Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1881-09-16

How Business Men are Made in Staunton.


ING AND ACTING MERCHANTS.
&C. SC, &C.
To-day the session of the Hoover High
School, now one of the established institu-
tiors of Staunton, commences with most
flattering prospects. The school has out
grown its former accommodations and the
business Department under the manage
me,,t of Prof J. g. Dunsmore will be re-
moved to the old Valley Bank Building,
on Maine street, which furnishes very sui
table quarters.
The system and management of this
very important practical branch of the
school is comparatively new to our people
and there is 80 much that is interesting in
connection with it's operations that we pro-
pose in this sketch to give an inside view
of its workings.
During the summer Prof. Dunsmore,
who is graduate of the well known East
man Business College, taught special
class of ten young men the session of which
closed recently.
The day before it closed our reporter,
attracted by the talk of the boys about the
extensive business operations that were
CARR d On in the basement of the Academy
building, dropped in upon them and spent
an interesting hour in watching MIR. Duns-
more's mode of making business men.
He had five in the Theory Department.
Nat. Catlett, Ed. Kinney, Charlie lesser,
Thomas Peyton and Thomas Burke, and
five who bad graduated in that department
and had passed to the "Actual" where
they we're engaged in regular business on
separate capital and carrying on trans
actions with each other from day to day as
in real life These were J. T. Stuart, rep
resenting the Domestic Dry Goods bust
ness, at Poughkeepsie, N. Y; A. S. Nor
Ton & Co. and P. G. Rosenbaum & Co.,
Wholesale Dry Goods and Commission bus
mess. on State Street, Baltimore, and E.
G. Harrison Co., Wholesale Dry Goods
and Commission, Broadway. New York.
Each firm started with capital of $500.
They had small packages Of flour. molas-
ses, salt, sugar, kerosene oil, dry goods.
&c., labelled aud marked to represent large
quantities which they bought and sold
among themselves in real business like
style.
In order to give a variable price for a
margin in buying and selling between the
trades. Gold Board is established and
every morning the teacher fixes new rate
by which the price of goods is regulated.
For instance the day before the writer
looked in on the school, gold stood at 1O2
and molasses was quoted at 60 cents. The
next day, gold rose to LII and molasses
went up with it to 68 ALI cents and all
other goods in proportion, and some of the
young merchants were in fine spirits at
the money they had made by holding on,
while others were depressed that they had
to buy SO high and feared there would be
no money in the operation.
They had bank too which was run by
Mr.. Dunsmore as Cashier and known as the
D. G. Bank, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y, and
money was hourly deposited, checked out
or borrowed here on good merchantable
paper.
The currency was one of the most in
teresting things about the establishment.
Confederate money predominated from
800 note with it's familiar cut of an old
Confederate soldier leaning on his gun and
another one sitting beside him peering in
to the distance, to the short brick dust
colored so cent note with medallion OF
Jeff Davis in the centre, good in those lat
ter days for hard boiled egg in any Rich
mond restaurant Rut the buys had been
ransacking their fathers old drawers and
musty packages and there were also old war
notes of the corporation OF Lewisburg,
Va, notes of broken Richmond banks,
Greensboro Mutual Life Insurance &
Trust Co., N. c.; VIM. A. Burke individ-
ual fractional currency notes, of 1861, re-
deemable when presented in sums of SIS,
and county of Augusta fractional cur
rency ''promising to pay the bearer at the
office of the County Treasurer, Twenty
Five Cents in bankable currency when
presented in sums of Five Dollars. By
order of Court, Robert Guy, Presiding
Justice" Some of these notes were wit
messed by W. A. Burnett, clerk, but many
of them by W. T. Jewell, the work of sign
ing them having gotten too heavy for one
man, one of them bore the No. Is, 535 of
that series, showing the extensive issue OF
that date, May 25th. 1852.
This money was passed from hand to
hand among these young merchants with
all gravity and change demanded to the
last cent which was often paid in cancelled
postal and revenue stamps, but it had to
come in something; or the cash account Of
the concern would not balance and some
times the head of firm had been known
to work over his cash accounts of these
spurious transactions, through the hours
of school. then in the afternoon till the
setting OF the sun and far into the night
looking for mistake with all the intent
ness of head book-keeper in city bank
with reputation at stake.
While our reporter was looking on. his
attention was attracted By a little financial
transaction going on at a business counter
near. The firm of J. T. Stuart mot A. T.
Stewart) presented the following note at
the desk of A. s. Morton:
BALTIMORE, Nd, June 80, 81.
$151.11.
Sixty days after date promise to
nav T. T. Stuart or order, value received
One Hundred and Fifty One Dollars and
Eleven Cents.
A, s. MORTON.
He paid it in confederate money and
made the change with some notes from a
Richmond broken bank, some of W. A.
Rurke's fractional currency and cancelled
stamp, all at par. Stuart had some credit
too as the following copy of certificate of
deposit our reporter found on his desk
showed he kept bank account: