Chapter 2: Dear Friend: Lurid Tales From Junk Mail America

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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