I HAD BEEN AWAY FROM JESSIE, MY FIANCE, FOR SEVERAL MONTHS AND
was anxious to see her. She and her family welcomed me back,
and that winter, I saw her often. She thought I was a traveling
salesman for a reputable firm, but I told her that I was tired of the road
and intended to set up my own business in Chicago.
In those days, a woman seldom questioned a man's work. Her place
was strictly in the home. Jessie didn't ask me about the sort of sales- manship I was engaged in. It was many years, long after we were
married, before she found out that I was anything but a respectable
business man.
She and her mother were devout members of the Sacramento Con-
gregational Church in Chicago. With them I attended services every
Sunday. The minister had a forceful delivery, using a clever choice of
words to sway his audience.
This set me to thinking. I said to myself, "Joe, you are not capable
of hard physical work. You're too fraiL Whatever you accomplish in
life must be done through words. You have that ability. You can make words beautiful and scenic. What marble is to sculpture, what
canvas is to painting, words can be to you. You can use them to influence others. You can make them earn your living for you."
As I have said, that minister made a deep impression on me. I wondered would he help me enter a good theological seminary where
I could study to be a pulpiteer. I broached the subject to Jessie and
her mother. They were overjoyed.
One Sunday evening we waited after services and approached the
minister. His advice was realistic.

"First," he said, "you must give your soul and your whole life to
God. Have you done that?"
"Not yet," I admitted.
"Are you familiar with the Scriptures?"
"Some of them. Not all." "You've got to make up your mind that you will give yourself to
the work," he urged. "Then you will have to be able to pay your way
through school."
"I can pay part of it," I said. "And I imagine I can work to pay
the rest of it." "Yes, that can be done," declared the minister, "if your heart is in
it. Here is what I advise you. First read some religious texts. Study
religion for a while in your own way. Then if you are ready to give
your life to God, come back to me and I will tell you how and where
to enroll."
That minister must have been psychic. He must have realized that
my heart had not been given over to God, but that I was seeking a career to further my own ends. However, he gave me a list of books
to read.
First was the Bible. I read through it, then the other volumes he
had recommended. I supplemented these with books of my own
choice. I studied the lives of Moses, Buddha, and Mohammed. I secured a copy of the Catholic Encyclopedia and read that.
The net result was that I lost all desire to become a pulpiteer. There
were so many inconsistencies I could not reconcile that I became an
iconoclast. I arrived at these conclusions: Man has all the bestiality of
the animal, but is cloaked with a thin veneer of civilization; he is inherently dishonest and selfish; the honest man is a rare specimen
indeed.
However, my reading firmly convinced me of the power of words.
I felt that its proper use could lead me to fortune. In that I was to be
right. The use of words led me to many fortunes.
When I told Jessie that I had decided that I was not cut out to be
a preacher she accepted my judgment. She continued, however, as organist at the Sacramento Church and retained her faith. Though
I became an iconoclast, I attended the services because of my great love for her. And I still have a high regard for that minister and his
power with words.


In those days, the police were not like our police of today. The
force was not so large, and the Detective Bureau had not yet been
organized. The Municipal Court was not a big organization. Most of
the courts were operated by justices of the peace. We called them
"Justice Shops." Each justice had his own constables, who were the
detectives of that period.
There was practically no restriction on either gambling or vice. A
man could earn money by his wits without any interference from the
constables or the police. There was none of this pickup business,
where a man is locked up and held indefinitely in a cell without a charge being placed against him.
Both civil and criminal cases were tried in the Justice Shops. I knew one of the magistrates quite well — Judge Aldo. He used to send me out to select jurors. Juries were composed of six men. When
I was assigned to get a jury, I was, first of aU, told which way the
case was to be decided.
Naturally I went into the saloons. I'd tap a man on the shoulder
and say: "How would you like to make a couple of easy dollars?"
If he was interested, I explained to him that he would have to vote
right — to earn his money. In this way, I picked up half-a-dozen
men, led them into Judge Aldo's court, and saw them sworn in as
jurors. The trial, of course, was a farce — the verdict had been decided
before the jury had even been assembled.

