The Oregon daily journal., May 10, 1908, Page 35, Image 35

THE - OREGON SUNDAY f JFOURNA, PORTLAND, SUNDAY cEORNING. .HAY 10. Ifrs3
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tant letter !goea'by Huetohrih architect, aa well as
a supply page from one of the books of aocount deal
lav with quantltlea of material furnished.
"How many typewriters of that make," demanded
th prosecuting attorney, "ar thers In user
"I should say 60,000," responded the expert on the
stand. , j . -
Yet, although every on of those 60,000 machines
had been most scrupulously constructed to .perform
Identical york in every smallest particular, both ex
perts were able to swear positively to the peculiarities
of . the machine which did those two pieces of type
writing. The faces of 60,000 Canton Chinamen could took no
more alike to the Caucasian stranger eye; the hand
writing of 60,000 Americans could display no more
obvious differences to the expert 1
In the submarine investigation, which during the
Uow an Effort to Steal a
Million Dollar Estate Was
. Detected
rpORGERY by typewriter, a new phase
fl in tc eternally -mutable phases of
crime, lias suddenly leaped into a
tonspicuousness which fairly dwarfs the mys
tery and romance of the old-time forgery of
handwriting;,
JFithin a sinele fear, upon charges of
Horzen bv tVtewriter, the possession of a lat winter nd spring has so ocoupled the attention
f.J. uJu. L ,A,7 of Congress and of he country at large, tho House
s ms m...v, w,..w con,mUtee on tbe investigation became determined to
Upon the identity of the work done by tar- trace every ramification of the charges; aiid a number
ticular machines the milt or innocence Of of- ot anonymous letters sent to various people In Wash-
ir- -ui. I... 'nsrtpn acquired an Importance never suspected at the
ficials of a treat commonwealth has been or- ,.mnf ,!,. r.,,,oi
. . t ' o .
igued in the criminal courts and the conduct of
the United States government itself has been
ieriovsly involved.
Under an aspect Jo tally new, by methods
totally unfamiliar, the evU which appears to
tendure in humanity has acquired a dismaying
renaissance; and, instantly upon the uprear of
this newest hydra head, the agencies of jus
lice and of law have responded to the im
perious need of defense.
SToday, with the startling existence of a
wholly new order of crime, there is a wholly
new system of protection, constituting together
a remarkable modern embodiment of the most
encient of human dramas, the constantly war
ring forces of Evil and Good.
- ,f ' " v 'j.
V'-'- ''Jell..- A sfs a Sl JJ-J '" e
Florida ne-xt month., o
Iphia and soo you c
hfiart, and frant to h
remembep that had V
month, and made htm the sole heir, upon her death,
of the widow's mite left for the support of Mrs. Craw
ford. He thought he'd better take the money right
away. x
Judge Sandow made the obvious decision that. In
view of the complete settlement of the estate under
the original will, Mr. Sohooley would have to sue for it.
He sued. The verdict sustained the first will. He
appealed, carried his claims to the Supreme Court,
hired a lawyer who was himself a millionaire, se
cured a Supreme Court ruling that threw the case
back Into the lower courts -and was arrested for
forgery.
A girl gave the clue. She was miss Gtulta Ivy,
. employed in June. 1906, In the office of George M.
Weller, an Easton Insurance agent, as typewriter.
Seeing one ot the many reports of the will contest
Masses of typewritten matter, submitted by Repre
sentative George U Lilley, were turned over to such
famous experts as William J, -Kinsley, David K. Car
valho and Albert S. Osborn, men noted for their skill
In Identifying handwriting, who, as the typewriter has
become the new tool of crime, have devoted them
selves to the study of the manifold peculiarities of its
product ,
They made their comparisons, and they swore, un
equivocally, that the machine which wrote the anony
mous letters was the same machine on which Abner
E. Nett, of the Lake Torpedo Boat Company, wrote the
documents submitted to tho committee by Congress
man I Jlley.
How, in the light of the seemingly similar; results
obtained from every machine of the same make, has It
become possible for man's mind and man's eye to dis
cern individual distinctions as surely as Reade plo-
S?s7&2rrc rrtber?e fbyesy
tured the detection of handwriting forgery when he
wrote "Foul Play" as convincingly as the living ex
pert, Kinsley, demonstrated that the late John Hay
was the author of "The Breadwinners" T
The most recent as well as 'the most sensational of
all typewriter forgeries perhaps the most daring and
thorough of all forgeries ever known affords the
most Illuminating example. f)
In February, 1906, there died of heart disease at
Indlanola, Fla., a Pennsylvania millionaire, James I
Crawford, of the city of Bcranton. His will, probated
in due course, left his estate to his widow and his
- stepson, James G. Shepherd. The estate, as duly, was
distributed in the ordinary course of court procedure.
