Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (11 page)

Hatched in Abilene, Texas, in 1854, Clark Stanley grew up to become a cowboy never quite satisfied with the day-to-day drudgery of ranch life. Stanley had an idea that there was more to life than staying put and working for peanuts. As with most other hucksters of his (or any other) age, he seems to have been born with an innate urge to make his mark—and his fortune—in a grand way. The big, vague things he thought he might like to pursue in life would require money to accomplish, of that much he was certain. His penchant for big bucks—any way he could get them—led him to sniff out possibilities and opportunities that might lead to money.

Stanley followed along a well-trod trail for young men in Texas at the time and became a ranch hand. He must have enjoyed aspects of it, for he spent eleven years at it. But unlike many of his colleagues of the saddle, Stanley's searching mind led him to study traditional Hopi medicine for two years under a Moki pueblo medicine man at Walpi, Arizona. It was there, at the Hopi village to the east of the Grand Canyon, that he learned the intricacies of gathering ingredients for natural remedies.

Clark Stanley was also, from an early age, charismatic and wholly slippery. And at a time rife with people clogging the back roads and byways, well-trammeled routes, and main streets all over America, peddling cure-alls for ailments most folks had no idea they had—until they heard the hucksters' patter—Clark Stanley stood out among them. Indeed, he is arguably the most famous snake-oil salesman of them all. So much so, it is said, that he is the man for whom that very phrase is coined.

In true huckster fashion, Stanley was most often a one-man band, coming up with his own product, hawking it himself—and working hard doing so—conjuring the advertising lingo, which was as creative in its claims as was Stanley's outlandish Western garb.

As we've learned with any good huckster, Clark Stanley showed no shortage of self-confidence. In 1897, primarily as a vehicle for selling his tonic, Stanley penned an odd, forty-one page publication, part autobiography, part lesson plan for would-be cowboys, and one-third compendium of advertisements for Stanley's liniment, touting its wonders and revealing tall-tale claims of healing.

The first edition contained a number of cowboy songs he had collected from his years as a ranch hand, and by including them in his book it has become one of the earliest, perhaps
the
earliest, published collection of cowboy ditties. Stanley used the book as a selling tool in his shows. It had the effect of showing him as a learned man, but not so much as to distance himself from his primary clientele, the average laborer looking for relief from a real or imagined illness. He revised and added to the pamphlet a number of times over the coming years, including personal anecdotes, more history, and most importantly for him, glowing testimonials from users of his magic snake potion.

During his heyday in the 1890s, Stanley toured the country as a celebrated showman-huckster and claimed his “Snake Oil Liniment” was “good for man and beast.” He also said that his snake oil was “the strongest and best liniment known for the cure of all pain and lameness” and that it was an excellent curative for “rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, toothache, sprains, swellings, etc.”

But wait—there's more! He also claimed it “cures frost bites, chill blains, bruises, sore throat, bites of animals, insects and reptiles” . . . and if that didn't convince the average attendee, he sealed the deal with the vow that it would afford the user “immediate relief” and that it was “good for every thing a liniment should be good for.” All that for a mere 50 cents a bottle. Who could possibly resist? Not many, as it turns out.

So how did our man Stanley create this magic topical tincture? If he was to be believed—and everything he said should be ingested with copious helpings of skepticism—Stanley gleaned his super-secret recipe from that ancient medicine man of the Moki Pueblo tribe under whom he studied. This claim is thought to be true, at least in part because various Native American tribes were known for making a soothing balm of grease squeezed from rattlesnake carcasses. . . .

With a confident downward slicing motion, the man who called himself “the Rattle-Snake King” dispatched yet another long serpent. The deadly, jaw-popping head, now separated from the curling, writhing body, nonetheless continued to snap and bite harmlessly at the air, reflexively and brutally.

Yet the man who wielded the blood-smeared blade smiled as though he had just been informed he was the recipient of a vast fortune.

“You are a long way from Texas, cowboy!” someone shouted.

“You bet I am,” said the tall, handsome, smiling cowboy as he stood over a large crate to one side of a low wooden stage. He was dressed in a flamboyant, well-appointed suit, topped with a fine hat. His attire was most appropriate, he felt, given the grand venue he found himself in: The World's Columbian Exposition of Chicago in the year 1893.

His face wore a perpetual wide-eyed look, as if daring anyone he came in contact with to ask him what was wrong. And talk he did—at the drop of a well-worn trail hat, Stanley would launch into a nonstop patter proclaiming the wonders of his liniment, pausing only long enough to snatch hold of yet another rattlesnake from his seemingly bottomless crate full of writhing serpents.

“It's as the bottle says, ladies and gentlemen, a wonderful pain-destroying compound composed of the very thing you would suspect would cause nothing but pain and grief. Yes, folks, I am referring to the oil of rattlesnakes! And do you know what?” Clark Stanley held his right hand, outstretched, palm down, scanning the crowd as if the arm were itself a snake.

“No? Then I will tell you, for I have no secrets, no fears save one, ladies and gents, and that one fear is that a soul in need, just one, I tell you, will leave here today without a bottle of Clark Stanley's Snake-Oil Liniment in their hand, and go on home to a sad, dreary existence filled with the torment of never-ending pain, pain that, I tell you folks, can be lessened and eventually eradicated, given repeated doses, with what I know without a doubt to be the strongest and best liniment known for the cure of all pain—yes, all pain—and all manner of lameness, too!

