on the steel plate. This the
engraver finishes with his graver, a tool with a three-cornered point,
which cuts a clean line without leaving a rough edge.

Now this is used for making other plates--it is never used to print
from. It must be made hard and this is done by heating it and cooling
it quickly. A little roller of softened steel is then rolled over it
by a powerful machine until its surface has been forced into all the
lines cut into the plate. The outlines of the vignette are thus
transferred to the roller in raised lines, and after the roller is
hardened it is used to roll over plates of softened steel, and thus
make in them sunken lines exactly like those in the plate originally
engraved. The center picture is engraved and transferred to a roller
like the vignette, but the network in the upper corners, and also on
the back of the note, is made by the lathe. This machine costs $5,000,
a price that puts it beyond the reach of counterfeiters, and its work
is so perfect that it can not be imitated by hand.

The black parts of the note are printed first, and when the ink is dry
the green-black is printed, to be followed by the red stamps and
numbers. It is then signed and issued. For greater security one part
of the note is engraved and printed at one place and another part at
another place, when it is sent to Washington to be finished and
signed.

But even after all this care and all these safeguards many skillfully
executed counterfeits and raised and altered bank notes have been made
and issued, some of them so good as to deceive the most expert judges
of money.

Many devices have been resorted to by counterfeiters to raise genuine
bank-notes, as well as to manufacture bogus ones, but one of the most
novel has recently come to light. The scheme consists of splitting a
$5 and a $1 note, and then pasting the back of the $1 note to the
front of the $5 note and the front of the $1 note to the back of the
$5 note. The mechanical part of the work was excellently done, but the
fraud could be detected the moment the note was turned over.

An effort had been made to change the "one" to "five" on the "one"
side of the new combined note, but it was done so clumsily that the
fraud would have been seen at a glance, and the only hope of passing
the notes as fives would have been to pass them over with the $5 side
up and trust to the man receiving it not to turn it over before
putting it away. The doctored notes came t