Board (wage)

“ No instruction was given in the statute as to the principles on which the Board should determine wages, but the Board has necessarily in mind on the one side the requirements of the worker, and on the other the economic position of the trade. The workers’ representatives naturally emphasise the one aspect and the employers the other, but the appointed members and the Board as a whole must take account of both. They must consider what the trade in general can afford to pay and yet continue to prosper and to give full employment to the workers. ”

“ By the decision of this board the miners secured an increase of wages (which was assessed on the consumer in the form of higher prices) and several minor concessions. Yet at best, their lot is excessively hard. ”

“ The bank was never to suspend under twelve per cent. penalty; all the branches were responsible for each other; suits were to be against the State Bank; no stay of execution on judgments against it; it might receive federal deposits; lowest denomination $5, and, the Legislature might forbid notes for $10; the Legislature to elect a president for five years, and four directors, all removable by joint resolution; each branch to elect annually one member of the Central Board; the Central Board to control the branches, examine and inspect them, and distribute the capital. ”

“ Section 16. That before any member of a board of control enters upon the performance of his duties he shall sever all connection as officer or stockholder with every bank in his commercial zone, and he shall be ineligible to any position in any bank in his zone during the time for which he shall have been elected to serve.
Comment:—The Board of Control will be composed of a body of men who are younger than the Bankers' Council; but of the same high order. They will be men who have the undoubted confidence of the banking fraternity; men who are to win the prizes in the banking world. ”

“ The commercial zones bearing the odd numbers shall elect bankers and the commercial zones bearing the even numbers shall elect business men, and every seven years thereafter the bankers' council of the respective zones shall alternately elect a banker or a business man, so that the elective members of the board of directors of the American Reserve Bank shall always be composed of an equal number of bankers and business men. ”

“ This penny fever had originated in the parish board of supervisors, for the board itself was the greatest speculator of all. Every one down to the laboring youth of twenty years desired in his transactions to make ten dollars out of one ”

“ When a farmer hires a day-laborer for a dollar a day and his board, the board is as truly a part of the wages as is the dollar; and when I say that the laborer's wages should buy back his product, I mean that the total amount which he receives for his labor, whether in advance or subsequently, and whether consumed before or after the performance of his labor, should be equal in market value to his total contribution to the product upon which he bestows his labor. ”

“ These mixed banks have quite beaten the old banks, composed exclusively of pure bankers; it is found that the board of directors has greater and more flexible knowledge—more insight into the wants of a commercial community—knows when to lend and when not to lend, better than the old bankers, who had never looked at life, except out of the bank windows. ”

“ The masters with their capital are seated on one end of the board, and the men with their labour are seated on the other end. The plank is supported on a narrow edge, and the very least change in the quantity of gold at one end, or in the number of men at the other end, makes a re-adjustment needful to keep the balance. ”

“ After the appointment of Philip H. Minor, in September 1817, to be Cashier of the bank; and the order of the Board, on the same day, relative to the whole duties of the bank being performed by the then officers of the bank; no renewal of the appointment of teller was made, and he usually performed the duties of Cashier and teller. ”

“ From March, 1835, the chief control and management of the affairs of the institution appears to have passed from the hands of the directors. The mode in which the Committee of Exchange transacted their business shows that there really existed no check whatever upon the officers, and that the funds of the Bank were almost entirely at their disposition. That committee met daily and were attended by the cashier and at times by the president. They exercised the power of making loans and settlements to full as great an extent as the Board itself. ”

“ The hired laborer gets $150 and his board for six months, at the rate of $300 and board per year. The farmer and his wife get only $232 a year each and part of their board, for what is not produced on the farm they must buy. ”

“ That whenever any body of men desire to establish a national bank, or to nationalize a private bank, State bank, or trust company, they must first secure the approval of the board of control of the commercial zone in which the proposed bank is to be located ”

“ For their board and lodging they pay six dollars a month, one-sixth of which is paid by the corporation; and as their average earnings are about three and a half dollars a week, it is evident that, if not extravagant in their dress, they have it in their power to save a considerable sum yearly. ”

“ A national bank can 'exercise by its board of directors, or duly authorized officers or agents, subject to law, all such incidental powers as shall be necessary to carry on the business of banking, by discounting and negotiating promissory notes, drafts, bills of exchange, and other evidences of debt ”

“ Any worker or any person authorised by a worker may complain to the Trade Board that the wages paid to the worker by any employer in any case to which any minimum rate fixed by the Trade Board is applicable are at a rate less than the minimum rate, and the Trade Board shall consider the matter and may, if they think fit, take any proceedings under this Act on behalf of the worker. ”

“ On the Board of Trade proper nothing smaller than a 5000-bushel lot of grain or a 250-package111 lot of provisions can be dealt in. On the other side of the street, however, is the Open Board of Trade, to the floor of which strangers are admitted free, and where one may deal in 1000-bushel or even 500-bushel lots. Here is a place where quick action may be had for one’s money. The intending speculator may make his deal, watch the blackboard, close out and walk away $50 richer or $50 poorer, as the case may be, inside of ten minutes. ”

“ It determines the amount of material required and the number of men that shall be employed, basing its regulation on the requisition of the general board for the goods which in turn gets its data from the store keepers who make requisitions on the board according to the public demand for the goods. ”

