Futility Closet - 107-Arthur Nash and the Golden Rule

Episode Date: May 29, 2016

In 1919, Ohio businessman Arthur Nash decided to run his clothing factory according to the Golden Rule and treat his workers the way he'd want to be treated himself. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll visit Nash's “Golden Rule Factory” and learn the results of his innovative social experiment. We'll also marvel at metabolism and puzzle over the secrets of Chicago pickpockets. Sources for our feature on Arthur Nash: Arthur Nash, The Golden Rule in Business, 1923. (Undercover journalist Ruth White Colton's September 1922 article for Success Magazine is quoted in full in this book.) Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule, 1996. Arthur Nash, "A Bible Text That Worked a Business Miracle," American Magazine 92:4 (October 1921), 37. "Golden Rule Plan at Clothing Mill Makes Profits for Owners," Deseret News, Dec. 16, 1920. "Golden Rule Nash Offers 7-Hour Day," Schenectady Gazette, July 4, 1923. "Arthur Nash, Who Shared With Employees, Is Dead," Associated Press, Oct. 31, 1927. The poem "Miss T." appears in Walter de la Mare's 1913 collection Peacock Pie: It’s a very odd thing — As odd as can be — That whatever Miss T. eats Turns into Miss T.; Porridge and apples, Mince, muffins and mutton, Jam, junket, jumbles — Not a rap, not a button It matters; the moment They're out of her plate, Though shared by Miss Butcher And sour Mr. Bate; Tiny and cheerful, And neat as can be, Whatever Miss T. eats Turns into Miss T. This week's lateral thinking puzzle is taken from Henry O. Wills' memorably titled 1890 autobiography Twice Born: Or, The Two Lives of Henry O. Wills, Evangelist (Being a Narrative of Mr. Wills's Remarkable Experiences as a Wharf-Rat, a Sneak-Thief, a Convict, a Soldier, a Bounty-Jumper, a Fakir, a Fireman, a Ward-Heeler, and a Plug-Ugly. Also, a History of His Most Wondrous Conversion to God, and of His Famous Achievements as an Evangelist). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the support page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a duck in the Marines to a tower for goats. This is episode 107. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1919, Ohio businessman Arthur Nash decided to run his clothing factory according to the Golden Rule and treat his workers the way he'd want to be treated himself.

In today's show, we'll visit Nash's Golden Rule factory and learn the results of his innovative social experiment. We'll also marvel at metabolism and puzzle over the secrets of Chicago pickpockets. This is a story, I suppose, about generosity of spirit. Arthur Nash sort of more or less fell into the clothing business in Ohio in the early part of the 20th century. He became a clothing salesman first and then started his own company, Manufacturing Clothing. He started his first clothing business in Columbus, Ohio in 1909, and was doing pretty well, but then a terrible flood there in 1913 wiped him out, and he found himself starting over from scratch in Cincinnati at age 46 in June 1916. It was a pretty simple

clothing manufacturing company. They would cut the garments in his part of it, and then he would farm out the work of actually assembling them into suits in 1919 the old austrian man who manufactured these pieces into coats for him decided that he wanted to return to austria and asked him if he wanted to just buy him out and run that part of the business for himself and nash got the money together and said sure and bought that part of the business and realized only later that he had bought a sweatshop that the people that the austrian had been paying he was paying them just grievously too low for the work they were doing. Nash himself had been raised strictly as a Seventh-day Adventist, but broke actually several times with organized religion. He thought that it just became exclusionary and sort of doctrinaire and judgmental, and considered himself still a Christian,

but not a member of any church. But in reading the Bible himself, he'd come to believe that the essence of Jesus' teaching was the golden rule, that if you boil it all down, that's basically what he was saying. And in that light, he really had a big problem with paying people so little. He told his wife, Right in my little shop is the best example of not doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. He talked it over with his sons, who said, Well, I agree with that, but I don't see what you can do. You need these people to work for you and you can't afford to pay them any more than you are. So it seems like you're sort of stuck.

