The finger-prints could be used also in all manner of documents filed for record, such as deeds to lands, mortgages, leases, and the like.  Railroads could use it to prevent men once employed and discharged for incompetency obtaining employment on another division, thus doing away with inspectors.  Each new employee’s finger-prints could be kept in a central office and classified.  Any man attempting to obtain employment again with the same railway, who had once been discharged for cause, would immediately be detected, and a high standard of personnel thus obtained.

Congress recently passed a law whereby the Bureau of Immigration is permitted to tax each immigrant four dollars; this sum to be used in detecting foreign criminals who come to this country; also to aid in ascertaining whether foreigners who come here commit crimes and get into prisons.  If such are found they are to be deported.  By the finger-print system the prints of each foreigner could be taken at all ports of entry.  These could be kept on file in Washington, and from time to time compared with those sent to the Bureau of Criminal Registry in the Department of Justice building.  Any foreigner located in a prison could be ascertained, and upon the termination of his sentence taken to some port and placed on board ship.

It has been demonstrated by experts that the ridges of finger tips do not change from birth until death and decomposition.  Scars made on the finger tips remain throughout life, and are valuable for identification purposes.  Criminals try to evade identification by the system by burning the tips of their digits with acid; but these are classified under the head of disfigured fingers, and a lawbreaker cannot escape detection.  Even the removal of two, three, or four fingers or an entire hand does not prevent a criminal being traced if his prints were taken before he lost the five digits.  In the case of one hand being amputated, the missing fingers are classified as they appear on the other hand.  If a search fails to locate the person, then the missing fingers are classified first as whorls and then as loops, search being made after each classification.  In this manner the search may be a little more tedious than it would be if all the fingers were there, but in time he would be identified.

The Department of Justice thinks so well of the system that it has recently established in Washington a Bureau of Criminal Registry.  There the finger-print sheets, and for the time being Bertillon cards, of all criminals who have been convicted of violating federal laws are to be kept.  The prints and Bertillon measurements of new arrivals at government prisons and jails will also be sent there for classification, none of this work being done at prisons as heretofore.  The men held in federal jails, charged with crimes, are also to have their finger-prints taken, and these sent to the central bureau.  If the expert in charge of this bureau ascertains that a man indicted for crime has served a previous term in prison, this fact is to be communicated to the United States judge and district attorney, and if convicted the criminal is to be given the full limit of sentence.