Part 20

eeting in May, voted to withdraw all their advertising from all the papers in that state. This loss of revenue, they argued self-righteously, would be a warning to the newspapers of other states. Likewise it would be a lesson to the newspapers of North Dakota. At the next session of the legislature they will seek to have the label bill repealed, and they count on the newspapers, chastened by a lean year, to help them. For the independence they have shown in the past, and for the courage they will be called on to show in the future, therefore, let the newspapers of North Dakota know that they have the respect and admiration of all decent people. "What is to be done about it?" is the question that follows exposure of organized rascality. In few cases is the remedy so plain as here. For the past, the newspapers, in spite of these plain contracts of silence, must be acquitted of any very grave complicity. The very existence of the machine that uses and directs them has been a carefully guarded secret. For the future, be it understood that any newspaper which carries a patent-medicine advertisement knows what it is doing. The obligations of the contract are now public property. And one thing more, when next a member of a state legislature arises and states, as I have so often heard: "Gentlemen, this label bill seems right to me, but I can not support it; the united press of my district is opposed to it"--when that happens, let every one understand the wires that have moved "the united press of my district." {092} The Following are Extracts and Abstracts from Various Articles in the Ladies Home Journal? A PECULIAR "ETC." A great show of frankness was recently made by a certain "patent medicine." The makers advertised that they had concluded to take the public into their confidence, and that thereafter they would print a formula of the medicine on each bottle manufactured. "There is nothing secretive about our medicine," was the cry. "We have nothing to hide. Here is the formula. Show it to your physician." Then comes the formula: This herb and that herb, this ingredient and that ingredient, and the formula winds up, "etc." All good, old-fashioned, well recognized drugs were those which were mentioned--all except the "etc." A certain Board of Pharmacy had never heard of a drug called "etc.," and so made up Its mind to find out. And the "etc." was found to be 3.76 per cent of cocain!--just the simple, death-dealing cocain!--From _The Ladies' Home Journal_, February, 1906. PATENT MEDICINE CONCERNS AND LETTER BROKERS. One of the most disgusting and disgraceful features of the patent medicine business is the marketing of letters sent by patients to patent medicine firms. Correspondence is solicited by these firms under the seal of sacred confidence. When the concern is unable to do further business with a patient it disposes of the patient's correspondence to a letter-broker, who, in turn, disposes of it to other patent medicine concerns at the rate of half a cent, for each letter. This Information was made public by Mark Sullivan in the _Ladies' Home Journal_ for January, 1906. [IMAGE ==>] {092} An advertisement showing how the names to orders sent to "Patent Medicine" concerns are offered for sale or rent to be used by others. Yet we are told how "Sacredly Confidential" these letters are regarded and held. (The advertisement is from the _Mail Order Journal_, April, 1905.) Says Mr. Sullivan: "One of these brokers assured me he could give me 'choice lots' of 'medical female letters'... Let me now give you, from the printed lists of these 'letter brokers' some idea of the way in which these {093}'sacredly confidential' letters are hawked about the country. Here are a few samples, all that are really printable: "'55,000 Female Complaint Letters' Is the sum total of one Item, and the list gives the names of the "medicine company" or the "medical institute" to whom they were addressed. Here is a barter, then, in 55,000 letters of a private nature, each one of which, the writer was told, and had a right to expect, would be regarded as sacredly confidential by the "doctor" or concern to whom she had been deluded into telling her private ailments. Yet here they are for half a cent each! "Another batch of some 47,000 letters addressed to five 'doctors' and 'institutes' is emphasized because they were all written by women! A third batch is: "'44,000 Bust Developer Letters'--letters which one man in a "patent medicine" concern told me were "the richest sort of reading you could get hold of." "A still further lot offers: '40,000 Women's Regulator Letters'--letters which in their context any woman can naturally imagine would be of the most delicate nature. Still, the fact remains, here thy are for sale." Is not this contemptible? In the same article Mr. Sullivan exposes the inhuman greed of patent medicine concerns that turn into cold cash the letters of patients afflicted with the most vital diseases. To quote Mr. Sullivan again: "All these are made the subject of public barter. Here are offered for sale, for example: 7,000 Paralysis Letters; 9,000 Narcotic Letters; 52,000 Consumption Letters; 3,000 Cancer Letters, and even 65,000 Deaf Letters. Of diseases of the most private nature one is offered here nearly one hundred thousand letters--letters the very classification of which makes a sensitive person shudder." An Appeal To The American Woman. "If the American woman would withhold her patronage from these secret nostrums the greater part of the industry would go to pieces. I do not ask any woman to take my word for this. Let me give her a personal statement direct from one of these manufacturers himself--a 'doctor' to whom thousands of women are writing to-day, and whose medicines they are buying by the hundreds of thousands of bottles each year. I quote his own statement, word for word: "'Men are "on" to the game; we don't care a damn about them. It is the women we are after. We have buncoed them now for a good many years, and so long as they remain as "easy" as they have been, and we can make them believe that they are sick, we're all right. Give us the women every time. We can make them feel more female troubles In a year than they would really have if they lived to be a hundred.' ".