But Nash was really troubled by this and finally decided he was going to stick with principle and resolve to treat people right as long as the business kept running. And then when it ran into the ground as it would have to, he would give up and go buy a farm in Indiana and start all over again. He just couldn't live with himself doing anything else. So the next morning, he gathered the workers in his sweatshop and told them this. He said, I made no promise about anyone's job lasting, but I told my people that so long as the business continued, I was going to try honestly to apply the golden rule. So he had at that meeting in his hands a little card with people's names on it. He didn't even know who the people were. He hadn't met them really properly yet. The first name on the card turned

out to be a little woman there who sewed on buttons. On the card in front of him, it gave her name and it said, sewing on buttons, $4 per week. He looked at her and saw his own mother's face in hers and found himself blurting out, I don't know what it's worth to sew on buttons. I never sewed a button on, but your wages to begin with will be $12 per week. This is a 300% raise. I should stop here and interrupt myself and say, this whole story is going to sound like a fairy tale, and if that's what you're thinking, I totally agree with you. Most often when you hear a story that sounds as pat as this, if you look into it, it turns out that all the facts have been violently bent to make the story work. But in this case, I've been looking into this fairly deeply, and it seems like everything I'm about to say is actually true.

All of this really happened. He raised everyone's pay significantly that day, some from $4 a week to $12, some from $18 to $27. And as he told his son, he couldn't afford to do any of this and assumed that it would ruin the company, but at least he could live with himself as he did it. And then he sort of gave up on that and assumed that the company would fail and started to turn his attention to seeking a farm in Indiana and a rather small farm he expected on which to retire. It was only several weeks later that a friend of his ran into financial trouble saying he was facing bankruptcy and asking if Nash could help him. And Nash said, honestly, I don't even know. But he went to his cashier and asked him how they were

doing. And she told him to his astonishment that the workers were now making three times as many clothes in the same factory without buying new machinery. It turns out, she said, that after he had left at that meeting, the little Italian presser had told his fellow workers that if he were the boss and had just raised everyone's wages, he would want everyone to work like hell, in his words, and they'd done that. Just productivity had gone up so sharply that the company the factory was now making the money and rather rather a good deal of it uh factory tripled its business from the previous year in fact so nash shelved the whole idea of buying a farm and started buying more fabric instead uh it and now things happened quite quickly on july 1st

1919 the company moved from its little one-four shop into a big six-story building, a converted brewery. He had borrowed $50,000 to make the move, and he told his workers that they would need lots of help in order to earn enough money to pay back that debt. He said, if you think this is a good place to work, tell your friends and neighbors about it, then bring them in and train them. They did this, and the workforce increased 600% without placing an advertisement. People just came and worked there because they were told by their friends that it was a good place to work. And in fact, that year, Nash's company did more than half a million dollars worth of business

as compared to $132,000 the previous year. This also is the beginning of a kind of a cycle for Nash where he feels uncomfortable making this much money. He likes living simply and believes so uh implicitly in the golden rule that he doesn't like becoming a rich man he said the more i looked at the figures the more i felt that this was too much money to take from the labor of other people so he announced another wage increase of 10 to 20 percent uh a lot of the impetus for this he was sort of the driving force from what i'm able to gather and sort of a really charismatic head leading figure in all this and

really believed in the whole principle of driving things by the golden rule. But the workers partook so much in the spirit of it that a lot of these initiatives that I'm about to talk about actually came from them. One department head said, there is really very little to this concern at all, except the fact that the workers all know they're getting a square deal. At the end of February 1920, he found that it had cost them less to make a suit of clothes in those two months than it had cost before the wage increase. This confused me as I was researching this piece. I thought, well, if you're – he was also selling the garments for very low prices. So I thought, well, if you're raising your costs and lowering your revenue, how are you getting by at all?

The answer seems to be productivity, that the workers felt they were so well-treated and sort of responded in kind that they worked very harmoniously and very efficiently together, more so than their competitors in other firms. That's what Nash said. He said the workers were speeding into new efficiency all the time. Visitors to the factory assumed that when they saw someone working very quickly that that person was paid by the piece, but in fact those people were paid by the hour. And conversely, the slow and thorough workers, for instance, people who had work jobs like cutting pieces that had to be done carefully, visitors assumed that they were paid by the hour when in fact, they were the only piece workers in the plant. So in other words, everyone was subordinating their own personal interest to

the good of the firm and just doing whatever seemed like it would generate the most good for the whole company, regardless of their own personal position there. In fact, they extended this even to the customers. Nash and the workers agreed that the customers should play a role in this whole golden rule idea, and that meant that they shouldn't charge them exploitative prices. So they priced the suits to yield only a dollar profit per suit, and that drastically undercut their competitors, who were charging $ 50 to $100 a suit. Nash charged 16 to $29. So that's going to drive up sales even more and actually in a way help

