The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-06
WORK OF COUNTERFEITER
 GROWS MORE DANGEROUS

New York, July 5.-whether crime is actually increasing or decreasing is disputed point among sociologists. One branch of criminal activity that shows a steady falling off from year to year
 is the making and passing of counter felt money. According to the records of the government secret service and of
 the bankers association the amount of
 queer money in circulation has been growing steadily less and less in ipropor- tion to the total for the past 20 years. The expert counterfeiters, men like the famous Ringer, who were artists at the practice of their dubious profession, have been driven out of 1t by the increasing risks and the relentless pursuit which the government and the banks have prac- ticed toward them At the present time most of the men engaged in this occu- patton are "cheap skates who would not have been recognized by the old time leaders who reckoned their profits by tens of thousands of dollars. The ef- forts of these modern money criminals are confined chiefly to sweating" gold coins and passing off on newly arrived immigrants base limitations that would not for a moment deceive a person fa- milar with our currency.
 The reason for the virtual disappear ance of what once was recognized as the top rank of the various criminal pursuits Is due partly to the relentless ness with which Uncle Sam hunts down every counterfeiting enterprise, no mat ter how long 1t may take to reach the criminal Partly also 1t comes from the increasing use of banks. With the null tiplication of banks and trust companies almost everybody maintains some kind of a bank account and this Is really the greatest protection against counterfeiters
 for it is in passing under the scrutiny
 of thes money-handlng experts in the
 banks that most spurious money Is de-
 tected and retired from circulation. While
 1t is true that counterfeiters as sue
 cessful criminals are becoming more and
 more scarce it is equally true that there
 is still large amount of money in cir
 cuation, perhaps a million dollars or
 more, which fails to come up to stand
 ard requirements in one or more partic- ulars.
 There are two general fields Of ac- tivity for the man who tries to make
 his living by tampering with the money of the country. The first Of these is the reproduction of currency, whether paper or metallic. The sec ond the more devious, Is that in which
 the chief end is robbing gold and the larger silver coins of part of their value and then putting them into cir- i culation again. In the first class, that of actual counterfeiting, the produc- tion of bogus bills is the most com mon feature. It Is cheaper, no more difficult and the returns of infrequent success would seem to be larger. Al
 most every denomination of notes is counterfeited, but the public has the satisfaction of knowing that its cir culation invariably leads to the de- tection of the counterfeiter, with con sequent term In jail. While the aver age man feels that the task of detect ing bogus bills when they pass through
 his hands in a perfectly innocent way
 Is rather too much for him, and must
 be left to experts. there are, neverthe- less, several rules which if remembered
 will often afford protection. Tn csc i rules have to do with the manufacture
 of the currency by the government. 1 All United States notes are printed l in sheets of four notes of one denoml
 nation on each sheet. Each. note is 1 lettered in it's respective order, in the l upper and lower corners diagonally op-
 posite, A, B, c, and D, and we haVo i this system for numbering our notes; 1 All numbers on being divided by and ! leaving l for remainder have the ] check letter A ? remainder. B; re-
 mainder, c; even numbers, or with no l remainder. D. Any United States note | the number upon which can be divided
 by four without showing the above re-
 suit is counterfeit and while this i rule is not infallable in all instances l 1t will be found of service in the de- 1 tection of counterfeits. 1 While paper money is still counter
 feited. gold and silver coins receive more attention. The great difficulty in the field of the ''money-maker" is found 1 in the necessity of conforming at the 1 same time to the standards, weight, | appearance and ring. While counter
 felt coin may have the correct weight. 1 the ring as a general thing is often so
 poor as to cause immediate exposure. 1 Then too 1t usually is not so trim .n i appearance as the genuine, and the i coin often has the well vnown, greasy l feeling of base metal.
 1 A daring and temporarily successful l counterfeiting scheme was discovered re-
 gently in France, where thousands of
 counterfeit gold 10 franc pieces were put
 in circulation. They were made of glass,
 which. in molten state, was forced into 1 moulds. Then by another equally in- ]! genius process. known technically as that 1 of "galvano-plastrie, the coins were cov- i cred with a fine film of gold. So perfect
 was their appearance and so joyous their ring when tested on a marble slab that
 no one thought of suspecting them. There
 was one weakness, however-there always
 is-and that was their fragibility. The cashier of bank, dropping one on the
 stone floor in his hurry. was stupehed to
 see it shiver into thousand pieces and the murder was out Next day nearly every merchant in the city where most of these coins had been put in circulation was busily engaged, with many nnaledic- tions in testing all his gold coins with d hammer.
 Methods in this country would hardly seem to be so artistic. One of the com monest is plating five-cent pieces with gold and passing them off on the newly landed foreigners as s5 gold pieces The silver coins are perhaps most counter faited for while the secret service rakcd