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.