Word: chain
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...picture industry has threatened to move out, and assorted tycoons are talking about emigrating to Nevada, Hawaii, Florida, anywhere. Two nationally famous Californians have grown particularly articulate. Wrote Novelist Charles Gilman Norris (Bread, Seed, Pig Iron) in a letter which was printed in California papers of the sympathetic Hearst chain...
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...
...April climbed dizzily and more than 100 extra hands were called in for full-time service to help handle the swelling volume of first-class mail. An amazing number of dimes began to pop out of the stamp-canceling machines. Finally it was discovered that a "Send-a-Dime" chain letter was sweeping the city. Completely swamped, Postmaster James Orren Stevic called in postal inspectors to investigate the possibilities of stopping the scheme as fraudulent. "The thing is staggering in its proportions," sighed weary Postmaster Stevic. When the Post Office Department in Washington pronounced the letters illegal, Denverites protested...
Headed "Prosperity Club-In God We Trust," the chain letter contains six names. A recipient is supposed to mail a dime to the first name on the list, and that name is then scratched off. At the bottom of the list is added the name of the recipient, who then mails out five copies to gain new "Prosperity Club" members. He does not receive any dimes until after his letters have multiplied six times and his name has moved to the top of the list. Then if the chain is unbroken, he will receive no less than 15,625 dimes...
Last week, despite a score of arrests, the "Send-a-Dime" flood had spread to Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Spokane, Seattle, Nashville, New York and a dozen other cities. New ideas for cashing in on the scheme popped almost daily. One chain raised the ante to $1, another to $10. In Oklahoma recipients of chain letters were instructed to give a kiss to the person whose name was at the top "and surely he may find a true love among the 15,000-odd trading kisses." In Philadelphia, racketeers began hiring staffs to send out chain letters to "sucker...