The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-01-07
FORGER BROCKRAY.
SKETCH OF THE AGEA CON
 VICT.
Yankee skni tn His countsrfeltlng Job.-How He Began Life in New Havea-To be Released January as.

and manufacturer of Monte Cristo mil lions, leave New Jerseys state prison on January 26, that institution will lose the most notorious of it's twelve hun dred inmates. In appearance he some what resembles both the late William II. Reward and William M. Evarts, both once at the head of the department of state Picture tall, slender, benev- olent looking man, eighty-one years old, with a strong, intellectual face and the modest, self-contained manner of Russell Sage, and you have William E. Brockway.
 He is not only remarkable man, but has given the secret service detectives of the Washington government more sleepless nights than all the other coun- terfeit money manufacturers in the country. The secret of his so-called success has been his ability to make genuine bank notes and bonds seem counterfeit when compared with his marvellous work.
 It is said that when United States treasury notes and Brockway's coun- terfeits were handed to an expert for
 
 notes as counterfeit and pronounced Brockway's money genuine. This is why the man was considered so great a menace to the finances of the govern ment. When arrested and tried in court he managed his case with con summate skill, and counsel for the gov ernment called it great luck" when he was convicted at all. And even when ' sentenced to state prison he so fre- quently found ways of legal escape that men began to talk of hypnotism and ask if Broadway had an assortment of charmed lives up his sleeve.
 A CONNECTICUT YANKEE.
 Of course this extraordinary man is a Yankee-a Connecticut Yankee-horn in New Haven in 1922. While lad he was apprenticed to printer there and be- gan as roller and press boy in printing bank-notes for the state banks and banks of New Haven. The work was done in the presence of at least two di- rectors, who watched and counted the sheets as they went through the press. The plates and paper belonged to the banks and were returned to the vaults and locked up when the printing of the notes was finished.
 In this work young Broadway soon became expert-was skillful, artistic and original As the business grew a chemical knowledge of how to make .>better ink and paper became necessary, and the boy was put under the instruc- tion of Professor Siliman, of the Yale college laboratory, to master the art of electro chemistry. Young Broadway showed amazing ability and was early at the head of his profession. Such was the beginning of his nope: making ca reer, and being~successf in manufac- tuyip6- -7safk notes for others, he in time us.-xussR5d to do business on his own ac- count.
 When I called on this man at the Trenton prison the other day I found him one of the most popular and re- spected of the inmates. He was at his duties as prison librarian and his face shone with pleasing intellectual glow The library contains an unusually fine collection of books did not see poor book among them-all standard works of poets, historians, novelists and scien- lists, from Plutarch and Homer to Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, Vic tor Hugo, Darwin and Herbert Spencer Broadway seemed to hold the well work books in great affection and kept them neatly bound, covered and let tered on the backs, and he seemed fa- nlilisr with the literature and archaeol- -~ osy.
 NOT AN ENGRAvER.
 I don't care to exploit myself or to defend my character in the newspa- pers, said the aged prisoner, s'but I dc object to misleading the public with statements that are not true. In the first place, I am not an engraver, as has often been asserted. I never en. graved plate in my life and know nothing of the art in a practical ol technical sense. I am a printer. That is my profession"
 The warden said he doubted if Brock way ever engraved a plate, for he wa. not an expert in that particular line o bank-note manufacture. His great skill lay in knowing how to print from the engraved plates of others better thar almost any one else. recalled a state. lnent that he had spent ten years on ont plate and it was said to rival the bes government work. "It is not true,'' wa. the reply.
 Here are Brockway's own views or counterfeiting: "There are not experts though there are good judges of paper money. I once had a fairly good cyl for distinguishing different kinds of en- graving. But in these modern days O machine work who can tell the differ ence between, say, two lines of paralle ruling done by machine?
 Men have sworn under oath tha geometrical lathe work is equally diff cult to duplicate, yet there are man, experts who can produce so perfect copy that the maker of the original can not distinguish the difference betweel the two. It is no secret that by wei Known chemical processes the most in tricate specimens of lathe work can b absolutely reproduced.
 CALLS BANKERS FOOLISH.
 If the bank people and companies do ing the engraving were not so hide bound and welded to their methods an processes which they fooishly claim t be infallible, they might introduce nev ways of manufacturing paper none, that could not be counterfeited.'
 This statement by Brickway is signifi cant, for it is fact that few year ago on his release from Sing Sing h had a conference with several promi