Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford

The holidays barely over, Wallingford was upon the road again, and until the first of May he spent his time organizing new branches, keeping the endless chain letters booming and taking subscriptions for his new journal, the _Commercial Farmer_, a device by which he had solved the grave problem of postage. The _Commercial Farmer_ was issued every two weeks. It was printed on four small pages of thin paper, and to make it second-class postal matter a real subscription price was charged -- five cents a year! For this he paid postage of one cent a pound, and there were eighty copies to the pound. He could convey his semi-monthly message to a million people at a cost of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, as against the ten thousand dollars it would cost him to mail a million letters with a one-cent stamp upon them. And five cents a year was enough to pay expenses.

On the first of May, the enterprising promoter, who seriously aspired now to become a financial star of the first magnitude, took a swift thousand-mile journey to the offices of Fox & Fleecer, where Mr. Fox, polishing, as always, at his glazed scalp, was still intent upon that bland but perplexing secret problem. Mr. Wallingford, as a preliminary to conversation, drew his chair up to the opposite side of the desk and laid upon it a check book and a package of documents with a rubber band around them. "Four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and negotiable securities," he stated, "and all to buy September wheat."