The big camp meetin’s at Ocean Grove and elsewhere remind me that some years ago there was a chap flourishin’ around here by the name of Bacon, a respectable lookin’ old fellow, with a sleek and plausible manner, who used to follow “the camp meetin’ lay.” He was one of those lucky sinners that looked just like a saint, and he knew all the “cant” terms of “piety” by heart, and all the “slang words” used in “religion” as if he was a parson.
It was in his case, like most others, the more religion on his lips the less in his life, and Bacon not only “prayed” but “preyed.”
Once he went up the river to a camp meetin’ and stayed there a week. He not only got “converted” himself but a lot of portable property lyin’ around loose got “converted into his pockets.” He not only experienced a change of heart, but a good many articles in his immediate vicinity experienced a change of location and ownership.
Having “fleeced” the lambs of the flock, he returned to New York, where he lived in clover on the proceeds of the fleece. But one day as he was walkin’ along Fulton street old Bacon was suddenly seized by a muscular chap, a Jersey blacksmith, he turned out to be, who fell upon Bacon, and came near makin’ cold ham out of him. In fact, if the two hadn’t been separated the old rogue wouldn’t have been able to save his bacon at all. The Jersey blacksmith meant to pound the life out of him.
And no wonder. The blacksmith was one of Bacon’s camp meetin’ victims. The old rogue had stolen some things from him direct and had talked him out of other things to the tune of several hundred dollars, and had then given the blacksmiths pretty wife “the kiss of peace,” and parted from the blacksmith himself as “his brother in the Lord.”
The blacksmith had found out his folly too late for anythin’ but revenge. But he had vowed to get that, and he got it. Both men were arrested, but the blacksmith was soon released, while Bacon was held. Then the case got into the newspapers and other men whom Bacon had swindled complained against him, and he was railroaded to Sing Sing.
Some of the sharpers of New York can imitate foreigners as well as any dialect actors in the world. One chap called “Snug” among the flash gentry, though he is known also as Jim Winters or Tom Trap, can do the German emigrant as well as Oofty Gooft, and he often “does” the German emigrant, too. Years ago he tried several times the “jewelry trick” combined with the “German racket,” and carried it through splendidly.
Winters dressed himself up as a German of the better class of immigrants, in a neat woolen blouse with a blonde wig, while his accomplice or pal dressed himself as a well to do American artisan. They started off together and then separated, each to perform his part of the “lay” or “racket,” which was all cut and dried between ‘em and had been as carefully rehearsed beforehand as if they were goin’ to try it at a theatre.
The accomplice strolled along the Bowery till he came to a beer saloon near Canal street, kept by a German. The accomplice stepped in here and got talkin’ to the proprietor and his wife, whom he delighted by showin’ ‘em he knew German as well as by drinkin’ and treatin’ ‘em to beer. The German beer seller and the stranger got to be quite friendly, and in the course of the conversation the stranger let it fall from him that he was a jeweler and a cast-iron, infallible judge of diamonds and gold and silver.
All this took some time, but skillful rogues are never in a hurry any more than truly skillful men in any other line of business, and it was not until the most sociable terms had been established between the beer seller and the accomplice, that the principal, Jim Winters made his entry as a German emigrant.
Winters rushed in the saloon and in German wanted to know where Herr Somebody or other lived. Of course, that Herr Somebody or other didn’t live there, and the beer seller told him so.
Still the German emigrant persisted that this “Herr” (who was a him and his uncle, he said) lived near here somewhere. He had been shown here as the place, and come what would he must find this uncle of his before three o’clock (it was now after one), as he wouldn’t be able to get his valuable trunks out of the Custom House, where they had been just taken from the steamer that day.
When the beer seller at last convinced the emigrant that there was no chance of findin’ his uncle thereabouts, the poor fellow seemed desperate. He even, in his desperation, asked the beer seller and his companion, forgettin’ that they were utter strangers to him, if they wouldn’t assist him gettin’ his trunks out of the hands of Uncle Sam.
The beer seller only laughed at the young German’s unconscious impudence, but the jeweler got mad at him. “Go to the devil with your uncle and your baggage,” he said in German, “but take this quarter to buy some beer with,” he added, handing the emigrant a quarter.
The emigrant, with an attitude of indignation that would have “brought down” the old Bowery, flung away the hand extended with the money. “Gott in himmel, I am no beggar,” he exclaimed. “Why dis watch of mine,” pulling out a magnificent lookin’ watch, “is worth several hundred dollars,” he said.
“Well, it is a good ‘un,” said the jeweler, examinin’ it. “It is one of those rare old European watches which we so seldom see in this country. It is an heirloom, I suppose.”
So it turned out to be, accordin’ to the emigrant’s account, he havin’ received it from his father, who in his turn had received it from his father. The emigrant prized it highly, of course; but if just now he could borrow some money on it to pay the duties on his trunks he would be willin’ to pawn or loan the watch as security for the repayment of the money with big interest.
