Chain Fever (Cont'd)

Fortnight ago, the chain-letter fever burned in Denver and a few other infected areas in the West. By last week, it had become a nationwide epidemic. Even Alfred Emanuel Smith, in his two-thirds-empty Empire State Building, received 1,000 letters. He waste-basketed all except one which contained a dime. President Roosevelt received 200, sent them to Postmaster General Farley, whose postal service in many a city seemed about to collapse under the weight of chain mail. The Post Office has ruled chain letters illegal but it was waggishly suggested that if the craze would only last, Jim Farley's postal receipts would eventually balance the U. S. budget.

The week's fever chart:

P: In Springfield. Mo. chain letters became the city's biggest business, cutting heavily into retail trade. Professional operators hired hundreds of stenographers, rented big offices, sold letters to crowds of customers, who in turn sold them to other suckers. On a $5 series, notaries public certified payments to make them "cheat-proof." After one roaring day the boom faded.

P: In Cleveland a gang of sharpers mailed out 30,000 letters with their names at the top of the usual list, thus insuring that if anyone made money on the chain they and they alone would make it. While authorities debated who should raid the gang's headquarters, the sharpers fled with 10,000 printed letters yet unmailed.

P: In Oklahoma City a group of chainsters were sued for $35,840, the total theoretical payoff on seven $5 letters. Charging breach of contract, the disgruntled buyers declared: "The defendants refused, neglected and failed to sell sufficient letters for the names of the plaintiffs to reach the top."

P: In St. Louis a postman was arrested for abstracting 40 dimes from the mails.

P: In Des Moines a suspect held by the police explained his hoard of dimes by insisting he was a coin collector. Des Moines and other Iowa banks had to call on Chicago's Federal Reserve for fresh supplies of dimes.

P: In Atlanta the number-game racketeers lost most of their customers.

P: In St. Louis, with cancellations up 350,000 per day, the post office was 24 hours behind in first class deliveries.

P: In Los Angeles, where the post office was handling 200,000 chain letters per day, it was discovered that school children were going hungry because they were frittering their lunch money on their own chains.

P: In Hollywood pranksters started a streetcar token chain to promote streetcar travel and a button chain ("In return you will receive 15,625 buttons for your wife to sew on your clothes").

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