The Unadjusted Girl, With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis

by William Isaac Thomas

He stuck to his advertising job by day and spent his nights in the public libraries. He read every available technical volume treating on engraving. Then he went out and bought the tools of the engraver. Next he practiced until he became an engraver quite as clever as any man in the Government service. That’s likely to stagger you. There are folks who will not believe that. But here we have the records and the confession. In a moment I shall tell you facts that will indicate just how clever he really was....

He read chemistry and paper making until he was something of a magazine of information on the subject. He limited his chemistry to that part of the science that has to do with paper making. He read volumes on dyeing and struck up an acquaintance with a well-known printer in Boston. This printer did the better grade of work and was so amused by Wilken’s enthusiastic desire for knowledge on the subject that he permitted the young man to browse about his plant of nights watching the various processes.

I merely mention all this detail to show you how, when Wilken set out to make his first counterfeit bill, he had mastered every phase of the complex industry. And all this studying took time, although not so much time as you would think. Certainly it was not more than a year. At any rate, he devoted himself for twelve months to the study of how to make a one-dollar bill.

There is just one firm making bank note paper for the Government. That firm turns out this paper in one factory. Government inspectors are there to check up the product and there is never any surplus. The mints [Bureau of Engraving and Printing] consume it as it is turned out; or, rather, it is turned out as the mints need it.

This mill is located in Dalton, Mass. The firm takes a certain amount of pride in it. Visitors are quite welcome, and there are guides to take callers through the plant. In one batch of visitors to this plant came Wilken.

He was about 26 years old at the time. I am ready to believe that he could see more in a given time from a given point than any man I ever knew. He had two exceedingly sharp eyes and a retentive memory. He told me that he could read faster than most men he knew and collect more in his fast reading than the majority of his acquaintances could by attentive study. I don’t think he was boasting. His was a remarkable mind.... It seems as though he had been built by nature for the job. I have often wondered whether his talents would have been smothered by convention had he been kept in the straight and narrow path. The most commonplace man becomes sometimes the most startlingly original crook. The reformed crook, on the other hand, turns to honesty and becomes duller than ditch-water.

Wilken went to that paper mill in Dalton three times. On each occasion he went as a visitor, of course, and spent inside the mills only the comparatively few minutes it takes the visitor to be ushered from process to process and room to room. If you have ever been conducted through an industrial plant you will realize how little you actually see of processes....

Wilken left the paper mill convinced that he was quite ready to start business. He moved to New York City and set up a studio at 250 West 125th Street. To make everything appear regular he got a job with an advertising firm. He drew pictures of soap and suspenders, and so on, and did rather good work arranging display type for posters. That required only a small part of his time....

First he made the necessary paper. Just how well he worked will be apparent in a few minutes. Then he set about utilizing his book-learned etching and engraving. Little by little he added to his equipment. He never used a camera. In this fact alone he stands conspicuous among counterfeiters. So far as I know, he was the only counterfeiter of any ability at all who did not first photograph the bank note he was about to counterfeit and work from that.... [Then he made one-dollar bills.] I must say to begin with that not all the Wilken bills were detected. Really relatively few of them came into our hands. We took several of the bills to the paper mill in Dalton. They declared the paper to be genuine! We looked back over the production records and checked them against consumption. The two figures balanced! In other words, the United States Mint had used all that had been produced. There seemed to be nothing to do but watch the factory. For six months we hung around and nothing happened.

In a month or so Wilken, so we learned later, decided it was time to go to work again. He did. He set up a studio in West Twenty-third Street, New York City, and began to turn out ten dollar bills that passed the tellers of some of the most important banks in America. They even passed the scrutiny of experts in the Treasury Department. I have samples of them here. They are magnificent frauds. I have never seen finer engraving.