Bank clerk

“ The clerk then starts for the Clearing House with nineteen bundles of checks; and a sheet which shows how much his bank has against each of the other banks; and the grand total it has against all the other banks combined. Therefore, at a certain hour, generally noon, on each day, twenty clerks, one from each bank, meet at the Clearing House. Each one takes his stand at his desk. When the manager taps the bell, every clerk makes the round of all the other desks, and leaves the bundle of checks he has against each bank with a slip showing the total amount of the package. ”

“ If he escape—well, thank Providence. Were these fallen ones called now to witness to the fact, they would unhesitatingly declare that espionage upon them would have been providential. Much woe would not now be upon them and their loved ones.
I know whereof I speak, when I say that a bank’s executive should know whether or not his bright young men are habitués of the pool-room, the horse-race track, or are in the habit of taking a “flyer” in Wall Street stock gambling. Expensive living in a bank clerk is a sufficient reason for suspecting that he is not a desirable employee. ”

“ When one is in this frame of mind it takes very little on the part of the clerk to make him believe that he has been treated rudely. Bank clerks are notoriously haughty, but the fault is often as much in the person on the outside as in the one on the inside of the bars, especially when he has come in to draw out money which he knows he should not, such as his savings bank account, for instance. ”

“ This was the first time Evan had had one of the bank's chief shortcomings brought home to him—it makes little difference what a clerk's intelligence or what his position and responsibility, he will be paid according to the time he has served. He is not rewarded according to his works, but paid for length of service. ”

“ Chesapeake Bank, 51 Md. 591, which was also a case where checks forged by the confidential clerk of the depositor had been paid by the bank, and, as shown by the pass-book, were charged to his account. The court, upon an elaborate review of the authorities, said, upon the general question, that 'there is a duty owing from the customer to the bank to act with that ordinary diligence and care that prudent business men generally bestow on such cases, in the examination and comparison of the debits and credits contained in his bank or pass book, in order to detect any errors or mistakes therein. ”

“ It shall be the duty of every other officer, clerk, and servant of the Bank, to do and perform all other duties, that may, from time to time, be required of them respectively, by the President and Cashier ”

“ The obvious purpose of the memoranda of numbers in the deposit book of the court, and upon the checks, was to enable the court and the clerk to properly keep the accounts, and that the checks might operate as vouchers, showing the manner in which the moneys in any particular case were distributed, and to enable the clerk to show to the court that he had deposited the funds which he had received. There is no evidence anywhere of any intention that the bank should be controlled by the numbers in paying any check drawn upon it. ”

“ One cannot get away from the horrible burden, it clings until the heart is sick and the stomach nauseated. And these monsters are not victims of the bankclerk's, either; the clerk is their victim; nor does he in any way merit the unnatural attachment—someone else digs them out of their graves (the bank "morgue" of accumulated back-work) for plunder, and saddles them on him.....
Evan's mind felt vacant; that was much better than having it loaded with worry, worry that could result in nothing but harm to the clerk and nothing but cold dollars to the bank. ”

“ You might just as well ask a strange bank to cash your check as to offer it your uncertified check for a collection on you. You would hardly cash a check for a stranger. Why should the bank take an equal risk for you? Yet nothing seems to rouse the ire of the average man more, than for the collection clerk to ask him to have his check certified. ”

“ A general ledger, showing generally the accounts of the bank, including the account in totals of the deposits made and checked out daily; a cash book, giving each day's business; a daily balance book, which was a summary of the general ledger; these three books were kept by Schardt; and an individual ledger, which showed in detail the deposit account of each individual depositor, and was kept by a clerk, who had no other duties, and was known as individual bookkeeper. ”

“ The teller was silent a while.
"Things change fast in the bank, don't they?" he observed, reflectively, thinking of himself and his career.
"You bet they do," replied Jones. "Banking isn't the same business it used to be at all. Salaries haven't kept up with the times. A bunch of junior men are now employed to fill posts that experienced clerks used to occupy. The bank makes a policy of recruiting—even going to Europe, where clerks think five dollars is equal to a pound sterling—to keep down expenses. A boy like yourself can, by heavy plodding, do the work of a ten-year clerk. ”

“ They must not be at the bottom—they must not even be half way up—they must be at the top. A merchant’s clerk would be a child at a bank counter; but the merchant himself could, very likely, give good, clear, and useful advice in a bank court. The merchant’s clerk would be equally at sea in a railway office, but the merchant himself could give good advice, very likely, at a board of directors. ”

“ The clerk, having been notified by the Interior Department that the First National Bank of Selma, Alabama, had been designated by the Secretary of the Treasury as a depositary of public money, deposited in July, 1866, to his own credit as clerk in that bank the money received by him from the marshal. ”

“ From time to time other clerks from every house enter the room, and, passing along, drop into the box the checks due by that firm to the house from which this distributor is sent. The clerk at the table enters the amount of the several checks in a book previously prepared, under the name of the bank to which they are respectively due. ”

“ Evan waited for his old friend at the boarding-house, and nursed a growing headache.
"I was afraid of it," said Robb. "Bank officials justify themselves and the bank no matter what happens. Besides being determined to carry out any bluff they have started they will never admit that they pay a man too little salary. If he quits because of starvation pay they say he was no good as a clerk. The bank must maintain at all costs what it calls its dignity. ”

“ And he went into the store, not to be a gentleman clerk to sit in the counting-house and copy letters and invoices, and do the bank business and [53] lounge about in fine clothing, but he went to do anything that came to hand, rough and smooth, hard and easy, dirty and clean, for in those days the duties of a junior clerk differed from those of a porter only in this, that the young clerk’s work was not so heavy as the robust porter’s. And even when he grew older and stronger he would go down into the hold of a vessel and vie with the strong stevedore in the shifting and placing of cargoes. ”

