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.