The Humbugs of the World

CHAPTER XIX

As long as the people of the United States tipple down rum and other liquors at the rate of a good deal more than one hundred million gallons a year, besides what is imported and what is called imported – as long as they pay for their tippling a good deal more than fifty millions, and probably over a hundred millions of dollars a year – so long it will be a great object to manufacture false liquors, and sell them at the price of true ones. When liquor of good quality costs from four to fifteen dollars a gallon, and an imitation can be had that tastes just as good, and has just as much “jizm” in it, – and probably a good deal more, – for from twenty-five cents to one dollar a gallon, somebody will surely make and sell that imitation.

Adulterating and imitating liquors is a very large business; and I don’t know of anybody who will deny that this particular humbug is very extensively cultivated. There are a great many people, however, who will talk about it as they do in Western towns about fever and ague: “We don’t do anything of the kind here, but those other people over there do!”

There is very little pure liquor, either malt or spirituous, to be obtained in any way. The more you pay for it, as a rule, the more the publican gains, but what you drink is none the purer. Importing don’t help you. Port is – or used to be, for very little is now made, comparatively – imitated in immense quantities at Oporto; and in the log-wood trade, the European wine-makers competed with the dyers. It is a London proverb, that if you want genuine port-wine, you have got to go to Oporto and make your own wine, and then ride on the barrel all the way home. It is perhaps possible to get pure wine in France by buying it at the vineyard; but if any dealer has had it, give up the idea!

As for what is done this side of the water, now for it. I do not rely upon the old work of Mr. “Death-in-the-pot Accum,” printed some thirty years ago, in England. My statements come mostly from a New York book put forth within a few years by a New York man, whose name is now in the Directory, and whose business is said to consist to a great extent in furnishing one kind or another of the queer stuff he talks about, to brewers, or distillers, or wine and brandy merchants.

This gentleman, in a sweet alphabetical miscellany of drugs, herbs, minerals, and groceries commonly used in manufacturing our best Old Bourbon whisky, Swan gin, Madeira wine, pale ale, London brown stout, Heidsieck, Clicquot, Lafitte, and other nice drinks; names the chief of such ingredients as follows:

Aloes, alum, calamus (flag-root) capsicum, cocculus indicus, copperas, coriander-seed, gentian-root, ginger, grains-of-paradise, honey, liquorice, logwood, molasses, onions, opium, orange-peel, quassia, salt, stramonium-seed (deadly nightshade), sugar of lead, sulphite of soda, sulphuric acid, tobacco, turpentine, vitriol, yarrow. I have left strychnine out of the list, as some persons have doubts about this poison ever being used in adulterating liquors. A wholesale liquor-dealer in New York city, however, assures me that more than one-half the so-called whisky is poisoned with it.

Besides these twenty-seven kinds of rum, here come twenty-three more articles, used to put the right color to it when it is made; by making a soup of one or another, and stirring it in at the right time. I alphabet these, too: alkanet-root, annatto, barwood, blackberry, blue-vitriol, brazil-wood, burnt sugar, cochineal, elderberry, garancine (an extract of madder), indigo, Nicaragua-wood, orchil, pokeberry, potash, quercitron, red beet, red cabbage, red carrots, saffron, sanders-wood, turmeric, whortleberry.

In all, in both lists, just fifty. There are more, however. But that’s enough. Now then, my friend, what did you drink this morning? You called it Bourbon, or Cognac, or Old Otard, very likely, but what was it? The “glorious uncertainty” of drinking liquor under these circumstances is enough to make a man’s head swim without his getting drunk at all. There might, perhaps, be found a consolation like that of the Western traveller about the hash. “When I travel in a canal-boat or steam-boat,” quoth this brave and stout-stomached man, “I always eat the hash, because then I know what I’ve got!”

It was a good many years ago that the Parliament of England found it necessary to make a law to prevent sophisticating malt liquors. Here is the list of things they forbid to put into beer: “molasses, honey, liquorice, vitriol, quassia, cocculus indicus, grains-of-paradise, Guinea-pepper, opium.” The penalty was one thousand dollars fine on the brewer, and two thousand five hundred dollars on the druggist who supplied him.

