If now we examine the plans of action carried out by children and men with reference to social values, whether they are good or mischievous, we find that the general intellectual pattern of the plan, the quality of ingenuity, is pretty much the same in any case. When, for example, children have escapades, run away, lie, steal, plot, etc., they are following some plan, pursuing some end, solving some problem as a result of their own definition of the situation. The naughtiness consists in doing something which is not allowed, or in ways which are not allowed. The intellectual pattern is the same whether they are solving a problem in arithmetic, catching a fish, building a dog house, or planning some deviltry. And the psychological pattern followed is the same as that involved in the desire for new experience which I illustrated in Pasteur’s pursuit of a problem, document No. 6, p. 10. From the standpoint of interest the nature of the problem and the means of its pursuit and solution make no difference. The latter are moral questions.
The celebrated Himmelsbriefe (correspondence with heaven) may be taken as an example of an immoral scheme which is intellectually beyond reproach. These letters are a pathetic and comic expression of the ingenuity, artistic imagination, business enterprise and desire for recognition of a young peasant girl. It will be seen that this “correspondence” has a remarkable resemblance to the pages of Anatole France; it lacks only the irony and the elaboration.
91. Cölestine Wurm, aged 13, was sick, bedridden, afflicted with boils and oppressed by the feeling that she was a burden to her parents. A neighboring family named Korn had lost a daughter named Ursula. Cölestine represented that she had had a letter from the dead daughter, who was then in purgatory and needed money to get out. A sum was provided, 1,000 marks, and committed to Cölestine for transmission. A letter was then received from Ursula describing paradise, the joy of the saints, and how Mary, mother of Jesus, was overjoyed with an oven Ursula had bought for her. In later letters it appeared that Ursula was desirous of improving her status among the saints and she requested money to buy a fine bed, some golden buckets, kitchen utensils, etc., which were for sale dirt cheap. Mary herself wrote a letter of appreciation to the parents of Ursula informing them that they had been in danger of losing two valuable cows through the machinations of the devil, but that out of gratitude to Ursula and themselves, she had sent twenty angels to guard them. Jesus also sent a letter, signing himself, “Your Son of God, Jesus Christus.” First and last Cölestine collected 8,000 marks on her enterprise.[[110]]
In more mature minds the socially unregulated scheme may be admirably elaborated and executed, corresponding in ingenuity with the most complete business or scientific plan and yet remain dangerously immoral because its application is in a form not sanctioned by society. In the following astonishing case we have an anti-social pursuit of a problem executed with all the ardor and resources of a Pasteur. I call the case astonishing because working under such handicaps, clandestinely, stealing the values of society, this boy yet knew how to use these values, the materials accumulated by society—the paper mill, the library, the printing office—so much better than we have been able to use them in an organized system of education. Pasteur’s scheme, and his later schemes of the same pattern, were socially organizing because they contributed to the development of medicine, agriculture, grape culture, etc., while Wilken’s scheme was socially disorganizing and personally demoralizing.
92. Henry Russell Wilken is the only man who has ever successfully counterfeited the fabrics on which we print our paper money. He did that so well that the people who make it for the Government accepted it as genuine. Now that I’m out of the Government service I can grin at what happened at that paper mill. He was a clever boy and a nice one. You’d like him.
There have been counterfeiters and counterfeiters. Some were almost brilliant. Others were plain dubs—clumsy lowbrows, who were clowns at work that required delicate artistry. But here you have a boy who had never seen an engraver at work, who knew no more about the engraving and printing industry than he did about paper making and chemistry. I assure you his knowledge of these industries, prior, of course, to launching upon his great enterprise, amounted to nothing at all. In fact, he told me, and I verified it, that he had never been in an engraving or printing plant in his life before he decided to compete with the United States Mint....
One morning in February, 1910, he came across a small item in a Boston newspaper wherein it was stated that a milkman out in Dorchester had found a packet of one dollar bills. The milkman took them to a bank. The bank informed the milkman that the bills were counterfeit, and very obvious counterfeits at that.
And there, on that morning in February, 1910, the criminal career of Henry Wilken was launched. As he told us afterward, he gave the matter much thought. Here he was earning $25 or $30 a week. There was a girl he liked and who liked him. There were certain relations who looked upon him as something of a castoff, a misfit, a ne’er-do-well, a drifter. And there were clubs that rich young men belonged to—rich young men who were not particularly top-heavy with brains, but who had money, and lots of it. There was but one thing for him to do—make money....
The boy was ambitious for success, for wealth, for position, for luxury. At that particular moment Boston was being pestered by a youth who lacked everything but several million dollars, and the city knew him as “The Millionaire Kid.” Wilken had scraped acquaintance with the Kid and the sight of the latter’s spending orgies merely added fuel to the fierce desire for wealth.
I have told you that Wilken knew nothing about chemistry, paper-making, engraving, printing, dyeing, and photography—all of them necessary arts of the counterfeiter. I assure you he knew absolutely nothing about any one of those things. But he did the thing that must commend itself to all successful men.