The following interesting story appeared in the New York Herald of February 10, 1895, and indicates that there has been but little cessation in the “green goods” business:

Mr. Hace Ead, of Texas, who comes on to New York every spring to buy “green goods,” and who each time takes home a valise full of bricks, but who, nevertheless, returns to the business again, hoping against hope, will have no more difficulty in making his purchases this year than he had last. The “green goods” men are still at their games, flooding the country with circulars and disposing of bags of rubbish at fabulous prices.

The revelations before the Lexow committee did not have the effect of driving the “sharps” into legitimate occupations. While the testimony was being given against them they kept in retreat in Jersey City, but even during the hearing of the “green goods” witnesses, “come-ons” were arriving in shoals at all the Jersey City depots, and the brick maker who supplies the swindlers at wholesale prices made his usual daily deliveries at their offices. The bricks, carefully wrapped up in paper, were distributed to the four corners of the United States.

John Sheffield, of Manchester, N. Y., who came to Jersey City recently to rob the “green goods” men, and who did steal $1,600 from two of them, says that a large part of the savings of residents in his town has gone to the operators in this city. It was to get revenge and to obtain some of these savings back that Sheffield came along. The place where the operators said they would meet him at No. 87 West street, New York, but he preferred to do business with them in his room at Taylor’s Hotel, in Jersey City, where he kept his black jack, and where he succeeded in disabling one of the men who wanted to jabe him in the eye with an umbrella and recover the money.

The “green goods” men live in New York still. They always did a good deal of their business in Jersey City, and they do it there now. Some of the odd looking farmers who come from the central part of New York State, and who have never seen a piece of water so large that it could not be crossed by a bridge, are afraid to trust themselves to the ferryboats. As soon as they see the river they rebel, and positively refuse to leave dry ground. This necessitates a good deal of the business being done in Jersey City. Another reason for the selection of that town originally was the cheapness of police “protection” as compared with its cost in this city.