Most counterfeiters combine practicality with talent by creating wallet-sized artworks both lucrative and portable. This sensible approach did not occur to two salesmen who hoodwinked a Ypsilanti housewife with a cumbersome fraud.
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A few days earlier Mrs. Miner had answered the door to find two well-dressed gentlemen. “They told her they were linoleum experts,” said the Press, “who had just finished laying a “big job” and they had a few pieces left over they would sacrifice. Two of these pieces they took into Mrs. Miner’s home and rolled out carefully on the floor. Perfect looks and a near fit. They quoted $12 on the outfit. Mrs. Miner protested that $12 was too much, and following considerable parleying a compromise at $8.50 was reached. Mrs. Miner paid and the men departed.”
Although linoleum is generally not complicated, “Mrs. Miner learned a lot of things about her linoleum that the salesmen had failed to tell. Principal of these reasons was that the linoleum was just a conglomeration of pretty colors stenciled on tar roofing paper and is worth about $1 to look at and nothing as a floor covering.” One wonders if Mrs. Miner, despite the deception, kept the fake linoleum in her home, to get her $1 worth.
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The excerpt says “A physician’s wife had suffered from headaches for a year and a test showed that the kitchen range was giving out 5.6 cu. Ft. of carbon monoxide per hour from four burners lighted. It was a range in which the grid top had been displaced by a solid top, which resulted in improper manner of supply of secondary air and inadequate provision for the escape of burned gases. When the solid top was removed and the grids put back there was proper aeration and no carbon monoxide was formed.” The ad explains that properly designed smooth-top stoves are safe but that the addition of a top to an open-burner stove was deadly. The ad ends with the phrase “A Word to the Wise is Sufficient,” having just spent 358 words in its warning.
A Daily Ypsilantian-Press story about the peddler concludes, “As one housewife put it: ‘If the women would only buy everything from reliable merchants instead of fooling themselves with the idea that they were saving something by patronizing the outside smooth-tongued artist, they would be better off and also save money.” Perhaps she took this lesson from the previous year’s summer, when Mrs. Miner had the linoleum pulled out from under her.
1 comment :
JUST WONDERED WHAT MRS.MINER'S HOUSE NUMBER MIGHT HAVE BEEN? MY PARENT'S BOUGHT THEIR HOUSE AT 617 & 619 NORTH RIVER STREET BEFORE I WAS BORN. JAN 18,1947. I RECALL WE HAD SOME UGLY FLOORING IN ONE ROOM IT LOOKED LIKE ALL DIFFERENT COLORS SPLATTERED ON A GREY BACKGOUND.
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