I know of no such law in this country. The theory of our government leaves people to take care of themselves as much as possible. But now let us see what some of these fifty ingredients will do. Beets and carrots, honey and liquorice, orange-peel and molasses, will not do much harm; though I should think tipplers would prefer them as the customer at the eating-house preferred his flies, “on a separate plate.” But the case is different with cocculus indicus, and stramonium, and sulphuric acid, and sugar of lead, and the like. I take the following accounts, so far as they are medical, from a standard work by Dr. Dunglison: – Aloes is a cathartic. Cocculus indicus contains picrotoxin, which is an “acrid narcotic poison;” from five to ten grains will kill a strong dog. The boys often call it “cockle-cinders;” they pound it and mix it in dough, and throw it into the water to catch fish. The poor fish eat it, soon become delirious, whirling and dancing furiously about on the top of the water, and then die. Copperas tends to produce nausea, vomiting, griping, and purging. Grains-of-paradise, a large kind of cardamom, is “strongly heating and carminative” (i. e., anti-flatulent and anti-spasmodic.) Opium is known well enough. Stramonium-seed would seem to have been made on purpose for the liquor business. In moderate doses it is a powerful narcotic, producing vertigo, headache, dimness or perversion of vision (i. e., seeing double) and confusion of thought. (N. B. What else does liquor do?) In larger doses (still like liquor,) you obtain these symptoms aggravated; and then a delirium, sometimes whimsical (snakes in your boots) and sometimes furious, a stupor, convulsions, and death. A fine drink this stramonium? Sugar of lead is what is called a cumulative poison; having the quality of remaining in the system when taken in small quantities, and piling itself up, as it were, until there is enough to accomplish something, when it causes debility, paralysis, and other things. Sulphuric acid is strongly corrosive, – a powerful caustic, attacking the teeth, even when very dilute; eating up flesh and bones alike when strong enough; and, if taken in a large enough dose, an awfully tearing and agonizing fatal poison.

The way to use these delectable nutriments is in part as follows: – Stir a little sulphuric acid into your beer. This will give you a fine “old ale” in about a quarter of a minute. Take a mixture of alum, salt, and copperas, ground fine, and stir into your beer, and this will make it froth handsomely. Cocculus indicus, tobacco-leaves, and stramonium, cooked in the beer, etc., give it force. Potash is sometimes stirred into wine to correct acidity. Sulphite of soda is now very commonly stirred into cider, to keep it from fermenting further. Sugar of lead is stirred into wines to make them clear, and to keep them sweet. And so on, through the whole long list.

It is a curious instance of people’s quiet acknowledgment of their own foolishness, that a popular form of the invitation to take a drink is, “Come and h’ist in some pizen!”

I know of no plan by which anybody can be sure of obtaining pure liquor of any description. Some persons always purchase their wines and liquors while they are under the custom-house lock and consequently before they have reached the hands of the importer. Yet there are scores of men in New York and Philadelphia who have made large fortunes by sending whisky to France, there refining, coloring, flavoring, and doctoring it, then re-shipping it to New York as French brandy, paying the duty, and selling it before it has left the custom-house! There is a locality in France where a certain brand of wine is made. It is adulterated with red-lead, and every year more or less of the inhabitants of that locality are attacked with “lead-colic,” caused by drinking this poisoned wine right at the fountain-head where it is made. There is more bogus champagne drank in any one year, in the city of Paris alone, than there is genuine champagne made in any one year in the world. America ordinarily consumes more so-called champagne annually than is made in the world, and yet nearly all the genuine champagne in the world is taken by the courts of Europe. The genuine Hock wine made at Johannisberg on the Rhine is worth three dollars per bottle by the large quantity, and nearly all of it is shipped to Russia; yet, at any of the hotels in the village of Johannisberg, within half a mile from the wine-presses of the pure article, you can be supplied for a dollar per bottle with what purports to be the genuine Hock wine. Since chemistry has enabled liquor dealers to manufacture any description of wine or liquor for twenty-five cents to a dollar a gallon, there are annually made and sold thousands of gallons of wine and brandy that never smelt a grape.

