The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-12-18 00:00:00

BANKERS' CHECKS AND THEIR
CROSSINGS.

The following communication, which has been sent to The
Times for publication, will Interest many of our readers :--

Sir,—As a commercial man of 38 years' experience,
will you kindly allow me to give my views as to the
issuing of checks, and upon the security I have hitherto
felt as to the various ways of crossing?
1. Check issued to bearer. This is open, and can be
crossed by any bearer into whose bands it may pass,
hut must then go through the bank only to which the
bearer may cross it.
2. Check crossed simply " and Co." The in-
tention here is that the check should go through a back,
and may also be crossed to any. bank, but must in the
latter case go through that special bank.
3 Check crossed, for example, "Bank of England,"
must pass throrgh the Bank of England only for pay-
ment, such being the intention of the drawer at the
time of issuing it, and also of the payee.
4. Check crossed "Bank of England, account of
Messrs. Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson," must
go throngn the Bank of England into the Clearing
louse, and can only be placed to the credit of Messrs.
Smith. Brown, Jones, and Robinson.
5. No Check bearing on its face more than one
backer's name should be paid by any banker.
I have made these statements upon the feeling that
the drawer of the check has studied the wishes or fol-
lowed the instructions of the payee in so drawing it,
and that any desired alteration in the crossing should
be met by a fresh check from the drawer.

Consequently, any person receiving a check crossed
to a_ bank not his own does so at his own risk.

Finally, if special crossings are not to be respected,
a person stealing a crossed check, with facilities for
pa.sing it, is in the same position as if he had misap-
propriated an open one.---I am. Sir, your obedient !ser-
vant, W. J. R. COTTON, Lord Mayor.
Mansion House, Dee. 10.

In connection with the foregoing, "A. C." writes to The
Times:—

Sir,—Considerable confusion seems to exist about
the law of cressed cheques, and suggestions are rife for
its alteration. If it is well mad( rstood that the follow-
ing two propositions are established law, there would
seem no difficulty in commercial men regulating their
practice accordingly, without further legislation or liti-
gation :-
1. A cheque crossed with the name of a specific
banker, or merely with the words "and C 0.," must be
paid only through a banker, but not necessarily through
the banker whose name is endorsed.

2. A cheque crossed with the name of a specific
banker and also with the name of the account at that
banker's to which the owner of the cheque who makes
the crossing desires it to be paid ceases to become
negotiable on such endorsement being made, and can
only be paid to the banker specified, and he is bound
to apply the proceeds to the credit of the account
named.

Thus cheques are, at the option of the owner, (a)
negotiable'in the fullest sense, like a promissory note;
(b) negotiable with the limit that ne one but a banker
can receive the proceeds; (c) non-negotiable when the
proceeds have been by the crossing above-mentioned
hypothecated to a particular account.

[From Punch.]
THE BRITISH PUBLIC'S XXXIX.
ARTICLES.
I.—Ox-Tail soup.
IL —SHAKSPEARE.
• 111.—The Bdaik of England.
IV.—The Lout) MAYOR.
V.—Beer.
Vt.—Cold Water.
VlL—Sometbing Hot.
VllL—Public Dinners.
IM—Public Schools.
X.—The Peerage,
X[.—The Royal Academy.
XII —The British COTI StltUtiOnt
XTTL—The Family Doctor.
X IV. —Bran dy-and-Soda.
XV.—St.
XV [.—The Three-per-Cents.
X V IL—The Court Circular.
XV B dance at the Banker's.
X I X.—A Neat Umbrella.
X.X.—A Nice Cob. it Ail; 't siitor•
XXI —Roast Thief. . .4,0;
XX T.—Seasonable Weather.
XXI Elf.—Long Walks.
XXIV. —Across Country,
XXV.—A Latch-Key.
XXVI.—The Classics.
XXV IL—A Mouth at the Sea-side.
XXVII L—Great Bargains.
XX X —Grumbling.
XXX.—Writing to the Papers.
XXXL—Sight. seeing.
XXXlL—'he Lig Vacation.
XXXIIL—The Twelfth of August and the First of
September.
XXXlV.—Being Introduced.
XXX V.—Turkey and Plum Pudding.
XXXVL—A Great Subscription.
XXXVIL—A Qiiiet Cigar.
XXX Vlll.—Testimonials.
XXX[X.—Christmas.

