rks,
recently contributed to Munsey's Magazine an interesting article on the
subject of "Mistakes in Banking." From this we are permitted by the
courtesy of the publishers of Munsey's to reproduce two of the
facsimiles shown.

One wrong word, or figure, or letter--the right thing in the wrong way
or the wrong place--the scratch of an eraser or the alteration of a
word--or any one of these things, in the making or cashing of a check,
is liable to become as expensive as a racing automobile.

The paying teller of a bank, says Mr. Woods, must keep his eyes open for
new dangers as well as old ones. The cleverest crooks in the country are
pitting their brains against his. After he has learned the proper guard
for all the well-known tricks and forgeries it is still possible that an
entirely new combination may leave him minus cash and plus experience.

But it is not the unique and novel swindle that is most dangerous,
either to a bank or an individual. It is the simple, ordinary mistake or
the time-worn trick that makes continuous trouble. Apparently, every new
generation contains a number of dishonest people who lay the same traps,
and a number of careless people who fall into these traps in the same
old way.

Check-Raising Made Easy.

One of the first lessons, for instance, that a depositor should learn
before he is qualified to own a check-book is to commence writing the
amount as near as possible to the extreme left of the check. Those who
forget this are often reminded of it in a costly way. Some one "raises"
their checks by writing another figure in front of the proper amount.
"Five hundred" might be "raised" to "twenty-five hundred" in this way,
even by an unskilled forger.

The highest court has recently decided that a bank cannot be held
responsible, when it pays a "raised" check, if the maker of the check
failed in the first place to write it out correctly. The treasurer of
the Bath Electric Company, of Bath, Maine, had written a check for one
hundred dollars, which was raised to eighty-one hundred dollars and
cashed. The court held that the company, and not the bank, should lose
the eight thousand dollars, because of the "gross carelessness" in
drawing up the check. Facsimiles showing the check as originally written
and as it looked when paid are here reproduced.

Altered Words and Figures.

The altered check is the bane of the paying teller's profession, and it
is the general practice in conservative