That is why the most implacable enemy of the men who dare raise or
falsify a check is the American Bankers' Association. This great
concern in reality is a protective association, and it relentlessly
hunts down all forgers first, last, and all the time. It never lets
up, absolutely never, no matter time, money, or trouble. It bitterly
pursues defaulters for the sake of justice, but it has still another
object in its deadly trailing of forgers and check tampereus. That is
because the whole banking structure hangs on signed paper. When it can
be altered with impunity, away goes the financial system of to-day.
Hence the unrelenting hunting-down of forgers who trifle with men's
names. On the books of more than one large detective agency of the
country are cases more than ten years old. The forgers never have been
found, but the hunt still goes on. Reports of the chase come in
regularly and the books will not be closed until the hunt stops at
prison doors or beside a grave.

Yet with all this remorseless hunting, check-raising flourishes so
well all over the United States that the banks fear to give even a
hint as to the sums of which they or their depositors are robbed each
year. The magnitude of the amount would frighten too many persons.

For a time it was thought that the use of chemically prepared paper
would prove a safeguard, because any erasure or alteration would show
immediately. The chemicals used in its composition would make the ink
run if acids were used to change the figures. But among the
check-raisers there were chemists just as clever as the chemists who
devised the prepared paper.

Then paper with watermarks woven through it was used. But it, too,