I picked up money in various ways, hanging around the saloons
and hotels — always by persuasive words, playing upon the gullibility
of some sucker who was anxious to make easy money at someone else's expense.
But most of my time was spent at the race tracks. There was no
pari-mutuel system then. Bets were accepted by bookmakers and bet-
ting commissioners who determined their own odds. I pretended to be in the confidence of owners of race horses and sold inside tips to other bettors.
I made no bets myself, because I soon learned that there is no such
thing as smart money at a racecourse. I yearned to be an owner of race horses myself, but the time for that was not yet.
I had sold the plug I had acquired from the farmer, but I kept the
sulky. I heard of a socially prominent young woman who owned two
horses. But they were so high-spirited that she couldn't control them.
I contacted her and bought them for a ridiculously low price. They
were named Nicotine and Mutineer.
At this time, sulky racing was still popular. I used to race one or the other of my horses hitched to my sulky, at Billy Gilliam's race- course at 35th and Grand Boulevard. When I could afford it, I bought
a buggy and used Nicotine and Mutineer as carriage horses.
Driving up Michigan Avenue in my buggy, with these two blooded
horses prancing and champing at the bit, I often attracted attention.
One day a well-dressed, elderly man hailed me. I stopped.
"Young man," he said, "is that rig for sale?"
"I hadn't thought about it," I replied, "but I'll sell it for the right
price."
"How much do you want?"
"A thousand dollars," I declared, after some thought.
"I'll give you five hundred."
"No," I said. "A thousand is my price."
"Well," he grumbled, "if you change your mind come to see me at my office. I'm Mr. Loomis, you know."
"Yes, sir, I know," I replied.
Mr. Loomis was the head of a large wholesale grocery firm which
was then, and still is, one of the leaders in the Middle West. His
proposal inspired me with an idea for a new confidence game. This one was to be an excellent money-maker — and within the law.

Two days later, I called at his office. "Have you decided to accept my proposition?" he asked eagerly.
"No, I haven't, Mr. Loomis. But I have come to make you a counterproposal. I want you to lend me $5,000."
"What!" he exclaimed, when he had recovered from my effrontery.
"That's a lot of money, young man. Do you have any collateral?"
"All I have is my rig," I replied. "But if you will make me the
loan, I will put up the rig as collateral and at the same time tell you
how you can make a lot of money."

"I suppose I ought to throw you out," frowned Mr. Loomis, "but
you interest me. In the first place, I'd like to have that rig. Now
what is your proposal?"
"Are we alone?" I asked, looking around his office. "This must
be strictly confidential."
"No one can hear." To make doubly sure, he got up and closed
the door. "Now, what is it?"
"You know of the big handicap race at Hawthorne three weeks
from now?"
"Of course."
"I am going to tell you how to make a lot of money. I happen to know the race is fixed. The man who weighs in the horses is a friend
of mine. The winning horse will carry no weight. I also know the
judge. In case my horse fails to win, he will declare it no contest. In
other words, Mr. Loomis, you can't lose."
"And your proposition?"
"Lend me $5,000. When the race is over, I'll not only pay you
back out of my winnings, but I'll make you a present of my rig. Just
to show my good faith, though, I'll pledge my two fine horses and
buggy. If, by some mischance, our horse should fail to win, then
you'll have my rig."
Mr. Loomis required only a few minutes to think this over. He
wrote me a check for $5,000. I gave him a mortgage on my outfit.
Then I told him the name of the horse — Mobina.
Actually, Mobina was a selling plater and hadn't won a race in
months. There was so little chance that Mobina would win now that
he was listed at 10 to 1. Of course, the odds appealed to Mr. Loomis greatly. He got ready
to make a killing. He was helped along by my enthusiastic reports
from the track. Within a few days, he was figuring up the vast sum
he was going to add to his already sizable fortune.
But before the race came off, I took Mr. Loomis for more money.
I dashed in to say that the judge was afraid and that we needed a couple of hundred dollars to keep him quiet. On another occasion, I told him that the jockey had threatened to expose the whole thing. On
one pretext or another, I took him for an additional $1,700.

Then came the day of the race. Mobina didn't even show. Of
course, the race hadn't been fixed and nothing had been paid to the
judge. The only fixing I had done was to give the jockey a couple of
hundred dollars to pull the horse, just to make sure it didn't win.
Sorrowfully, I went to Mr. Loomis and gave him the rig.
"I can't understand it," I said. "Something went wrong. It has
absolutely cleaned me out."
Mr. Loomis got his rig. And there is a moral to this story: if he
had been willing to make an honest deal for it in the first place, he
could have bought it. But he wasn't willing to pay a fair price and in
the end, it cost him $6,700, in addition to whatever he lost on the race.

I tried the same deal, with variations, on other wealthy men. Almost
without exception, they were eager to get in on the easy money. I didn't have my rig as bait, but I played on their natural greed. I asked
for a loan and told my story of a fixed race. The amounts I got varied
with the individuals. But I never found another who was as gullible as Mr. Loomis.
One day, I approached John R. Thompson, who founded the
Thompson restaurant chain. I asked him for a loan of $2,500 and
told him my fixed race story.
"If you are desperately in need of $2,500," offered Mr. Thompson,
"and if you can prove it to me, I'll lend you the money. But I will
have absolutely nothing to do with a fixed race."
I didn't take anything from Mr. Thompson. I probably could
have talked him into the loan, but I didn't. In my long career, I can
truthfully say that Mr. Thompson was the only man I ever met who
was one hundred per cent honest.
There was, of course, a limit to the number of suckers who would
take part in this con game.

This is the Part 2 of the story; named:
How Yellow Kid Got His Name

The Concluding Part