He had a cousin, George B. Schooley, engaged In
the fertilizer business In Philadelphia, who owed him
111,000 money loaned on notes to tide the cousin over,
periods of remunerative trade. .
Fifteen months after the Bcranton millionaire's
death the cousin went to Judge Sandow, In Soranton,
with a will and codicil, duly signed and witnessed, al
though In the form of a letter addressed to him, which
released him from the 11,000 obligation of his notes;
told how Crawford thought more of his cousin than
any other relative he had; gave him $300,000 in cash
and 50O,000 la stock, with a special 'inoome of $10,000
s ':
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, I " I
- - - 1 mrA.
A.CXupetz, Expert )Yro Pcrnorr
tor the Crawford millions, she remembered how "Mr.
Crawford," that very millionaire, bad introduced him
self to her and given her the grand fortune of $6 for
typewriting his will. She had a new place now, with
Lawyer Labar. Surely her new employer was the very
person to iniorm..
Lawvtr Labir nromnttv wrotn ta JudffA Sandow. in
Scraoton. Judge Sandow, comparing dates, was con
vinced that either the person who dictated the second
Crawford will to Miss Ivy In Easton was not Craw
ford, or was Crawford's ghost and he had little faith
In grhosts. ' '
t Justice now moved swiftly, and yet took time to
grind' exceedingly fine. In the course of one of the
most sensational trials known to the state's criminal
' history, the bold conspiracy of Sohooley was exposed
how he had declared, upon learning of his cousin's
: will, that it was an outrage that Crawford had not, at
-least, canceled his debts of $11,000; how he gave ,to
Mies Ivy -the People's Coal Company letterheads, on
which she wrote the will at hts dictation; how he in
duced Charles Reldel and Albert Bahtnan, a couple of
New Jersey men, to whom he sold fertilizer, to witness
both will and codicil.
, MADE A HARri, FIGHT
The prosecution bought, from Mr. "Weller, In Scran
ton, the machine on which Mies Ivy nad played the
ignorant accomplice. By good chance, It had not been
overhauled for repairs from the time when the forgery
yas committed,'
But, on the other hand, It was of a make In which
all the types are on a single small plate. In the form
of the segment of a circle a form which never allows
an individual type to run out of alignment-and leaves
a remarkably regular appearance to the work.
, Proof complete, convincing, overwhelming proof
was needed by the prosecution, not only for the con
viction of the forger, but really to preserve to the
widow the Immense Inheritance his claims endan
gered. Schooley was a man of perfectly good repute: he
had massed ample resources for an expensive legal
battle, and he had the most sublime assurance ever
seen in a court of law. He was a hard man to beat
But the proof came. Kinsley, the handwriting ex
pert, demonstrated that the forger' had gone to a
Philadelphia maker of rubber stamps, to whom bo
gave an old letter of his cousin's. Of course, the rub
ber stamp man turned out a stamp that was a perfect
copy. Schooley, to make things look convincing, had
put in the codicil important bequests to himself, bo
that he- sed the stamp twice, instead of once, as
would have sufficed for the plain will.
The very perfection of resemblance between the
two. signatures was indisputable- evidence of the forg
ery, for no man ever wrote his name twice In pre
cisely the same manner. Humanity in general, like
the New York official who profanely declared his In
dependence not long ago, is very far from being a
rubber stamp.
Photography and the microscope proved that he
had hired a printer to forge the very letterheads., Ills
printer deceived Schooley to Schooley's full satisfac
tion, but failed to deceive the microscope, as the com
parison of any two capital T's to say nothing of other
typo discrepancies made obvious.
Adolph G. Kupetz, the office expert in Philadelphia
of the company that made the typewriter, fairly i
crushed the forger's defense. He showed how the
type bar material, of rubber, in time assumes some
slight warpings, different in every bar, yet Imper
ceptible to the naked eye.
PECULIARITIES OF THE MACHINE
t
The small f on the Weller machine slanted a little
to the right; when the letters c and h appeared to
gether, a space slightly more than the normal ap
peared; at the top of the right-hand peak of the letter
y a tiny fragment was broken oft scores of peculiarl
ties, all apparent under the microscope, which had
developed in the course of a few years, in tho one ma
chine so constructed that the personality sf the human
operator, her touch, her varying conditions of enersrv.
her countless characteristic touches, were absolutely
eliminated.
The will itself, when compared with copies made
on that particular machine by both Miss Ivy and
Kupeta, the expert; convicted the daring forger.
