Counterfeiters Cornered on the Tide Flats
Secret Service agents raid a clandestine workshop near Occidental and Atlantic streets, nabbing two men in the act of minting gold.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
SEATTLE, June 22.—Caught in the act of making counterfeit money, H. Long and Monie Brown were arrested yesterday by Secret Service Agent Bell and Deputy Marshal Laube. The men were at work turning out spurious coins in a little cabin on the tide-flats, near Occidental Avenue and Atlantic Street, and Long made an attempt to escape through the rear, but seeing that flight was useless, surrendered without any trouble. "Well, I guess it's all up," was his only remark as the officers closed in. Brown, the younger man, had absolutely nothing to say. Everything in the house indicated that the work was to have been carried out on a large scale; $300 worth of $5 and $10 gold pieces were found, only lacking electro-plating. Agent Bell declared it the best counterfeit work he had ever seen.
“Well, I guess it's all up.”
While this raid occurred in Seattle, the 'tide flats' geography—reclaimed industrial land—is a defining feature of Tacoma's own industrial history. Counterfeiting was a frequent preoccupation of the early 20th-century press, reflecting deep anxieties about the stability of the gold standard and the integrity of the booming frontier economy.
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