The jeweler’s eye began to twinkle now–to fairly sparkle with delight. “Don’t lend on the watch,” he said to the beer seller ,takin’ him aside confidentially. “But offer to buy it from him outright for say $75. It is worth $200 cash down at the very least. You can get that for it at any of the big jeweler’s. The gold in it is worth the money. Never saw such a watch in this country. Mind, I shall expect you to give me $25 for givin’ you this chance to make it least $100.”
The beer seller took in the situation and his chances at a glance. He promised the cunning jeweler the $25, and then offered to buy the watch of the emigrant for $75.
But the Immigrant strikin’ another first class attitude, refused positively to sell “his fadder’s watch.” He would borrow on it for a while, but sell it never.
“Lend him the $75 on it, then,” said the jeweler to the beer seller in another confidential aside, “only make him promise to pay you $100. This will give you a clear profit of $25 if he redeems the watch, or if he ever finds his way back to your place, which I don’t believe he will ever be able to. Anyway, make sure of the watch first.”
The beer seller “made sure of the watch” by payin’ out $75 for it to the emigrant who took for the watch the security of a piece of paper with the beer seller’s name–a name feigned for that occasion, at the suggestion of the jeweler.
Then leavin’ his magnificent “fadder’s watch” behind him (which the beer seller discovered a few hours afterwards to be an ororide worth about $6) the German emigrant hastened to redeem his trunks, or rather Snug, alias Tom Trap, alias Jim Winters, hastened to a “hotel” in Prince street, where he waited the coming of his “pal,” the lifelong jeweler, the two havin’ made just $69 in less than sixty-nine minutes off “the German racket.”
But years and years ago, before Winters and the German racket were ever heard of, there was a “racket,” or a “lay,” or a scheme worked up by a few unprincipled men who “roped in” a lot of enthusiasts, which scheme or “lay” or “racket” made thousands upon thousands of dollars for the men who started it, while all the rest in the scheme lost of course. For it always happens that for one to make in a scheme of this sort at least a hundred must lose. The scheme I speak of now was a vegetable and an agricultural one, though its chief hold was among city people. It got to be known in time as “the mulberry mania,” because it was really a mania about mulberry trees and the uses they could be put to.
Some sharpers, or sharp men, started the idea that silk could be produced in America just as well as anywhere else by developing the mulberry trees, the leaves of which could nourish the silkworm and be transformed into silk.
Accordin’ to this scheme the more mulberry leaves the more silk. So that all a man had to do was to own enough mulberry trees to own all the silk he wanted, silk which was always worth its price in gold. In short, mulberry leaves were equal to gold, and all a man had to do to become a millionaire was to plant a garden full of mulberry trees.
This sounded pretty well and didn’t seem foolish either. The sharp people at the head of the scheme got the newspapers interested in it and they published editorials and special articles on the cultivation of the mulberry, the morus multicaulis, as they called it; for the first thing a first-class sharper always does is to lug in science and big words if he can. They make a scheme sound so respectable.
Then the sharp people workin’ the mulberry racket set the arithmetic men to work, and these fellows proved by figures that cannot lie that the profits from plantin’ mulberry trees were simply enormous. A very little money invested in a very few years would make a man very rich, or a woman either.
The females took to this mulberry racket very kindly. Every woman prefers a silk dress to a cotton one, and if she could get silk out of mulberry leaves, why, then, in heaven’s name, she was for the mulberry leaves every time. In fact, a number of women talked their husbands into investin’ in mulberries.
Then they got Grant Thorburn, the florist, interested in this mulberry excitement. Grant went into mulberries with his whole soul and planted a place in Long Island full of ‘em. He talked mulberry mornin’, noon and night; stayed awake all night sometimes talkin’ it, and at one time regarded himself, proved himself to be, the richest man in the United States.
From New York the mulberry fever spread all over the country. Philadelphia got it bad. Old Doctor Gebhard, a leadin’ physician and scientific man, made a mulberry fool of himself, and almost relinquished his practice to plant mulberry trees. Captain Whilldin, who commanded a crack steamer, talked mulberry durin’ his whole voyage and got his passengers as mad as himself. For a while it looked as if the Western world would turn into one wild mulberry.
But it didn’t. The men who had started the mulberry racket saw that it had gone far enough. They quietly sold out, and when the crash came they hadn’t a mulberry, but plenty of bankable funds instead.
The time soon came when people hated the very name of mulberry, when to be pointed out as havin’ been “a mulberry man” was about the same as bein’ exhibited as a condemned fool.
Altogether it was a queer madness, one of the notable insanities which proved that there were as many fools in Gotham thirty years ago as there are at this hour.
[Editor’s notes: The first two anecdotes–about the camp meeting pickpocket and the watch fraudsters–are generic. The names of the crooks (Bacon, Jim Winters, Tom Trap) can not be identified with specific individuals.
The Mulberry craze was very real. See: https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/connecticuts-great-mulberry-mania-1830s/ or https://modernfarmer.com/2014/02/illustrated-account-1830s-mulberry-craze/ ]