Suppose a wholesale liquor-merchant imports genuine brandy. He usually “rectifies” and adulterates it by adding eighty-five gallons of pure spirits (refined whisky,) to fifteen gallons of brandy, to give it a flavor; then colors and “doctors” it, and it is ready for sale. Suppose an Albany wholesale-dealer purchases, for pure brandy, ten pipes of this adulterated brandy from a New York importer. The Albany man immediately doubles his stock by adding an equal quantity of pure spirits. There are then seven and a half gallons of brandy in a hundred. A Buffalo liquor-dealer buys from the Albany man, and he in turn adds one-half pure spirits. The Chicago dealer buys from the Buffalo dealer, and as nearly all spirit-dealers keep large quantities of pure spirits on hand, and know how to use it, he again doubles the quantity of his brandy by adding pure spirits; and the Milwaukee liquor-dealer does the same, after purchasing from the Chicago man. So, in the ordinary course of liquor transactions, by the time a hundred gallon pipe of pure brandy reaches Wisconsin, at a cost of five or perhaps ten dollars per gallon, ninety-nine gallons and one pint of it is the identical whisky that was shipped from Wisconsin the same year at fifty cents per gallon. Truly a homœopathic dose of genuine brandy! And even that whisky when it left Wisconsin was only half whisky; for there are men in the whisky-making States who make it a business to take whisky direct from the distillery, add to it an equal quantity of water, and then bring it up to a bead and the power of intoxication, by mixing in a variety of the villainous drugs and deadly poisons enumerated in this chapter. The annual loss of strength, health, and life caused by the adulteration of liquor is truly appalling. Those who have not examined the subject can form no just estimate of the atrocious and extensive effects of this murderous humbug.

CHAPTER XX

Not many years ago, a dignified and reverend man, whose name is well known to me, was walking sedately down Broadway. He was dressed in clerical garb of black garments and white neckcloth. He was a man of great learning, profound thought, long experience, unaffected piety, and pure and high reputation.

All at once, a kind of chattering shout smote him fair in the left ear:

“Narfnarfnarf! Three shall I have? Narfnarfnarfnarfnarf! Going at two and a half! Gone!!”

And the grave divine, pausing, beheld a doorway, over which waved a little red flag. Within, a company of eager bidders thronged around an auctioneer’s stand; and the auctioneer himself, a well-dressed man with a highly respectable look, was just handing over to the delighted purchaser a gold watch.

“It would be cheap at one hundred dollars,” said he, in a despondent tone. “It’s mere robbery to sell it for that price. I’d buy it myself if ’twas legal.”

And while the others, with exclamations of surprise and congratulation, crowded to see this famous purchase, and the buyer exhibited it with a joyful countenance close by the door, the divine, just out of curiosity, stepped in. He owned no watch; he was a country clergyman, and poor in this world’s goods; so poor that, to use a familiar phrase, “if steamboats were selling at a dime a piece, he would hardly be able to buy a gang-plank.” But what if he could, by good luck, buy a good gold watch for two dollars and a half in this wonderful city!

Somehow, that watch was snapped open and closed again right under his ministerial nose about six times. The auctioneer held up another of exactly the same kind, and began to chatter again.

“Now gentlemen, what ‘moffered f’this first-class M. I. Tobias gold English lever watch – full jeweled, compensation-balance, anchor-escapement, hunting case? One, did I hear? Say two cents, wont yer? Two and a half! narfnarfnarfnarfnarf and a half! Two and a half, and three quarters. Thank you, Sir,” to a sailor-like man in the corner.

“Three,” said a tall and well-dressed young gentleman with short hair, near the clergyman, adding, in an undertone, “I can sell it for fifty this afternoon.”

“Three I am offered,” says Mr. Auctioneer, and chattered on as before: “And a half, did you say, Sir? Thank you, Sir. And a halfnarfnarf!”

The reverend divine had said, “And a half.” The Peter Funks had got him! But he didn’t find it out quite yet. The bidding was run up to four dollars; the clergyman took the watch, opened and examined it; was convinced, handed it back, ventured another half, and the watch was knocked down to him. The auctioneer fumbled in some papers, and, in a moment, handed him his bargain neatly done up.

