May 17, 2025
SOUVENIRS WORTH $8,000.
That Much Given Away During
Commercial Club Trade Trip.
Nearly $8,000 worth of souvenirs were given away by the Commercial Club "specialists," who returned Saturday night from their 1,400-mile trip through Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. This estimate was not made with "Schmelzerized" money, either.
According to his own guess, Herman Schmelzer, vice president and secretary of the Schmelzer Arms Company, burned up $1,873,500 on the trip. At almost every station he would ostentatiously set fire to a crisp roll of yellow-backs amid the ill-suppressed gasps of the natives, and the plaudits of his white-hatted excursionists. Thus his counterfeit Confederate currency displaced the real coin of the commonwealth on board the train, and some of the transactions made between the missionaries dealt with large figures.
What was given as souvenirs from the train is hardly worth mentioning. Anyway, they included everything from traveling clocks and papers of needles, to rubber stamps and automatic calendars.
Labels: Commercial Club, railroad