THE LANDLORD OF NEW YORK.
(From the Spectator.)
The career of Mr. W. B. Astor, the American mil-
lionaire, who died at New York on the 24th of
November, deserves more than a passing word. He
was believed to be, perhaps erroneously, the greatest
capitalist in America, and he certainly was, in the
whole world, the supreme example of a speciel type of
rich men, those who may be called beaver-capitalist—
men who, possessed of unusual means, care nothing for
speculation or for business in the usual sense of the
term, nothing for splendour, and nothing for political
power, but pass quiet lives, almost in seclusion, in the
patient and usually successful endeavour to increase
and secure their fortunes. l'he late Mr. Thornton,
whose death affected an English Budget, was one of
these men • and Mr. Brown, the Liverpool shipowner,
another ; hilt neither of them offered so perfect a speci-
men of the genus as the late representative of "the
Astors." He was the second in succession of a family
of money-getters, who, but for an accident, might have
attained wealth unequalled in modern history.
John Jacob Astor, the founder of the house, the eon
of a German butcher of Waldorf, possessed in a high
degree, the genius, for in him it was something more
than the mere capacity, for rapidly making money.
He landed in 1782 in New York at 19 with £5 in his
Pocket and seven flutes for luggage, intending, it is
believed, to deal in musical instruments, but became
apprentice to a Quaker furrier, get up speedily for him-
self, and without any special luck—without marrying
his master's dau4later, or inheriting a great legacy—
accumulated before he was 40, by dealing in furs and
by some suc Tssful shipping speculations, about a
quarter of a million sterling. This was an immense
fortune in those days, more than a million would be
now, but it was only a beginning of Mr.
Aator's accumulations. He commenced investing
his money on a plan which had the advantage of
being absolutely secure, and of affording a
chance of immense profit, if he could only wait. He
had a profound belief that New York would grow in
no long time into a London, or would become, at all
events, an immense as well as a wealthy city, and he
bought land on the island very cheap, at what seemed
to less convinced observers preposterous diatancea
from the centres of business, and began erecting large
and attractive houses on his estates. As the city
spread they sold and let well, and still continuing his
business as a furrier, and speculating heavily in shops
and pianofortes, he invested all his profits in more
and more acres and more and more houses, till, when
he died, in 1848, at the age of 85, it was found that his
estate required as much management as a first-class
business, and that his only efficient son, the other
one being insane, bad inherited a fortune of
£4,000,000 sterling. Larger fortunes than this are
believed to exist in the United States to-day, but
in 1848 this was probably the largest, and certainly
the largest safely invested in real estate, and beyond
any fluctuations except those incidental to the pros-
perity of the country. The German butcher's boy who
at 17, long before emigration had become a habit, had
the nerve to decide on emigration to a new world, and
to wait two years in England en route merely to learn
its language, had in one life-time made himself the
richest citizen of his adopted country. He intended to
have been much more. There was ambition as well as
power in the man, he had is passion for wealth as a con-
quest as well as a possession, and he struck out a scheme
for founding a Fur capital in Oregon, to be called
" Aeteria," monopolising the furs of the North
and the Far West, and developing a trade between
the United States and Asia through the Pacific
Slope, which, but for the war with Eng-
land of 1812, would, he firmly believed, have made
him "the richest man that ever lived in the world."
The scheme was abandoned in consequence of the war,
and never resumed; but Mr. Astor never lost faith in
it, and looked back on it to the end of his days as re-
gretf ally as Napoleon looked back on his expedition to
Egypt, and the wretched little Englishman who
"stopped his true career." He would, there can be
little doubt, had he succeeded, have held in his hands
all the furs from the Far West, then a main source of
supply, especially for beaver, and might have saved a
million a year for thirty years. He turned aside, how-
ever, and thenceforward adhered firmly to investments
in land.
The William B. Astor who inherited all this wealth
had none of his father's daring genius fur money-
making ; but he had, nevertheless, a quietly persistent
desire to continue accumulating. He was 56 when he
succeeded; he had been trained to wa-ch his father's
property, and for the rest of his life he pursued un-
swervingly a single purpose—that of so managing "the
Astor Estate" that it should grow greater in his hands.
He was not a mean man, still less a miser, any more
than he was a generous one. He thought his father had
not distributed quite enough amorrkwoae relatives, and
in a moderate, sensible way, at a cost of a few thou-
sands he remedied all the deficiencies he perceived. He
heardt that the trustees ot the Astor Library, after their
large expenditure on buildings, had hardly adequate
fur& for book-huying, and he added £40,000 to his
father's gift of £BO,OOO. He gave, when asked, to chari-
ties, and not illiberally ; but his usual check was one
for 22, 0, and he is only once recorded to have made a
donation of £lO,OOO at once. He lived also liberally,
with a town house and large country place; but he
lived moderately, spending on himself and his charities
but a fraction of his income, secluding himself almost
entirely from the public eye, and taking no visible part
in the business of the City or Republic. He never en-
ea..ted in "business "in the ordinary sense, and never
became a director in any of the undertakings in which
be held shares. His work for 27 years was merely to
manage his property, to cover his father's lands with
large houses, tdi shortly before his death he possessed
720, must of them of the first-class and in the richest
quarters, and te invest his yearly accumulations in the
safest investments he could find. He never speculated
or dealt on 'Change, or went in for grand coups, but
steadily added house to house,and share to share, work-
ing all the while as if he had still his bread to maker
His office was as large as that of any great contractor,
and he superintended it himself, going down every day