.”
His first problem was getting the mail to its destination. The dying words of a wounded Pony Express rider—“Get out of the way—of the—United—States—mail,” in no way implied certainty of delivery.
Mail was carried by train for the first time in 1834, but only for a short distance from a canal boat to a town. In many areas, delivery was only nominally better than it was in Ben Franklin’s time—the main conveyance was the horse. Some places got no mail at all during high water.
Things were worse out West. Mark Twain expected the stage driver taking him to Utah to “unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and leave it to the Indians or whosoever wanted it."
In 1862, thanks to Blair, the post office started operating mail cars on the growing national railroad system. Crews of men, “eyeshaded gnomes in shirt sleeves,” stood on their feet overnight, sorting mail by destination and dropping it into pouches, according to historian J.C. Furnas.
One year later, mailmen started delivering to the door in the 49 largest cities. “Little can I tell how my life has been interwoven with those to whom I have carried mail,” said Morris Church, of Worchester, Mass. when he retired decades later. “Their joys and sorrows have taken a deep hold upon my life.”
And in November 1864, the post office started selling money orders so that families could send money to soldiers without fear of theft. (Registered letters had been around since 1855, but the New York Times had argued that the system facilitated “fraud on the part of Post office officials, by pointing out the letters which contain money.”)
Finally, postage was now affordable. Advanced payment had been mandatory since 1855, but Congress now sweetened it by lowering the rates and dividing mail into three classes: First class (regular letter mail); second class (periodicals); and third class (circulars).
The lottery men noted all this. And by the time Blair, who had offered to resign when it suited the President, was told by Lincoln, “The time has come,” they were taking full advantage of it.
NEXT WEEK: Larceny in Laramie
Copyright 2008 by Ray Schultz
