The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-29

An interesting phase of bankers cor is the matter of letters of which are being received all the way from London to Calcutta and may contain an infinite variety of requests. It is becoming a custom in Wall street to keep close track of the so introduced. not only as to the sources of the original introduc- ton, but as to the result of such trans actions as they may have taken up on the strength of the American ac- quaintanee gained through it.
 Every large banking firm has more or less constantly in its employ number of technical experts, some of them under general retainer, and some as a lawyer may be retained for individual cases. Is there rail- road to be financed in South America, the expert on railroad construction is to the ground for an ex- tended stay. He may even have with him a student of the economic pro- blems of rairoading, so that when the report comes back to the partners
 
 of capitalization according to the most accurate knowledge of the facts. If it is an enterprise of size and one that is being watched closely, the construction expert will stay by no doubt until the road is finished, and his side partner on operation until it is in such running order as will insure reasonable se- curity to its capital issues.
 Everybody in banking house de- bends on the archive department, which is the final resting-p place of all the documents and reports, pros pectuses and agreements that make up the round of the years business. Ev- erythlng, in fact. except the private and cable correspondence finds its eVentful way into the archives, and is so cared for that it will be available on moments notice That is the ideal condition. It may be varied according as the partners sees fit to leave letters and documents around in their desks, which should be returned immediately upon using
 Behind these special departments lies the general business office of the firm, differing not very largely in some respects from that of bank. One finds the familiar paying and re- receiving tellers in their cages; the cashiers department, wherein securi- ties are received and paid for and handled up to the time when they go to the custodian of the vaults of the firm for safekeeping. There is also the loan department which attends to the physical end of the loan business. The executive end of it the partners manage in the first instance, determ- ming how many hundreds, thousands or millions shall be placed on given day or at given rate, and executing their desires through an outside brok- CT on the floor of the stock exchange.
 There are comparatively few large banking houses who keep ther own men on the board, either at the loan post or in the general trading. The specialists of the stock exchange can attend to the loaning sufficiently well, and as for the buying and selling of stocks-well, it not infrequently would be extremely inconvenient for a big banker to have man tagged with the name of his firm putting through or ders on which some big market move ment was being conducted. So it Is that Morgan brokers" and Kuhn Loeb brokers',' and standard oil brok- CTS" are well recognized names on the floor They do not imply ownership nor would any business connection at all be admitted at either end, but serve to illustrate how closely the operations of the large interests are watched throughout the market com munity
 The foreign exchange man in a banking house might have story written about himself alone. His work is perhaps the most mysterious in all Wall street, although it Is a matter of simple arithmetic simmered down through cable quotations. But the idea of buying exchange in London and selling it in Paris, and buying it again in Berlin, and then conducting some resultant operation here by which the varying rates of exchange in force at
 the several points, might operate to produce profit involves a perplexing confusion of figures, and may we'll be left for some special elueidation. The foreign exchange man Is, of course, an expert. When the gold in terms of which his purchases are made gets
 over here it is not infrequently taken in charge by junior clerk.
 To run the books of an international
 banking house is no small undertak- ing. It is not sufficient that the man in charge of it should be familiar with putting up syndicate accounts, joint accounts, pool accounts, and trio quar- to, and quinto accounts, but he must
 be able to keep them, interest and all, in half dozen kinds of foreign cur rency, and in such shape that a state ment may be taken off for any partici- pator at any moment.
 Thus in an international syndicate or pool it would not at all unlikely to
 have the accounts of the German par
 ticipators kept in American and Ger
 man currency, those of the partici- pators of Brussels in American and
 French currency, those of the Anster- dam particpators in American and
 Dutch, and those of the British par
 ticipators in American and English
 currency. All of which requires a head bookkeeper of some ability and lexperience.
 The custodian of the firms vaults
 has pretty much department of his
 own, for not only is his the physical
 custody of the securities of the firm and it's customers, but he has also to