He brassened it out for weeks after his conviction.
But the damning document, by which he had hoped
to rob the widow of his dead benefactor, and the ma
chine which displayed almost human individuality m
the accomplishment of his crime, remained proofs of
guilt unescapable.
His accomplices confessed. The whole imposing
structure of his forgery collapsed. And at last, only a
short time ago, the arch-crlminal realized the futility
of fighting longer against the chain of evidence which
he himself had so cunningly forged.
Sentenced to ten years' Imprisonment in the peni
tentiary, his fraudulent witnesses, Bah man and IleidVl,
sentenced to five years each, the curtain fell in the
Scranton court upon this most startling crime by type
writer, With Schooley the itigrute, a confessed forger,
being led to Jail, when the mother of Bah man, tears
of shame and sorrow streaming down her aged face,
Hunt? herself upon him, . tearing his still Impudently
composed features with her finger nails, and shrieking:
"Voy put the devil Into my boy! He never did a
wrong before in his life! I'll tear your eyes out!"
This case proved that a typewriter forgery Is no
more safe than the old kind done with pen and ink;
that human Ingenuity and Sherlock Holmes methods
may reveal a crime even when It seems best hidden.
w
T
rlTH the advent of the typewriter, the auto
matically registering machine, wherein the
letters were all cast in the same mould.
wherein complete elimination of personality
was attained. It seemed at first that forgery, most dif
ficult ot all offenses, bade fair to be Invested with the
i possibilities of aa epidemic
Wlla-ths; realisation of the absolutely Impersonal
ISUalitV of tvnanrrttlnff on A nt ttm fnttlttv fur !o-nl t lira
the Individuality of chirography was essential, it ap
peared that forgery by machine must forever remain
Impossible, f .
. The true outcome had to await the full quarter of,
a century which has sufficed to bring the typewriter,'
like the telephone, into the Intimate utilities of every- :
day Ufa . .
It Is a curious outcome, and one, as yet, realised in
Its significance by only a few even among the type- v
writing experts of the country, although the courts
and the Congress of the United States are already,
being forced t take cognizance of tho very ; facts
which whole bodies ot those experts unite in denying,
NEITHER GAIN NOR LOSS ;
i- Neither more nor less than In the old day of forged full, if you can realize what that means"
opportunities to the criminal and affords the same
pUances of detection by the trained investigator.
And so crime, in Us combat against the right, has '
tieither gained nor lost a point by the changing of Its
grip; and Justice in Its unending struggle to maintain
Its supremacy, has not In the least emerged from the -(Svadlock
with Its ancient antagonist.
The criminal suit, involving men who had occupied
r ich slate offices in Pennsylvania, which followed the 1
M.ne ef extravagance in the building of the Harris
I wrs; Capitol- en expose that attained national noto- '
jiciy had one of its meet thrilling chapters in the
f laniinwilon of expert witnesses, called to prove, for
the Uciense, that the same machine wrote an tmpor-
Drumniefg AVithout &mplea
kfJfst'.-H
HE drummer lean
ed over the' desk
of one of thi big
Washington : ho
tels in the afternoon of
one of the closing days of
Congress, and he looked
imploring. .
'Tour trunks, he
eaid, solemnly, "And I'll
take anything. I've just
got to have a room to
show my Btatt." ..
"Charlie," rejoined
the austere clerk, his
; . tones belying the 'affec
tionate address of old acquaintance, "I couldn't
give you room to open a jack pot. We're full
kAiS ?i,Vu?e-1Vult that means."
"Ob, Belial 1" gritted the di-mwmo-. t ,vu
.there -was a drummer's job that went without
: samples. - ' . .'
"There isn't any, Charlie," said the hotel clerk,
encouragingly. "If there was, we'd both be hap
pier men." .
T
HIS shows that the popular opinion of great men
tuireci; noiej clerks do not know
everything. ,. . .
There. are drummers who work ltht .am
ple, and they are the greatest drummers ef the world. 1
'uaUy, they sell the biggest things ta the wc7ldl .
There are far fewer drummers without samples than
there are samples without drummers, for the marvelous
history of the mall order business and the wonderful
results of permanent exhibitions, such as exist in both
America and In Europe, have shown that even the ubiqui
tous drummer Is dispensable under especial conditions.
It has not been so very long ago no more than five
years that many firms In the East fancied they saw
ahead a millennium wherein the drummer was not and '
the goods sold themselves." , v
They have changed their minds, and the drummer Is
on his Job as expensively as ever perhaps more so, for -living
and traveling expenses steadily climb, and the Out
rageous $13 a day traveling Umlt of the decade past has
become the equally outrageous US of the present.
