of a less denomination than $10 after a certain date; 

 that imitating an illegal issue was not counterfeiting. 

 It was while the proof impressions of the $5 bill were 

 being taken that the police broke in, securing both 

 employer and workmen, with all the machinery 

 and tools, and a partly-finished plate of $10 denomi- 

 nation, found on the work-bench. 



I have seen the room where the work was done, and 

 the arrest made, and all the ingenious devices for 

 concealing work, machinery and tools, and the 

 arrangement for escape of operators, apparently 

 perfect, but which proved as perfect a trap as could 

 be devised. When the man sprang for what he 

 believed a certain way to escape, and was met by 

 revolvers in the hands of resolute men, it was natural 

 that his suspicion of treachery should center on his 

 red-haired employer and fellow workman, who he 

 saw so desperately struggling with his captors. [53] 



When entering the counterfeiter's cell in company 

 with Mr. Wood, with the prepared work in my hands, 

 there was a gleam of satisfaction on the man's face, 

 but when he was shown the preparations that had 

 been made, and then told of the decision the inspectors 

 had come to, the change was instantaneous to that of 

 utter despondency. He muttered, "Then I must try 

 and be content with oakum picking these long, long 

 days, until death relieves me; but there is nothing in 

 it to employ the mind and bring a single moment of 

 the rest of forgetfulness." 



I said to him that it had occurred to me that a man 

 who had shown such ingenuity as he had in producing 

 the facsimile of Spencer's scroll lathe work could 

 make such valuable suggestions in the direction of 

 preventing counterfeiting as would excite an interest 

 in a direction that might shorten his term of imprison- 

 ment and find him employment that would put him 

 beyond the necessity of pursuing so dangerous a 

 business as engraving for counterfeiters. 



His reply was: "There is no use in it. for there is 

 nothing, no matter how complex, that one man or 

 set of men can do, but others can and will be found 

 to duplicate it." 



I explained to him Mr. Biddle's idea that the greatest 

 protection might be in a kind or quality of paper that 

 could not be produced without extensive works and 

 costly machinery that could not be worked secretly. 

 This brought the first semblance of a smile that I 

 had seen on the man's face, as he said: "I suppose 

 Mr. Biddle felt secure with his shaded, water-marked 

 paper; that no paper-maker could lie found to imitate 



it. Why, I made that paper in a room not over 12 

 feet square, with only two wash tubs, a bucket, a 

 basin, a plain wire-faced mould, just large enough to 

 make a sheet for three bank notes, a common copying 

 press, a few small sheets of polished zinc, and I cut 

 up a well-worn woolen blanket for felts. By soaking 

 and reducing to pulp a piece of the genuine bank 

 note to be imitated, with my microscope I found the 

 character of the linen fiber and the shreds of crimson 

 floss silk, and their relative proportions in its compo- 

 sition. I found on sale a strong, heavy linen paper, 

 hand-made, with a fiber closely resembling that of the 

 bank note. I bought a quantity of it, soaked it in 

 one of my tubs, changing the water to get rid of the 

 animal sizing, and by hand reduced it to pulp. The 

 threads of silk I got by folding and scraping on my 

 knee a crimson silk pocket-handkerchief, just as lint 

 is scraped. My second tub I used as a vat to mix 

 the pulp to the proper consistency to form the paper 

 when I dipped my mould." 



On my remarking that he must have had some 

 knowledge of paper-making, his reply was: "A little. 

 Before I was apprenticed to the tannery, I was the 

 layman's assistant in a hand-making paper mill; I 

 carried the wet sheets and hung them in the drying 

 loft. I tried my hand at couching, and occasionally 

 the vatman allowed me to dip a sheet or two." 



But you said you used plain moulds; how did you 

 make the shaded water-mark with them? 



"Oh, that was simple enough. It was evident the 

 dark shade was from a slight thickening of the paper 

 when formed on the mould by depressions in its face, 

 and which, to take a uniform impression from the 

 copper plate, must be reduced to an even thickness 

 by pressure, which so consolidates the fiber in the 

 thickened portions as to produce the dark shade. I 

 should have adopted that way, but I noticed on the 

 sheets of paper I bought some darker shades that held 

 the same relative position on several of the sheets, but 

 not on all of them. They were not like the spots 

 caused by water dripping from the deckel when 

 removed by a careless vatman. If from indentations 

 or undulations in the wire cloth I should most prob- 

 ably have found the same shades in all the paper I 

 bought, but no paper-maker would allow uneven 

 face moulds to be used. There must De some other 

 cause." 



"I asked myself the question: what would be the 

 effect if a careless workman allowed some spots of his 

 mould-face to become clogged, and the interstices 

 between the wires closed on the distribution of the 



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