Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 97

The great mass of the American people, aside from those who have had experience in hunting and shadowing criminals, labor under the popular delusion that the most daring criminals of today are a lot of tough, ignorant men, with little or no education at all, who would do almost anything else than work honestly for a living. If people would but stop to consider the subject a moment they would readily discover their error. There are, it is true, a large number of swindlers, thieves, pickpockets, thugs and criminals of a like class who have but a scant knowledge of books, or literature, but they are only to be found among the lower class of criminals. The most notorious criminals the world has ever produced have been men and women of high culture and refinement, well educated and thoroughly posted on all that is transpiring. It is this class of people who make the most successful, and at the same time most dangerous, criminals. It requires men of education to swindle, crack a safe, rob a bank, jewelry store or forge a paper. To be a successful confidence operator requires the man to be well educated in matters of all kinds, to be a fluent talker, a person of refinement and polite address, and a good judge of character.