Junk dealer

“ A junk-shop is where old ropes, old anchors, old iron, and cast-off odds and ends of all kinds are kept for sale. There are many such shops to be found in every large city, and if it is a seaport, they are generally located near the waterfront, as a vast quantity of such rubbish is picked up along the wharves. In New York city junk dealers drive wagons round the streets, and buy old stoves or any worn-out household goods. ”

“ It is easy for a child thus trained to accept the proposition of a junk dealer to bring him bars of iron stored in freight yards. Four boys quite recently had thus carried away and sold to one man two tons of iron. ”

“ Whoever was higrading the collection had to have an outlet for his stuff, and he had to have a source of supply for the junk he was infiltrating into the collection as replacements. A crooked dealer is the answer to both, and Arnold Rivers was definitely crooked. ”

“ This needs no answer beyond a reference to the well-known fact, alluded to by the New York court of appeals in its opinion herein, that junk dealers provide an important market for stolen merchandise of the kinds mentioned, and that because of their experience they are peculiarly fitted to detect whether property offered is stolen property. Plainly it cannot be said that the classification rests on no reasonable basis. It is unnecessary to rehearse the grounds upon which rests the authority of states to resort to classification for purposes of legislation. ”

“ The first she sells to a man who comes to the door and buys them; the others she sells at a store where rags are bought for making paper. She has no system in buying and selling—buying at the lowest prices she can, and selling at the highest. Another woman told me she buys white rags at three and a half cents per pound, and sells at four. She pays so much a pound for old metals, and sells at an advance. Other articles, as bottles, glass, bones, cold victuals, and grease, are disposed of by junkwomen. The damaged cotton picked up by old women is sold to junk dealers. ”

“ It has been my experience that only a very wise man has sense enough to do that; consequently, despite your youth and impetuosity, I seem to see the glimmer of a very brilliant commercial future for the West Coast Trading Company.
“However, to the story: When Mike Murphy got down to Papeete he found a couple of broken-down junk dealers hanging round—the kind of fellows who would have been glad to bid in the vessel at a couple of thousand dollars for the privilege of breaking her up for junk and gutting her of her cargo. ”

“ It is displacing brick for building and wood for ships. And yet how much goes to waste! Stoves, pots, kettles, rails, machinery, wagon springs, car wheels, pillars, girders, and a multitude of other forms of this valuable metal go to waste. The junk shop is a mine. Manufacturers will pay you fifty cents per 100 pounds. The fact is not generally known, but many junk dealers have become rich.
920. Old Newspapers.—Newspapers should not be sold to the ragman until they have been scissored, and{291} perhaps not then. In New York there is a man who makes a business of preserving newspapers. ”

“ Now, in objects that are out of the fashion—a category including always many of the best things—and if approached in slack times, the great dealers will occasionally afford bargains, but in general the economically minded collector, who is not necessarily the poor one, must intercept his prey before it reaches the capitals. That it makes all the difference from whom and where you buy, let a recent example attest. A few years ago a fine Giorgionesque portrait was offered to an American amateur by a famous London dealer. ”

“ The business man has no stock-in-trade that pays him better than a good address. If the retail dealer wears his hat on his head in the presence of ladies who come to buy of him, if he does not see that the heavy door of his shop is opened and closed for them, if he seats himself in their presence, if he smokes a pipe or cigar, or has a chew of tobacco in his mouth, while talking with them, or is guilty of any of the small incivilities of life, they will not be apt to make his shop a rendezvous, no matter how attractive the goods he displays. ”

“ How can the collector object to a long price when he can read for himself in the papers what you had to pay for the same thing at Christie's.
Yes, in spite of trade rivalries, a dealer should be on friendly terms with other dealers. If Mr. Samuel Levison and Mr. Algernon Franks had not been picture-dealers, they would have quarrelled, for each had taken an advantage of the other that the other considered to be unfair; as it was, they went into partnership. In business they were strictly honest—by which I mean that they did nothing illegal and nothing generous. ”

“ In general, besides a few of the retail dealers, only the dilélma, or broker, has a stall, which, on this account, is called diléllam; and, no shady trees being found, both buyers and sellers are exposed to the whole force of the sun during the very hottest hours of the day, between eleven and three o’clock, when the market is most full and busy, and the crowd is often so dense that it is difficult to make one’s way through it: for the place not being regularly laid out, nor the thoroughfares limited by rows of stalls, each dealer squats down with his merchandise where he likes. ”

“ The bars are dropping down in every line.”
“Business is done in queer ways,” said a man who was sitting near me. “Tobacco men give away guns in order to sell their tobacco; coffee is sold by giving plated ware, baking powder by glassware, boots and shoes by giving dolls and sleds, ready-made clothing by a prize of a Waterbury watch, and soap by giving jewelry. Nowadays a dealer don't ask you about the quality of your goods, but about the scheme you've got to sell them. It's a demoralizing way of doing business, and ruining trade.” ”

“ Every shouting dealer collects around him a crowd of listeners; these, however, are circumspect purchasers, and don't permit themselves to be decoyed. Now and then, a handkerchief, a paper of buttons, a hank of thread, flies into the embrace of a peasant woman or girl, and whilst they thoughtfully examine the wares, and slowly reach for their small coin, the dealer has turned himself to other customers, in perfect security that he will be paid. He who shouts the loudest, and makes the most violent gesticulations, attracts the greatest number of people around him. ”

“ Through this crowd moved dealers with their cries of ‘Who wants to sell? Who buys?’ Every now and then some poor wretch with hunger in his looks, would stop one of them, and dispose of the miserable rags from his back, and then, turning to another dealer, expend the amount in unattractive food. Some of the occupations of which I have spoken—such as, for example, straw-plaiting—were forbidden by the English, as coming into competition with their own manufactures; with slight interruptions, however, the prisoners worked continuously through the whole day. ”

