Counterfeit Money: The "green goods" business exposed for the benefit of all who have dishonest inclinations. — John Shaqi
Counterfeit Money: The "green goods" business exposed for the benefit of all who have dishonest inclinations.Anonymous
History
Counterfeit Money: The "green goods" business exposed for the benefit of all who have dishonest inclinations.
Anonymous
Counterfeits and counterfeiting
John Sheffield, of Manchester, N. Y., who came to Jersey City recently
to rob the “green goods” men, and who did steal $1,600 from two of
them, says that a large part of the savings of residents in his town
has gone to the operators in this city. It was to get revenge and to
obtain some of these savings back that Sheffield came along. The place
where the operators said they would meet him at No. 87 West street, New
York, but he preferred to do business with them in his room at Taylor’s
Hotel, in Jersey City, where he kept his black jack, and where he
succeeded in disabling one of the men who wanted to jabe him in the eye
with an umbrella and recover the money.
The “green goods” men live in New York still. They always did a good
deal of their business in Jersey City, and they do it there now. Some
of the odd looking farmers who come from the central part of New York
State, and who have never seen a piece of water so large that it could
not be crossed by a bridge, are afraid to trust themselves to the
ferryboats. As soon as they see the river they rebel, and positively
refuse to leave dry ground. This necessitates a good deal of the
business being done in Jersey City. Another reason for the selection
of that town originally was the cheapness of police “protection” as
compared with its cost in this city.
DISLIKE TO BE FOUND OUT.
There are still other reasons. A “come-on” is frequently a wild
looking being, with lengthy hair and an embarrassed manner, who
continually falls over himself and gets buncoed or robbed before he
reaches the swindlers to whom he morally belongs. “If he is a queer
sight,” said an operator, “he won’t attract so much attention in Jersey
City as he would in New York.”
Chief of Police Murphy told me the other day that there were many
“green goods” men quartered in his bailiwick in temporary exile. They
received visits from men who might be customers and who might be
clergymen trying to convert them. It was hard to get evidence against
these criminals, as their victims are as interested in not being found
out as are the operators themselves. They continue to take many of the
“come-ons” to Bound Brook and there perform the final act in financial
juggle.
There “green goods” men who used to be very active in catching and
despoiling “come-ons,” but who now say that they have reformed and
are leading simple Christian lives, are John Morgan, James Wilson and
Michael Ryan. If they have really become converts to religion the
business they have gone into is probably that of guides, for they
are seen meeting strange looking men with chin whiskers, wide hats,
carpet bags and agricultural boots at the trains. In a short time,
sometimes only two or three hours, these same men reappear at the ferry
or railroad station carrying a valise that they did not have with them
when they arrived.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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