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ciated with him in the bank came in and found him dead; and knowing that he had shared in the dead man's speculation, he shot himself and fell dead across the body of the other man.

In Iowa not long ago I was told that within a radius of, I think, one hundred miles ten bankers had committed suicide as the result of their speculations. The market had gone against them! It would be a mercy to these men to protect them from this temptation that has cursed humanity from the beginning: the temptation of gambling! The man who has in his keeping the money of others ought to be protected as far as law can protect him from the temptation of gambling. Am I not right?

VOICES: You are, you are.

MR. BRYAN: Again I am right.

Now I have said all that I have upon this question in the belief that it is not necessary to wait until the election is over to find out what ought to be done. Take a plan that appeals to the common sense of the average man. You need not be afraid to present it before election. The people want to do what is right. Some of you misunderstand our people out in the suburbs of New York. You think we are anarchists. You think we want to hurt and injure. I think I am a fair representative of the average man out in the country; at least I have been able to keep in touch with him in spite of all the newspapers. He and I get along pretty well together. Why? Because I have tried to appeal to the hearts and consciences and judgments of these men. You have said that we are arraying class against class. It is false! You say we have been taking property! That is not true. The man who defends human rights is the best defender of property rights. The man who prosecutes the wrong-doer is the best friend of honesty. And all we have asked is for you to view this great question from the bottom and not from the top. There is an idea that God selected a few men and endowed them with greater wisdom and fitness and then put the country in their hands. That used to be the plan. First it was the King who could do no wrong. Then it was the aristocracy. Now it is the democracy.

These men whose deposits make your bank worth keeping, these men whose deposits are the basis of your fortunes, have a right to be considered. Not only their interests, but their opinions. You like to persuade a man that your bank is a good

place to deposit his money in and that his judgment is good when you are trying to persuade him to deposit his money in your bank. Trust his judgment a little when he wants to regulate the method that will be employed by those who will have charge of his money. Some time we will have to meet this issue, and we may as well do so frankly and boldly now. There is no reason why, if our finances had been conducted as they ought to have been, there should have been this stringency. If the people tell you that they need an emergency currency, I will take their word for it; but if the banks are to hold both ends of the elastic, I will tell you that you do not need it as badly as you thought you did. Trust the Government, the representatives elected by the people. These men, acting in the open, and responsible to their constituents, are just as trustworthy as people acting behind closed doors, who are responsible to no one but themselves. I think you will have to consider the opinions of the voters on this question, whether you try to settle it by ballot or by a commission selected for the purpose of preparing the kind of bill that you would not prepare yourselves before the election. It has got to come before the people, and you might as well take them into your confidence first as last.

If you want this elastic currency let the Government issue it and loan it. You will have no difficulty deciding upon adequate securities that will be easily furnished. Then lay upon the banks the responsibility of making the banks safe, and if the banks say that they do not want to be held responsible for other banks, my answer is that if you banks won't trust each other, in heaven's name, why do you expect people to trust you with their money? The slight tax imposed would be more than compensated for by the money drawn from the people, which you could then loan out at interest. Here is a system that protects the depositor, protects the community, and gives the big bank an advantage at a small price. Why isn't it good to bring something in the interest of the masses up before the election?

My friends, I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. I have been talking a long while,-I don't mean to-night-for many years, and this is the most respectable crowd that I have ever talked to in my life-that is, measured by New York standards. It is no more respectable than the people among whom I live. The man who toils by the day, who goes out in the

morning and works all day; who commences in the spring and works all summer, though his hands be hard from work, and his clothing not up to the social cut-he is a respectable man, and I have been addressing respectable audiences all over this country, but this is the first highly official financial audience that I have yet addressed.

And if I have exceeded my time limit, and spoken with earnestness for which I should apologize, just remember how long I have waited for the opportunity and think that I may never have it again.

The Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants has invited The American Association to hold its twenty-first Annual Meeting at Atlantic City next October and the invitation has been accepted. Accountants from all sections of the country are taking an interest in the meeting, which will, it is expected, rival the Congress of Accountants held in 1904 at St. Louis.

Averaging Account Sales.

By H. D. GRANT.

The most trying part of the work of a bookkeeper for a commission house is averaging the account sales for the current month; and having had practical experience in that capacity, I should like to present a few suggestions. This method is a unit calculation only and has been approved by competent judges as an accurate and simple form of averages to cover large sales.

Take, for instance, the sales for a month in a large woolen commission house, which may aggregate $200,000 made up of 2,000 invoices or more, with terms of sale ranging from ten days to seven months and incidental dating covering a number of days. The formula which I submit provides columns to cover such running time, with a supplemental division for uneven days.

This unit method is a safeguard against getting the wrong number of days. The old system which is ordinarily used is to abstract the amount of each charge at its due date, from the sketch of sales at the end of the month and multiply each amount, by the number of days intervening between the due date and the focal date or the first day of the month; then divide by the total sales for the month. The method takes two men about two days to figure sales, whereas the unit system takes one man four hours to complete the same number of sales.

The columnar arrangement of Form A gives a place for 10 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 4 months, 6 months, and 7 months with the dates 1 to 30 on each side. There is a daily sales margin in which may be inserted each day's total sales (in dollars only, no cents being considered). The total for the month is reconciled to the sketch and the first unit of dollars omitted from the total. This total, divided by 3 (which is the same as the original amount divided by 30), will give one day's interest on the total sales.

As a sketch clerk enters, say, an item termed ten days June Ist, billed on February 5, amount $211 (see sheet entry under February 5), that is, 123 days running time, he assigns it to the columns headed 10 days, 90 days, and to the supplementary division under 23. By footing each column you get the running

time at the rate of 1 per cent. per month; the supplemental amounts are all carried up alongside the daily sales, opposite the running time specified on the actual sale. They are added and carried to the right of daily sales. This amount is multiplied by the running time, which begins with the unit 1, inserted after the first date or on the 2d of the month. The result of the extreme right-hand column is the interest on the running time, on the daily sales and the supplemental division, and you get that by multiplying each amount by the unit running time and dividing the total by three. The first unit of the total is omitted, which, as before stated, is the same thing as keeping the total intact and dividing by 30. For example, take 3727. To get I per cent. for 9 days we multiply 3727 x 9 ÷ 30. In the breaks 10 to 19 we add the amounts and affix a cipher; in the breaks 20 to 29 we add the amounts x 2 and affix a cipher. In other words, we do not multiply 2599 by 23 but by 3 and the 20 is taken care of in the breaks. The total interest earned 695.48 is the same as if we took each amount opposite I to 27 and extended these amounts separately, viz. IX 1387 +2 X 5344 + 4 X 2223, and divided each quotient by 30. We then total the interest earning column and divide it by one day's interest on the sales which is, $31.87. This divided into $3,189.30 equals 100; now 100 days from February Ist gives the due date May 12, 1907.

The negative to sales, namely, returns and allowances, cannot be covered by this form. The sales begin always on the first of the current month, while the returns sometimes cover a period of six months before and after the date of the account current rendered. This requires a laying out of all the amounts at their due date, before one can find the focal or beginning date. The formula for averaging the credit is illustrated in Form B.

The allowances number thousands of small amounts, representing all sorts of dates, and are taken as at the end of the current month in aggregate.

The thirty-one perpendicular lines are crossed with horizontal lines to provide a laying out space for the amount of returns. The focal date is the first date on the first laying out space, the numbers 1 to 31 at the top being the monthly date.

We get the even month's interest earning at I per cent., by cross-adding each monthly laying out space, which is designated by its title at the extreme left of sheet. The time between the

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