“ In September, 1852, the board of commissioners, pursuant to the acts and election, subscribed for 600 shares of the stock of the railroad company, amounting to $30,000, and in payment of it issued 30 bonds of $1,000 each, signed and sealed by the president of the board, and attested by the auditor of the county, and delivered the same to the company. These bonds drew interest at the rate of 6 per cent. per annum, for which coupons were attached. ”

“ When they collect together around the pay-table they indulge in jocular remarks with one another, and the majority bubble over with good-nature. As they pass the table in single file they grab up the box containing the money with commendable determination. If the pay is a full one there will be a broad smile, or a grin, on the faces of most of the men as they remove the cover and pocket the coin ”

“ A Trade Board consists of an equal number of representatives of employers and of workpeople in the trade, to whom are added a neutral chairman and two or four persons unconnected with the trade, who are known as “appointed members.” ”

“ The face of a cheque drawn to the amount of his deposit in favor of another depositor in the same bank is transferred in the banker's books from the credit of the drawer to that of the payee by the stroke of a pen, no money at all passes in the premises, while the banker is released from one debt by creating another of equal amount, the drawer is released from one debt by another to be transferred to the payee, and the payee is paid by the drawer by the former's receipt of another debt more acceptable to him. ”

“ There is a building called the Clearing-house, to which every City banker sends, each afternoon, all the cheques on other bankers which he has received during the day, and they are there exchanged for the cheques on him which have come into the hands of other bankers, the balances only being paid in money ”

“ In a small book of this description much must necessarily be omitted, but it may just be added that in these days the facilities bankers grant their customers range from taking charge of their plate and valuables to allowing them to have their letters addressed to the bank, while they will even pay their subscriptions for them. The difficulty is to say what they will not do, and some day, perhaps, we shall have their young men calling in the morning for orders with the baker. ”

“ When a sufficient amount of cotton has been accumulated the local banker, at the request of the buyer’s agent, delivers the tickets in question to the local agent of the railroad, who in turn issues a bill of lading covering the shipment to the compress point, which then is attached to the draft drawn by the buyer’s agent upon the buyer’s head office, which draft includes the price paid for the cotton plus interest and exchange charged by the local banker, who is reimbursed for the amount of the draft thus drawn. ”

“ But in connection with banking and in ordinary commercial parlance it means money taken to a bank, left there, and understood to be subject to check or draft. [2] Money thus deposited and drawn on enters largely into the commerce of the country: checks and drafts are mercantile instruments, part of the machinery of trade, having commercial value and bearing no resemblance to the 'pass-book' held by the poor seamstress, or washerwoman, or cook, who can go but four times a year and after notice to have a debit entered in it. ”

“ The money account may or may not reflect efficiency in performance. Have we not been grasping at the shadow of money at the expense of the substance, effect? Consider, if you please, the working of a bank, perhaps the corporate institution in whose efficiency the public has the greatest confidence. In a small country bank one man does all the work. Later he requires a clerk or a bookkeeper. As the bank grows there are self-suggesting divisions of labor along such well defined positions as teller, paying or receiving, cashier, vice-president, president, etc. ”

“ An officer of a bank there asserts that banking in the north coast countries is not to any great extent a matter of handling currency or money funds. The intermediary system of brokers, merchants, and other middlemen between the producer and his market, to which we are accustomed, is lacking, and the banker must take the place of all of them. ”

“ If the great Bank secured through its branches, as it appears to have done, all the internal exchange business of the entire country, it would indeed, by promising to pay everything, never need to pay anything, but settle the whole by bookkeeping balances. ”

“ The local banker borrowed, in turn, from the bankers in the city, who, perhaps, obtained a portion of their money from the large money centres of the North. Every time this money passed from one hand to the other, the man who loaned collected toll from the man who borrowed. 154At the bottom, where the system connected up with the Negro farmer, the planter or storekeeper added something to the costs which had already accumulated—as a sort of insurance, and to pay the expenses of looking after his tenant and seeing that he did his work properly. ”

“ Bank Commissioners to inspect the bank and certify that this has been done; no loan to be made to a director for more than half his shares; in a $100,000 bank no one person to owe it more than $8,000, and so on according to a scale; no loan to be made to an officer; debts, exclusive of deposits, not to exceed one and a-half times the capital; the circulation never to exceed the capital, and one-third of it to be held in specie; a State officer to register and countersign the notes, and to guard the limit for each bank as returned to him by the Commissioners; tax to be one-half of one per cent. ”

“ What buys land, will buy every thing the land produces; and what buys the product of land, will buy [Pg 193] all other goods whether home or foreign. if wine is brought from France, the merchant designs to lay out his money on goods, at interest, or on land: the commission does not receive silver money, so he cannot have a bond from the commission, unless he give the value in paper; and many of the landed men won’t take silver for their goods or lands, having occasion for paper to pay the commission. ”

“ Each branch had a great degree of independent life and action. The directors of each branch were to borrow specie from time to time for that branch and on its credit, not issuing more notes than the actual specie on hand until that amounted to $25,000. After that they might put in circulation three times the amount of specie, provided that the last should never exceed $300,000. Five hundred dollars were appropriated to procure plates and paper, and the Legislature might appropriate money in the Treasury to fill the coffers of the bank. ”

“ If he had been content with his bank his bank within wise and proper limits—the money of the realm might have been doubled, and an extreme facility afforded to commerce and to private enterprise, because, the establishment always being prepared to meet its liabilities, the notes it issued would have been as good as ready money, and sometimes even preferable, on account of the facility of transport. ”