The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-15
CONFIDENCE MEN.
Ingenuity of Their Schemes Exceeding Iy Great. .r .

Ingenuity of Their Schemes Exceeding .. Iy Great. The confidence trick, though it is now acclimatized in all civilized coun-
 tries, is undoubtedly American in
 origin. It is only in the expansive air of American institutions that con
 fidence' in it's double sense can blossom
 it's brightest. Whether confidence" be taken to mean .impudenee" or trust fulness" it is equally indigenous to American soil, and all other versions are but limitations In Paris thls genesis is so thoroughly realized that 1 this species of swindling is called le vol a. la Americain,'' and the operator always speaks bad French and poses | as a rich and eccentric Yankee. ess. .< That character is not unfamiliar, too' to the operators who hang around the I big hotels at Charing Cross, but of late l there has been a distinct tendency to adopt the colonial pose, Perhaps It IS 1 a tribute to the imperialism that IS Tn the air that these specious, shallow I swindTers find it their most effectlve cloak A few months ago a case came | before a London police court in which the swindlers were posing as Australian l sheep farmers who had made pile ot money and were seeing life. Still more I recently a corporal in the South African l consfabulary was actually swindled out l of his money at Waterloo Station as he | was waiting for his train for South- l aTnpton. In this case the operators
 were men from the Rand who were l anxious to give a South African agood
 send-off. :, I AIn these instances the confidence trick I assumed the form most familiar to us. 1 One of the swindlers has a large sum l in bank notes, the proceeds of legacy, l which he proposes to- hand over to the dupe to administer for charitable pur-
 poses. He proposes < that the dupe should hand over. his. purse and money 1 as security while he is going on some | fiotitfous errand. When both the
 swindlers have disappeared, the ''come l on'' Gas he is called in America) finds that he is the holder of a parcel of l Bank of England notes, and that his 1 .'confidencep has been misplaced. l Whatever the excuse, this IS always | the result. <. ..,.+ ,;.yJ.., '...5 .5 @.= 1 Closely related to the confidence trick
 is the Spanish prisoner swindler The | swindler cireularizes innocent house. | holders. offering them large fortune
 which he cannot get at because he is
 in a debtors prison-on conditions 1 that they will provide for his daughter Sometimes it is the treasures of the ex- | Empress Eugenie which he offers; sometimes it is the war chest of Don
 Carlos. Many English people have
 sent sums as high as e100 or e150, and on arriving in Barcelona discovered they had been duped. The persons con l ducting the swindle have been re- I peatedly arrested at the instance oi the British consul in Barcelona, but
 the victims are trying to grasp a
 fortune to.which they are not honest ly entitled they invariably. decline tt prosecute, and after a few days deten-
 ton the swindlers are released, *z But America is the real home of ,the "confidence man. it is his native air and he flourishes like a green bay tree It is not sWindle there; it is lsyndicate. Tom O'Brien, the confidence man who shot his old pal "Kid'' Wad' dell, another American crook" at the
 Care du ,Nordt Station in Paris, just ter
 years ago, had in his prime two ol three dozen men in his employ, who used the funds he provided and turned 3l over to him the profits, just like com. T lmercial travellers. They would wal outside hotels and railways stations fol well-to-do visitors from the rural dis.
 -"hayseeds,' is the slang term
 1t was easy enough for these plausible
 well dressed fellows to strike up ar
 acquaintance, and then the "hayseed'
 became 'come-on."
 The confidence trick in their hands had endless subdivisions. There wa' the man whose dearest friend had in
 vented an electric plough that only
 wanted $S,000 worth of Improvement
 to sell like hot cakes. The farmer wht
 put up some of his good money for this enterprise learned afterward that tn,
 stock certificates were bogus.
 Then there was the "gold bricl game" in which Tom O'Brien person !, ally excelled. He would, when at hi best, sell two gold bricks a. day fo
 weeks at a stretch. He was returned
 miner from California. Australia O
 Klondike, who had got all his 'clean \ up'' melted down into one solid brick
 He was tired of carrying it around ant showing it. It was marked with United States assay mark, and h
 would sell it for $2,000 to get rid of it The purchaser learned too late that tn United States Assay Office mark onl, Iguaranteed the character of a nea
 three-inch plug of gold which had beel
 inserted into an otherwise leaden brick ; and the whole suitably glided. 7
 Another branch of the confidenc trick irAmerfca is the saWdust game,