The Syracuse Journal, Volume 3, Number 41, Syracuse, Kosciusko County, 9 February 1911 — Page 6

The Fake Auction By H.E.TWINEXLS o'zaPY/t/Wr OY PEAPSOSt PL/B. ca

MERICANS have the reputation of being quick witted and shrew'd. As a matter of fact we are Barnumlzed bluffers, far more gullible and credulous than any class of any nation. l Right now, in nearly every moderk ate-sized city of the United States we ** are falling in line and dropping gold into the tills of organized fake auction stores and taking in exchange

a misrepresented article. These bogus auction stores are more harmful to us as a nation than all the oldtime lotteries, policy games, mail-order fakes and circus grafts, including gold bricks and shell games, combined. They are not honest. They playj “heads we win, tails you lose.” Uncle Sam doesn’t want to bring up his boys in the business; yet he countenances it, and over 530 ot his cities 1 issue licenses: regularly : frTT == TrT to the auctioneers °* iU 1( n I these fake companies, i giving them the privl- \ ) V)' ' lege ot Bwln<illng 016 (i i public at a nominal fee. ’lux/ Any town with over Z\’ I \ A 10,000 blind, Barnumlzed / \k I \ p\\u\ Yankees waiting to be i \vw \ ll \ buncoed is considered a L ' \\ y A I fertlle field. | From coast to coast,

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word “shill,” or “shilorigin. It ifi ' with "cap“booster,” "ringer,” and “outside all techincal slang y'Ves for the shabby ersahuman buzzard, picks up his foul livby rascality and

in working between the public and some game: In this case, working among who stop in at the auction and pretending no connection with the sale, betraying of people a day after ingratiating himself good graces through cunning and craft. these shills no sham auction can exB|Of course in smaller towns only two or three used, as strangers are more easily noticed gglSMbi places. They are the crooks on whom relies to pick out unsuspecting vls■bared by the bargain lure and jockey them Bying misrepresented articles. mixes with the crowd. His business just like an Interested buyer and He in Bthe fly for which the elaborate web was for whom the scenery is set dressed, is called In technical slang Mi’ The old three-card monte men chrisM’sucker.” room 40 feet long and 20 feet wide. ■ to the sidewalk are invitingly open; an enticing red flag bearing Mk what purports to be a legitimate that, in large letters, are ■ BALE TODAY. who lives in a small Prosperous, and has come to the to 80,000 population to look purchase a present for his for the farm. papers and magazines ac- . Mtond antique auctions and notby rarities. When he Vagrant flag of the fake aucin at the window, heaped m antiques, he is suddenly Mil longing for a bargain. door. There is a wcrIfelly to sell a pair of ‘ - v ’' ' B; bid for tiiem.

I dont believe you gentlemen would give $2.50 to see statue of liberty do a Salome dance# Two dollars bld, oh, shill! Two dollars!” Jones, your out-of-town friend, is undecided whether to go In or not; but at that moment a fellow near the door shakes his head to a seeming stranger beside him and says in a low voice: “It’s a shame. Things are going for nothing. Wish I had the price to buy some of that cut glass. It'll sell for a song.” Jones overhears and is Interested. He thinks the mind of everybody in that store is centered on the opera glasses, going so cheap. He smiles at their rapt attention and the auctioneer’s hard luck complaints. The smile would disappear instantly if he knew that he himself was the sole concern of the eight minds in that audience, and

““ the auctioneer. He would be furious if he knew that the whole sale of the opera glasses was a sham; that when the auctioneer saw Jonesey looking in he Immediately transmitted this fact to the shill nearest the door by saying, “Oh, shill,” casu ally in his speech. Jones had never heard the word, so naturally he didn’t select it with suspicion from the auctioneer’s jargon, and suspected nothing when the man near the door remarked about cut

glass bargains. As a matter of fact Jones was Interested In cut glass. His wife liked it and occasionally he invested in some, it being the nearest he could get to diamonds. So he sauntered in casually and watched with an amused smile the frantic auctioneer trying to sell a watch.

