The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1922-03-23

Inc great wall street DOnQ tneILS
of 1920, totaling $5,006,000, are still
fresh in the memory, and none of US
will ever forget the almost daily hold
ups in our largest cities which have
been terrorizing our bankers and
merchants for more than two years.
A recent hold-up of a mail truck on
the most prominent street. of our
largest metropolis netted the bandits
s2,OOO,O00.
What has caused this unparalleled
wave of banditry?
That is what I propose to show in
this article.
I preface my story with these. huge
figures so that the reader may get
a mental picture of the seriousness
J Of the recent crime wave that has
swept this great American country
from coast to coast during the last
two years.
The whole world is changing, but
in no class of sicety has there been
such a decided change as marks the
upward course Of the criminal. The
new Underworld is bursting with
prosperity.
AS l go along shall point out
the things that have caused this
crime wave, how the Underworld has
evolved, and the parts played by
prohibition, the reformer, the bank
safe maker, and every factor that
has contributed to the making of the
new Underworld, with its new crimi-
nal with his new methods and his
new woman.
During the past six months I have
talked with at least one hundred de-
tectives in New York, Boston, Chi
cago and Detroit about the crime
wave of bank hold-ups. was aston
ished beyond expression to learn that
not a single one of these blood
hounds of the law had the slightest
conception of the fundamental un-
derlying causes of the bandits sud-
den plundering of banks. Like news
paper and magazine editors, business
men and citizens, they all echo
"War and unemployment"
War and unemployment have Gre
ated lot of petty-larceny thieves,
sneak thieves, pickpockets and foot
pads, but never bank burglars or
bank hold-up men. The bank hold
up man is not an overnight creation.
He is the product, as l shall point
out, of an evolutionary process that
has been functioning for forty years
or more.
In the days of Mark Shinburn,
George White, Jimmy Hope and Big
Frank Mccoy the burglarizing of
banks was largely matter of getting
key impressions, mastering lock COM
binations, and, where force was re-
quired, drills and gun-powder. We're
these aristocrats Of the years gone
by to return today to apply their old
time ideas to the present modern
bank with the screw-door safe and
automatic time-lock vaults, they
would starve to death.
For fifty years there has gone on
in this country battle of wits be-
tween the safe maker and the safe
burglar. Most of the time the burg
lar has worn the victor's laurels.
For thirty of these years, his career
was a succession of successes, blast
ing to smithereens every invention
Of the safe builder, outthinking him,
outwitting him, anticipating him.
Think of the ingenuity, the resource
fulness, the cunning-the brain
power, in fact-of the burglar who
competed for thirty years, and pre-
dominated over the best safe-mak-
ing brains in the country.
It has been a tremendously inter-
esting battle, with a multitude Of
sensational sidelights, and many safe
burglars have given their lives In
this competitive conflict. I have
known many Of them who have had
arms and legs blown away during
their experiments with dynamite
and nitro-glycerine. Many were
blown entirely to pieces. There have
been sacrifices to endeavor in the
Underworld as well in the upper.
Langdon Moore was the prince of
American bank burglars from 1850
to 1880. Fifty per cent. of the safes
that he robbed were old key-lockers
that were fashioned as simply as the
door to your house. Moore was so
successful in getting key impressions