“ This makes the other clerk (who plays billiards with you) laugh very heartily, but it makes your employer laugh out of the other corner of his mouth, for he has no business to keep such a clerk, and the customer knows it. The customer may avenge himself by refusing an extension on a note which he holds, and that note, possibly, may have your employer's name on it! The mistake you make in this particular case is in applying the manners of a billiard-saloon to the uses of a place of business. A very ordinary-looking old man was one day standing in a great bank in New York City. ”

“ I asked him what time the bank closed.
“At four,” he answered. “The clerks generally get away by half-past.”
“Do you like the idea of being a [Pg 56] banker’s clerk?” inquired Conny, with a gleam of mischief in her blue unfathomable eyes.
“I haven’t the least notion,” I replied. “All that I know about banks is that they are places where you offer cheques and receive money for them.”
“True,” said my uncle, with a laugh; “but people must work very hard in order to induce the banks to change those cheques into money.”
“I wonder your papa didn’t put you into the army,” said Conny. ”

“ Every applicant must be recommended by three members of two years’ standing, who must each give security for £300 for two years. The committee meets every alternate Monday, at one o’clock; but a special meeting may at any time be called by the chairman and deputy-chairman, or by any five members. Brokers and jobbers, or dealers, as they are politely termed, are not allowed to enter into partnership; and, when a defaulter is excluded, his clerk is excluded with him. ”

“ That the bank never was furnished with a copy of rule 28 in bankruptcy, and had no actual knowledge of the rule.
' (18) That neither the clerk, Bowen, nor his successor, Converse, presented to the district court at each or any regular session of said court, after the defendant was so appointed depository, the account and vouchers required by section 798 of the Revised Statutes of the United States. ”

“ As soon as he was aware of the fact, he telegraphed to the West Sussex Bank to stop payment, only, however, to make the unpleasant discovery that the cheque, filled in to the amount of six hundred pounds, had been presented and cashed (in gold) two days previously. The clerk who cashed it took no particular notice of the person presenting it, except that he was of gentlemanly appearance, and declares himself to be quite incapable of identifying him. The largeness of the amount raised no suspicion in the mind of the clerk, as Mr. ”

“ Minor capitalists, like parasitical plants, clung to him, and were always ready to advance their money in speculations at his bidding. Nothing seemed too gigantic for his grasp; nothing too minute for his notice. His mind was as capable of contracting a loan for millions, as of calculating the lowest possible amount on which a clerk could exist. Like too many great merchants, whose profits were counted by thousands, he paid his assistants the smallest amount for which he could procure them. ”

“ The career of the man who thus craved assistance was somewhat out of the ordinary way of his craft, and may, perhaps, prove interesting, as the sketch of an adventurer in whose power it lay to make or mar the fortunes intrusted to him; and also as a specimen of the mode in which the Stock Exchange is sometimes resorted to by bankers with the balances of their customers.
Bred a hosier at Aberdeen, Alexander Fordyce found the North too confined for any extensive operations, and, repairing to London as the only place worthy his genius, obtained employment as clerk to a city banking-house. ”

“ The long balance-night orgies were registered there; the fixed expression that comes from searching out differences and the strain that accompanies each day's balancing of the cash. Something more as well—debts!
All bankclerks contract debts. The careless ones do so thoughtlessly, the careful ones reluctantly—both necessarily. Evan owed about sixty dollars, tailor and other bills. A bankclerk must make a good impression on people; he must have a good appearance—head office makes that its business. The clerk's salary—that is nobody's business, not even his own. ”

“ The clerk makes a journey from one end of the line to the other, depositing, as he goes along, a parcel of money packed up with the wages-list. These parcels are received from the hands of the clerk by some one who is always on the lookout at each place of deposit, with that eagerness or care men usually betray when they expect to obtain the reward of their industry. The arrival of the cash-bearer is always either known by fixed arrangement or by a special telegram which is sent down the line. ”

“ A working man enters into a banking house with his month’s earnings nicely tied up in the corner of his handkerchief: a blandly smiling clerk, with well pared nails and laundried linen, receives it and notes the amount in the depositor’s account book;—the workingman departs. Then the proprietor enters, gives a portion of the money to his clerk and puts the remainder carefully away—in his pocket. In another apartment, the projectors of a railway company offer a graceful financier one-half of their beautifully printed stock certificates, on condition that he floats the other half. ”

“ The term ordinary business, with direct reference to the duties of cashiers of banks, occurs frequently in English cases, and in the reports of the decisions of our State courts, and in no one of them has it been judicially allowed to comprehend a contract made by a cashier, without an express delegation of power from a board of directors to do so, which involves the payment of money, unless it be such as has been loaned in the usual and customary way. ”

“ The question we are now considering is the authority of the cashier. It is his duty to receive all the funds which come into the bank, and to enter them upon its books. The authority to receive implies and carries with it authority to give certificates of deposit and other proper vouchers. Where the money is in the bank he has the same authority to certify a check to be good, charge the amount to the drawer, appropriate it to the payment of the check, and make the proper entry on the books of the bank. This he is authorized to do virtute officii. The power is inherent in the office. ”

“ Faxon been in?"
"No; only Mr. Whippleton. What's the matter, Phil? Everybody seems to be in a stew to-day."
"There's an awful row brewing. What did Mr. Whippleton do?"
"He went to the safe, and looked over the pages of one of the books. What's the matter?"
"He has been using the money of the firm for his own speculations, and in my opinion he means to run away with all the cash he can put his hands on."
"Whew!" whistled the entry clerk. ”