The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-29
GREAT BANKING HOUSES. HOW BUSINESS IS DONE The Growing Tendency To-
 ward Specialization.

dency to specialization among the part ners of banking houses. Whether It will reach the stage to which it has been developed in some of the great banking establishments of Europe remains yet to be seen. But the railroad specialist and the specialist on industrials, the "outside man." and the banking law yer are as well known in their profes- sion as are the eye and ear specialist, the specialist in nervous diseases, and the skilled surgeon in the practice of { medicine.
 In the Deutsche bank of Berlin this division is carried so far as to have eight managing directors, each with his special line of activity. An absolute assignment of business is made among them, unless, perhaps, one may be en- gagged to the limit of his time and en- ergy, and another be called to tighten the burden. They meet in conference once or twice day for discussion of the general affairs of the bank. On this side of the water the process has not been carried so far, nor is it likely to be in banking firms where an individ- ual interest dominates instead of board of directors representing many stockholders.
 Next to the partners in a banking house comes the holders of the power of attorney They are generally the actual heads of departments, and prlm- arily serve on a salary basis with an arrangement whereby they may share in the profits, without risk of loss. Per haps the most. important of all these departments is the bond department, which handles the selling issues of se- curities taken in bulk by the firm, and stands as the immediate point of con- tact between the firm and it's individual clients.
 It is through the bond department al- so that the banking house comes into contact with the machinery of the in vesting world The original decision to take an issue of securities having been made by the partners, or by the head of the house, the matter is passed up to the bond department to attend to the details. It is this department which must make the arrangements with the issuing corporation, must get out the prospectus and work out the terms of the public offer as to time and condition of payment.
 There are some banking houses which go even further with such lots of se- curities as they may take. They cor respond to the jobbing houses in mer- cantile life with an organized staff of bond salesmen, who are kept on the 1 road all the time offering their wares. Not infrequently this mode of carry l ing on the bond business is combined with circularizing on large scale. It is a parallel to mail order business in the commercial world, but involves a mass of detail that the largest l houses which buy securities, not by millions, but by tens or hundreds of millions, do not, as q rule, undertake.
 There is, in fact a certain pride talk en by the great international bankers in the ease with which they are able to I dispose of the securities which they have underwritten or have bought sub ject to the formation of an underwrit- ing syndicate. Tn Europe the Credit 1 Lyonnais makes no public offers at | all, but handles it's securities simply through it's sub-agoncies the world 1 over. The Deutsche bank is able to 1 float tens of millions of bonds at a | time in the same way. It needs only | to send to it's sub-agenciese dispatch such as: Advise sale of Russian bonds, reinvest Americans, in order to create a market for such an issue of our se- curities as it may have taken. That is what there is in a name.
 After the bond department comes the arbitrage department, which takes care | of the firms own dealings between in- ternational markets, and handles the purchases and sales in foreign mar kets of securities which are not avail able here. third special department is that which might be called the chancellery of the firm, or the office of lthe confidential clerk. It is here that the private cables and correspondence are received and sent. Upon this de- partment the partners depend for their personal information on host of sub jects. They receive 1t from an abstract 1 of each days transactions, and the 1 head of the firm is not infrequently de- I pendent upon the confidential clerk for the handling of his family and person. al accounts and papers.
 The cable business of great banking house, with it's connections in London, in Berlin, in Paris, and in Amsterdam or else where on the continent, is no triftng matter The cables of course, are of all sorts and descriptions. Ir dull times there may be hardly half dozen of them a day, but when import ant negotiations are on, steady stream of code may be turned on tc the wires from before the opening ot business until late into the night. The recording of the cables in classified books according to subjects, is part of the work of the confidential clerk. The volume of mail received and sent by a great Wall street banking house may be judged from the fact that the largest ones file away from 5O,OOO to 10000 letters and documents a year, exclusive of those received which are not deemed of sufficient importance for filing. The mail, upon it's receipt, is segregated as to private" partners or general" The general mail is sent to the office manager, who dis tributes it with instructions, and he, in return, is responsible at the end of the day for the correctness of the subject