If you live in America, you’re more likely to be scammed than the citizens of any other nation.
In 2024 alone, victims reported losses totaling $12.5 billion.
As as we all know, however, most loses are not reported.
We are too embarrassed.
The United Kingdom (the European country that we’re most similar to culturally) is also a big target for fraud.
The U.K. is the “credit card fraud capital of Europe.”
One ancient type of scam was traveling medicine shows.
This type of con originated in medieval Europe.
200 years later, British patent medicine sellers began selling their products in the American colonies.
After the Revolution, Americans began to sell “home grown” concoctions to their fellow citizens.
The Golden Age of “snake oil salesmen” was between the end of the Civil War and the early 1920s.
Today, telephone scams, and internet scams, have taken the place of the traveling medicine show.
I recently read Four White Horses and a Brass Band: True Confessions from the World of Medicine Shows, Pitchmen, Chumps, Suckers, Fixers, and Shills.*
This book is the autobiography of Violet McNeal, an American con woman who was active from 1904 until the early 1920s.
Presenting herself as “Princess Rose Blossom,” Ms. McNeal sold a nerve tonic called “Vital Sparks,” proclaiming it a “virility cure.”
Her mixture was made from melted buckshot candy (small balls of peanut butter, sugar, butter, and chocolate) combined with powdered aloe.
Later, close to the end of her career, she adopted the persona of “Madame Pasteur,” and sold rejuvenation herbs while dressed up in a college cap and gown.
Violet didn’t just sell one product (or service) in her journey as a con woman; she sold many.
Violet’s autobiography was originally published in 1947.
At that time, Ms. McNeal did a press tour giving lectures around the country on her sad and fascinating adventures.
The back matter of her book presents the reader with two typical grifter scripts, as well as a glossary of pitchmen terms (ie: “ballyhoo,” for entertainment leading to the sales pitch, and “coconuts” for money).
It’s amazing how much the scripts read like current TV ads for beauty products and health foods.
Ms. McNeal, and her ilk, traveled from town to town, selling chopped grass, “special” soaps, and potions, to rubes and yokels.
Sometimes her fellow grifters dressed in the guise of Quakers, Native Americans, swamis, or (like Violet) Chinese princesses, selling their products.
Wandering thieves like Violet’s first husband (Will Archambault, aka “Tiger Fat Davis”) amassed a large fortune from his scams. All this, despite being a serious cocaine addict.
Will Archambault taught his 16-year-old protege (Violet), that “no one but a sucker ever works.”
He also trained this naive Minnesota farm girl to take opium, enjoy alcohol, desire fine clothes and jewelry, and take advantage of the sexual needs of other men.
In the early 1900s, the American Medical Association became a force to be reckoned with fighting against quackery, and introducing regulation to the selling of remedies.
The AMA was instrumental in the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act (the bane of Mr. Archambault and Ms. O’Neal’s existence).
Adding to the scandal of medicine shows, many local government officials were actually in on the grifts.
They charged scammers large fees to sell fake products in their “territories.”
Perhaps, if the pitchmen had annoyed wealthier citizens, police departments would have put them in jail.
Since the victims of scam artists were basically the poorer people, however, pitchmen were seldom punished for their misdeeds.
I suppose that America has always been a “grift magnet” because of the basic materialism baked into our culture.
America may have more religious diversity than any other country.
As French scholars Alexis de Tocqueville and Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne have pointed out, however, America also has an inordinate love of money.
Other factors that turn us into a gullible society are human trust in authority (or what we perceive as authority), love of the exotic, and curiosity about new inventions.
Some politicians who’ve opposed Trump (like Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney), have described Donald Trump as a grifter.
Although Donald Trump was once mostly known as a real estate tycoon, he’s used the Trump brand in many other enterprises.
His Trump Shuttle didn’t turn a profit.
His seminar company, Trump University, was shut down in 2005 amid fraud allegations (with Trump paying $25 million to settle).
Trump Steaks was discontinued in 2014.
Trump Foundation was dissolved in 2018, for violating the key requirements of a charitable organization.
Trump showed the world how much he thought of American citizens on Saturday, October 12th, 2024, when the Trump campaign left thousands of elderly Trump supporters stranded, in 93-degree heat, in Coachella (California).
This was not the first time that Trump had shown disrespect for his voters.
Earlier, at a June 10, 2024 Las Vegas event, candidate Trump told his audience: “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote.”
At that single event, six audience members were hospitalized, and 24 more were treated for heat stroke.
A key difference between valid businesses, and shysters, are the products that they sell.
Violet McNeal sold candy to rubes, fooling them that her product would make them virile.
Donald Trump promised that he would improve the wealth and lives of Americans, and make America great again.
All he seems to be doing is aggrandizing himself, making regular Americans poorer, and making himself richer.
*Four White Horses and a Brass Band, by Violet McNeal, was reissued in 2019 by Feral House press.
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