THE ORIGIN OF MONEY CHAIN LETTERS
by Daniel W. VanArsdale
Copyright  June 21, 2014


Commercially printed Send-a-Dime letter postmarked in Beaumont, Texas on May 13,1935. Separate note from sender includes: "Every body is getting them."

Miss Jeanne Paris, 404-5th Street, Bismarck, N. Dak.
Miss Isabel Clark, Capital Commercial College, Bismark, No. Dak.
Mr. Jimmy Lies, Fessenden, No Dak.
Mr. Marvin O Miller, Fessenden, North Dakota
Miss Emma Keiper, Fessenden, North Dakota
Miss Caroline Billingmierer, Fessenden, North Dak.

             Hope--Faith--Charity. 

This chain was started in the hope of bringing you  prosperity. Within three days make five copies of this letter leaving off the top name and address and adding your own name and address at the bottom and mail to five of your friends to whom you wish prosperity to come.

Im omitting the top name, send that person ten cents as a charity donation. In turn when your name reaches the top of the list you will receive 15,625 letters with donations amounting to $1,562.50.

Is this worth ten cents to you?
Have the faith your friends had and this chain will not be broken.   [1935-05]
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The earliest text we have of SD was in the April 19 Denver Post article, but the first mailing was estimated to have been three or four weeks earlier [BB2]. Thus some guesswork is necessary in choosing a prototype. Many early examples do not have the two line title above the list, but probably this resulted from accidental deletion when the list was revised. Many cities had an organization called "Prosperity Club" going back into the 1920's. These did not seem to have a national charter, and their activities varied from city to city. Many sponsored dances. There is some published text of a Prosperity Club chain letter circulating in March, 1935 that advocated spending to counter the depression. [1935-03] This could have influenced the title appearing on Send-a-Dime, but there is no evidence that a Prosperity Club had any role in initiating the Send-a-Dime craze.

Most copies of SD in the Paper Chain Letter Archive contain an instruction to wrap the dime in paper. I presume this was an early addition since there would be no motivation to remove it if it were present from the start. A loose coin can work through the edge of an envelope with the jostling of transport, or be slung out deliberately. Wrapping it in paper prevents this. Many early SD letters boosted the "ante" that was to be sent to the person removed from the list to 25 cents, a dollar, and more. [1935-05] Inflation adjusted, ten cents in 1935 is worth about $1.75 today (2015). Another common early variation is "This charm was started ..." instead of "This chain was started ..." [scan1, text1]  Here "chain" was likely original since SD studiously avoids attributing any result to luck or magic, and "chain" appears on the Hyatt letter. Thus "charm" was likely a miscopy of "chain" that became established. A postscript that is often seen was a request to return the letter to the sender if the reader did not wish to participate in the scheme. Within weeks of the launch of SD, printed forms appeared with slots for senders' names and addresses to be written in. [scan2, text2]

A "money chain letter" requests the reader send money to one or more prior senders, claiming that one may likewise benefit if copies of the letter are distributed. The backbone of SD, and any money chain letter, is its list of names and addresses. Lists of prior senders first appeared on US chain letters with the 1922 "Good Luck" type letter. The entries were names only, often in the form "X to Y", "Y to Z", etc. [1922-06]  Names were added to these lists without any restraint, and some lists developed for years and attained monstrous lengths. One was reported to have 214 different names - presenting a great challenge to making the asked for nine copies. [1925-12]  Beginning with the "Prosperity" type letters in 1932, which we will describe in the next section, "controlled" lists appeared which instructed the reader to (1) remove the top name, (2) move each remaining name up one slot, and (3) add the reader's name to the bottom. [1932-03]  If senders obeyed these instructions, the number of entries in a controlled list would never change. But we see chain letters on which this number has grown [1939-03], probably because some senders neglected to delete the top name. But for the overwhelming majority of SD examples in our archive the number of names and addresses on the list remained fixed at six. Someone, considerate of downline recipients, may have initially introduced a controlled list to lessen the effort required to copy a chain letter. Whatever the motive, understandably Prosperity letters with the resulting shorter list soon replaced those on which the uncontrolled list had grown long.

Say John Doe fully complies with a money chain letter that has a controlled list of n names and asks that q copies be distributed. Then there will be q letters with "John Doe" at the bottom of the list. If every recipient of these letters also complies there will be q x q (written q^2) letters with "John Doe" in the second slot from the bottom. Continued full compliance will eventually result in q^n letters with "John Doe" in the top slot and hence conceivably John could receive that many antes when those letters are processed. Though it is all but impossible to have such total compliance, q^n antes is touted by most money chain letters and pyramid schemes as an attainable return. For SD, q^n = 5^6 = 15,625.

