The Ouija Declines

1920

William and Isaac Fuld are contestants in a comparatively unimportant suit in a Baltimore court. Each claims to have invented the Ouija board. Each one claims the right to profit from the sale of the invention. The court is asked to settle the dispute and decide who is entitled to the profits from the sale last year of 375,000 of these popular instruments of modern psychism.

Newspaper correspondents were quick to grasp the incongruity. A court with all its admitted human failings was asked to decide the question. The arbitration of the all-wise and all-known Ouija board was refused by those who might be expected to know its virtues best.

The Fuld brothers hit on a queer policy of advertising their wares.

Frequently it is reported that Ouija board devotees have become insane through too great faith in the mysterious powers of the omnipotent board. It would seem that the Fuld brothers were a trifle crazy so publicly to confess the purely mundane origin of Ouija. After such a confession in court it would appear that only those who already are mentally unbalanced would purchase Ouija as anything more than a toy.

If Ouija cannot designate its own inventor, what can be expected of it in other fields?

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, p. 6.