The Honest Listmaker

A.J. Liebling, who wrote for the New Yorker for almost 30 years, was known mostly for his articles on boxing, food, the press and World War II. But buried within his massive body of work are a few paragraphs on the mailing list business.

These appear in “The Honest Rainmaker,” his 1953 book on Col. John R. Stingo. The Colonel, a racing writer and all-around Broadway character, shares his life story with Liebling over bottles of “Gambrinian amber” in a Times Square dive.

One tale concerns his stint early in the last century as credit man at Tex Rickard's Northern gambling house in Goldfield, NV. (This was way before automated scoring systems.)

“Many a man rife with money makes no outward flaunt,” the Colonel says. “His habiliments, even, may be poor. But, Joe, when it comes to rich men, I am equipped with a kind of radar. The houses I worked for collected on ninety-five percent of markers, an unchallenged record.”

These gifts came in handy when he went to work for traveling evangelist Dr. Orlando Edgar Miller in the 1920s. As part of their routine, they asked congregants to include their addresses on the envelopes they dropped into the collection plate (the better to receive literature).

“The Doctor was not interested in the addresses of people with less than a buck,” the Colonel tells Libeling. “Such were requested to drop their coins in the velvet-lined collection box, where they wouldn't jingle. The jingle has a bad effect on suggestible people who might otherwise give folding money.”

Though not trained in lists, the Reverend had figured out how to suppress unwanted names. These were identified when his employees followed up with prospects. “If, as occasionally occurred, they encountered a scoffer who had invested a buck just to see what would happen, the name was scratched from the mailing list,” the Colonel relates.

Dr. Miller also pioneered list exchanges. “When we swapped towns with another big preacher, like Dr. Hall the hundred-dollar-Bible man, we sometimes swapped mailing lists,” the Colonel recalls. “But we would always keep out a few selected prospects, and so, I suspect, would the other prophet.”

The Miller list, a “mighty lever to place in the hands of a stock salesman,” was eventually used to peddle shares in a movie that bombed. Like Max Bialystok in “The Producers,” Dr. Miller drew jail time for the scheme. But he emerged unscathed and went back to his ecclesiastical dodge.

And the Colonel? He lived to be over 90, and was “holding” in his old age (meaning he had money). He outlived Liebling, who died in 1963 at age 59.

The book, along with many other wonderful Liebling writings, is reprinted in part in a collection titled “Just Enough Liebling” (North Point Press, 2004). We can't recommend it enough.