On the 1st October, 1884, the public was given the opportunity of employing the telegraph for the transmission of inland money orders, and during the first six months of the scheme 5788 money orders for Rs.3,75,000 were issued. The cost of Rs.2 for the telegram and ½ per cent for money order commission was a decided bar to the popularity of the telegraphic money order, which at first was chiefly used in Burma and Madras owing to the isolated positions of those provinces. In 1887 the Post Office relinquished its commission on orders for sums not exceeding Rs.10, and the telegraph charge was reduced to R.1. This led to an immediate increase of traffic, the number of such orders in 1887-88 being 45,417 compared with 18,540 in the previous year, more than half of which were issued from Burma. In 1917-18 the total number of telegraphic money orders issued was 875,000 and the value Rs.6,22,00,000 of which about three-fifths came from Burma. With the improvements in railway communication in India which are continually taking place, the pre-eminence of Burma in the matter of telegraphic money orders is likely to continue owing to her isolation and the largely expanding trade of Rangoon. The ubiquitous swindler was not long in taking advantage of the telegraphic money order to ply a profitable trade. His chief resorts are Benares, Rameswaram, Tripati and the other great places of pilgrimage in India; his victim is generally some unfortunate pilgrim, who is only too anxious to meet an obliging friend willing to act as a guide and adviser in one of the sacred cities, and the procedure adopted is always the same. The swindler acts the part of the kind stranger and finds out all the details of the pilgrim's family. He then goes to the local post office, represents himself to be the pilgrim and sends a telegram to his victim's relations to say that he has lost his money and wants a certain sum at once. So confiding are the people of India that it is very seldom that a request of this kind does not meet with an immediate response, and the swindler, by waiting a couple of days during which he takes good care to ingratiate himself with the post office officials, walks off the richer by a considerable amount. The earlier reports of the Post Office on the telegraphic money order system abound in cases of the kind, and very stringent measures were adopted to put a stop to the practice. Identification of payees by well-known residents of the neighbourhood was insisted upon, and a payee of a telegraphic money order had to prove his claim and give satisfactory evidence of his permanent address. Despite all precautions, the telegraphic money order swindler is still common enough and manages to get away with large sums from time to time.