“ Another set are actually in trade at the moment, if that can be called a trade, which consists of a shop of all sorts; these are called "general dealers," and partake much of the character of the jobbers; only that the latter for a shop, keep a "warehouse," upstairs in a garret; or their lodging room at the public house serves the purpose of a warehouse! I have known one of these, at the same time a dealer in cutlery, coffins, pictures, paper, hose, books, bandanas, and other heterogeneous articles ”

“ I had not got the dealer's name, and had not wished to arouse suspicion unnecessarily by asking for it. So I did not hit on the right man the first time, or the second, or the third, but I got him in the end. And when I reminded him of that lot of stuff out of the railway carriages that he had bought, he swore very heartily. He had paid too much for it, he said.
"And what do you do with that kind of thing?" I asked.
"Destroy the worst of it and make up the rest. Some of the loose cushions I sold just as they were, and a lot of them are still on my hands. ”

“ It is not strange to say that they find it pays. Why shouldn’t it? Their wares are just as much in demand as any other commodity. Why shouldn’t they go after the business the same as any other dealer? ”

“ Enormous profits can also be made by a single dealer, or close combination of dealers, if they are able to control some indispensable article, to monopolize its sale, so that the purchaser can only receive it from their hands. He must resign himself to the alternative of doing without it, or paying the price charged for it by the robber band. ”

“ The only know cure for Tasmanian Pig Fever is revolution. Paranoids unite!
DOPE — As you probably know, most dope is illegal, therefore some risks are always involved in buying and selling. In the legal section we have discussed the selling problems. Now let us consider the problems involved in buying. Arrests are not a problem unless you are inside and happen to get caught in a raid on a major dealer. What is a major hazard is getting burned. The usual trick is to take your dough and just vanish, leaving you standing on the street. ”

“ In the present state of the retail organization she may find either attitude. In shops kept by her co-nationals she will naturally have the utmost confidence. This puts the small neighborhood stores in a position of peculiar privilege, and makes it doubly easy for them to take subtle advantage of the unwary customer. Even when the dealer takes no special advantage of his customer, in following the general practice of the trade, he can create innumerable situations in which her problem is rendered more, rather than less, complicated. ”

“ They seldom come into the hands of the dealer. On the rare occasions, however, when one of these gems does pass into a merchant's keeping, some one is always charmed by it, and has a great mind to buy it, but cannot readily persuade himself to pay the price, and so asks the dealer to let him keep it for a time, during which he privately consults the opinions of other dealers as to the proper figure. ”

“ It is however sincerely to be hoped that an effectual stop will be eventually put to the possibility of committing this crime, which, we apprehend, nine times out of ten brings the poor, needy, half-starved retailer of paper to the gallows, while the more un-principled wholesale dealer escapes detection. ”

“ Neither do the small peasants receive a fair price for their products, since they depend upon the intermediate trader. The dealer who traverses the country [352] on definite days or in definite seasons and usually trades off his merchandise to other dealers again, must obtain his profit. But to gather in the many small quantities means much more trouble to him than to procure a large quantity from a great landowner. ”

“ I had the envelope in my pocket containing the note and the cheque when I reached the club for lunch; and that afternoon I played bridge [Pg 117] so disastrously that I was glad I had not posted it.
After all (so my thoughts ran, as I destroyed the envelope and contents) such bargains are all part of the game. Buying and selling are a perfectly straightforward matter between dealer and customer. The dealer asks as much as he thinks he can extort, and the customer, having paid it, is under no obligation whatever to the dealer. ”

“ Of course, there have been cases of men starting on the road with good clothes and boots, which they had to sell almost at once for food and lodging at a second-hand shop. The dealer that buys must give these men substitutes to cover their nakedness, and these old things would be hardly likely to fit well. ”

“ If the beginner will make a point of learning his subject and will keep in touch with a few dealers, he will find that they will readily assist him to identify his own specimens and systematically aid him in adding judiciously to his collection. A great deal of offensive nonsense has been written by fashionable lady journalists, declaiming against the professional dealer and crediting him with every conceivable trick under the sun. But the greatest and the wisest of collectors number a host of dealers as personal friends. ”

“ Each dealer loudly proclaimed to the wayfarer the merits of his goods, vying with his neighbour in his endeavours to attract attention to himself or distract it from the other, especially if, as was often the case, a number of traders trafficked in the same class of merchandise. ”

“ From the orange-boy and the retailer of seals, razors, glass and other wares, in the public streets, or the collector of
“Old rags, old jags, old bonnets, old bags,”
to the shop-keeper, dealer in wearing apparel, or in silver and gold, the same principles of conduct too generally prevail.
“The itinerants utter base money, to enable them by selling cheap, to dispose of their goods; while those who are stationary, with very few exceptions, receive and purchase at an under price whatever is brought them, [311] without asking questions ”

“ Such an horse dealer has a reputation to maintain that is as valuable to him as that of a banker is to him. If you will place confidence in him he is not apt to betray it, for he values his customer and knows that there will probably be other sales to make.
But the dealers who advertise in the newspapers that they will sell from private stables horses worth $500 or $1000 for $100 or $200 are the pirates of the trade. They give one excuse or another why such immense bargains are offered, and they make many sales. ”

“ Here are wholesale dealers in large number engaged in interstate trade upon whom it is proposed to impose as a condition of carrying on that trade that they shall not sell in such manner that a local retail dealer may regard such sale as an infringement of his exclusive right to trade, upon pain of being reported as an unfair dealer to a large number of other retail dealers associated with the offended dealer, the purpose being to keep the wholesaler from dealing not only with the particular dealer who reports him, but with all others of the class who may be informed of his delinquency. ”