A Treatise on Counterfeit, Altered, and Spurious Bank Notes, with Unerring Rules for the Detection of Frauds in the Same. This item is unavailable.A Treatise on Counterfeit, Altered, and Spurious Bank Notes, with Unerring Rules for the Detection of Frauds in the Same

Hardcover. 9.5" x 6". iv, (3)-51, (1); 20 pp. Engraved frontispiece and 4 engraved bank-note plates (Plates 1-3 bound before the text, Plate 4 between pp. 44-45); woodcut illustrations in the text. Original black blind-stamped dotted-grain cloth with ornamental frame and oval panel, front board lettered "MONEY" in gilt. Printed by John F. Trow, New York. A complete copy of this Civil War-era counterfeit detector from the Eastman business-college network. Edwin J. Wilber and Edward P. Eastman were teachers and principals in the Eastman colleges, which trained clerks in practical banking with their own "college currency." The work reworks H. G. Eastman's Treatise, first published in St. Louis in the 1850s, and appeared just before the Secret Service was founded in 1865. The frontispiece is a view of Poughkeepsie, "The City of Schools," published by Eastman National Business College. Plates 1-3, engraved by the New York Bank Note Co., show genuine vignettes, counters, and lathe-work, along with a specimen $1 Exchange Bank of New Orleans note dated January 1865 and engraved for the authors. Plate 4 is a numbered comparison sheet of genuine and counterfeit vignettes, portraits, counters, lathe-work, and lettering, keyed to the text. Its lettering specimens bear the imprint of W. L. Ormsby, the noted New York bank-note engraver. The text runs from ancient money, Continental currency, and the Bank of England to a feature-by-feature anatomy of genuine and counterfeit engraving. That anatomy covers hair, eyes, drapery, landscapes, lathe-work, lettering, ink, signatures, photographed bills, and the new fractional currency. It closes with an appeal for "business education," the Eastman colleges' stock in trade. The opening chapter calls "Guineas, Eagles, Dollars" "the Trinity in which all believe." Called for in the contents and issued with the book is a separately paginated reprint of Waldo Abbott's "Making Money. III. The American Bank Note Company," from Harper's New Monthly Magazine for February 1862. It is an illustrated tour of the firm's Wall Street works, during which Treasury Secretary Chase is glimpsed visiting while the company rushes out the first Union Treasury notes. Condition: Fair to good. The spine cloth is gone, exposing the paper spine lining, which includes printed binder's waste. The head and tail of the spine are chipped, with a small loss to the cloth at the lower spine edge of the rear board. Corners and edges are rubbed. The boards are otherwise clean, with bright gilt. The front free endpaper is lacking. Two blank leaves are present at the front, the second with an earlier bookseller's pencil notes, and there are further pencil notes on the rear pastedown. The endpapers are toned and foxed. There is some offsetting to the title page from the frontispiece opposite, foxing to the frontispiece and scattered leaves, and light offsetting from the plates. The plates themselves are clean and strong. The text block remains sound and complete. . …