That' with samples. Without samples It Is likely to
be $50 and even $500 a day, for the no-sample drummer
Is liable to he the president of the company, who carries
' no baggage beyond the glad hand and some equally glad
rags. .,
: No such salesman 'was ever known In Washington as
the late Charles W. Cramp, whose shipbuilding company
supplied the American government with ships enough for '
'a navy, unless it was the first of the Winans dynasty,
from Baltimore, who ..supplied . Russia with railroads
enough to make It a nation. ,,
- Drummers of those calibers are oftentimes so nobly
disinterested that tbey take a pride In being above the
selfishness of turning In expense accounts; and the
temptation te work In a new spring suit or to swap a
sealskin pocketbook sample. with another drummer for
the collapsible baby carriage that's needed at home are -
trivialities they disdain. , , .
But no man. on or off the road, could ever be' per
uaded that somehow, some time, th thousands they lay
out do not creep back Into their hank accounts. -
The lateCharies-Terkes 4aekledUBdea-with othlng
hut his record and his nerve, But London is still grum
bling over his tupenny . tube, and Terkes got back bis
expenses without itemizing the account.
It may be of Interest to know that recent records of
our foreign trade In such knickknacks as locomotives
showed that, in spite of the bitter competition of Europe,
we have managed to garner In during a single year
15,892,403 and that without having drummers carrying
around in their grips any large number of driving wheels
and boilers. Yet there are drummers who sell locomo
tives, some of them going as far as Japan. .
Of passenger and freight cars, during a single year
Argentina bought $105,147 worth; Brazil, $133,378; Mexico,
$714,339, and France, ,1280,839. with Egypt taking $401,151
and Canada. $378,612. '
Nowadays these figures 'are piled up by real drum
mers, by men whose business It is to get the ordersrather
than by those more glorious members of the -craft who
have attained the apotheosis of promoter or head of the
firm. i. i.
And they are the salesmen who encounter the dlfflcul-,
ties, the hardships and the expenses typical of, the
genuine salesman
Russia some years ago had announced her intention of
spending millions In Manchuria on railway construction,
special building and other work required for the military
and industrial utilisation of the province.
. From Europe and America there assembled in, Vladi
vostok the expert salesmen jf the world.
With them, night and day, were the Russian officials.
. Not a sample was in sight, or within reach. But the
standing of the competing concerns was thoroughly well
- known. And an American salesman was declaring that
his country could make anything better and cheaper than
all the rest of the world put together.
"We will deliver," announced a German drummer,
"the locomotives you need within eight months."
"And 1," retprted the American, "will deliver them in
sixty days at a price 20 per cent, less than any firm In
Europe can quote you."
The American and the Russians, amid a chorus of de
rision at "the American bluff." quietly departed. A little
later the American paid a rouble a word for a cable to
his home company.
; A drummer from Chicago, whose line was agricultural
-TOacMneryi- proposed Htothe locomotlvirTnSfr Thatthey
Jointly charter a steamship. The agreement which waa
entered Into proved the starting point for a line of steam
ers running regularly from New York 4to Vladivostok.
The locomotives and the farming Implements were
delivered on time, and Russia was not only frank to
admit that they were superior to the European products,
but was rejoiced to find herself emancipated from the
thrall of European domination in supplies.
. Her officials were Induced to come to the United
States and study with their own eyes the facilities of the
land that could accomplish such Wonders. The results
have been of a magnitude so impressive that the prestige
remains even after the dislocations ot war's defeats.
When Charles M. Schwab went to Russia just after
that country's war with Japan, his purpose, it was under
stood, was to sell battleships, or at least armorplate for
battleships. For obvious reasons this drummer did not
carry eumples with him. Nor do the representatives of.
English shipbuilding firms when they go to Japan to sell
warships, j : . .'.,. ...
Drummers who sell wagons, traction engines and other
such 'things to agricultural communities do not carry
samples. In fact, there are many in various lines who '
' travel sampleless, yet make big sales.
A New Face
0' F COURSE, the militia s composed of first-rate
men now, but years ago a detective. Inspecting
a rallitla corps fpr a "wanted" criminal, happened
, to stop opposite a -certain ranker. ....
."Come, this can't be tho ruin, surely!" exclaimed the .
colonel. "He' the best man I've got in thu battalion.
You don't mean to say your know him?" " ,
m."No," replied the detective, 'I don't He's the only
- man in your regiment I don't know, and X waa wonder
ing where he came from I" Tit-Bits. ,,
' 7 ,i ' I v V ' ' '