“This way to the clerk’s office if you please, Sir,” he added, with a civil bow. The clergyman passed a little further in; and while the sales proceeded behind him, the clerk made out a bill and proffered it.

“Fifty-four dollars and a half!” read the country divine, astounded. “Four and a half is what I bid!”

“Four and a half!” exclaimed the clerk, with sarcastic indignation; “Four dollars and a half! A pretty story! A minister to have the face to say he could buy an M. I. Tobias gold watch, full jeweled, for four dollars and a half! Ill thank you for the money, Sir. Fifty-four, fifty, if you please.”

The auctioneer, as if interrupted by the loud tones of the indignant clerk, stopped the sale to see what was the matter. On hearing the statement of the two parties, he cast a glance of angry contempt upon the poor clergyman, who, by this time, was uneasy enough at their scowling faces. Then, as if relenting, he said half-sneeringly:

“I don’t think you look very well in this business, Sir. But you are evidently a clergyman, and we wish everybody to have fair treatment in this office. We won’t be imposed upon, Sir, by any man!” (Here his face darkened, and his fists could be seen to clench with much meaning.) “Pay that money, Sir! This establishment is not to be humbugged. But you needn’t be afraid of losing anything. You may let me take the watch and sell it for you again on the spot. Very likely you can get more for it. You can’t lose. The clergyman hesitated. The tall and well-dressed young man with short hair pushed up and said:

“Don’t want it? Put her up again. G – ! I’d like another chance myself!”

A heavily-built fellow with one eye, observed over the auctioneer’s shoulder, with an evil look at the divine, “D – d if I don’t believe that cuss is a gambler, come in here to fool us country-folks. They allus wears white neckcloths. I say, search him and boot him out of the shop!”

“Hold your tongue!” answered the auctioneer, with dignity. “I will see you safe, Sir,” to the clergyman. “But you bid that money, and you must pay it. We can’t do this business on any other principles.”

“You will sell it for me again at once?” asked the poor minister.

“Certainly,” said the mollified auctioneer. And the humbugged divine, with an indistinct sense of something wrong, but not able to tell what, took out forty dollars from his lean wallet and handed it to the clerk.

“It’s all I have to get home with,” he said, simply.

“Never fear, old gentleman,” said the clerk, affably; “You’ll be all right in two minutes.”

The watch was put up again. The clergyman, scarce able to believe his ears, heard it rapidly run up to sixty dollars and knocked down at that price. The cash was handed to the clerk, and another bill made out; ten per cent., deducted, commission on sales. “Usual terms, Sir,” observed the clerk, handing over the notes just received for the watch. And the divine, very thankful to get off for half a dollar, hurried off as fast as he could.

I need not say that his fifty-four dollars was all counterfeit money. When he went next morning, after endeavoring in vain to part with his new funds, to find the place where he had been humbugged, it was close shut, and he could hardly identify even the doorway. He went to the police, and the shrewd captain told him that it was a difficult business; but sent an officer with him to look up the rascals. Officer found one; demanded redress; clergyman did the same. Rascal asked clergyman’s name; got it; told him he could prosecute if he liked. Clergyman looked at officer; officer, with indifference, observed:

“Means to stick your name in the papers.”

Clergyman said he would take further advice; did take it; thought he wouldn’t be shown up as a “greeny” in the police reports; borrowed money enough to get home with, and if he has a gold watch now – which I really hope he has – got it either for its real value, or as a “testimonial.”

There, that (with many variations) is the whole story of Peter Funk. These “mock auctioneers,” sometimes, as in the case I have mentioned, take advantage of the respectability of their victims, sometimes of their haste to leave the city on business. When they could not possibly avoid it, they disgorged their prey. No instance is known to me of any legal penalty being inflicted on them by a magistrate; but they were always, until 1862, treated by police, by magistrate, and by mayor, just as thieves would be who should always be let off on returning their stealings; so that they could not lose by thieving, and might gain.

These rascally mock-auctioneers, thus protected by the authorities, used to fleece the public out of not less than sixty thousand dollars a year. One of them cleared twelve thousand dollars during the year 1861 alone. And this totally shameless and brazen-faced humbug flourished in New York for twenty-five years!

