Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1894 — STENOGRAPHER’S BILLS. [ARTICLE]

STENOGRAPHER’S BILLS.

They Are Hard to Collect—How to Get a Remedy. These are bitter days for stenographers. There is just as much work now as ever before, but collections are slow and uncertain. One of them toldjne the other day that he had been doing $1,200 worth of work for every S4OO he had received during the last year. A movement is now on foot to raise a fund to send a competent lawyer before the Supreme Court and argue against the celebrated Bonynge decision. This is the man who sent in a bill of SI2,uOJ to Tweed's lawyers for his work on the Tweed case, together with the transcripts of testimony ordered. The lawyers refused to pay it on the ground that they were simply acting as the agents of their clients, and were not personally responible for the bill. The general term sustained this decision, when Bonynge brought suit, and the case was lost every time it'was appealed. Now stenographers are compelled to wait until their lawyers collect their fees from clients, and if there are no collections the stenographer’s bill is held over. The only remedy is to get a written contract from the lawyer himself to be personally responsible for the bill; but few court stenographers care to risk loss of friends and patronage by insisting on this precaution. Of course, great Jaw firms in this city and elsewhere pay their stenographers promptly as they would pay any other employe, and do not ask them to share their risks in business. But the great majority of small firms and individuals in bad times take advantage of the law and stenographers have to suffer.—New York Press.