The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1917-08-24
MODERN BANKING
IN BLACKFOOT

lHiuSS are mONluk swiftly uOW
days. IL a man had something mod
ern two or three years ago and has
been working along with it, he
wakes up today or next week to find
that 1t is not exactly modern; 1t Is
growing obsolete because something
new and better has been built or in
vented. Ten years ago the modern
bank had no machinery operating in
it, aside from typewriter and the
combination on the vault. Then
came the metal cash-holder for each
size of coins; and the cashier jig
gled a trigger to shake out any de-
nomination he desired. It enabled
him to make change quickly and cor
rectly. Then came the check pro-
tector, the adding machine, and the
loose-leaf ledger, and banks pointed
with pride to these machines that
were human.
The people of Blackfoot have al
ways been justly proud of their bank
ing institutions. and of the modern
things operating in them. A visit to
its newest one, the Blackfoot City
bank, situated in the Eccles build
ing, finds four people doing the work
of six as compared with those having
equipment not quite SO modern.
The old heavy ledgers with their
pages and pages of accounts that
are closed, are not in evidence. The
loose-leaf ledgers hold the accounts,
and the day an account is closed it
is slipped out of the clasp. A book
keeper no longer spends hours of time
turning from one account to another,
aided by an index; machine takes
the ledger leaf between its lips and
prints in the entries of the day. 1t
adds, substracts and gives balances.
1t locks and refuses to work If a |
man presents a check that there is
not enough in his account to pay. |
Everybody from the cashier down
the line has delicate machinery of
some kind to simplify his or her
work and to enable one person to do
more work in day than could be
done without the machine. An adj
ditional advantage is that the ma
chine is more accurate than the HUI
man mind and it never tires.
Walk in and hand the cashier a
check for, say $3.50. He taps three
keys and the correct change falls
into his palm. He need not look
at it to see if it is right for the
machine count is correct. 1t saves
your time and his and he can do his
work in a smaller space.
By the use of the ledger posting
machine, the bookkeeper keeps the
accounts posted right up to date, and
one persons does the work that three
would be required for under the old
method. The graphotype and the
addressograph make addresses IN
type and do the addressing. At the
end of each month when the monthly
statements are ready to be mailed
to the long list of depositors, the
envelopes are simply fed into the ma
chine and they come out correctly
addressed. Note the use of the word
correctly for the machine makes
no mistakes, and that cannot be said
of the human mind. The work OF
addressing the envelopes Is done by
the machine in about a tenth OF the
time that would be required by hand.
The stationery of the Blackfoot
City bank bears the unique emblem
Oh q l6drL Ill WulCu 10 oOAuC iCIIOA Aho | ,
that tells that it represents the B. G.
B. and it is in the heart Of the Snake
river valley, the emblem of the heart
telling part of the story.
Printers and publishers have been
swelling up and bullying their chests /:
for quarter of century because
they had the linotype, the most hu-
man and most complicated of ma
chimes, but now comes the banker
and puts it all over him with a
ledger poster that adds, substracts
and gives balances and then-here's
where it beats us all, it balks when it
comes to an overdraft. What the
editor wants is linotype that will
balk when setting statement that
Is not true, and the prospect is that
we shall have to labor on and depend
on human effort to detect those
things. There was an old Sunday
school story about the Necklace OF
Truth that did the choking stunt the
instant it's owner got off wrong, but
invenors frankly admit that they
have not yet found way to apply
it to the linotype. But live banker
never rests till he is one link ahead
Of everybody else.
m.. A