Business Hints for Men and Women Part 32

In like manner, never destroy the cancelled checks handed you by the cas.h.i.+er when your bank account has been balanced. Each of these checks, if drawn to order as it should be, is a receipt, a voucher, for some payment that may possibly be demanded again.

Be on the safe side.

SENDING AWAY MONEY

It may be well to repeat again, in more condensed form, just how money may be safely sent to a distance.

1. By bank draft, payable to your order and endorsed over to the person whom you wish to pay. The party receiving the draft must endorse it before he can collect, and this endors.e.m.e.nt is a receipt for the money, as the cancelled draft must eventually come into your possession.

2. You can buy an express order up to fifty dollars, but you may send money in a package to any amount. Only banks or large dealers in money do this. Like the bank draft, the express order must be endorsed by the receiver, and the express company returns it to you, when it becomes a receipt.

3. By post office orders, up to one hundred dollars.

4. By postal notes, in small amounts.

5. By telegraph.

6. By transmitting a personal check.

7. By a trusted messenger authorized to get a receipt.

The bank draft is the very best way of transmitting money.

As has been said, drafts can be bought at any bank, and they should always be made payable to your order.

You want to pay a bill of goods to Lloyd, Smith and Company, New York, so you sign on the back of your draft for the amount:

Pay to the order of Lloyd, Smith and Company, Henry C. Robbins.

Lloyd, Smith and Company must endorse the draft before it can be cashed. The draft, after payment, is returned to you, and it becomes the best form of receipt.

LOST IN MAILS

Were you ever at the Dead Letter Office in Was.h.i.+ngton? If you have never paid such a visit, you can form no conception of the tons, the hundreds of thousands of letters and parcels that are lost every year in the mails.

Unaccounted for drafts, checks, postal orders, books, jewelry, medicine, everything, indeed, that the mails will agree to carry, may be found piled in that cemetery of lost communications, the Dead Letter Office.

Have you added to the mortuary list?

All these deaths, like many of living creatures, are due to carelessness.

As a rule, the sender is to blame. He has misdirected. He has placed papers not properly folded in the envelope and then neglected to seal it. He has neglected to write any address at all, and dropped the letter into the box. Again he has addressed the parcel, but neither men nor angels can decipher the writing.

MORE ABOUT NOTES

The note, as has been said, is one of the most usual forms of obligation, yet misunderstandings often arise as to its settlement.

Here are the points that must be attended to, nor shall we offer any excuse for repeating them collectively:

1. The date and amount must be so plainly written as to leave no doubt as to either.

2. The rate of interest, if any, must be clearly expressed.

3. The post office address of the signer or signees must be written opposite the name.

4. The note should be made payable at a definite place and on a definite date.

5. In taking a note or other obligation from a person who cannot write, be sure to have his "x" mark witnessed.

Should you receipt certificates of stock as security for the payment of a note, or the payment of any other debt, be sure to notify the company issuing them.

In giving this notice, which should be done at once, state clearly the number of shares you hold, the number of the certificates and to whom issued.

The enforcement of this rule will depend altogether on the character of the person with whom you are dealing.

Never, if you can help it, buy a past due note, especially if it is not secured by a mortgage.

If a note, which a third party has endorsed, becomes due, never agree to an extension of time without getting the written consent of the endorser.

Many men have lost through their ignorance of this essential transaction.

CHAPTER XXVI

LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP

We are not quite through with the note.

When making a payment of princ.i.p.al or interest on a note, be sure to take a receipt for the amount, stating specifically what the payment is to be credited to. In addition, if it be possible, see that the sum paid be endorsed on the back of the note itself.

The endors.e.m.e.nt of the sum paid on the back of the note bars its being negotiated for more than the amount actually due.

Sometimes the owner and the maker of a note live at points some distance apart. If you were the maker of the note, and wanted to make a payment, but wished to avoid the expense and annoyance of a trip, what should be done?

In this case a good plan would be to write to the owner of the note, asking him to send it by a certain bank in your neighborhood where you can pay. The bank will receive the cash, make the endors.e.m.e.nt in your presence, and then send its check for the amount with the note to the owner.

You must pay the cost of this transaction.

Or you may send the amount to be credited on your note, through a bank draft, as already indicated.

Never destroy a cancelled note.

NOTES IN BANK

If you have money at a bank your note will form the chief evidence of indebtedness and be the paper for which the security is pledged.

Keep careful track of the date of payment and the amount. There must be no neglect or carelessness.

Never permit your note to go to protest.

If for any reason payment cannot be made at the time fixed, then the better way is to go, as soon as this is learned, to the bank or other holder of the note, and frankly explain the situation.

Bankers are not shylocks. They realize that good and responsible men are often disappointed in their collections, or in the payment of a sum on which they depended for the settlement of their account with the bank, and in such a case they are usually willing to grant an extension.

Private individuals, as note holders, should be treated in just the same way.