them out even more. Yeah. It's this odd, it's one of those paradoxes in life where you can only get something if you don't want it. He really genuinely didn't care about profits. All of this was just an expression for him of his own faith and of the principle of the golden rule actually working. He wasn't really interested in money, and it was only because of his own belief in that that he made an awful lot of money. In 1920, the clothing market actually slumped, but his production increased more than 1,000%. In June 1920, the business equaled that of 1918 in its entirety, and he wrote, We swung into 1921 almost swamped with orders. Here are some more initiatives that were started by the workers.

He proposed as another way to get rid of all this money. He proposed a profit sharing plan and initially proposed that the profits would be divided proportionately according to people's pay. So if you were a highly skilled worker near the top of the organizational chart, you would get more, a higher share of the profits than someone at the bottom. That was his proposal. The workers came to him unanimously and voluntarily and said, no, we'd prefer to do it by hours worked. So if the person who works the most hours in the

firm in a given period is at the very bottom of the chart, she should get the largest share of the profits. Again, that wasn't his idea. That was actually counter to his proposal. It was the skilled laborers themselves who came to him with this idea unanimously and voluntarily, and they were making some of them $75 to $90 a week. So according to his original proposal, they would have made six to seven times as much of the profits as the lower workers, and they voluntarily gave that up just in the whole spirit of this golden rule. In 1920, the employees who now numbered 500 volunteered unanimously to surrender their jobs for a month because the whole Cincinnati clothing industry was really suffering then. I thought, well, we'll step away from our jobs for four weeks just so other people can come in and have some employment, at least for a short time.

Again, that was entirely the employee's initiative in a very difficult time. The company kept expanding in 1921. Some of the only criticism I'm able to find about this company at all comes, there were some external observers who felt that some of the facilities were inadequate. Remember, this is a converted brewery. They were working and it hadn't been designed as a clothing company. But that's about the worst I can find said about it. I know, again, that this all sounds too good to be true, but it really seems that all this is accurately reported. is accurately reported. The best example of that is in 1922, there was an undercover journalist named Ruth White Colton, who got herself hired there under an assumed name and not telling them

she was a journalist and spent two weeks in the factory working just to see if this was all what it was purported to be, and recording her experiences for a magazine article that was published in September 1922. And she found, she said that it was, all the stories were true. She witnessed the marriage of nash's son to the company secretary before the assembled workers and at one point a man robbed the company cashier of the weekly payroll and instead of seeking his punishment they said well he has a wife and children who ought to be supported and the company would make an effort to do so and put her actually in charge of doing that and she was so touched at that responsibility that she sort of

came clean and told them she was a journalist and revealed her identity. She called the enterprise this remarkable experiment and said that every change in economic or social policy there had come about through a worker's idea or a discussion between workers and management. So that's as close to an objective account I can see of someone who saw the inner workings of this place closely and endorsed and believed, really, that it was all true. And she would have had a motivation to have found some muck to rake, right? To have been able to print this expose in a magazine. Yeah, I've read her article.

She doesn't go in saying she was looking for muck to rake, but I'm sure you're right. It would have been quite a feather in her cap if she'd found some, and she just didn't find any. All this had happened quite quickly. Only three and a half years earlier, Nash had started with a sweatshop that had eight old-fashioned machines and 29 employees. He now built it into the largest organization of its kind in the world. It now had more than 2,000 employees. For Nash, as I said, the business results have no value except as a validation of his own faith. Again, he considered himself a Christian, but he wasn't really a believer in any organized religion.

And it was really the principle of the Golden Rule that really summed up most of his beliefs. He said what he told the workers was this, the golden rule is going to be the only governing law in this factory, which means that I must do by each one of you just what I would want you to do by me if I were doing the work and you were up in the office paying me the wages. All I ask of you is to do by me just as you would want me to do if you were in the office and I were doing the work. Another businessman tried this. I mean, sometimes other businessmen saw what a giant success this was and said, you know, we admire you. We're trying to emulate your success and it's just not working. Nash asked this one man, did you take the brotherhood step? And the man said, what do you mean? And Nash said, if you don't know what that means, then you're not

emulating us. This isn't just some tactic that you can copy to make money. That's the whole point. You have to put people ahead of profits or it's not going to work at all. He tells another sort of anecdote, or I guess parable. One day, a time clock salesman came into our place and managed to interest the factory superintendent. He called me into conference and the salesman began to tell me that with so many employees, I had no idea how much time we lost by not having a time clock. It was the noon hour and many of our folks were around. Do you see all those machines in this happy group of workers, I asked. Yes, he said.