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give him confidence in the fact that things were going dirt cheap. Two ladles beside him commiserated because they wouldn’t have enough “Gentlemen and ladles,” the auctioneer went on solemnly, “if I had this article in Chicago or New York it would bring one hundred dollars, one hundred dollars. You couldn’t duplicate it at retail for less than two hundred. It is the finest piece of art glass ever shown In your city.” “Can I get one hundred dollars? Ninety? Eighty? Seventy-five dollars? Can I get sixty? Fifty? Give me forty; thirty-line; thirty!" “Fifteen dollars!” came a halting voice from beside Jones. Jones was interested. He sensed a bargain. Had he known that when the auctioneer said “thirty-line” it was a signal to the shill beside Jones to bld SBO with a line through it, or fifteen actual dollars, he would not have been so enthusiastic. “Sixteen!” “Seventeen!" “Half!” "Eighteen!” staccato offers punctuated the atmosphere after the auctioneer’s encouragement. The little man beside Jones shook hie head sadly. “Gee, it’s gone beyond me,” he sighed, turning to Jones; it’ll go dirt cheap, too. If you could buy that for SSO It’d be a bargain, sure enough.” “Twenty-eight is the last bid,” wailed the auctioneer. “Why, you could take it out and pawn it for more than that.” Jones thrilled as the auctioneer turned to look squarely at him. “You’d give thirty, wouldn’t you?” he cried. Jones gulped and nodded. The auctioneer skilfully led up to the grand landing by taking offers of "thirty-six" and “thirtyseven” from members of his troupe. He had felt out his man carefully and knew that S4O would be Jones's limit "Will you give me forty?" he said simply, in a level tone, leaning far over the showcase. Jones hesitated, gulped, and then nodded his head abruptly. Jones was pleased with hie bargains until he got home and his wife told him he could get the same punch bowl for $lO and that the other stuff was worthless \

Jones wasn’t interested in watches. He had one in his pocket; so his eyes continually roved toward the cut glass In a little Japanese cabinet.

He didn’t know it, but before he was in the place two minutes, while the auctioneer was trying to “feel him out” with the watch, one of the shills had notlce4 Jones’s interest in cut glass, and had called the auctioneer’s attention to the fact by touching the cabinet significantly. The auctioneer, on his perch above them all, had control of the situation. He noted the signal from the shill, jotted down mentally that Jones wanted cut glass, and knocked down the watch he had been experimenting with to one of the shills for a ruinous price, which was all helpful in showing Jones that a shrewd man could pick up a bargain if he laid low, attracted no attention and hided his time. , “Sold for six ninety. Put it with the other goods for Mr. A. Deposit sufficient,” the auctioneer cried to the pretty cashier. Jones did not bid on the first piece of cut glass The auctioneer did not look toward him once to give him a chance. The piece was knocked down for $3.80. It was a frightful bargain. Jones would have given $5 for it himself. But the auctioneer passed abruptly to the next article. Jones pressed forward this time as a gorgeous punch bowl was put up. He heard various exclamations around him, all tending to

MUCH UK MONEY Clever Counterfeiters Throughout the Country Busy. Use Finer Quality of Silver Than United States Government and Experts Are Puzzled—Uncle Sam Is Watching Cuba. Washington.—A regular carnival of counterfeiting is in progress and the country is being flooded with “phony” money. Experts of the United States mint frankly admit that they have difficulty in detecting the real from the bogus coin, for the counterfeiters are making the money of real silver of finer quality than that used in the genuine pieces. The explanation of this is that silver is so cheap that the silver dollar, half dollar and quarter can be made at a profit of about 50 per cent. In other t ds, there is only about 50 cents’ worth of silver in a dollar piece, 25 cents’ worth in a half dollar, and 12% cents’ worth in a quarter of a dollar. This means that even if the counterfeiter makes his bogus money of real silver he can still rake in a handsome profit, getting 50 per cent on the risk he takes in passing his coins. What a bonanza this discovery has been to the counterfeiter may readily be imagined. There is great risk in "shoving the queer” when the queer is made of tin or lead. This variety of queer queers itself on sight and a man or woman must be in a great hurry or very careless to accept counterfeits that ring with about as much music as a pebble and affect the sense of touch like the inside of an oyster shell. The clumsy counterfeiter who tries to pass this out-of-date stuff is jeopardizing his liberty at every attempt. But the man who handles only coins that ring true, are real silver to the touch, and can safely withstand all the prefunctory tests for genuineness is fairly safe from the law. The question that will naturally be asked by any one reading the fore- ? ■ Secret Service Chief Wilkie. going—how, then can one recognize a counterfeit coin that is made of real silver?—was asked by your correspondent of a government expert. The answer was that only by a careful examination under a microscope can the difference between a well-made bogus coin of real silver and one turned out from the United States mint be discerned. The minted coins are stamped in a die press, from which they come out with the obverse and reverse sides imprinted on them. Formerly coins were made by molding the metal, the molten mass being poured into a matrix and allowed to cool. But this process of making coins became antiquated long ago and is no longer In use except by the counterfeiters who cannot set up a plant with die press without too much expense and adding greatly to the risk of detection. Therefore the counterfeiters work by the old process of molding, and, although the metal they use is real silver, they cannot make the coins with the cleancut precision of a government die press. So it is possible to detect the difference when a microscope is brought to bear on the molded coin and the figures and letters of the design are examined closely. But how is it possible to carry around a microscope for the purpose of examining apparently good coins as they are passed around in the course of everyday business? It is obviously Impossible, and therefore the fetters who use care in preparing their coins and make them of real silver stand a very good chance of escaping the clutches law. The west is the favorite stamping ground of the counterfeiting gangs, for there silver circulates more freely than in the east and there is infinitely more opportunity to make money from the money they make. The secret service men under Chief Wilkie are on the alert as ever for the suppression of this lawless game, but they confess that they have only one trump card. This is to watch carefully the silver market If anyone is caught buying silver in large quantities then a close watch is kept to see what is done with it As purchasers of silver are necessarily few in number, the work of watching them is not as difficult as it may seem. This close espionage has driven the counterfeiter* to purchase silver in small quantities from many sources, and in this way the game is kept within

