A recent scheme to defraud with raised bills is to raise a two-dollar bill to a five. In order to accomplish this feat rascals cut out the figure five in the left-hand corner of a "V" and paste it over the figure "2" in the upper right-hand corner of the two-dollar bill. The pasting is done so neatly that not one person in a hundred, or even a thousand, unless an expert, would notice the difference. The very small $2 marks in the scroll-work surrounding the large figure are blotted out with a pencil and are not visible. The figure "2" in the lower right-hand corner is erased with acids, and the bill is in all respects a first-class imitation of the genuine article. Treasury officials say that this is something new in the way of bill-raising, and is very dangerous.
Many people who are not used to handling money have been swindled by what is known as "Imitation Money." The United States Treasury Department is making strenuous efforts to break up the practice of issuing imitations of the national currency, to which many commercial colleges and business firms are addicted. This bogus currency has been extensively used by sharpers all over the country to swindle ignorant people and its manufacture is in violation of law.
So vague is the general idea as to how a bank note is made that we give an explanation of the various processes it goes through before it is issued as a part of the "money of the realm," saying, by way of introduction, that this country leads the world in bank-note engraving. Unfortunately, the first consideration in making a bank-note is to prevent bad men from making a counterfeit of it, and therefore all the notes of a certain denomination or value must be exact duplicates of each other. If they were engraved by hand this would not be the case; and, another thing, hand engraving is more easily counterfeited than the work done by the processes we herewith describe.
Every note is printed from a steel plate, in the preparation of which many persons take part. If you will look at a $5 "greenback" you will see a picture in the center; a small portrait, called a vignette, on the left, and in each of the upper corners a network of fine lines with a dark ground, one of them containing the letter "V" and the other the figure "5." These four parts are made on separate plates.
To make a vignette it is necessary, first, to make a large drawing on paper with great care, and a daguerreotype is then taken of the drawing the exact size of the engraving desired.
The daguerreotype is then given to the engraver, who uses a steel point to mark on it all the outlines of the picture. The plate is inked and a print taken from it. While the ink is still damp the print is laid face down on a steel plate, which has been softened by heating it red hot and letting it cool slowly. It is then put in a press and an exact copy of the outline is thus made on the steel plate. This the engraver finishes with his graver, a tool with a three-cornered point, which cuts a clean line without leaving a rough edge.
Now this is used for making other plates—it is never used to print from. It must be made hard and this is done by heating it and cooling it quickly. A little roller of softened steel is then rolled over it by a powerful machine until its surface has been forced into all the lines cut into the plate. The outlines of the vignette are thus transferred to the roller in raised lines, and after the roller is hardened it is used to roll over plates of softened steel, and thus make in them sunken lines exactly like those in the plate originally engraved. The center picture is engraved and transferred to a roller like the vignette, but the network in the upper corners, and also on the back of the note, is made by the lathe. This machine costs $5,000, a price that puts it beyond the reach of counterfeiters, and its work is so perfect that it can not be imitated by hand.
The black parts of the note are printed first, and when the ink is dry the green-black is printed, to be followed by the red stamps and numbers. It is then signed and issued. For greater security one part of the note is engraved and printed at one place and another part at another place, when it is sent to Washington to be finished and signed.
But even after all this care and all these safeguards many skillfully executed counterfeits and raised and altered bank notes have been made and issued, some of them so good as to deceive the most expert judges of money.
Many devices have been resorted to by counterfeiters to raise genuine bank-notes, as well as to manufacture bogus ones, but one of the most novel has recently come to light. The scheme consists of splitting a $5 and a $1 note, and then pasting the back of the $1 note to the front of the $5 note and the front of the $1 note to the back of the $5 note. The mechanical part of the work was excellently done, but the fraud could be detected the moment the note was turned over.