Do you know that nine months ago we had only eight machines and a little handful of employees? I understand you've had a remarkable growth. Did you ever see this company run a want ad? No. Now tell me, what kind of stiff would I be to hang a time clock over that bunch of people? I wouldn't do it for $100 a day. In fact, shortly before this, there were a few of the workers who

had been coming in late, and when they got wind of his decision not to start using a time clock, they came in even later. But what he found was that he didn't have to confront them. The other older workers took them aside and said, what are you trying to do? Force Mr. Nash to use a time clock. We brought you in and trained you, and if you won't play fair, we'll see that you're fired. And they began, he says, to come in actually 10 or 15 minutes earlier after that. So this whole golden rule idea was sort of self-reinforcing, and the workers stuck to it because they saw that it was a good deal for themselves, that the whole thing, if everyone bought into it, it would sustain itself. One worker told Colton, the undercover journalist, we ladies feel like this business is most as much ours as it is Mr. Nash's, and we try to do what's best for all. Colton wrote,

too much cannot possibly be said as to the value of the informal meetings which are called from time to time in the golden rule factory. Sometimes these meetings are called by Mr. Nash, sometimes by one of the foremen, but most often by one of the lesser members of the family. But from whomever the call may chance to come, there is but one spirit always evident, and that is the spirit of perfect cooperation and understanding. Arthur Nash is loved and trusted by every man and woman in that factory. He is their big brother, their counselor, their friend. And in return, his love, his faith in these men and women is unquestionable. So simple, so sincere in the spirit of brotherhood that no problem, however vexing it might be, if one were to endeavor to view it from any other angle, has ever arisen that has not been happily and wisely settled.

And again, that's from a journalist who had no axe to grind. I'm thinking that probably a really important piece of this was the quote that you read the worker saying that they all felt like the company was theirs. Yes. Right? So everybody felt like they had an equal and important stake in the company. So that would help get around people's self-interest. Like, it's in your own self-interest to come in as late as possible and do as little work as possible, right?

Yeah. If you don't care about the company. But if you feel like, well, the company's success is important to all of us, right? And he, I think it matters, too, the reasons for doing that. Like, other companies will try sharing profits and, and things like that as, as a way to motivate employees, but it's,

it's still done ultimately, I think often in the service of making a profit. And he just wanted to share the profits because he felt it was wrong to hold onto them for himself, which is different. And they knew that. That's my feeling anyway. Yeah.

On it goes in 1923, he established a vegetarian cafeteria for his 2100 employees with a dedicated dietician he imposed a 40-hour work week saying he was absolutely indefinitely opposed to all overtime work at all this was at a time when other clothing factories were working 44 and 48 hours a week and still did not get any more production out of their workers per hour in fact nash wrote most of them do not come within 15% of us, and some of them have a production plant that is simply a wonder to look at. That July, he announced a 35-hour workweek for women because he knew that many of them had more responsibilities at home, and he

thought it was unfair to ask them to work a full-time job on top of that. And he established a minimum wage of 50 cents an hour. By 1925, the company had become the largest producer of direct to consumer clothing in the country, doing $12 million in business. The profits were divided in thirds annually, with a third of it going to stockholders, a third to the workers themselves, and a third back into the company. Nash, toward the end of his career, toward the end of all this, as it was a giant success, started speaking more and more around the country because he was so afire with the success and what it showed, he thought, that he wanted others to start trying to do it themselves. He was called the most famous layman in the United States and spoke in nearly every United States state.

