The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-06

I L J
 what a good bill looks like No matter
 how. cleverly done, the eounterfeiter':
 work may be, his product is not just like
 that turned out at Washington. That's
 all that saves us. -e s-..
 "See this s1O bill? It looks pretty
 good, doesn't it?h Well, it's worth jus
 $1; no more. I Believe that bill would
 be accepted anywhere outside the biz
 banks. Yet to a man with a trained eye
 it looks bad enough. The man who first passed that bill raised it from .$1 to $10
 Examine it closely, and you can see how
 it was done. I would not explain just
 how it was done, for l might in that way tempt some one to try the experi-
 ment. There are many men who know
 the way to do it. and they cause us I trouble. 5 q caught that bill the other morning
 with my eyes half closed. I had been
 out to a party the night before, and | was sitting at my desk running over a great stack of currency that came in
 with the remittances from our country
 agents. When I came to this bill threw it aside. You see the lathe work
 around the figure 10 differs from that
 on the rest of the bill. And. besides, only 9 $1 bill has the portrait of both Lincoln and Grant upon it's face.
 That is clever piece of work. Tn all my experience I have never seen a raised bill where the work was done
 more neatly. Therefore the trained eye sees # is bad. s s@.
 Here are samples of eounterfeits, good, had and indifferent" continued
 MT. Wood as he threw several bills on
 the desk. "These are all old, and I pick ed them up between 1872 and 1879, when
 the counteffeiter piled his vocation with great vigor. Some are made from stol- en plates, others were stolen before be- ing signed. and still others are just simply bad money of the most glaring kind.
 Not long ago I came across bogus $5 gold piece. It was really silver piece. A bag of gold came into the office. and when I dumped it upon the table one coin rolled a little to one side 'of the pile. It looked to be all right, but a ray of sunshine that slanted into the office cell across the coin. and I noticed 2 slight flaw in the rim. I picked it ID. The milling was sharp and clear. The coin looked to be. as good as any in the bag. but there was something about it that didn't like. threw it aside as bogus. took it to a number of banks in Chicago. All pro- nounced it genuine cut into it and found it was almost pure silver heavily planted with gold.
 s T have often tried to imagine the per- egrinations of a counterfeit bill. I know of one that has q peculiar history. One day about three years ago received q large package of currency, consisting of notes of high denominations. There were several notes of SIC. 900 value, sey- eral of s5,000 and a large number. of $100 each. was counting them when I came across a counterfeit note of a Pittsburg Pa,1 bank, I knew where the note had come from, and after duly recording and marking it, returned 1t to the man who had sent it in.
 a Exactly one year later again sound that identical note in a package Of cur rency sent to me. It had been mixed with other currency. however, and I could not tell when it came. I charged it up to profit and loss. The bill was placed in drawer in the office and there 1t remained for a year. One day some one was looking for some large bills when was away and he lighted upon the bogus bank note. It was de- posted in one of the big banks of the city. We could not trace 1t further. I have not seen my old friend, the coun- terfeit. since then. and I do not know where it Is. but itsis safe to say that it is doing it's lawful share of the busi- ness of the nation. assa
 Tt is not an easy matter to learn to. detect commercials. It. is hard to tell, how it is done. I do not have any faith in the statement that men can tell the good from the bad by touch. think the eye is the safest deteetor. We meet people every day for a year. We learn to know just how they appear. If we were asked to describe them nlinutely we perhaps could not do it. vet if we, see them when there is the slightest change in their appearance we detect it &
 ''It is the same way with money. If we see genuine currency ever ylay for years we learn to know it. It has it's certain appearance. just like a human has. When q bogus bill comes into our i.ends we see that it does not l6ok right. We know that much. Some people be- lieve that one can tell whether q bill is gcad or bad by the hunters upon it. That isn't so. A cornterfciter knows as much about the numbers as do the men make genuine money, It requires long practice to become a detector of bogus money. There is no other way to learn the trick" Chicago Inter- Ocean. ~