The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-10-17
WOMEN BLUNDER
At BANK WINDOW
LaughabIe Mistakes In Bust
ness Ethics
BY FAIR DEPOSITORS
The Woman's Teller Has Many Things
to Amuse Him and Relieve the
Monotony Of Long Work
ing Hours.

From the Kansas City Star.
It's wrong to suppose that women do
all the silly things one hears about In
banks. Men are just as foolish, but they
seldom tell on one another-that is, men
who are not up in matters of banking.
They find malicious pleasure in laugh
ing over the story of the woman who
sent the bank a check to cover her over
draft-and this really has happened, right
here in Kansas City--but they forget all
about the business women whose accounts
are always absolutely correct and their
checks properly drawn.
Women whose time is spent chiefly in
Family duties with little society now
and then and an occasional vacation trip
are not expected to know so much about
banks and banking ethics as those who
have checking accounts in four figures
and transact all their own affairs These.
mostly, are the women who make the
paying tellers laugh with the delightfully."-
innocent errors that crop out through
ignorance which is excusable and, In
many instances, due to the parsimony of
husbands. But women don't make all the
mistakes.
A group of women chatting on a porch
or the New Films at Excelsior Springs
one day last summer took up this ques-
ton as 1t is here discussed:
Women" said one, ARE always doing
something foolish in banks They're
worse than mon, believe Now there's
Mrs -"
Whereupon one OF the number in de-
Tense appealed to w H. Winants, presi-
dint CT the Mercantile Bank of Kansas
City, who was sitting near. Now Mr..
Winants had a rather extraordinary
large experience with women depositors
when he was ce-president of the Ma
tional Bank of Commerce
ut was In the old bank one day." he
said, that an intelligent-looking man
came In and said he wished to send SIS
to Memphis. I directed him to the proper
window Three weeks later that man
came in again, hopping mad.
Do you know he said, that money
never reached Memphis?' Go to that
window, | told him, and get the number
of your draft and I'll have It traced
He pulled out his pocketbook. I've
got that receipt right here he said an
grily. No need to go to the window
He had carried that draft around for
three weeks. No woman would do a fool
trick like that; no woman in the world"
Still, there are just a few laughable
happenings. Just a few. Possibly as
queer an incident as one might hear of in
many day developed in the Pioneer Trust
company's offices year ago. woman
added up a long row of figures and
asked for a draft for the amount against
a New York bank. Casually she re-
marked that she had been shopping in
New York and owed all these persons
and well. just one draft would cover the
whole sum. What name? And how did
she expect these persons to get their
money? Well, wasn't 1t too ridiculous?
What could she have been thinking
about? The idea. And away she tripped
laughing gleefully.
Some bold. bad men have forged their
wives names to checks, and some faith
full, Woodworking women have signed
their husbands names to checks when
they shouldn't have. But the women be-
lieved. in their inscrutable way, that they
had done no wrong; that they had a right
to the money-and they had-only' the law
doesn't look at 1t that way. This has
happened often in Kansas City banks. 1t
takes patience and gentleness to explain
to them how the bank must guard all its
deposits and pay out money only on
checks signed as the bank register shows
they should be signed.
'"There Is one game, though. that we
have hard time to beat" paying teller
said. That's the woman who asks how
much money her husband has on deposit.
We daren't answer that question and we
don't answer 1t unless we personally
know those concerned. l remember how
I was deceived once. A man called up