A long experience in studying how best to “beat” steel vaults and safes has demonstrated to me that real security for personal valuables doesn’t depend so much on high-grade safes, superior combination locks, heavily bonded employees, and the most efficient burglar-alarm system extant, as it does upon a common-sense use of the simple precautionary methods of protection with which any well-conducted banking institution should be equipped. Among the safeguards in mind is a systematic espionage upon the employees of a bank. Their habits should be known to the president under whom they serve. The fact that cashiers and tellers are members of a corporation in control of the bank ought not to exclude them from espionage. In proof of this, I will call the attention of the doubting one to the columns of the daily newspapers. Scarcely forty-eight hours pass without its being recorded that a bank cashier or teller in some part of the country has absconded with the bank’s funds. A thorough knowledge of the social and business relations of every man holding a responsible position in a bank should be had. His habits and general character ought to be an open book for the daily perusal of his chief. The habits of the associates of cashiers and tellers should be known. The old saying, that birds of a feather flock together, ought to be considered in its fullest sense, and therefore a bank president should know what sort of a flock his cashier or teller seeks after business hours. That a cashier has been a faithful steward in a bank for many years is not a valid reason why he should not be kept under surveillance. Almost every bank employee who falls into corrupt ways was a “trusted” employee. A careful espionage upon any one of these fallen cashiers or tellers would have preserved the bank’s funds, and more than likely would have prevented a fast and furious downward career, which terminated behind the bars of a prison cell. Many and many bitter tears of stricken and shamed wives and disgraced children might have been unshed, and many happy homes might have been preserved and not have been forever blighted, had timely warning and strong hands been laid upon the erring husbands and fathers of these firesides.