The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1886-08-18
TRICKS IN BANK NOTES,
STORIES TOLD BY AIN OFFICIAL IN
THE NATIONAL TREASURY.

MGH and Express says: There Is WhlIe-
haired, sharp-eyed little man in the
Treasury who has been one of the features
of the place for years Into this gentle
mans hands, speaking metaphorically, l
happened to fall and it required no par
ticular effort TO make the official talka
tive. lie was inspecting at the moment
a spurious 800 note, and this circum-
stance gave rise to his first anecdote.
IL tell you," he said ''there is appar-
emily no limit to the clever tricks of
counterfeiters Just look at this note.
Il doubtless deceived over hundred
people before it came into our hands.
know for fact that it was accepted as
genuine by bank teller in high stand
ing, and yet the instant a certain young
woman in one of our departments let her
experienced eye fall upon it, she detected
its worthless character. The neat work
manship on the bill reminds me of a case
which came to our notice sCme time ago.
A counterfeiter had got up number of
800 notes on six separate banks. The
copy used was on bank which made its
500 notes in this style. On one end of
the paper was an engraving of a ship,
the yard-arm of which ran between two
delicate flourishes underneath the word
'the,' which was the first word of the
name of the bank of issue; as, for in
stance, The National Bank of the Re-
public or The First National Bank.
The fraud would have been particu-
larly neat one had the counterfeiter made
his notes payable by the same bank from
which he obtained his original specimen.
Instead of being sufficiently shrewd,
however, to avail himself of that precau-
tion, OF perhaps through an excess of
caution, be made them payable by six
other banks. Each of these latter insti-
tutions had one distinctive feature on
their one hundred dollar notes. The
yard arm of the vessel instead of running
between the two minute flourishes barely
touched the outside of the flourish nearer
the top of the note, and approached
closer to the word the by the sixteenth
of an inch. OF course the counterfeit,
which was a capital piece of workman
ship, with the one exception mentioned,
deceived merchants easily, and deceived
many bank tellers as we'll The moment
the notes passed through the hands of a
lynx-eyed young lady at the Treasury,
she discovered their spurious quality in
twinkling."
''It must be difficult, then," 1 re-
marked, ''to hoodwink your clever fe-
male clerks2"
''Yes, indeed, it is. Their eyes are so
thoroughly educated as to make mis-
take almost impossible"
'sHow do they educate their eyesi"
'By constantly running over money.
To casually watch these women at work
you would probably imagine that their
sole aim was simply to count the money
as rapidly as possible. Not so. A clerk
will take pile of bills, tightly fastened
together by rubber bands, and without
so much as loosening the fastenings, she
will begin to count at lightning rate
by merely turning over quickly the
upper right-hand corner of each note.
Still, though she has only such small
portion of the note for her guide, she
swill discover counterfeit readily. Let
me relate little incident which hap
pened while the Seventh regiment was
in the city. Some of the boys, among
them paying teller from a New York
bank, paid us a call, looking very ele-
CANT in their tasteful uniforms. They
were engaged for several moments in
watching the clerks count money in the
manner described. Suddenly one of the
young women snapped a note from the
package which she was running over.
After she had thrown it aside in an ap-
parently careless manner, l picked it up
and handed it to the visitors for inspec-
ton. 1t was passed from one to another
without eliciting any special comment.
Finally it reached the man whom l knew
to be a paying teller. He examined it
for a moment and returned it to nv
possession without word. l asked him
if he had noticed anything peculiar in
regard to it. He replied in the negative.
And yet it was an ingenious counterfeit,
as the experienced eye of the clerk had
detected the instant she had turned up a
corner of it,"
''Is it possible;;' l asked, s'for a note
to be so split in two as to show both
sides of it intact2"
"Oh yes, and it is very easily done.
You procure a certain kind of gum, and
paste the note face downward to a piece
of paper Then you paste another piece
of paper over the back of the note. By
carefully pulling the two pieces apart
the fibre OF the note will split, and what
looks like a difficult transaction is easily
accomplished. Nothing, however, can
NC Bdintu ny lhe operation. ii One-na l
Of such bill were forwarded to us for
redemption, we would return to the
sender one-half Of its face value. Sharp
ers indulge occasionally in little game
which consists of piecing notes. That
is, they Will make nine notes out of eight,
each note being pieced once When you
como 10 measure them you will find that
they are precisely one-eighth shorter
than they should be. Merchants are
readily duped by them, bnt rarely bank
cashier.
''What is the rule relative to the re-
demption of mutilated eurrency2"
"We redeem nothing smaller than one
half of note, and we pay in proportion
TO the quantity Of the note sent, except
where there Is only one-tenth missing.
In the latter case we pay the full face
value. If you were to send US a one