--From "Why 'Patent Medicines' are Dangerous," Edward Bok, Ladies' Home Journal, March, 1905. "REPEATERS." It is the "repeat" orders that make the profit. Referring to a certain patent medicine that had gone to the wall a nostrum agent said that It failed because "it wasn't a good repeater." When these men doubt whether a new medicine will be a success they say: "I'm afraid it wouldn't be a 'repeater.'" "_Cure_ rheumatism" said a veteran patent medicine man considering the exploitation of a new remedy; "good Heavens, man, you don't want a remedy that _cures_ 'em. Where would you get your 'repeats'? You want to get up a medicine that's full of dope, so the more they take of it the more they'll want."--From "The Inside Story of a Sham," _Ladies' Home Journal_, January, 1906. PATENT MEDICINES AND TESTIMONIALS. In the January, 1906, issue of the _Ladies' Home Journal_ Mark Sullivan contributes an article on the business of securing from well-known people testimonials indorsing and praising nostrums. Mr. Sullivan learned that three men, rivals in trade, make a business of securing these indorsements. They are known as "testimonlal-brokers." A representative of a patent medicine who was anxious to exploit his preparation through the press approached one of these brokers and made arrangements for the delivery of one hundred signed testimonials from members of {094}congress, governors and men high in the Army and Navy. The following is the memorandum of the agreement as drawn up by the broker: "Confirming my talk with Mr. ------, I will undertake to obtain testimonials from senators at $75 each, and from congressmen at $40, on a prearranged contract.... A contract for not less than $5,000 would meet my requirements In the testimonial line.... I can put your matter in good shape shortly after congress meets if we come to an agreement.... We can't get Roosevelt, but we can get men and women of national reputation, and we can get their statements in convincing form and language..." It was for this reason that years ago Mrs. Pinkham, at Lynn, Mass., determined to step in and help her sex. Having had considerable experience in treating female ills with her Vegetable Compound, she encouraged the women of America to write to her for advice in regard to their complaints, and being a woman, it was easy for help ailing sisters to pour into her ears every detail of their suffering. No physician in the world has had such a training, or has such an amount of information at hand to assist in the treatment of all kinds of female ills. This, therefore, is the reason why Mrs. Pinkham, in her laboratory at Lynn, Mass., Is able to do more for the ailing women, of America than the family physician.' Any woman, therefore, is responsible for her own suffering who will not take the trouble to write to Mrs. Pinkham for advice. [IMAGE ==>] {094} The way in which the testimonial is actually obtained is thus described by the broker: "The knowing how to approach each individual is my stock-in-trade. Only a man of wide acquaintance of men and things could carry it out. Often I employ women. Women know how to get around public men. For example, I know that Senator A has a poverty-stricken cousin, who works as a seamstress. I go to her and offer her twenty-five dollars to get the senator's signature to a testimonial. But most of it I do through newspaper correspondents here in Washington. Take the senator from some southern state. That senator is very dependent on the Washington correspondent of the leading newspaper in his state. By the dispatches which that correspondent sends back the senator's career is made or marred. So I go to that correspondent. I offer him $50 to get the senator's testimonial. The senator may squirm, but he'll sign all right. Then there are a number of easy-going congressmen who needn't be seen at all. I can sign their names to anything, and they'll stand for it. And there are always a lot of poverty-stricken, broken-down Army veterans hanging around Washington. For a few dollars they'll go to their old Army officers on a basis of old acquaintance sake and get testimonials." It goes without saying that such testimonials are a fraud on the purchaser of the medicine thus exploited. "Not one in a thousand of these letters ever reaches the eyes of the 'doctor' to whom they are addressed. There wouldn't be hours enough in the day to read them even if he had the desire. On the contrary, these letters from women of a private and delicate nature are opened and read by young men and girls; they go through not fewer than eight different hands before they reach a reply; each in turn reads them, and if there is anything 'spicy' you will see the heads of two or three girls get together and enjoy (!) the 'spice.' Very often these 'spicy bits' are taken home and shown to the friends and families of these girls and men! Time and again have I seen this done; time and again have I been handed over a letter by one of the young fellows with the remark: 'Read this, isn't that rich?' only to read of the recital of some trouble into which a young girl has fallen, or some mother's sacred story of her daughter's all! "Then, to cap the climax of iniquity, with some of these houses these names and addresses are sold at two, three or five cents a name to firms in other lines of business for the purpose of sending circulars. As a fact, often the trouble is not taken to