INTELLIGENCE OFFICE ROW
The names of those concerned in it are suppressed, and it is a matter of no consequence anyhow, but the foundation of the fight is of interest to some, as showing how the business of intelligence offices is some times conducted, in evasion of the law, but not in violation of it. The statute says that the keeper of the office must, in return for the money received from his customer, give him a receipt, in which the nature of the service rendered must be specified. This is done in this wise: "Received of John Doe, two dollars and fifty cents, for services rendered in procuring him a situation as stable boy." That is according to law, and if John Doe goes to the stable and is refused the situation, he can make the intelligence man refund his money. But the latter takes no such chances. To the receipt he adds the following postscript, which blocks the game on the stable-boy, in spite of the statute: "If you are denied the situation, your money will be refunded upon the presentation here of a written statement of the fact of the refusal by the parties so refusing." The "parties" will not trouble themselves with writing communications for stable-boys and servant girls to intelligence office keepers, and without the ceremonious "written statement," the noble dealer in occupations will not disgorge. He sticks to his contract. The result of this practice is, that every day the District Attorney is besieged by frantic chambermaids and blasphemous cooks and wood choppers, seeking redress for the wrongs they have suffered at the hands of the intelligence office keepers; but they go away without it. The law is a wonderful machine, and few there be that understand it; they say it does not cover the case we have spoken of, at all. This having been ascertained by a victim, yesterday, he went back to his chuckling spoiler and whaled him.
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