The Counterfeit Salmon Bait Incident
Two teenagers on Mercer Island find themselves in federal court after attempting to trade a counterfeit dollar for salmon eggs.
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.
Two boys living on Mercer Island were brought before the United States Commissioner on a charge of passing counterfeit money. The boys had obtained a counterfeit dollar from a steamer captain and, seeking salmon eggs for fishing, traded it to an Indigenous man near Renton. The storekeeper in Renton immediately spotted the bogus coin. The boys admitted to the act when confronted, leading to their arrest. In a moment of leniency, the U.S. Commissioner, noting the boys’ age and the relatively trivial nature of the 'crime,' chose to dismiss the charges upon a promise of future good behavior, noting he had a 'soft spot' for the unfortunate.
“The innate love of mischief in the lads asserted itself, and not thinking of the consequences, they gave the pigeon-toed red man the dollar for a string of eggs.”
This story highlights the informal, sometimes precarious legal landscape of 1890s Seattle, where teenagers were dragged into federal court for adolescent mischief, yet handled with a paternalistic discretion by officials. It serves as a stark reminder of how severely the legal system could—and did—weigh on youth while simultaneously showing the 'soft' side of the law at the turn of the century.
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