The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-07-05

est Is plating five-cent pieces with gold and passing them off on the newly landed for- eigners as five-dollar gold pieces, The sii- yer coins are perhaps most counterfeited. for while the Secret Service raked fin ss,0o0 as spuriaus gold coin last year. the haul in silver currency was double that amount. Sometimes counterfeit of the subsidiary coins is stamped out of copper or brass and plated but they are easy of detection as are those made from pewter.
 An extremely good tekt for counterfeit coin is to cut sharply with the milled edge of good coin against that of the suspect ed one. If 1t be bad the metal will almost immediately begin to shave off. It is test with which the public might become ac- quainted to It's profit, for. It can be tried anywhere in a moment All that is needed is the proverbial two coins to rub one against the other.
 There are many ways of doctoring good com to the gain of the criminal and the public loss Over in China for instance the willy Oriental thinks 1t worth while to cut Uncle Sam's silver dollars into two flat halves for the purpose of scooping bullion from the inside. They are then filled up with metal of q proper weight and fastened together so carefully as practically to defy detection. In this country a similar but even more delicate treatment is given to gold coins, as silver Is considered unworthy of notice by the artistic worker in this line.
 Plugging is the favorite method employ ed and the larger denominations of gold coins especially twenty-doflar gold pieces are selected The interior of these coins is bored out with exceeding delicate instru- ments several dollars worth of pure gold being obtained from each. The minute hole is drilled In the edges. and expertly is 1t done. and so neatly and skiIifuliy Is the interior plugged with bad but weiehty met thai thaSe cofna oftan defy defartfon until they reach the hands Of an expert The puncture is so small and so c1everly annealed with pure gold that a very good pair of eyes is necessary to detect 1t.
 From such work as this the methods of converting good money into bad pass through an increasingly unartistic series of efforts Some counterfeiters give the gold coins an acid bath, or sweat" them out of dollar or two of the good metal and then pass them along The coins are genuine, of course. but the sweating de- prfves them of the required weight. These swehted coins pass in circulation from hand to hand until they reach the banks or the sub-treasuries. where they are at once caught up by the coin counters. and their careers come to a sudden and abrupt close as coins of the realm.
 The wonder Is not that there is counter felt coin in circulation but rather that, the amount Is constantly decreasing and that through the efforts of the Secret Service 1t Is fast approaching the point where 1t will be a negligible quantity And it is rather grim commentary on American abil- ity that the great majority of counterfeit CTS in this country are native born. The foreigner is Title able to compete in this line apparently, for out of all the persons arrested by the Secret Service last year for counterfeiting nearly seventy-five per cent. wero Americans. Italians and Russians came next, but far in the rear.