Monroe Enquirer
I am getting up a list of beggars who come to town and some day I shall publish the various plans and schemes these persons have for making an easy living off of a gullible public.
Only recently a fat young woman, stranger in these parts, came in and asked for the boss. I told her I was bossed, but go ahead. She opened up her cardboard valise and took therefrom a handful of unartistic artificial roses. “Please buy these,” she said, “to help my poor sick husband.” The woman may have been worthing of assistance but I had no way of knowing whether or not she was an imposter.
Another beggar was an old paralytic, scarcely able to be about. His own county should take care of him.
Pretty girl, who said her home was in Charlotte, breezed in, inquiring:
“Mister, are you the manager?”
I told her I was the managed. Whereupon she confidingly told me that she was working for a prize—had 800 subscribers to a magazine and needed 2,000 by Saturday night when the contest closed. She gave me the glassy eye when I told her I didn’t need any more magazines and those I am taking were paid for another year in advance.
Another asker of alms was a committee of ladies seeking donations for the erection of a church building. “We just know you’ll put down for $50,” said the spokeswoman.
“Ladies,” was my reply, “this ain’t Duke’s Foundation headquarters, nor yet is it one of the Rockefeller’s filling stations.” But they insisted that I give at least $10, and I out-talked ‘em and got out by paying $0.
Afterward though I did go to the trouble to find out why another church? It appears in the community in which these good ladies live there are already two churches of different denominations, and serving in a good way. Five families of the neighborhood will not affiliate with these organizations because they are of “another faith and order,” which means the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum. And it is possible the devil himself is behind the new church scheme to keep the people of a good community at variance because of denominationalism.
But the biggest humbug Monroe has to contend with are the fellows, strangers, who have questionable advertising schemes to sell the merchants. Often it’s easier to pay a few dollars than to say no.
From page 3 of The Concord Daily Tribune, Feb. 13, 1926
Some things never change. I've had young people knocking on my door saying they are selling magazine subscriptions and need so many points to win. And if you haven't, it's because you don't open your door to strangers. Today solicitations for donations tend to come through e-mail and the regular mail. And of course, people come to your door to invite you to their churches. It never occurred to me to challenge them with this editor's thought that "it is possible the devil himself is behind the new church scheme to keep the people of a good community at variance because of denominationalism."
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-02-13/ed-1/seq-3/
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