About the first day of June, 1862, the Peter Funks had eleven dens, or traps, in operation in New York; five in Broadway below Fulton street, and the others in Park row, and Courtlandt, Greenwich, and Chatham streets.

The name, Peter Funk, is said to have been that of the founder of their system; but I know nothing more of his career. At this date, in 1862, the system was in a high state of organization and success, and included the following constituents:

1. Eight chief Funks, or capitalists, and managers, whose names are well enough known. I have them on record.

2. About as many more salesmen, who took turns with the chiefs in selling and clerking.

3. Seventy or eighty, rank and file, or ropers-in. These acted the part of buyers, like the purchaser whose delight over his watch helped to deceive the minister and the other bidders on that occasion. These fellows dressed up as countrymen, sailors, and persons of miscellaneous respectability. They bid and talked when that was sufficient, or helped the managers thrash any troublesome person, if necessary. Once in a long time they met their match; as, for instance, when the mate of a ship brought up a squad of his crew, burst into one of their dens, and beat and battered up the whole gang within an inch of their lives. But, in most cases, the reckless infamy of these dregs of city vice gave them an immense advantage over a decent citizen; for they could not be defiled nor made ridiculous, and he could.

4. Two or three traders in cheap jewelry and fancy-goods supplied the Funks with their wares. One of these fellows used to sell them fifty or a hundred dollars’ worth of this trash a day; and he lamented as much over their untimely end as the Ephesian silversmiths did over the loss of their trade in shrines.

5. A lawyer received a regular salary of $1,200 a year to defend all the Funk cases.

6. The city politicians, in office and out of it, who were wont to receive the aid of the Funks (a very energetic cohort) at elections, and who in return unscrupulously used both power and influence to keep them from punishment.

All this cunning machinery was brought to naught and New York relieved of a shame and a pest by the courage, energy, perseverance, and good sense of one Yankee officer – Russell Wells, a policeman. Mr. Wells took about six months to finish up his work. He began it of his own accord, finding that the spirit of the police regulations required it; prosecuted the undertaking without fear or favor, finding not very much support from the judicial authorities, and sometimes actual and direct discouragement. His method was to mount guard over one auction shop at a time, and warn all whom he saw going in, and to follow up all complaints to the utmost until that shop was closed, when he laid siege to another. Various offers of money, direct and indirect, were made him. One fellow offered him $500 to walk on the other side of the street. Another offered him $1,000 to drop the undertaking. Another hinted at a regular salary of hush-money, saying “he had now got these fellows where he could make as much out of them as he wanted to, right along.”

Sometimes they threatened him with “murder and sudden death.” Several times they got out an injunction upon him, and several times sued him for slander. One of their complaints charged, with ludicrous hypocrisy, that the defendant, “with malicious intent, stood round the door uttering slanderous charges against the good name, fame, and credit of the defendant,” just as foolish old lawyers used to argue that “the greater the truth the greater the libel.” Sometimes they argued and indignantly denounced. One of them told him, “he was a thief and a murderer, driving men out of employment whose wives and children depended on their business for support.”

Another contended that their business was just as fair as that of the stock-operators in Wall street. I fear that wasn’t making out much of a case.

But their threats were idle; their suits, and prosecutions, and injunctions, never came to a head; their bribes did not operate. The officer, imperturbably good-natured, but horribly diligent, watched, and warned, and hunted, and complained, and squeezed back their money at the rate of $500 or $1,000 every month, until they were perfectly sickened. One by one they shut up shop. One went to his farm, another to his merchandise, another to emigrant running, another (known by the elegant surname of Blur-eye Thompson) to raising recruits, several into the bounty jumping business.

Such was the life and death of an outrageous humbug and nuisance, whose like was not to be found in any other city on earth; and would not have been endured in any except this careless, money-getting, misgoverned one of New York.

CHAPTER XXI

I have before me a mass of letters, printed and lithographed circulars, and the like, which illustrate well two or three of the most foolish and vicious swindles [it is wrong to call them humbugs] now extant. They also prove that there are a good many more fools alive in our Great Republic than some of us would like to admit.