The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-08-09
SPURIOUS COIN ALLURE.
Psychology of Counterfeiting Puzzle
to Federal Authorities.

Like the fly which lights on paper
carefully smeared with molasses for
his benefit. the man who lets his
thoughts dwell upon queer money is
caught hard and fast. unless he gets
| the idea out of his head as soon as it
enters" That is the psychology of
counterfeiting, as explained by Captain
Thomas j. Porter of the United States
secret service, to the Chicago Record
Herald.
As a. further illustration of his the
DRY, Captain Porter reverted to the case
of the Rev. James r. Kaye, the Oak
Park minister, convicted of making bad
coin.
Men who counterfeit want to get
rich quickly" explained Captain Por-
ter. 1T is funny, though. how the
game attracts man who is otherwise
honest. The man who is attracted at
first by the prospect of making money
easily in this way argues that he is do
ing no wrong.
He simply says to himself that he
will make a few thousand dollars of
spurious money and then shove it out
in a safe way. He argues with him.
self that the money will be accepted by
everyone, and that it really is the same
as the money stamped as legal tender
by the government, and only the gov
eminent will lose
He begins to read about counterfeit
ing, and the more he reads the easier
the thing seems. Ten to one he has a
taste for mechanics, and any man with
a simple knowledge of metals, if he has
the proper dies, can turn out a pretty
fair representation of dollar or other
silver coin.
Most of the old-time counterfeiterS
have gone out of business or are serv-
ing terms in penitentiaries, and many
of the spurious coins made at the pres
ent time are manufactured by men who
are respected in the communities in
which they live
"Counterfeiting bank notes is more
difficult than making spurious coins,
but after a man has been successful
with silver pieces he takes up the 9TH
er, and, with study and perseverance,
can turn out few bills. However.
these makers of bad money never last
long They are run to earth sooner or
later Then comes their realization of
the crime they-have been involved in.
The government is relentless enemy
and the punishment for making spuri-
Gus money is severe, but the wrong
doors never realize this until they are
fairly caught.
Every man believes in his own heart
that he is sharper and ShreWder tndn
his neighbor. When he reads stories of
counterfeiters who fiourished years ago
he sees what blunders they made and
how they came to be caught.
81 can do better than that fellow
did, and those dub detectives could
never hauve caught me in the trap
they laid for him, is the way the ana
ateur counterfeiter muses.. He figures
it all out to his own satisfaction, but
he fails to give the men in Uncle
Sans service credit for any brains or
originality OF thought He thinks that
they work the same way on every case,
and that all he has to do is to observe
the pitfalls that the other men fell into
and be careful not to walk into them
himself.
This point settled, the deluded vic
tim of the get-rich-quick craze has only
few more steps to take. The first
thing that he does. generally, is to
manufacture some homemade dies OF
plaster of paris. They are crude molds
of silver pieces, and so our deluded
friend experiments little by pouring
pure lead into these casts. and to his
surprise and delight he turns out few
pieces of metal which bear resem-
bianCe 10 money"