The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing Part 10

Paying Notes and Acceptances.

Make your notes and accepted drafts payable at the bank where you do business. Whether it or other banks hold them for collection, they will be presented to your bank when due.

Pay your notes, etc., on the day they fall due, and early in the day if convenient, or leave a check for the amount with your bank on the day before your paper matures. Banks will not pay notes or drafts without instructions.

Keep a careful record of the days of maturity of all your paper. Banks usually notify all payers a few days beforehand when their paper matures, but this is only courtesy on their part and not an obligation.

Exchange.

"Exchange" means funds in other cities made available by bankers' drafts on such places. These drafts afford the safest and cheapest means for remitting money. Drafts on New York are worth their face value practically all over the United States in settlement of accounts.

Collections.

A draft is sometimes the most convenient form for collecting an account.

The prevalence of the custom is due to the fact that most men will wait to be asked to pay a debt. If a draft is a time draft it is accepted by the person on whom it is drawn by writing his name and date across the face. This makes it practically a note, to be paid at maturity.

Notes or drafts that you desire to have collected for you by your bank should be left at the bank several days before they are due, so as to give ample time to notify the payers.

Borrowing.

Banks are always willing to loan their funds to responsible persons within reasonable limits. That is what they exist for. There is, of course, a limit to the amount a bank may loan, even on the best known security, but the customer of the bank is ent.i.tled to and will receive the first consideration.

The customer should not hesitate, when occasion requires, to offer to the bank for discount such paper as may come into his hands in the course of business, if, in his opinion, the paper is good. At the same time he should not be offended if his bank refuses to take it even without giving reasons.

Indorsing Checks, Etc.

When depositing checks, drafts, etc., see that they are dated properly and that the written amounts and figures correspond. The proper way to indorse a check or draft--this also applies to notes and other negotiable paper--is to write your name upon the back about one inch from the top. The proper end may be determined in this way: As you read the check, holding one end in each hand, draw the right hand toward you, and turn the check over. The end which is then farthest from you is the top. If, however, the check, draft or note has already been indorsed by another person, you should write your name directly under the other indors.e.m.e.nt, even if that is on the wrong end. If your own name on the face of the check, draft or note is misspelled, or has the wrong initials, but if the paper is clearly intended for you, you should first write your name as it appears on the face, and under it your regular signature. You should indorse every check you deposit, even though it be payable to bearer.

Mistakes in Banking.

Mr. Samuel Woods, a member of the American Inst.i.tute of Bank Clerks, recently contributed to Munsey's Magazine an interesting article on the subject of "Mistakes in Banking." From this we are permitted by the courtesy of the publishers of Munsey's to reproduce two of the facsimiles shown.

One wrong word, or figure, or letter--the right thing in the wrong way or the wrong place--the scratch of an eraser or the alteration of a word--or any one of these things, in the making or cas.h.i.+ng of a check, is liable to become as expensive as a racing automobile.

The paying teller of a bank, says Mr. Woods, must keep his eyes open for new dangers as well as old ones. The cleverest crooks in the country are pitting their brains against his. After he has learned the proper guard for all the well-known tricks and forgeries it is still possible that an entirely new combination may leave him minus cash and plus experience.

But it is not the unique and novel swindle that is most dangerous, either to a bank or an individual. It is the simple, ordinary mistake or the time-worn trick that makes continuous trouble. Apparently, every new generation contains a number of dishonest people who lay the same traps, and a number of careless people who fall into these traps in the same old way.

Check-Raising Made Easy.

One of the first lessons, for instance, that a depositor should learn before he is qualified to own a check-book is to commence writing the amount as near as possible to the extreme left of the check. Those who forget this are often reminded of it in a costly way. Some one "raises"

their checks by writing another figure in front of the proper amount.

"Five hundred" might be "raised" to "twenty-five hundred" in this way, even by an unskilled forger.

The highest court has recently decided that a bank cannot be held responsible, when it pays a "raised" check, if the maker of the check failed in the first place to write it out correctly. The treasurer of the Bath Electric Company, of Bath, Maine, had written a check for one hundred dollars, which was raised to eighty-one hundred dollars and cashed. The court held that the company, and not the bank, should lose the eight thousand dollars, because of the "gross carelessness" in drawing up the check. Facsimiles showing the check as originally written and as it looked when paid are here reproduced.

Altered Words and Figures.

The altered check is the bane of the paying teller's profession, and it is the general practice in conservative banks to accept no checks or other paper which shows signs of erasure or alteration in either words or figures.

THE NAMES OF THE STATES.

Alabama--Indian; meaning "Here we rest."

Arkansas"--Kansas," the Indian name for "smoky water," with the French prefix "arc," bow or bend in the princ.i.p.al river.

California--Caliente Fornala, Spanish for "hot furnace," in allusion to the climate.

Colorado--Spanish; meaning "colored," from the red color of the Colorado river.

Connecticut--Indian; meaning "long river."

Delaware--Named in honor of Lord De La Ware.

Florida--Named by Ponce de Leon, who discovered it in 1512, on Easter Day, the Spanish Pascua de Flores, or "Feast of Flowers."

Georgia--In honor of George II. of England.

Illinois--From the Indian "illini," men, and the French suffix "ois,"

together signifying "tribe of men."

Indiana--Indian land. Iowa--Indian; meaning "beautiful land.'"

Kansas--Indian; meaning "smoky water."

Kentucky--Indian for "at the head of the river," or "the dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground."

Louisiana--In honor of Louis XIV. of France.

Maine--From the province of Maine, in France.

Maryland--In honor of Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I. of England.

Ma.s.sachusetts--The place of the great hills (the blue hills southwest of Boston).

Michigan--The Indian name for a fish weir. The lake was so called from the fancied resemblance of the lake to a fish trap.

Minnesota--Indian; meaning "sky-tinted water."