e difficult than identification of the person which so often forms
the chief difficulty in criminal trials. As illness, strange dress,
unusual attitude, and the like, cause mistakes in identifying the
individual, so a bad pen or rough paper, a shaky hand and many other
things change the appearance of a person's handwriting.

This kind of evidence ought never, therefore, to be regarded as full
proof in trials where a handwriting is in dispute. Generally the best
witness in a handwriting case is one who often sees the party write,
through whose hands his writing has been continually passing, and
whose opinion is not the result of an inspection made on a particular
occasion for a special purpose.

CHAPTER IX

GREATEST DANGER TO BANKS

Check-Raising Always a Danger--A Scheme Almost Impossible to
Prevent--The American Bankers' Association the Greatest Foe to
Forgers--It Follows Them Relentlessly and Successfully--Chemically
Prepared Paper and Watermarks Not Always a Safeguard--Perforating
Machines and Check Raisers--How Check Perforations Are Overcome--How an
Ordinary Check Is Raised--How an Expert Alters Checks--How Perforations
Are Filled--Hasty Examination by Paying Tellers Encourages
Forgers--The Way Bogus Checks Creep Through a Bank Unnoticed--A
Celebrated Forgery Case--Forgers Successful for a Time Always
Caught--Where Forgers Usually Go That Have Made a Big Haul--A
Professional Crook Is a Person of Large Acquaintance.

Raising checks has become the greatest danger to the banks. There is
no comparison between raising checks with a genuine signature and
forging the signature itself, so far as ease of execution is
concerned. After many years of arduous work and after great
expenditures of money the banks have to admit sorrowfully that if a
man wants to raise a check he can do it; and the detection, while, of
course, inevitable when the paid check returns to the depositor, is
not immediate enough to prevent the swindler from getting away with
the money.

That is why the most implacable enemy of the men who dare raise or
falsify a check is the American Bankers' Association. This great
concern in reality is a protective association, and it relentlessly
hunts down all forgers first, last, and all the time. It never lets
up, absolutely never, no matter time, money, or trouble. It bitterly
pursues defaulters for the sake of justice, but it has still another
object in its deadly trailing of forgers and check tam