The spy
system, so conducted, seemed to such persons proper and normal. But the
moment they found their own acts investigated, their own footsteps
dogged, they became indignant, and denounced the whole principle of the
thing.
No man convicted in a federal or state court, or set free after having
done his time in prison, but is abundantly conversant with the methods
of the American spy.
As we all know, the first thing done with a new prisoner is to take his
bertillons, and the record of these measurements and observations,
together with two photographs of him, or with four, if he had a beard
when convicted, is sent to every police office in the country, and is
there studied by the detectives and police. The intention, of course, is
to render easier the recognition of "old offenders," and to curtail
their future industries. It is generally affirmed that bertillons cannot
be mistaken; but in a Detroit court, on January both, 1914, an expert
declared that "a difference of one-eighth of an inch in the laying on of
the fingers made an entirely different impression"; and "judgment was
awarded against the bank," which, relying upon the infallibility of the
finger record, had brought the action. At any rate, the bertillon is
still a potent weapon with the police, and when they want a man for a
crime committed, or when they desire to drive out of any given place on
the face of the earth a man who has been previously a convict, they have
but to point to his bertillons, and the thing is done.
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