pereus. That is
because the whole banking structure hangs on signed paper. When it can
be altered with impunity, away goes the financial system of to-day.
Hence the unrelenting hunting-down of forgers who trifle with men's
names. On the books of more than one large detective agency of the
country are cases more than ten years old. The forgers never have been
found, but the hunt still goes on. Reports of the chase come in
regularly and the books will not be closed until the hunt stops at
prison doors or beside a grave.

Yet with all this remorseless hunting, check-raising flourishes so
well all over the United States that the banks fear to give even a
hint as to the sums of which they or their depositors are robbed each
year. The magnitude of the amount would frighten too many persons.

For a time it was thought that the use of chemically prepared paper
would prove a safeguard, because any erasure or alteration would show
immediately. The chemicals used in its composition would make the ink
run if acids were used to change the figures. But among the
check-raisers there were chemists just as clever as the chemists who
devised the prepared paper.

Then paper with watermarks woven through it was used. But it, too,
became an easy mark for the chemists who had gone wrong.

Finally, and until recently, the banking world thought that it had
struck the absolute safeguard by using a machine to stamp on the check
the exact amount for which it was drawn, the machine perforating the
paper as it stamped it. Certainly it does seem that when the paper is
cut right out of the check, leaving nothing but holes, no change is
humanly possible. But the completeness of this supposed safeguard has
offered a tempting field for the check-raiser.

A special detective in the employ of the American Bankers'
Association, who has spent half the years of his mature life in
running down forgers and check-raisers, said that it was "too easy" to
raise checks, and that a good many more men than try it now would do
it were it not for the well-known relentlessness of the association in
running down offenders against any single one of its constituent
members.

"Write me a check for any sum you want," said the sleuth, "and I'll
show you."

A check for $200 was written and passed over to him. In less than two
minutes, without an erasure of any kind, the check called for $500,
and the work was done so well even in that short time that the writer
would