One interesting thing that I think is telling is that when he was away speaking, some of the magic wore off a little bit. The morale at the company began to suffer and the managers he left behind to run the place, even though they were competent in doing what he said they didn't have the same fire and conviction that he had and i guess this inspiring presence as well so the magic faded a little bit when he was away which means that it might not be the golden rule as he thought that was really driving things but his own charisma and personality and just conviction that it would work and that you know it sounded like the workers really loved him and wanted to do right by him yeah i mean every company even today wants this to happen but it never does and the question is why nash himself

said that uh especially as you get up to literally thousands of employees it would be unrealistic to expect that everyone would buy into this by his own estimate 90 of his employees lived and worked by the golden rule and 10 really worked there because it was a great place to work which i think is understandable you couldn't really hope for more more than that. Nash finally died in 1927 at age 59 of heart trouble. He had written, the golden rule is the divine law governing human relationships accepted by all religions and proclaimed by all prophets and teachers of every creed. It is the only infallible, workable, industrial, and economic law in the universe today. So he was completely convinced of this right up to the very end. After he left, though, the company sort of turned back

into a pumpkin. It was still a successful clothing company, but it didn't still have this wild success that it had under his leadership. And he had left the company when he died, left it to his family, and they sold it to another company shortly before the stock market crashed in 1929. And it sort of became another large and successful, but sort of more ordinary clothing company that had been under his leadership. At his death, a lot of people published their thoughts about him in the Nash Journal, which was a house organ that he had started a few months earlier. One of them wrote this, he proved in his factory what he somehow knew, that Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and unbeliever know alike how to love, how to be friends, how to stand by one another in a great undertaking.

Our differences are theological and racial rather than of the soul. Never have racial and religious prejudice been so rebuked than by the Nash experiment. If you value hearing forgotten stories like that of Arthur Nash, then please consider becoming a patron to help support our show. We really appreciate all the support that we've gotten from our listeners, but the show takes a lot of time to research and produce each week, and we haven't quite made it yet to our first goal of covering the commitment of time that the podcast takes. So if you like Futility Closet and want to support the show,

then we could use your help. If you join our Patreon campaign and pledge at least a dollar an episode, you'll get access to our activity feed, where you'll find outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles and learn what's going on behind the scenes of the show, including what Sasha, the show mascot, has been up to lately. So if you want to help out, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us page of the website. And thanks so much to everyone who has been helping support Futility Closet. This is a poem by Walter Delamere about an overlooked miracle. It's a very odd thing, as odd as can be, that whatever Miss T eats turns into Miss T. Porridge and apples, mints, muffins, and mutton,

jam, junket, jumbles, not a wrap, not a button it matters, the moment they're out of her plate, though shared by Miss Butcher and sour Mr. Bait, tiny and cheerful and neat as can be, whatever Miss T eats turns into Miss T. I'm going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I have to try to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This one's for me.

Ah! In the 19th century, passengers on Chicago commuter trains were preyed upon by pickpockets. The passengers wore all manner of clothing and hid their money in various pockets, but the thieves always knew where to look. How did they do this? Does it matter what country this is in? No. And you said this is railway passengers specifically, did you say?

Yes. Is that important that they're on a train or that they're going to be on a train? I wouldn't say the mode of transportation is important, but— Is it related to the fact that there's a ticket involved? No. Or tickets for trains? Hmm. fact that there's a ticket involved no or tickets for trains um hmm so there's something about the fact that that they're traveling that's important or they're going from point a to point b no no hmm okay so it's how did the pickpockets know where the money was being kept yes on any given

individual yes and you're saying the pickpockets had a system or method for divining this exactly pickpockets in general not one specific group of pickpockets that's right well i happen to know this took place in chicago because we have a record of it, but I think it was probably used elsewhere. Okay. But it's not like one little specific band or- No, as far as I know, no. Individual or something.

Okay. So how did pickpockets in Chicago know where the railway passengers were keeping their money? And it has nothing to do with tickets or the fact that they are traveling or moving from point A to B. Does it matter which gender they were? No. So they were able to do this for men and women?

Yes. Does it have something to do with the clothing styles of the time? No. The wallets of the time? No. The money of the time? No. Not like, I don't know, it was made out of metal and would jingle or they had some kind of crude metal detectors or magnets or something.

But you said, no, it has nothing to do with. That's a good thought, but no. No. So it has nothing to do with what the money is made out of. No. Or would have looked like. That's right. And it was money they were taking.

Yes. Specifically money. Yeah. Okay. And the pickpockets would know and it doesn't have anything to do with like they would just watch them buy a ticket and then see where they put the money back or something i suppose they could have done that but that's not what this was that's what i would do um okay does it matter where exactly the pickpockets were?