Despite repeated threats of prosecuting senders, a headline on the Monday, April 29, 1935 Denver Post reads: "Chain Letters Triple Denver Mail", and "Carriers stagger under 350,000 pieces." [BB3] Blank chain letters were sold door to door in residential areas and by hawkers on street corners. [BB4,  BB5] In Kingsport, Tennessee three movie theaters gave away free Send-a-Dime forms at showings. [BB6] A purchase (1/2019) on eBay exemplifies this practice: a commercially printed SD form [1935] was one of an order of 2,000 by the Knickerbocker Theatre (likely in Holland, Michigan). Each contains an add at the bottom for an upcoming performance of the 1935 movie "Go Into Your Dance" starring Al Jolson. In Denver, restaurant owner A. A. McVittie returned home from two days out of town to find 2,363 chain letters awaiting him. [BB7] The craze rapidly spread to other cities - on May 8 the "chain letter splurge" had increased the St. Louis daily mail average from 450,000 to 800,000 letters. [BB8].

Two new motivational categories of chain letters branched off early from SD - the exchange chain letters [ARCX] and parodies [ARCJ]. More relevant to our topic, various schemes developed attempting to avoid postal regulations and counter cheating with SD. Thus distribution of the text defining the scheme was required to be person-to-person, and the supplier would supervise mailing the ante and preparation of the revised list. [1935-05-09, 1935-05-10]  Chain letter "factories" appeared that supplied cheap printed forms of the latest chain letter, and often the services of typists and notaries. Dense crowds of men in hats mobbed makeshift establishments to get in early on the latest scheme.  [BB9, 1935-05]

On May 17, 1935, Post Office officials in Washington DC announced that the "send-a-dime letter fad was on the wane." [BB11]. On Aug. 15 of that year, Denver Postmaster J. O. Stevic revealed that there were 100,000 SD letters in their Dead Letter Office. They contained over $3,000 in dimes, quarters and dollar bills, this to be turned over to the United States Treasury Department. [BB12,  Photo1] Send-a-Dime was a creature of 1935. All 34 SD letters in The Paper Chain Letter Archive which have a postmarked envelope were mailed in May of 1935. [ARCM]

Paper money chain letters still circulate in the US mail. A popular recent example, usually titled "AS SEEN ON OPRAH AND 20/20", is five pages long,  features surprisingly traditional testimonials, and recommends sending out hundreds of copies. This is primarily a vehicle to promote the sale of mailing lists. [2009-02] All money chain letters and pyramid schemes are illegal in the US, whether they use the mails or not.

We conclude this section with links to five newspaper photographs that document the 1935 chain letter craze. Captions on the back of the pictures describe the activities depicted.
(1) Buyers for the $5 Springfield Pyramid scheme. Springfield, Missouri. May 8, 1935.  [Photo2]
(2) Store selling the "Pot O' Gold" Pyramid scheme. Springfield, Missouri. May 10, 1935. [Photo 3]
(3) The Glendale "Dollar Scramble". Glendale, California, May 18. 1935.  [Photo4]
(4) The Golden Gate Chain Recirculating Club. San Francisco, California. May 28, 1935.  [Photo5]
(5) The St. Petersburg Chain Letter Club. St. Petersburg, Florida. July 12, 1935.  [Photo6]

Below is the text, "exactly as written" (except for the four omissions in the list) of HL as published by Harry M. Hyatt in Folk-lore from Adams County, Illinois in 1935. He states it was part of a "chain letter fad" that appeared in the latter part of 1933. [1933-11]

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We trust in God. He supplies our needs.

Mrs. F. Streuzel..., [omitted]... Mich.
Mrs. A.Ford........, Chicago .....Ill.
Mrs. K.Adkins......, Chicago .....Ill.
Mrs. R.Arlington..., [omitted]....Ill.
Mrs. [omitted]....., Quincy.......Ill.
Mrs. [omitted]....., Quincy.......Ill.

Mrs. Sanford won $3,000.
Mrs. Andres won $1,000.
Mrs. Howe who broke the chain lost everything she possessed.

The chain grows a definite power over the expected word.

DO NOT BREAK THE CHAIN
See what happens on the 9th day.
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This letter is prototypical of the "Prosperity" type which dominated circulation of luck chain letters in the US from 1932 to around 1938. [ACRL]  Like the prior "Flanders" type, most Prosperity letters asked that five copies be distributed within 24 hours and warned against breaking the chain. But whereas the 1920's Flanders letters had  promised "good luck" for compliance, the 1930's depression era chain letters promised "prosperity". Most of these also bore a title much like the title on HL above. And most important, usually a controlled list of prior senders appeared below the title. A quota nine 1932 letter, transitional to the Hyatt version, is the earliest example I have found anywhere of a controlled list, though in this case the contents of the list were not reported - a common problem with newspaper transcriptions. There are claims on the World Wide Web that an exponential process based on a controlled list such as found on SD was previously employed in London in the 1890's by "The Self-Help Mutual Advance Society". These claims are false. [BB13, BB14] Extensive searches of online newspaper archives and other sources have yet to reveal a controlled list prior to the 1930's. However all my searches have been in the English language, and even in English the choice of search words is not obvious.

