The system is not only a great aid in preventing the forgeries of commercial brigands, but the easiest of all means for a person in a strange city to identify himself as the lawful possessor of check, or note, or bank draft which he may wish to turn into cash at a banker's window. USED IN ANCIENT TIMES. A thousand years ago the Chinese were using the thumb print signatures in commercial business. Its practical adaptation today is explained at a glance in the check reproduced here, as it was filled out by Mr. McClaughry himself. In this check the design is that the maker of the check, before leaving home for a distant city, shall draw the check for the needed sum and, in the presence of the cashier of his bank, place one thumb print in ink somewhere over the amount of the check as written in figures. Thereupon the cashier of the bank will accept the check as certified by his institution. With this paper in his possession the drawer of the check may go from his home in New York to San Francisco, stranger to every person in the city, but at the window of any bank in that city, presenting his certified check to a teller who has a reading glass at his hand, the stranger may satisfy the most careful of banks by a mere imprint of his thumb somewhere else upon the face of the check. Had this simple thumb print been used in the Stensland bank, no handwriting expert would have been needed to establish the genuineness of any note under question. With the ink thumb print of the cashier of a bank placed on a bank draft over his signature and over the written amount of the draft, chemical papers and the dangers of "raising" or counterfeiting the draft would be an impossibility. The thumb prints of the secretary of the United States treasury, reproduced on the face of greenback, silver certificate and bank note of any series, would discourage counterfeiting as nothing else ever has done. SAFEGUARD ON SEALS OF LETTERS AND MONEY PACKAGES. As an aid in the transmission of sealed packages, the thumb print is invaluable. The print will determine absolutely whether the wax has been broken in transit, and it will also establish the identity of the person putting on the seal. Packages so protected have been left by train robbers where all other packages in the safe were taken. The thumb print was too suggestive of danger to make tampering with such packages safe. In the ordinary usage of the thumb print on bankable paper, the city bank having its country correspondents everywhere, often is called upon to cash a draft drawn by the country bank in favor of that bank's customer, who may be a stranger in the city. The city bank desires to accommodate the country correspondent as a first proposition.