The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-09

ed Paper Money, Bogus
 Gold Bars, a Silver Brick,
 Fishing for Ingots in a
 Mint Vault.
 Somebody is all the time picking Uncle Sam's pocket. Only few days ago it was discovered that a clerk in the treasury had stolen sev- eral sheets of unsigned blank-notes from a vault. Such notes, of course, do not acquire the signatures of the bank officers until after they have reached the bank for which they are printed by the government. But with out the autographs they are perfect ly good spending money. Who looks to see whether a banknote is signed |? The methods by which Uncle Sam is robbed are often most picturesque. On one occasion negro night watch man at the San Francisco mint got away with $20,000 worth of gold He took 1t from the separating tanks in the refining room with a spoon-just a spoonful, worth about $20, at a time.
 The loss was noticed, and, when | it was ascertained that the watch man. whose name was Henry Smith, had been selling bullion, he was ar rested. His humble home was search | ed; the floors were taken up; the modest furniture was knocked to pieces-all without any result Final l ly his yard was dug over, and be- meath a beautiful bed of pansies the secret service men unearthed an earthen pot containing seven cone shaped ingots of yellow metal. Smith l (who had melted his stealings in a ! crucible went to jaiD. l The notion of substituting chunks l of base metal for gold, and pocket | ing the difference of value, was the
 original idea of John T. Jones, as-
 sistant melter and refiner in the Car
 son mint He took ingenious ad- Ivantage of the fact that the quality of gold bar is not shown by its 1 looks. It may be 999 fine, and yet have the appearance of piece of old 1 brass.
 Jones got away with a prudent few
 ounces at g. time. When he had
 taken 500 ounces, he would make a fake bar, wholly of base material
 and mark it with a false value, inn
 itating the assay stamp. This brought [him out exactly square. When the
 treasury inspector came around and took stock of the bars, nothing seem
 ed to be missing.
 E Unassisted, he could not have man.
 aged the scheme; but two other mint | employees "stood in'' with him, one
 of them being James Heney, the sill
 ver-dissolver. The three finally quarrelled over their shares of the proceeds, and Heney started in to
 steal for himself. He had charge of
 the kettle in which silver bars Gall of
 which, as they come from the mines,
 contain more or less gold), were l treated to separate the gold out of them. When the bars were dissolved in boiling sulphuric acid. the silver l became a solution, while the gold fell l to the bottom as a reddish powder
 resembling fine gravel Heney took
 a few pinches of the gravel from each
 kettleful.
 | This went on for quite a while,
 Heney stealing granular gold from 1 the refining room while Jones and the l third confederate made bogus melts,'' substituting fake bars for the gold they took. The three took $75,-
 500 altogether, and there is no tell l ing how much more they might have
 got had it not been for the appoint
 mef.t of a new chief of the melting
 and refining division, who drew on the stock of gold bars for coinage. Then it was discovered that some of them were not gold at all.
 Another larcenous episode, not less l picturesque in it's way. was staged
 at the mint in Philadelphia, where | it was away back in 1S51-one James I E. Negus was employed as weighing
 clerk. There was at that time a flood
 of gold, following the discovery in California, and great quantities of
 dust and nuggets poured into the mint, for conversion into bullion and
 coin. It was Negus job to weigh the :, deposits and put them in a vault un- til they could be melted. To abstract
 a nugget or a pinch of dust from each deposit was an easy trick,
 But Negus had a sharp-eyed as- sistant. youth named Henry S. l Cochran, who, his suspicious aroused
 kept watch and found out what was going on. Finally he disclosed the matter to the superintendent Negus fled, and, as a reward for his clever J appointed in his place.
 I This, however. is only the begin ming of the story. Many years elapsed, and then Cochran took tC stealing on his own account. By that time he had been 40 years in the
 service of the mint. of which he was l one of the most trusted employees One of the vaults under his charge
 contained 25 tons of gold ingots, each
 one stamped with it's value and g number.
 One day he chanced to notice tha, l the wire door of this vault was loose l enough to be lifted about three inches from the bottom. It seemed hardly safe. Just for experiments sake, he 1 took an iron rod, bent it into a hook
 at one end. and tried to see if he could not fish out an ingot, Sure
 enough, he extracted one of them. Ii
 was only a little one. worth perhaps s1,800.
 Cochrc n, up to that moment, had had no notion of stealing; but the temptation was too much for him
 He dropped the ingot into his pocket A few days later he took another and from time to time he resumed
 his fishing operations, until he haG stolen $28,000 worth. He felt safe
 enough. The vault had not beer
 opened for six years. It's content. l were not likely to be disturbed fol
 an indefinite pss.od to come,
 He owned modest house, wf1ief