bounds to some g _ . — tied on much toFeXt, th« peace of mind of th'/ secret servlet men. Both In this I country and in Europe the real silve I coin that is not government-made is I being circulated in ever-increasing qu/rmtitles. “If the coins are :seal silver and 11 is almost impossible/ to tell the difference between th'Fm and minted coins, what does lt| matter to those who handle them?”! This question, atfked by <tie philosopher, is referred I-o the secret service bureau, Uncle scam, is of course, the one who sufferrl most, and the average individual is I not wasting much sympathy over that I prosperous person. With gold coins W- is, ot course, altogether different 'B'here is no profit to the counterfeiter r in making gold money, and so he §>eaves it alone, the metal being very I difficult to counterfeit with any composition, and the real thing bej °g too expensive to use. And, there/ is not so much gold in circulation lf‘ this country as abroad, and so ts e possibility of passing it is a^ditio/ ‘ally slim. The coins th/t are made of tin or lead are of coun Je > easily detected, but these continue! to circulate, being worked off in tl l ® country districts or in places wher? 3 money is changed in a hurry. But f bis kind of counterfeiting is not up . date. The maker of money that | is all too obviously “phony” is a re»ck number. The up-to-date counterfeiter is he who uses real silver and defiis almost every known method of detecting the fraud. Keeping an on Cuba. It develops that a'J»art of the government’s regarding the critical situation in Cut>^ —which it is expected will call for intervention this winter—-Was brought baclif by President Taft himself on his Aeturn from Panama recently. \ On his way back the president stopped at Guantanamo to inspect the site selected by Secretary Meyer "or a naval base to guard the Panama Canal. ;It was learned that on that occasion representatives of both President Gomez and the opposition factions described the conditions of the island, <each from their own viewpoint, in such detail that the president had personal confirmation of reports that have reached the state department of the disrupted and cor- | rupted conditions in Cuba. “Official denials” of early intervention and of Cuba conditions in general were made; there was no revolu- ’ tion at: present, and therefore no intention of sending troops to Cuba at this particular time. White Secretary Dickinson refused to talk on the Cuban situation, an army officer of high rank and officially familiar ‘‘With conditions in Cuba said that “the present government of Cuba is a government *by assassination.” So serious is the situation there and so near is the opposition verging on a revolution thht President Gomez has stripped the standing army of all ammunition. This information, on file in the war department, was received recently. When General Guerra, hea dos the army, was forced to resign a few weeks ago, President Gomez feared the army would follow him and be a strong fhetoy in his deposition, which he apprehended was to be attempted. It was for this reason that he relieved the soldiers of their ammunition and turned it all over to the rural guards, an organization as strong as the standing army numerically, anl in sympathy with Gomez. The latest advices from Cuba are that President Gomez is in deadly fear of assassination at the hands of his rivals. A majority of them believe that there is a scheme on foot to retain Gomez as president despite fre-' quent declarations of his intention to step down at the end of his present term. Evidence of this scheming, it is declared, is to be found In the recent unsuccessful attempt to send General Guerra, who resigned as head of the army, out of the country on a foreign mission. Guerra, a “hero of the revolution,” has never made any secret of his presidential aspirations. Had he consented to take the trip out;- of the country a dangerous candidate against th r re-election of Gomez would have been eliminated. Guerra did not go, however. He resigned and declared he would fight Gomez. His refusal to leave Cuba is believed by officers of the war department to presage a revolution. These officers believe that at a word the army which Guerra commanded will desert Gomez and flock to Guerra’s standard. Reducing the Price of Rats. United States Consul E. Carlton Baker, at Antung, China, has reported to the United States some items of intense interest to the young women, who are trying to make their heads look like haystacks in -a storm. He says rats, puffs, switches and other such prevalent devices to reinforce nature are to be so cheap as to cease to be distinguishing mark of the up-to-date woman. “As prologue to the omen coming on," Consul Baker says that 200,000 Koreans have amputated their topknots since the annexation of Korea by Japan, and by this concerted action on the part of 200,000 Koreans the hair market is pretty much flooded. It is not the nicest thing to think about; but, just the same, it is true that the ruck of stuff the pretty girl is wearing on her head as puffs and curls for which she paid 25 cents, marked down from 85 cents, is fearfully and wonderfully made from material that she would not touch with a 40-foot pole if she saw from what it comes.

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