Geography
Only three out of this batch of stories ended up being based inside of Washington, D.C. The wide majority of the rest of them found their settings on and around the American east coast, with nine in the state of New York and another five in Pennsylvania. This is not unlike the trends being seen across other papers during the early 1900s, as many other counterfeiting articles were also centered on those areas. However, the Pennsylvanian stories did not revolve around the city of Philadelphia. While it was the home of two stories, cities such as Easton and Pittsburgh were also mentioned. Another place of note here was Boston, Massachusetts, with three articles found.
Outside of the east coast, American counterfeiting articles came from as far away as Portland, Oregon. Here, a supposed young “counterfeiting queen” was arrested with her husband. There were also three papers discussing Texas as a state of interest. In two of these, the alleged offenders were actually minting false “Carranza money,” otherwise known as Mexican pesos.
This was not the only mention of foreign currency though, as another two stories were set across the oceans. One discussed a massive police raid on counterfeiters forging Chinese republican notes in Shanghai. Curiously, law enforcement from France were involved in this one. The other focused its attention on the Spanish city of Madrid, where bogus silver coins worth over $2.2 million were in circulation. These stories from abroad are massive in scope, making them significant enough to write about in the D.C. paper. Finally, it is worth noting that two more of the articles did not give a specific place for the crime taking place.