“Now, I know a number of you are standing there saying, ‘But Mr. Clark Stanley, how is that even possible?' I will tell you just how. For I happen to know that we have in our presence a special treat—a satisfied customer is here today, folks. So why take my word for it? Take the words of this wonderful young woman.”

He nodded toward a girl who had begun to walk forward toward the low stage. “. . . who when I met her was little more than a fledgling, wasting away in bed, unable to raise a hand to help her dear family.

“So lame was she by a deathly crippling case of rheumatism, but not just any run-of-the-mill case, no, this poor young woman was born afflicted and spent the first eighteen years of her days on God's earth as a bent, crippled, and stooped young woman looking far older than her years for far too long.

“Every moment awake was an agony for her, and every moment asleep was a double-threat—for she did not know if she would awaken the next morning. In fact, she told me she secretly hoped that she might not wake one fine day, so tired was she of spending her life in the throes of agony. But don't take my word for it, ladies and gentlemen, take hers!”

The packed crowd gathered before the low stage on which Dr. Stanley trod back and forth, all the while holding a writhing rattlesnake in each hand, the rattles clacking and vibrating and buzzing, the bodies twisting and curling, writhing around his gesticulating arms. But those gathered had momentarily lost interest in this bizarre sight as their gaze swiveled to take in the pretty young woman walking confidently forward as the crowd parted before her.

Even Clark Stanley paused momentarily. Luckily she was in his employ, if momentarily. He suppressed a wry smile, felt the snakes twisting on his arm, the sinewy muscles twitching and writhing, and came back to himself.

He was always careful to avoid the very thing that could put him right out of business. For a bite from a rattlesnake would dictate that he treat himself with his own medicine, and though he claimed it was good for healing snake-bites, he didn't want to test that thin theory. He knew that if he all but died before his adoring public, they would have a difficult time buying his patter ever after.

During a show later that day Stanley patiently answered a series of questions from a man who looked as if he never believed anything anyone ever told him.

“As I said, my patent liniment comes from the purest oil of snakes, sure as shootin'. ” Stanley stood there looking down at the man who'd questioned him, his eyebrows pulled together as if he wasn't sure, but maybe he hadn't heard the man correctly. Maybe the man hadn't seen what he was doing right there in front of him.

Stanley held up the still-writhing body of the snake. The head lay at his feet, the eyes beginning to glaze, but a slow reflexive opening and closing of its jaws showed that, even in death, the snake was still determined to defend itself.

The man who'd questioned him stood as he had throughout the grisly proceedings, his arms wrapped tight about himself, the sleeves of his wool jacket pulled tight about his fat arms. His face wore a smirk, a knowing look that said he was anything but a believer. He was, yes sir, a skeptic.

Stanley had seen his kind before, and he found them amusing. He also liked the challenge of bringing them around to a point where he might introduce doubt in their skepticism, if not outright belief in his product.

Stanley faced the crowd once again. “My assistant and I will now render down these snake bodies into a fine oil that is more valuable than all the gold in the West. Do you doubt it, friends? I do not, and once you see the amazing curative effects this precious liquid can have on a body fatigued by pain, crippled by overwork, and agonized by ill-tended injury, why then, my friends, you shall see the power of Clark Stanley's Rattle-Snake Oil. Or I am not the Rattle-Snake King!”

With that, the flamboyantly dressed cowboy washed his hands and proceeded down to his favorite part of the show—selling his bottles of oil and taking money in exchange.

While it is possible that Clark Stanley began his snake-oil venture with the purest snaky ingredients and the best of intentions, by 1917 he was finally investigated by the federal government, which seized a large shipment of his product. Predictably, when tests were run, his Snake Oil Liniment was found to contain a creative blend of a number of benign ingredients including mineral oil, 1 percent fatty oil (determined to be beef fat), red pepper, turpentine, and camphor.

None of these ingredients, in any combination or amount, could even remotely be responsible for curing much more than a bad case of heavy wallet. The other determination was that the primary ingredient was good old mineral oil, with not a whiff of oil or fat derived from honest-to-goodness rattlesnakes.

Because of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, the US government was able to bring a lawsuit against Stanley for unlawful branding and misrepresentation of his product. Unsurprisingly, the feds won. Alas Stanley was fined a mere $20. But the lawsuit's real benefit helped give the term “snake oil” a well-earned taint among the American public. Soon the term “snake-oil salesman” meant little more than someone up to no good, a huckster with a shoddy product spouting false claims. There were many imitators, but there was only one Clark Stanley, the Rattle-Snake King.

BUILT ON CLAY

Leila P. Irish, of Cave Creek, Arizona, made a worthless gold mine pay, and pay handsomely. She bought the Clay Mine but found, much to her consternation, that it was nearly useless and produced no gold. It did prove, however, to be a gold mine in a wholly unexpected way. No slouch, Ms. Irish discovered the mine was rich in clay deposits. In an effort to recover some smidgen of her investment in the paltry mine, Ms. Irish mixed her mined clay with water. She bottled the result and sold it as a cure-all-ailments elixir called “Apache, a Perfect Mineral Drink,” though she wasn't entirely sure what it might be used to cure.