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ters. It is quite possible that if you, any time within the past five years, have written a letter to a quack doctor, your letter is somewhere in that warehouse, and men familiar with the business could find it. Probably your letter has been sold over and over again, and rented and re-rented to every quack who plays on the victims of 3'our particular ailment.
One of the largest of these letter-brokers is the Guild Company of 132 Nassau street, New York. They issue a large circular describing the letters they have for sale. A portion of the list is printed on the next page. The part here produced is only a very small portion, and that the less unprintable part of the circular.
If you have ever been foolish enough to write to any of the quacks and frauds in that list, you may know that your letter is now for sale. You may know that all the things you have said about your health and your
Portion of a circular sent out by one of the concerns to which "patent medicine" men and quack doctors sell the letters they receive from their victims. There are five or six concerns similar to this, acting as clearing-houses, through which pass many millions of letters. |
An advertisement originally printed in the Mail Order Journal offering to rent letters. These letters are the ones which dupes all over the country write to "patent medicine" and quack concerns. When the original quack has squeezed the dupe dry he sells the letters to other quacks. |
person—intimate details to which you carefully conceal from your friends and neighbors—are the property of any person who cares to pay four or five dollars for the letters of yourself and others like you.
One very interesting fraud carried on under the name of the Astropathic Institute by means of this traffic in letters, was unearthed by the Post-office Department recently. The following is quoted from the records of the Law Division of the Department, which drove this fraud out of business:
"The company begins its operation by purchasing large numbers of letters from letter-brokers. The letters purchased by the company refer to the desire of the writer for a treatment for nervous diseases, and have been addressed to some other company dealing in such matters."
The remainder of the explanation of this fraud, as set forth in the PostOffice Department records, is rather technical and legal. But the way it worked was this: You had written a letter, let us say, to Dr. Blosser, or to the Ozomulsion Company, or to Theo. Noel, or to any other of the scores
