The Painter Who Played the Local Market
A local tradesman's attempt to execute a 'get-rich-quick' scheme by double-dipping on merchant credit ends in a police court trial.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
W. G. Herrington, a painter and paper hanger, was arrested yesterday by Detectives Ackler and Huckaba. Charged with being a suspicious character, he confessed to a scheme of 'frenzied finance' that he hoped would have made him rich. Herrington's plan was to earn the confidence of local merchants by purchasing small allotments of goods, then returning to those same merchants to ask for credit on a second, larger assignment, promising to pay at the end of the month. Herrington then sold the goods he secured to local pawn dealers. He is said to have duped a number of firms, the principal losers being paint stores where he secured large orders on credit. He is being tried in police court this afternoon for obtaining money under false pretenses.
“Herrington confessed this morning to a little game of 'frenzied finance' that would have made him rich if the policemen had only stayed away.”
This incident reflects the perennial tension between small-business credit systems and the impulse for quick exploitation, a dynamic that remains familiar in the age of modern retail fraud.
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