THUMB-PRINTS NEVER FORGED

Thumb-Print Method of Identification Absolute—Now Brought to a High State of Perfection—Will Eventually Be Used in All Banks—Certified Checks and Also Drafts with Thumb-Print Signatures—Absolute Accuracy of a Thumb-Print Identification Assured—A Thumb-Print in Wax on Sealed Packages—Its Use an Advantage on Bankable Paper of All Kinds—How Strangers Are Easily Identified—Bankers, Merchants and Business Men Protected by This System—Full Particulars as to How Thumb-Prints Are Made—Can be Printed by Anyone in a Few Minutes—How and When to Place Your Thumb-Print on Bankable Paper—Finger-Prints as Reliable as Thumb-Prints—Use to Which This System Could Be Put—Thumb and Finger Tips Do Not Change From Birth to Death—Department of Justice at Washington Has Established a Bureau of Criminal Registry Using the Thumb-Print System—Thumb-Print System Said to Be a Chinese Invention—Its Use Spreading Rapidly—How to Secure Thumb-Print Impression Without Knowledge of Party—An Interesting and Valuable Study.

How to detect the forger as one of the cleverest of operating criminals has been solved by the "thumb-print" method of identification, now spreading throughout the banks, business houses and public offices of the world.

It is quite as interesting as the suggestion that through the same thumb-print method in commercial and banking houses the forger is likely to become a creature without occupation and chirographical means of support. R.W. McClaughry, chief of the bureau of identification in the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., is one of the most expert in the thumb-print method of identification in this country, having been schooled at Scotland Yards in London, where the method first was brought to its present state of perfection. Mr. McClaughry sees for the system not only a great aid in preventing the forgeries of commercial brigands but the easiest of all means for a person in a strange city to identify himself as the lawful possessor of check, or note, or bank draft which he may wish to turn into cash at a banker's window.

Thumb-print signatures will eventually be used in all banks as a means of identification. It will be a sure preventative of forgery. For instance: A maker of a check desiring to take a trip around the world shall draw a check for the needed sum and, in the presence of the cashier of his bank, place one thumb-print in ink somewhere in one spot on the check—perhaps over the amount of the check as written in figures. Thereupon the cashier of the bank will accept the check as certified by his institution. With this paper in his possession the drawer of the check may go from his home in New York to San Francisco, a stranger to every person in the city. But at the window of any bank in that city, presenting his certified check to a teller who has a reading glass at his hand, the stranger may satisfy the most careful of banks by a mere imprint of his thumb somewhere else upon the face of the check.

With the ink thumb-print of the cashier of a bank placed on a bank draft over his signature and over the written amount of the draft, chemical papers and the dangers of "raising" or counterfeiting the draft would have no further consideration. The thumb-print of the secretary of the United States treasury, reproduced on the face of greenback, silver certificate and bank note of any series would discourage counterfeiting as nothing else ever has done.

But this thumb-print possibility in commercial papers has its greatest future in the positive identification which either thumb or finger print carries with it. Criminologists all over the world have satisfied themselves of the absolute accuracy of the fingerprint identification.

At the present time traveling salesmen, who spend much money and who wish to carry as little as possible of cash with them, have an organized system by which their bankable paper may be cashed at hotels and business houses over the country. But with the thumb-print in use, as it might be, such an organization would be unnecessary.

As between bank and bank, this use of the fingerprint in bank papers of large face value is especially applicable. A draft for $100,000 or $1,000,000 may be worth more consideration of the banks concerned than the penmanship of signer and countersigner of the paper.

In the shipment of currency where there may be question of either honesty or correctness in the persons sealing the package, a thumb-print in wax will determine absolutely whether the wax has been unbroken in transit, as well as establishing the identity of the person putting on the first seal. As to the protective value of such a thumb-seal, a case has been cited in which train robbers, discovering a chance seal of the kind in wax of such a package, left that package untouched when the express safe had been blown open; it was too suggestive of danger to be risked.