Arizona republican., 1908-07-06
MAKING BAD MONEY
 FALLING INTO DECAY
Work of the Counterfeiter Growing More Hazardous-How to Detect Spurious Bills and Coins That Have Been Tempered With.

New York, June 29-Special cores pondenct of The Republican.-Wheth- CT crime is actually increasing or de creasing 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 counterfeit money. Ac- cording to the records of the govern ment secret service and of the bank CTS association the amount of queer money in circulation has been growing steadily less and less in proportion to the total for the past twenty years. The expert counterfeiters, men like the famous Ringer who were artists at the practice of their dubious prOfes- sion. have been driven out of it by the increasing risks and the relent- less pursuit which the government and the banks have practiced toward them. At the present time most of the men engaged in this occupation are cheap skates" who reckoned their profits by tens of thousands of dol lars. The efforts of these money criminals are confined chiefly to sweating" gold coins and passing off on newly arrived immigrants base inn itations that would not for a moment deceive a person familiar with our currency.
 The reason for the virtual disap- pearance of what once was recognized as the top rank of the various crimi- nal pursuits is due partly to the re- lentlessness with which Uncle Sam [ hsnts down every cOunterfeiting en- terprise no matter how long it may take to reach the criminal. Partly also it comes from the increasing use of banks With the multiplication of banks and trust companies almost everybody maintains some kind of bank account and this. is really the greatest protection against counter feiters for it is in passing under the scrutiny of the money handling eX perts in the banks that most spurious money is detected and retired from circulation. While it is true that counterfeiters as successful criminals are becoming more and more scarce 1t is equally true that there is still large amount of money in circulation, perhaps a million dollars or more, which fails to come up to standard requirements in one or more particu lars.
 There are two general fields of ac tivity for the man who tries to make his living by tampering with the mon ey of the country. The first of these is the reproduction of currency wheth- er paper or metallic. The second, the more devious, is that in which the chief end is robbing gold and the larger silver coins of a part of their value and then putting them into cir culation again. In the first class, that of actual counterfeiting. the pro- duction 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 detec- tion of the counterfeiter, with a con- sequent term in jail. While the av- craze man feels that the task of de- tecting bogus bills when they pass through his hands in a perfectly inno- cent way is rather less, several rules which If remembered will often af-- ford protection. These rules have to do with the manufacture of the cur rency by the government.
 All United States notes are printed in sheets of four notes of one tlenom- ination on each sheet Each note is lettered in its respective order. in the upper and lower corners diagonally Op posite, A, B, c. and D, and we have this system for numbering our notes: All numbers on being divided by 4 and leaving 1 for a remainder; have the check letter A; remainder, B; 3 TO- mainder, c; even number, or with no remainder, D., Any United States note the number upon which can be divided by four without showing the above re- suit is a counterfeit, and while this