Not like that they're in Chicago, but did they station themselves in particular places and that was important? Particular locations or – I wouldn't say so, no. Not in a way that would help you, no. Some particular point along the railway journey that came into play. Were they using vision primarily, the pickpockets, to deduce where the money was? Yes. So they were using something they saw? Yes, but there's more to it than that.

There's more to it than something they saw. Would you say they were using one of their other four senses also? Like hearing or smelling or touch? No. I think the best answer for that is no. The best answer for that is no. So they're using some combination of something they saw and putting that together with something else.

Combination of something they saw and putting that together with something else. Some piece of information, would you say? As opposed to a process? I mean a piece of- No, I'd call it more a process. More a process. So they're putting together vision and some sort of process that they're using or doing. Yeah, yes. Did it require multiple pickpockets to work together to carry this off?

No, this one account refers to a band. They happen to do it in groups, but a lone pickpocket could use the same technique. Okay, okay. Because, you know, I thought like, you know, one person bumps into somebody or does something and then the next person sees or gains information from that. So, but one pickpocket working entirely alone without accomplices could could do whatever it is yes could you do this if there was only one passenger on the train or waiting for the train in principle yes but i think it's easier to pick pockets in a crowd yeah okay but i was just wondering if you need people to be yeah it would be other or something it would be possible does

it matter where the mark was the person being pickpocketed, which I'm going to call the mark? No. Okay. Does it matter whether the mark was standing or sitting? No. Or moving? Or like, did the mark need to be doing something in particular?

Not anything in particular. Not anything in particular. And you said this didn't need to have been involving a railway. That's right. Could they have done this in a park? Yes. Just as easily? I'd say yes.

Okay. But they just happened to be doing it in railways. Yes. They did it on commuter trains because there are big crowds of people who are distracted. Right, and you'd have a bunch of people standing together in a tight bunch.

But anywhere you had that, I think you could use the same technique. Okay. All right. So you could have done this anywhere. How did they figure out where the money was? And you're saying

people put money all over their clothing or in different places to try to foil the pickpockets, but the pickpockets still figured it out. You had it down to vision and a process.

I'll tell you, vision was just they ultimately saw where the money must be. But work out what the process was that helped them. And you're saying it has nothing to do with the mark was purchasing something. That's right.

Was it that the people in trying to protect their money would act in some particular way? Yes. Like they'd be guarding or acting more protective of some particular part of themselves? Yes. Is that it? Is there more? There's a little bit more. There's a little bit more.

How did they get people to guard? Oh, no. See, that wouldn't require an accomplice because that's what I was like. You have an accomplice pretend to rob them or act like they're going to rob them or act like they've just been robbed, right? If you had somebody that says, oh my gosh, my wallet's been stolen, and then that everybody else would pat themselves to make sure their wallet hadn't been stolen. You're very close. But that would require an accomplice.

How could one person do this? One person could yell, thief, thief, stop, thief, or something like that. No, one person- No, you're very- One person could pretend that his wallet had been picked. You've almost got it. I may just give it to you. You're so close. Okay.

Is the pickpocket doing something to make people fear or think that there is a thief in the area? Yes. Okay. And it's not that he's pretending that his own pocket has been picked. Right. It's actually more straightforward than that. He says to them, you might want to be careful. I've heard there are pickpockets in this area. Is that it?

Is that it? We know this because there was a pickpocket, a reformed one named Henry O. Wills, who cleaned up his act and became an evangelist and published a book about the tricks of the trade in 1890. Here's an excerpt from that. It is done in this way. The mob comes into the car or depot and cries, look out for pickpockets. Any man having money on his person and not up to the trick will, on hearing the alarm, put his hand at once over the pocket that holds the cash. Doing this till

that good-looking gentleman, who is called the Wire, who has an eye like a hawk, sees just where to put his hand and get what he wants. Here's some further art. Suppose you have your hands in your pockets with your pocketbook have your hands in your pockets with your pocketbook in your hands. All the thieves have to do is push each other and rush you about. Then one of them will hit you on top of the head and drive your hat down over your eyes. Out come your hands to lift your hat so you can see. Your pocket is unguarded and biff, your money is gone and the crowd also. Will says, so beware of the cry pickpockets either in the car or depot. Keep your hands still. Don't tell them where you keep your money. To do this will sometimes require an effort,

because most men, knowing where their money is, find that their heart is there also. Wow. Oh, very good. If anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's another show for us. If you're looking for more quirky entertainment,

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