"Confirming my talk with Mr. ------, I will undertake to obtain testimonials from senators at $75 each, and from congressmen at $40, on a prearranged contract.... A contract for not less than $5,000 would meet my requirements In the testimonial line.... I can put your matter in good shape shortly after congress meets if we come to an agreement.... We can't get Roosevelt, but we can get men and women of national reputation, and we can get their statements in convincing form and language..." It was for this reason that years ago Mrs. Pinkham, at Lynn, Mass., determined to step in and help her sex. Having had considerable experience in treating female ills with her Vegetable Compound, she encouraged the women of America to write to her for advice in regard to their complaints, and being a woman, it was easy for help ailing sisters to pour into her ears every detail of their suffering. No physician in the world has had such a training, or has such an amount of information at hand to assist in the treatment of all kinds of female ills. This, therefore, is the reason why Mrs. Pinkham, in her laboratory at Lynn, Mass., Is able to do more for the ailing women, of America than the family physician.' Any woman, therefore, is responsible for her own suffering who will not take the trouble to write to Mrs. Pinkham for advice. [IMAGE ==>] {094} The way in which the testimonial is actually obtained is thus described by the broker: "The knowing how to approach each individual is my stock-in-trade. Only a man of wide acquaintance of men and things could carry it out. Often I employ women. Women know how to get around public men. For example, I know that Senator A has a poverty-stricken cousin, who works as a seamstress. I go to her and offer her twenty-five dollars to get the senator's signature to a testimonial. But most of it I do through newspaper correspondents here in Washington. Take the senator from some southern state. That senator is very dependent on the Washington correspondent of the leading newspaper in his state. By the dispatches which that correspondent sends back the senator's career is made or marred. So I go to that correspondent. I offer him $50 to get the senator's testimonial. The senator may squirm, but he'll sign all right. Then there are a number of easy-going congressmen who needn't be seen at all. I can sign their names to anything, and they'll stand for it. And there are always a lot of poverty-stricken, broken-down Army veterans hanging around Washington. For a few dollars they'll go to their old Army officers on a basis of old acquaintance sake and get testimonials." It goes without saying that such testimonials are a fraud on the purchaser of the medicine thus exploited.