In the above chain letter, the sentence "The chain grows a definite power over the expected word" is a type of statement, called an "Affirmation", which often appears in luck chain letters from around 1926 to 1940. Affirmations function as a comment by one supposedly knowledgeable about the history of the chain letter, and usually confirm or explain its claims of good fortune. Often affirmations are highly corrupted by miscopying and thus may no longer be comprehensible. 

The controlled list on HL, and probably most other Prosperity type letters, consisted of names, towns and states, but NOT full street addresses. [1933-04, 1939-03]  Prosperity letters were also the first in the US to bear testimonials about winning or losing money. This feature also appears on prior French chain letters from 1928 [F1928]. Possibly a translated French letter was the source for many of the new features on Prosperity chain letters. Other translated French language chain letters circulated in the US at about the same time, possibly coming from Quebec. [1930-01,  1930-02, 1931-10]

I think it is likely that widespread replication of standard Prosperity chain letters with controlled lists of names and towns resulted in donations being sent to mailable addresses on the list, especially to the name at the top. Back then, if you lived in a small town it was common practice to use just your name and town as a mailing address. Of the first 15 envelopes with distinct addresses among the 1935 money chain letters in the Paper Chain Letter Archive, eight are addressed in this manner. [ARCM]  But since there is no request to send money in HL, why would recipients of this luck chain letter send money to anyone on the list? Some readers might have interpreted the letter's title, "We trust in God. He supplies our needs", to mean that the people on the list were receiving charity, perhaps through a church, or perhaps from readers of the letter. Thus in response to the great needs of the time, some may have thought the letter was a charitable appeal and sent a donation. Partial literacy may have been a factor in this. Charity chain letters had circulated since the 1880's that asked recipients to send a dime to an address on the letter. The omission on standard Prosperity letters of the usual suggestion on luck chain letters to dispatch copies on a tour around the world also hints at pecuniary motivation, since any letter sent abroad had little chance of eliciting a donation. 

In 1978 someone told me that a grandparent had once mailed out a luck chain letter and was surprised when subsequently varying amounts of money were  received "from all over the country". At the time I did not know that luck chain letters previously had lists of senders, and this fact had disappeared from the family legend. So I did not take the story seriously. This could have been a surviving account from the early 1930's of receiving charitable feedback from a Prosperity luck chain letter with a name and town controlled list. Nothing like money chain letters existed then, so getting letters with money in them could have been totally unexpected, or possibly regarded as an answer to a prayer.

But what was the original motivation to add one's town and state to the names in a list of prior senders? This could have been just a matter of imitating some initial behavior, as happened with adding a date of receipt on a 1982 luck chain letter. Or it could have originated when a chain letter was intended to "go around the world". Several such geographical locations could strongly imply that a letter had completed such a circuit. The earliest known controlled list with recipient's town was on a transitional form of the Prosperity type that retained a circumnavigation request. [1933]

If someone were intentionally mailing Prosperity chain letters to receive cash donations, they may have modified the letter to increase their take. But superstitious beliefs, legal concerns, and the desire to limit competition would have inhibited disclosing the exponential process involved. Alternatively, any such disclosure on the letter might generate broader participation and thus more donations. Here are several Affirmations from Prosperity letters in the archive.

Let your good wishes go with this as you send it out. Wish everybody good luck and it will return to you.  [1932-07]
The theory is that this gets up a definite and possessive radio.  [1932-12]
The theory is that this arouses a definite medium. The power of words cannot be denied.  [1933-04]
The theory is to set up a definite and positive thought.  [1933-04]
The chain grows a definite power over the expected word.  [1933-11]
This chain has a definite force to all who repeat these words. [1934-04]

The first example comes closest to revealing the process. Subsequent examples may be corruptions of added text that sought to promote faithful participation, but not clear understanding. Note also that, generally, innovations in a chain letter that increase circulation could arise from a multitude of offhand remarks and even copying errors, rather than from calculated human invention.

Suppose around 1932 some people were repeatedly mailing out Prosperity chain letters for money. The requisite knowledge to do this could have spread within families, or possibly within a criminal organization. A large collection of Prosperity chain letters could reveal such activity by the appearance of restarts on the senders' lists. It would also be revealing if any pre-SD letters had full street addresses. No letters intermediate between the Hyatt letter and Send-a-Dime have been found. The advent of SD in the spring of 1935 atrophied whatever money schemes were operating utilizing Prosperity chain letters. SD was where the smart action was - the Prosperity type reverted to pure superstition. All rational hope for money was banished when "do not send money" appeared in the late thirties and quickly captured the luck chain letter niche. The odd Affirmations disappeared at the same time.