The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-12-10
POINTS ON SAFE CRACKING
AN EXPERT WHO IS 4 WONDER AT
 HIS TRADE.

An Army Officer With 8 Taste for NIechan-
 ics-High Explosives and EIectricity-A
 New and Dangerous Method.
 Safe cracking has been made easy.
 There is not vault in the city of Chi cago which cannot be entered in thir- ty minutes by the modern burglar, pro- viding the only safeguards supplied be the enclosing walls. Take away the watchman, and the masses of iron and steel will give but little more than mo- mentary protection to the millions rep resented by the more precious metals which they inclose. The safes Of the smaller business houses are absolutely at the mercy of the thief
 Every municipality which supplies its own electric light, and every troll ley car company in the land, has put into the hands of the cracksman a means of attack, safe, silent and cer- tain--the electric current. The day of nitro -glycerine, dynamite and drills of tempered steel is gone. There need be no mors Wrecking of safes, with its ac- companying noise, nor will 1t ever again be necessary for the midnight worker to force off layer by layer, with explosives and jimmy, the iron doors of the treasure chest. Give him a carbon stick, a bunch of wire, and thirty min utes free from Interruption and the hoard is his.
 Samuel Rodman, jr., of Chicago, who has opened safe and vault of nearly every construction eXtant, and who, if he should choose to drop his work as an expert in high explosives, could probably earn as large an income as any bank president in the country by turning a. bank cracksman, has been eX- perimenting recently with the electric current; and now after years spent In showing how easy it was to get into the coffers of banking institutions by means of nitro-glycerine, drills, and the like, says that those methods are things of the past MT. Rodman is 8 graduate of West Point and was student while still in the United States army at the Engineers School of Application, Will let's Point, New York; at the United States Torpedo station station, New port, R. l., and at the Artillery school, Fort Monroe. The United States gov ernrnent came to the conclusion some time ago that the treasury vaults In Washington were in lamentable con- dition. It was decided to have the mat ter authoritatively settled by compe- tent and disinterested experts. A com mission was appointed consisting of Robert H. Thurston of New York, The odore N Ely of Pennsylvania, and Francis A. Pratt of Connecticut. MT. Rodman was the expert chosen to con- duct experiments for the commission. LA sample of nearly every known safe was sent to the commission and they were all speedily and quietly opened by the army officer expert. He used ni- tro-glycerine when occasion demanded it and the noise of the explosion was not heard thirty feet When the high explosive was unnecessary MT. Rodman bored through the containing walls. In many cases the more frequently the words burglar proof appeared upon the surface of the safe the more easily was the supposed strong box opened.
 The government never did anything to improve the condition of it's vaults and depends now, as it always has de- pended, upon the fidelity of watchmen for the preservation of it's treasures. It is perhaps just as well for the safe ty of Uncle Sam's money that this is so for within the last week, after final experiment with the electric cur rent, MT. Rodman, whom the govern ment chose as it's expert, has decided that in the future any large amount of money expended upon the construction of vaults and safes will be money thrown away.
 Safes and vaults" he said, should be built hereafter just strongly enough to withstand a sudden and quick at- tack. If they are of temper and thick mess to stand off the burglars for ten minutes it should be all sufficinet. 9th CT means of protection than thick walls and time-locks must be had. Masses of metal which seem to defy explo sions, or which from their positions and surroundings seem to render an attack by these methods impracticable, are now exposed to the new element of danger, the silent electric current. The development in the use of such meth cd of attack presents new problems in the question of bank security. Ponder ous, expensive construction must give way to lighter and cheaper ones, giving sufficient security against sudden at- tacks and supplemented by some satis- factory system of electric alarm pro- tection. There is a big field opening just now for some one who will perfect an alarm system which burglars cannot tamper with without bringing officers to the scene. I suppose it should take the form of a series of wires about the vaults and safes"
 Within a week watchman in this city, using a carbon stick, melted his way through five inches of wrought iron in less than thirty minutes. The hole made was big enough to allow the insertion of the hand and arm of @ man of medium size. All that is necessary flor a burglar to do now Is to connect wires with 9. terminal where the main wires of an electric light plant turn un- der the sidewalk. At this point he can get the full current generated at the central station. He can trail these wires along the gutter under the cover of darkness and into the building where he has safe to crack. He attaches his carbon to the wire and burns his way to the treasure which he covets. Detection, as far as the act of connect ing with the main wires is concerned,